Mars in Aquarius

[Jim Eshelman]

Mars will pass through Aquarius May 5 to June 19. What will we see in the top headlines during this time?

During the entire time, Neptune is also in Aquarius. This has been an obscure placement, our best effort at capturing its meaning being here:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=388&p=30706#p30706
I'm unclear how Mars will play into this - part of this project is to actually witness that - but with the current pandemic one thing I have seen in multiple forms is a shutting down or cutting back on opportunities for universalism in different forms; one wonders if this is being put on the block with two malefics in the constellation for the next six weeks.

In humans with Mars in Aquarius at birth, we expect the following character (although this hasn't been very helpful in other Mars transits):

Powerful pragmatic mind is progressive, non-dogmatic. Analytical, innovative, resourceful. Visionaries (yet pragmatic first). Bold individual, avoids automatic herd compliance. Honest, unpretentious. Follows own instincts, not advice. Gregarious, loves life, vested in friendship, helpful to friends (helper in general). Understands people. Sexually uninhibited.

Here is a Garth Allen article describing one noteworthy Mars passage of Aquarius in 1956: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1973

Potential Aquarius themes are: Futurism and universalism in all forms, science especially with a (social or technological) science fiction feel, progressive technology in general; anything symbolic of streaming channels, whether waterways, pumping hearts and vascular systems, or anything resembling them; compassionate help and bearing others' burdens or lightening their load; truth, discovery, novel breakthrough, liberty; so social, cultural, and artistic waves; astronomy, cosmology, astrology.

[Jim Eshelman]

Temporary list of recent Mars in Aquarius passes (the last 50 years). I may not keep this here - may delete the post - since it isn't the purpose of this thread (which is to track the five to ten biggest headlines each day against symbolism of Mars in Aquarius).

I don't want to get overly excited about this, but... Mars in Aquarius marked the confirmation of the first successful Ebola vaccine during the Ebola pandemic and the declaration that SARS has been contained in the SARS pandemic. Besides that, the space exploration news and general SciFi, extraterrestrial, and technology feel of these events is striking!

1971: England launched its first satellite into orbit. World's first domestic violence shelter established. The UNIX programming manual was published. Intel releases a breakthrough microprocessor. Mariner 9 becomes first spacecraft to successfully enter Mars' orbit. Soviet Mars 3 lander successfully lands on Mars. DB Cooper successfully steals $200,000 and leaps from a hijacked plane (during a severe thunderstorm), never to be seen again.

Enters Apr 30 1973 0:01:49 am (EST +5:00)
Leaves Jun 12 1973 4:43:12 am (EST +5:00)
Enters Apr 4 1975 5:44:35 am (EST +5:00)
Leaves May 13 1975 4:53:25 pm (EST +5:00)
Enters Mar 12 1977 5:52:13 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Apr 20 1977 5:51:05 am (EST +5:00)
Enters Feb 20 1979 2:35:47 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Mar 30 1979 5:26:07 pm (EST +5:00)
Enters Jan 30 1981 6:09:44 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Mar 9 1981 7:41 pm (EST +5:00)
Enters Jan 10 1983 8:07:31 am (EST +5:00)
Leaves Feb 17 1983 4:40:53 pm (EST +5:00)
Enters Dec 17 1984 9:43:26 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Jan 26 1985 6:25:24 am (EST +5:00)
Enters Nov 17 1986 6:16:56 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Dec 31 1986 12:24:47 pm (EST +5:00)
Enters May 13 1988 4:55:07 pm (EST +5:00)
Leaves Jul 2 1988 3:30:11 pm (EST +5:00)

1990: Hubble Space Telescope is launched aboard Shuttle Discovery. The two Germanies sign various treaties toward unification.

1992: Space shuttle Atlantis launches, carrying instruments to study global warming. Open Skies Treaty signed to allow unarmed surveillance flights over 34 member states: It went into effect in 2002 during another Mars in Aquarius period. Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert broadcast to over a billion people, raising millions for AIDS research.

1994: China gets its first Internet connection. Church of England ordains first female priests. Linux kernel 1.0 is released (after 2 years of development).

1999-2000: U.S. turned over full control of Panama Canal to Panama. Peak of the dot-com bubble with DJI peak. Tagish Lake meteorite strikes Earth.

2003 (6 months): SARS is declared to be contained by WHO. Eupatoria Planetary Radar sends a message (Cosmic Call 2) to five star systems. A European constitution is proposed by a body calling itself the Convention of the Future. Northeast Blackout of 2003. Spitzer Space Telescope launched from Cape Canaveral. Hubble Space Telecope starts the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field exploration for four months. French Guiana launches an unmanned Moon mission. China launches its first manned spaceflight.

2005: First YouTube video is uploaded.

2011: Civil uprising phase launches the Syrian Civil War. Tohoku earthquake triggers nuclear crisis at Fukushima.

2013: Meteor explodes over Chelyabinsk (most powerful extraterrestrial visitation to Earth in over a century). Scientists 3D print a human ear for the first time. Pope Benedict XVI resigns as pope.

2015: Charlie Hebdo shootings (with an international showing of solidarity & community). International agreement reached in Ukraine crisis.

2016-17: First proven vaccine against Ebola confirmed (70-100% effective). U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan after 15 years. Donald Trump is inaugurated U.S. President.

2018: NASA's InSight probe successfully lands on Mars. Ukraine declared martial law after Russian coast guard fired on and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels trying to pass from the Black Sea through Kerch Strait (another water passageway encounter!). France has worst civil unrest since 1968 due to the Yellow Vests movement (seeking economic justice). NASA lands a probe on an asteroid. New threshold of Internet use world wide with more than half (51.2%) of world population using it. Almost 200 nations agree on rules to implement Paris Agreement on climate change response.

[Jim Eshelman]

Today's top news headlines do have a different feel - we'll see if that continues. Noticeably, they're a little more science driven than we've seen lately and definitely lean (rightly? wrongly?) to the world getting moving again.

In one seemingly anti-science trend, the White House is reorganizing the coronavirus task force to get rid of (or minimize) most of the doctors and scientists. President Trump wants the new focus to be on healing businesses and economic revival.

Meanwhile, analytic models keep keep increasing the expectation of deaths consequent to the virus.

The word mutation is in the news, specifically that they've now confirmed that CoV-SARS-2 has mutated into a deadlier variant. But it's not new - the mutation occurred in early February and is the deadlier version that has been ravaging New York (imported from Europe).

The United Kingdom now has more virus deaths than any European nation, including hard-hit Italy and Spain. Despite this, and the fact that the curve is still rising, Boris Johnson (who recently recovered from the virus) is expected to announce tapering down of the UK's lockdown measures.

Meanwhile, the former agency director who raised the coronavirus alarm earliest and loudest and warned people off Trump's hydroxycloroquine recommendations - and then was fired - has filed a whistleblower complaint.

A new study of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Germany has confirmed that the hardest hit areas later brought out the most extremist, fascist votes in 19832 and 1933, propelling Nazism into leadership.

NASA is working with Tom Cruise to shoot a mission in outer space.

[Jim Eshelman]

In today's main headlines, science continues to take the lead. Two important findings have been released in the past 24 hours. One is that blood thinners can help severely ill COVID-19 patients - now, doctors just have to figure out which blood thinners are best. (My non-medical opinion is that this is another reason for everyone who can tolerate it to take a baby aspirin a day.) - The other report is that monoclonal antibody therapy, which has been effective for other illnesses like lupus and HIV, may be a way to build immunity while they're working on a vaccine.

(We certainly didn't find terms like :monoclonal antibody therapy" in the primary headlines while Mars was in Capricorn .)

Other news is primarily about the economy, which is suddenly worsening news. One is that U.S unemployment may, this week, probably will become the worst since the Great Depression, with some states at 25% unemployment and the eradication of 10 years of jobs gains. Second, Bank of England just predicted the UK economy is headed for its worst crash in 300 years. Third, the EU economy may shrink 7.5% this year (worse than in 2008).

I'm not sure what this economic news might have to do with Mars in Aquarius - we may have to wait a few days to see how the story shakes out.

A third lead story today is that Trump finally vetoed the Iran War Powers resolution as expected - Congress' effort to constrain the president after U.S. assassination of an important Iranian general. (Again, not sure how this fits Mars in Aquarius, but I list it while sorting this out. It may be as simple as there are more Aquarians in Congress than any other Sun-sign.)

More on track to the symbolism, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced new protections for men accused of campus sexual harassment and assault, mostly by narrowing the definition of sexual misconduct on campuses and giving the accused more due process rights.

[Jim Eshelman]

Today's headlines open observing that, while many businesses are indeed floundering during the lockdown, very Aquarian businesses - video game companies, e-commerce, remote communication services, etc. - are thriving. (But also Clorox and other cleaning product companies.) It's been a great year for them for a couple of months, but the news focus is breaking now that Mars has moved from Capricorn to Aquarius.

Beginning today, 40 of the 50 states are partially reopened for business. (That's a "wheels of industry" theme that might be here, but definitely an anti-science theme: CDC and other scientifically-based assessments advise against it.)

Racial disparity news: In the UK, black men and women are at least four times as likely to die from COVID-19 as white men and women. People of color in general have a "statistically significant raised risk of death." U.S. numbers match this trend (but not the size of the disparity.) In other race-themed news, two men were arrested for chasing down and killing a black man jogging in his own neighborhood in Georgia because they thought a black man running had to be up to no good

[Jim Eshelman]

The primary news story has indeed changed concurrent with Mars entry into Aquarius, as this matched the lightening of isolation restrictions in many parts of the world including at least 40 states in the U.S. Today's lead story is about this "get back out there" move with particular focus on how areas that have lightened restrictions are having infection numbers rise once more.

The House of Representatives will introduce a bill today to create a Public Health Corps to address, at a national level, health and economic problems, e.g., to perform widespread virus testing (and hire out of work people to do the work). Along with this come a couple of more scientific studies on what is and isn't effective (thus far) in treating the disease.

Today the Supreme Court will here three cases involving separation of power issues, mostly centered on Trump's tax returns and, more broadly, presidential immunity against scrutiny.

[Jim Eshelman]

Mostly, I don't see that today's top headlines reflecting Mars in Aquarius themes other than the broad theme of the world moving toward lifting lockdown (and consequences of that). The bullet points of the morning news are:

Fauci testified to the Senate yesterday, saying reopening states too quickly will increase infection, cause more suffering and death, and slow down the eventual return to normal. (Maybe a way to express this prevailing sub-theme is, "Things are not normal.")

The Supreme Court heard three important cases yesterday concerning separation of power between the branches of the U.S. government, especially centered on Trump's insistence that the president cannot be investigated or prosecuted while in office (no subpoenas, no testimony, no indictments). This position caused quite a stir among the justices!

Democrats have an unprecedentedly large $3 trillion relief package ready for voting. GOP leaders want to slow this down, saying there's no rush.

The Afghanistan-Taliban ceasefire is breaking down. In response to Taliban attacks, the Afghan government is resuming attacks.

The Democratic National Convention is moving ahead with the convention planning, trying to sort out how much will be digital, how much in person.

(Listing all of these in case they turn out to house relevant themes as we see them develop. The "wanna be free," "things are not normal," digital-tech themes are obvious enough, and the other two big stories may have themes thus far undetected.)

[Jim Eshelman]

Adding the science fiction theme, the White House program to get a coronavirus vaccine is now called Warp Speed.

People are more aggressively fighting SIP orders, with court battles now flowing in the upper Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan).

Real Navy incident reports have been released detailing the U.S. Navy's encounters with UFOs. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics ... index.html

[Jim Eshelman]

Ah, science. Let us all hope this is fer realz:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/covid-c ... A3ELPIHBlU

The company is a legitimate company. Here is a press release four and a half years ago of their co-announcement a breakthrough in collaboration with City of Hope. That almost certainly puts them in the category of recognized, legitimate companies.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 49674.html

In this case, the announcement concerned the development of "groundbreaking cell-penetrating antibody therapies" that allowed antibodies "to penetrate cells and target 'undruggable' disease-causing molecules.:

[Jim Eshelman]

Mass gatherings are starting to be a serious problem as people relax lockdown restrictions and start to congregate. Stories of several of these are dominate today's sad news. (I'm not sure if this is a Mars in Aquarius detail as such. I have an old ingrained Tropical Aquarius habit of thinking "social, friends, gathering" that may or may not be anything real, although the idea of "collectivity" likely fits.)

Anyway, social distancing and lockdown are dwindling and scientists are saying it's a bad thing that will result in really bad things. That's the story of this period of our lives in a nutshell, I think.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Force showed off its new flag.

[Jim Eshelman]

Today's primary headlines include...

More news questioning the accuracy of antibody tests, now known to be wrong as much as half the time. Encouragement of medical facilities to use the highest quality tests and maybe test people twice.

Trump threatened to pull the Republican National Convention out of North Carolina because the governor won't guarantee everyone's safety if the arena is filled to capacity. Trump apparently thinks this is a Democrat ploy to hurt his biggest rally of the season. Republican governors in Georgia and Florida have already raised their hands...

Big Aquarian news: SpaceX is about to launch two NADA astronauts to the ISS, the first time a commercial aerospace company carries people into space (and starts to take over shuttling for NASA).

People are getting so comfortable with Work From Home that it may become the new standard: Technology may replace architecture.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Space-X launch didn't go off because of lightening and electicity in the air. It's reset for Saturday.

We passed 100,000 people dead in the US late last night. Wasn't there some other aspect Saturn Neptune? yesterday.

The antibody tests in wide use are inaccurate.

[Jim Eshelman]

No Saturn-Neptune recently.

If SpaceX didn't go off today, it's going to launch soon... still a primary expression of the kind of space news that concentrates historically in Mars in Aquarius periods.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Sorry, brain fart. Neptune-Pluto.

[Jim Eshelman]

Sorry, brain fart. Neptune-Pluto.

No, they're 4° apart. At noon yesterday, the five outer planets were:

13°16' Ari - Mars
25°44' Aqu - Neptune
29°45' Sag - Pluto
1°29' Cap - Jupiter
6°45' Cap - Saturn

Not even any partile semisquares.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Here in Omaha, there were protests, but they devolved into attempts to break into Target and Best Buy by people who intended to loot the businesses but the police here brought out the tear gas and rubber bullets and put a stop to that.

The actual protests proceeded unmolested even when a major intersection was shut down. It was only when the looters and vandals came out the police used force against anyone.

The protests began about 3PM and were supposed to end at 8PM. Things started getting nasty about 9:30PM and the police started using force about 10:15 PM

This was all at the intersection of 72nd and Dodge, 41°15'41.0"N 96°01'29.3"W

[Jim Eshelman]

Yes, Friday's headlines were led by the Georg Floyd death in Minneapolis and the intervening days have seen riots and looting in dozens of cities across the country. Most of this is shown in the ingresses - the Caplunar, Canlunar, transits of Mars to solar ingress angles, and quotidians - but this doesn't make it any less expressive of Mars in Aquarius.

I think this incident is an expression of what I termed "a shutting down or cutting back on opportunities for universalism" at the top of the thread; or, to put it more simply of Mars in Uranian context, which we would expect to be explosive with startling violence, “bombshells,” fires, collisions, explosions, and surprise attacks. Over the weekend, some cities are literally burning. (Remember, though, that the extreme martial expression is probably from the ingresses.)

Tech news & conflict: Twitter is starting to label some of Trump's posts as needing fact-checking or as glorifying violence. He's retaliating. First amendment battles are ahead!

And, though this will be Monday morning's headline (since the summaries I use don't issue on weekends), the SpaceX flight lifted off and docked with the ISS successfully.

[Danica]

An interesting bit of news, a FB friend posted 16h ago (so, late night hours of 5/30 for Pacific zone, I guess) saying:
"So the United Nations just launched their new website. It’s literally called the New World Order."
https://unnwo.org/?fbclid=IwAR04g6Uh-CR ... APG9_ni-tY

Happytalism
Happytalism is a new economic paradigm which places happiness, well-being, and freedom at the center of human development models, systems, and all life.

And you can sign up to review the whitepaper for this model:
https://happytalism.com/

The United Nations New World Order Project is a global, high-level initiative founded in 2008 to advance a new economic paradigm, a new political order, and more broadly, a new world order for humankind, which achieves the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development by 2030, and the happiness, well-being, and freedom of all life on Earth by 2050.

[Jim Eshelman]

This morning's top headlines:

The George Floyd murder continues to flood the country with overflowing protests and riots that are also connected to looting, with several state National Guard units deployed. Some cities are on fire, many are on curfew. Explosive damage.

The national radical anti-fascist movement called Antifa has been labelled by Trump a terrorist organization. (I suppose it is, in the same sense that the Black Panthers were in the '60s Current and former government officials are calling the designation within U.S. borders unconstitutional.)

Oh, yaah, COVID-19 is still around. (I told you the story would change when Mars entered Aquarius!) Meanwhile, Trump dissociated the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

And, again oh yeah, for the first time in about a decade, U.S. astronauts went up into space this weekend, this time by a commercial carrier.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Trump is claiming he will (or has, it's hard to tell what he thought he was saying) deploy US Troops on US soil against US citizens invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, in abrogation of the Posse Comitatus of 1878 because there were agitators across the street from the White House who broke windows and set fires in St. John's across the street and he and his family were sent to the cellars ("the underground bunkers") for a couple hours by the Secret Service.

He also said the man who is the chief lawyer for the joint chiefs of staff is "in charge." Didn't say of what. I guess he was the guy trying to explain what had to happen for the Insurrection Act to be used so Trump decided he sounded like knew what he was talking about so therefore he should put it into action.

Or something. One of the governors on a phone call with Trump this morning said Trump has lost it.
That's not new.

[Jim Eshelman]

Or something. One of the governors on a phone call with Trump this morning said Trump has lost it.
That's not new.

SIDEREAL DEMI-LUNAR RETURN (May 24)20200524 Trump DSLR.jpg
His fiddling fantasy is interrupted by the nation's hardest week of the month. Uranus rises for surprising, swiftly changing circumstances. With it, the one important foreground aspect is transiting Pluto opposite natal Saturn, a mere 0°03' wide. This climaxing transit is destabilizing, even dismantling... Old, reliable structures crack, longstanding certainties are challenged, and security is threatened. He surely feels as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders...

[Jim Eshelman]

I've fallen behind tracking primary headlines this week but I have all the summary emails and the stories have barely changed.

Leading every day are the George Floyd protests raging through the nation and, now, many other parts of the world. Looting in some areas have been described as in anarchy (a great Mars in Aquarius word, I suspect), with consequent strong curfews in many cities for about a week now. That this explosive rioting could totally take over the top headlines in the midst of a deadly global pandemic and unprecedented national lockdown is a dramatic portrayal of Mars in Aquarius with Neptune having supplanted Mars in Capricorn with Saturn. By now, all four officers involved in Minneapolis now face felony charges for the death.

Current outrage has also expressed itself this week at the ballot box, expressly expanding tolerance and diversity. Openly racist Rep. Steve King lost the Republican primary and won't be a candidate for what would have been his tenth term. Ferguson, MO elected its first black mayor (who is also its first female mayor). Other races tipped similarly.

Grindr just disabled its ethnicity filter. Amazon's best-seller list is currently loaded with books on race. The Ahmaud Arbery murder case goes to court this morning.

Science continues to be a theme: Dr. Fauci said Tuesday that the U.S. should have 100 million doses of one COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020 with final-stage trials by mid-summer. India is using drones to fight its worst locust invasion in 30 years.

Blending tech and revolt, a block of Facebook employees staged a virtual walk-out tp protest the company's allowing violence-fueling posts by Pres. Trump to remain untouched (even though Twitter had started marking them with warnings or fact-check advisories).

[Jim Eshelman]

Impaired vision (which I'm still experiencing - waiting for a better lens) and increase of work demands has had be not reading the daily news summaries. With Mars having left Aquarius in the last 24 hours, I'm going to push through catching these up.)

For the most part, the same stories are dominating the news during this period. (I expect that by Monday the main themes will have changed.) -

Police reform is a main theme in several places - fitting Aquarius not because of any connection to the police but has an antiauthoritarian revolt (one might even say revolution). I think this level of publicized occasions of police violence has not hit since the 1960s "urban war zones." - BTW, the shift to the theme of social justice primarily "went big" after Jupiter retrograded into Sagittarius. - In particular, the Rayshard Brooks killing in Atlanta (the Wendy's drive-through killing by police) and the Breonna Taylor shooting in her own home became the latest outrages. Lynchings are again in the news.

The Supreme Court unleashed its usual June wave of decisions and there were plenty of surprises. The "this changes everything" 6-3 decision was that the 1964 Civil Rights Act already protects gay/trans from discriminatory firing. The Supreme Court also blocked the administration's efforts to terminate DACA. All the big decisions have seemed a rebuke of the White House.

Coronavirus: States have been easing lockdowns on individuals and businesses - this Mars in Aquarius time has definitely been all about "getting back out there" - with a consequence that virus numbers are again on the climb everywhere this is happening. (Some large states are hitting all-time worst day records for new cases.) - Meanwhile, several times a week there are stories about progress toward COVID-19 treatments or vaccines, keeping medical science in the news. (New Zealand, though, has opened widely and is now three weeks without a new case.)

Trump is moving the most visible parts of the Republican National Convention to Jacksonville (what, he's given up on winning North Carolina?) because they will allow him to have a packed auditorium without masks. The delegates will nominate Trump in Charlotte, then he'll hold his biggest rally of the campaign (i.e., his acceptance speech) in Jacksonville.

The stock market has continued to play roller-coaster with at least two or three short-term reversals during the last couple of weeks. I don't think that's a big deal either way.

John Bolton's book on Trump is coming out and we've had a week of the White House trying to shut it down and keep it from seeing light of day based on claimed security breaches. As of this morning, a Federal judge refused to call it back (saying the cat was already out of the bag) but left open the possibility Bolton could face penalties for his actions. (Trump's niece also has a book on him about to break.)

Fighting broke out along the India-China border. (I'm intrigued by this because today's solar eclipse totality line traces that border. We may see more volatilization in that area.)

Street protests in Nigeria have surged demanding swift government action against rape and other sexual violence (following the rape-murder of two young women). Lebanon has street protests over their tanking economy.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Trump had to make a choice. North Carolina or Florida. If Biden wins Florida and keeps all the solidly Democratic states, he wins. Period. Somebody in the Trump administration can add.
Check 270towin.com

Didja hear Bannon has taken over Radio Free Everywhere? Trump has his media farm, paid for by the government. There was a Friday night massacre there that left most people gasping.

[Jim Eshelman]

I'm copying mostly the whole thread here so I can later boil it down to identifiable interpretive themes.

Expected from the start
Potential Aquarius themes are: Futurism and universalism in all forms, science especially with a (social or technological) science fiction feel, progressive technology in general; anything symbolic of streaming channels, whether waterways, pumping hearts and vascular systems, or anything resembling them; compassionate help and bearing others' burdens or lightening their load; truth, discovery, novel breakthrough, liberty; so social, cultural, and artistic waves; astronomy, cosmology, astrology.[/quote]

Historic Patterns

• Major science (especially learning toward SciFi feel) events concentrate in these periods, especially medical science breakthroughs; breakthroughs in space flight, astrophysics exploration, extraplanetary events, and significant computer technology advances and applications, and broader futurism.
• Events of widespread (sometimes global) hope & international community or solidarity.
  Military & other confrontations over waterways, channels, and passages.
• Severe civil unrest & uprising.
• Forcibly overcoming prejudices. Possibly the hard work of over coming differences & separations.

Observations 2020

...a little more science driven than we've seen lately and definitely lean (rightly? wrongly?) to the world getting moving again.

In one seemingly anti-science trend, the White House is reorganizing the coronavirus task force to get rid of (or minimize) most of the doctors and scientists. President Trump wants the new focus to be on healing businesses and economic revival. Meanwhile, analytic models keep increasing the expectation of deaths consequent to the virus.

The word mutation is in the news, specifically that they've now confirmed that CoV-SARS-2 has mutated into a deadlier variant. But it's not new - the mutation occurred in early February and is the deadlier version that has been ravaging New York (imported from Europe). The UK now has more virus deaths than any European nation, including hard-hit Italy and Spain. Despite this, and the fact that the curve is still rising, Boris Johnson (who recently recovered from the virus) is expected to announce tapering down of the UK's lockdown measures.

NASA is working with Tom Cruise to shoot a mission in outer space.

...science continues to take the lead. Two important findings have been released in the past 24 hours. One is that blood thinners can help severely ill COVID-19 patients - now, doctors just have to figure out which blood thinners are best. The other report is that monoclonal antibody therapy, which has been effective for other illnesses like lupus and HIV, may be a way to build immunity while they're working on a vaccine.

Other news is primarily about the economy, which is suddenly worsening. U.S unemployment this week probably will become the worst since the Great Depression, with some states at 25% unemployment and the eradication of 10 years of jobs gains. Second, Bank of England just predicted the UK economy is headed for its worst crash in 300 years. Third, the EU economy may shrink 7.5% this year (worse than in 2008). -- I'm not sure what this economic news might have to do with Mars in Aquarius - we may have to wait a few days to see how the story shakes out.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced new protections for men accused of campus sexual harassment and assault, mostly by narrowing the definition of sexual misconduct on campuses and giving the accused more due process rights.

While many businesses are indeed floundering during the lockdown, very Aquarian businesses - video game companies, e-commerce, remote communication services, etc. - are thriving.

Beginning today, 40 of the 50 states are partially reopened for business. (That's a "wheels of industry" theme that might be here, but definitely an anti-science theme: CDC and other scientifically-based assessments advise against it.)

Racial disparity news: In the UK, black men and women are at least four times as likely to die from COVID-19 as white men and women. People of color in general have a "statistically significant raised risk of death." U.S. numbers match this trend (but not the size of the disparity.) In other race-themed news, two men were arrested for chasing down and killing a black man jogging in his own neighborhood in Georgia because they thought a black man running had to be up to no good.

The primary news story has indeed changed concurrent with Mars entry into Aquarius, as this matched the lightening of isolation restrictions in many parts of the world including at least 40 states in the U.S. Today's lead story is about this "get back out there" move with particular focus on how areas that have lightened restrictions are having infection numbers rise once more.

The House of Representatives will introduce a bill today to create a Public Health Corps to address, at a national level, health and economic problems, e.g., to perform widespread virus testing (and hire out of work people to do the work). Along with this come a couple of more scientific studies on what is and isn't effective (thus far) in treating the disease.

...broad theme of the world moving toward lifting lockdown (and consequences of that). Fauci testified to the Senate yesterday, saying reopening states too quickly will increase infection, cause more suffering and death, and slow down the eventual return to normal. (Maybe a way to express this prevailing Aquarian sub-theme is, "Things are not normal.")

The Supreme Court heard three important cases yesterday concerning separation of power between the branches of the U.S. government, especially centered on Trump's insistence that the president cannot be investigated or prosecuted while in office (no subpoenas, no testimony, no indictments). This position caused quite a stir among the justices!

The Democratic National Convention is moving ahead with the convention planning, trying to sort out how much will be digital, how much in person.

The "wanna be free," "things are not normal," digital-tech themes are obvious enough, and the other two big stories may have themes thus far undetected.)

Adding the science fiction theme, the White House program to get a coronavirus vaccine is now called Warp Speed.

People are more aggressively fighting SIP orders, with court battles now flowing in the upper Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan).

Real Navy incident reports have been released detailing the U.S. Navy's encounters with UFOs. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics ... index.html

Mass gatherings are starting to be a serious problem as people relax lockdown restrictions and start to congregate. Stories of several of these are dominate today's sad news. (I'm not sure if this is a Mars in Aquarius detail as such. I have an old ingrained Tropical Aquarius habit of thinking "social, friends, gathering" that may or may not be anything real, although the idea of "collectivity" likely fits.)

Anyway, social distancing and lockdown are dwindling and scientists are saying it's a bad thing that will result in really bad things. That's the story of this period of our lives in a nutshell, I think.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Force showed off its new flag.

Today's primary headlines include...

More news questioning the accuracy of antibody tests, now known to be wrong as much as half the time. Encouragement of medical facilities to use the highest quality tests and maybe test people twice.

Trump threatened to pull the Republican National Convention out of North Carolina because the governor won't guarantee everyone's safety if the arena is filled to capacity. Trump apparently thinks this is a Democrat ploy to hurt his biggest rally of the season. Republican governors in Georgia and Florida have already raised their hands...

Big Aquarian news: SpaceX is about to launch two NADA astronauts to the ISS, the first time a commercial aerospace company carries people into space (and starts to take over shuttling for NASA).

People are getting so comfortable with Work From Home that it may become the new standard: Technology may replace architecture.

The new educational methodology has been introduced in Finland, it appeared in the news a few days ago, I have seen this article (has no date):

“In Phenomenon Based Learning (PhenoBL) and teaching, holistic real-world phenomena provide the starting point for learning. The phenomena are studied as complete entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects.”

https://curiousmindmagazine.com/goodbye ... Nc33wSWgTI

The protests in relation to the George Floyd's death are in the forefront of news today.

I see the Aquarian in the anti-racism of it: a rising demand of the wholeness of Human to be acknowledged, anger provoked by violation of the basic human dignity and right to be treated as human being (whose humanity is not established based on the skin color, or any such base, fear-rooted, at present should-be-long-ago-outgrown, pattern of the past).

Not all of the street riots are such protesters, though, according to what I've seen my friends share from news on FB; there are also plain vandals, people who simply enjoy the opportunity to brutalize and demolish something, in this environment of chaotic and intense emotions of a mass gathering. (Ma in Aqu theme there: simply this liberation, explosive release into expression, of power needs..?)

Here in Omaha, there were protests, but they devolved into attempts to break into Target and Best Buy by people who intended to loot the businesses but the police here brought out the tear gas and rubber bullets and put a stop to that.

The actual protests proceeded unmolested even when a major intersection was shut down. It was only when the looters and vandals came out the police used force against anyone.

The protests began about 3PM and were supposed to end at 8PM. Things started getting nasty about 9:30PM and the police started using force about 10:15 PM

This was all at the intersection of 72nd and Dodge, 41°15'41.0"N 96°01'29.3"W

Yes, Friday's headlines were led by the Georg Floyd death in Minneapolis and the intervening days have seen riots and looting in dozens of cities across the country. Most of this is shown in the ingresses - the Caplunar, Canlunar, transits of Mars to solar ingress angles, and quotidians - but this doesn't make it any less expressive of Mars in Aquarius.

I think this incident is an expression of what I termed "a shutting down or cutting back on opportunities for universalism" at the top of the thread; or, to put it more simply of Mars in Uranian context, which we would expect to be explosive with startling violence, “bombshells,” fires, collisions, explosions, and surprise attacks. Over the weekend, some cities are literally burning. (Remember, though, that the extreme martial expression is probably from the ingresses.)

Tech news & conflict: Twitter is starting to label some of Trump's posts as needing fact-checking or as glorifying violence. He's retaliating. First amendment battles are ahead!

And, though this will be Monday morning's headline (since the summaries I use don't issue on weekends), the SpaceX flight lifted off and docked with the ISS successfully.

This morning's top headlines:

The George Floyd murder continues to flood the country with overflowing protests and riots that are also connected to looting, with several state National Guard units deployed. Some cities are on fire, many are on curfew. Explosive damage.

The national radical anti-fascist movement called Antifa has been labelled by Trump a terrorist organization. (I suppose it is, in the same sense that the Black Panthers were in the '60s Current and former government officials are calling the designation within U.S. borders unconstitutional.)

Oh, yaah, COVID-19 is still around. (I told you the story would change when Mars entered Aquarius!) Meanwhile, Trump dissociated the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

And, again oh yeah, for the first time in about a decade, U.S. astronauts went up into space this weekend, this time by a commercial carrier.

I've fallen behind tracking primary headlines this week but I have all the summary emails and the stories have barely changed.

Leading every day are the George Floyd protests raging through the nation and, now, many other parts of the world. Looting in some areas have been described as in anarchy (a great Mars in Aquarius word, I suspect), with consequent strong curfews in many cities for about a week now. That this explosive rioting could totally take over the top headlines in the midst of a deadly global pandemic and unprecedented national lockdown is a dramatic portrayal of Mars in Aquarius with Neptune having supplanted Mars in Capricorn with Saturn. By now, all four officers involved in Minneapolis now face felony charges for the death.

Current outrage has also expressed itself this week at the ballot box, expressly expanding tolerance and diversity. Openly racist Rep. Steve King lost the Republican primary and won't be a candidate for what would have been his tenth term. Ferguson, MO elected its first black mayor (who is also its first female mayor). Other races tipped similarly.

Grindr just disabled its ethnicity filter. Amazon's best-seller list is currently loaded with books on race. The Ahmaud Arbery murder case goes to court this morning.

Science continues to be a theme: Dr. Fauci said Tuesday that the U.S. should have 100 million doses of one COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020 with final-stage trials by mid-summer. India is using drones to fight its worst locust invasion in 30 years.

Blending tech and revolt, a block of Facebook employees staged a virtual walk-out tp protest the company's allowing violence-fueling posts by Pres. Trump to remain untouched (even though Twitter had started marking them with warnings or fact-check advisories).

[Jim Eshelman]

Mars entered Aquarius today.