Tag archive: Pholus

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AAA Profile: Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics for almost a quarter century.  A former KGB officer, Putin entered politics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event he describes as the greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century.  In 1996 he joined Boris Yeltsin’s administration; appointed as prime minister in 1999, he filled the role of acting president when Yeltsin resigned later that year, being elected to the office in 2000.  At the time, Russia had a prohibition on an individual serving more than two consecutive terms as president, so after being reelected in 2004, in 2008 Putin swapped jobs with then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev for a term, only to assume the top spot again in the following election, four years later.  That would have entitled him to two more terms, but Putin changed the law to allow himself to run for an additional two terms uninterrupted, potentially continuing his occupancy of the presidency indefinitely.

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Ukraine: Eight Stations of the Cross of War

On Thursday, 24 February 2022, at approximately 5 AM local time, Vladimir Putin’s Russian Army invaded Ukraine, accelerating a process of intimidation and aggression that had begun eight years before with the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea, and had continued with support for separatist movements in Ukraine’s easternmost sectors, bordering Russia, specifically portions of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, in the Donbass region.  Since the beginning of the year, a series of planetary stations had reflected the inexorable march to war, eight cosmic turning points which built upon each other like tumblers in a lock, eventually unleashing the conflict.

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COVID Turns Two

It’s hard to believe, but January 7 marks the second anniversary of the day the Chinese government announced it had identified a new coronavirus that was ravaging the city of Wuhan.  It was also the day that asteroid Apollo, named for deity noted mythically as the bringer of plague, conjoined asteroid Koronis, closest celestial match to coronavirus.  And just five days before the Saturn/Pluto conjunction, with its theme of “pervasive structural change.”

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Afghan Implosion

The phenomenal collapse of the Afghan government in mid-August 2021 sent shockwaves through the US and across the world.  Seemingly overnight (though the process took eleven days total), the 180,000+ strong US-trained Afghan military melted away, leaving the resurgent Taliban, already predominant in much of the rural regions, with little to no resistance in occupying the cities.  Even Kabul, the capital of the country, fell in a matter of hours on August 15th, with the US in full retreat from its abandoned embassy, controlling just half of the airport.

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Death in Boulder

Less than a week after the spa shootings in Atlanta, shots rang out again in Boulder, Colorado, as 10 were killed in a crowded grocery store by a lone shooter wielding an assault-style rifle.  The suspect, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, is the same age as the Georgia shooter, but this motive is less certain.  We do, however, have a birth date, and victim names which match asteroids, so let’s dig in on this latest atrocity.

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The Georgia Spa Shootings

At approximately 4:55 PM EDT on 16 March 2021, Robert Aaron Long allegedly entered the Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia and opened fire with a 9mm handgun, killing 4 and wounding another.  He then drove the half hour to Atlanta and continued his shooting spree at two additional massage establishments, Gold Massage Spa and Aromatherapy Spa, across the street from each other on Piedmont Road.  Long shot three dead at Gold’s Spa, killing one more and wounding 4 others at Aromatherapy Spa.  He was apprehended on the highway at about 8:30 PM, allegedly headed to Florida to continue his murderous rampage. 

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