Iranian warships pass through Suez Canal

Nothing's exploded yet, but Israel certainly isn't happy.. Since Reuters regards every word from all their articles as sacred and every other news organization is too lazy to write their own damn version of events, no excerpts are forthcoming. Summary: Iranian State TV said the ships are already through the canal and headed towards a port in Syria. Iranian ships through the Suez? Not since 1979, baby.. Israel's freaked out and will bitch about it for weeks to come.

Diplomatic tensions in the region just ticked upward.. Satisfied, Reuters?

Bahrain Massacre: The World Bears Witness In Horror And Disgust..

When Bahrain's al-Khalifa royal family is overthrown, I hope the trial is broadcast internationally. Their response to their people's peaceful demonstrations have sealed their fate, and their subjects have shown more courage than the royal family could ever muster. Bahrain protesters didn't run away. They faced the bullets head-on. Excerpts, doubling as future testimony at the World Court:

"Massacre – it's a massacre," the doctors were shouting. Three dead. Four dead. One man was carried past me on a stretcher in the emergency room, blood spurting on to the floor from a massive bullet wound in his thigh.
A few feet away, six nurses were fighting for the life of a pale-faced, bearded man with blood oozing out of his chest. "I have to take him to theatre now," a doctor screamed. "There is no time – he's dying!"
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Eyewitness testimony from a hospital orderly at the demonstration..
"We decided to walk to the hospital because we knew there was a demonstration. Some of us were carrying tree branches as a token of peace which we wanted to give to the soldiers near the square, and we were shouting 'peace, peace. There was no provocation – nothing against the government. Then suddenly the soldiers started shooting. One was firing a machine gun from the top of a personnel carrier. There were police but they just left as the soldiers shot at us. But you know, the people in Bahrain have changed. They didn't want to run away. They faced the bullets with their bodies."
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The demonstration at the hospital had already drawn thousands of Shia protesters – including hundreds of doctors and nurses from all over Manama, still in their white gowns – to demand the resignation of the Bahraini Minister of Health, Faisal Mohamed al-Homor, for refusing to allow ambulances to fetch the dead and injured from Thursday morning's police attack on the Pearl Square demonstrators.

But their fury turned to near-hysteria when the first wounded were brought in yesterday. Up to 100 doctors crowded into the emergency rooms, shouting and cursing their King and their government as paramedics fought to push trolleys loaded with the latest victims through screaming crowds.
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Five ambulances sent to the street – yesterday's victims were shot down opposite a fire station close to Pearl Square – were stopped by the army. Moments later, the hospital discovered that all their mobile phones had been switched off. Inside the hospital was a doctor, Sadeq al-Aberi, who was himself badly hurt by the police when he went to help the wounded on Thursday morning.
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Why has the royal family of Bahrain allowed its soldiers to open fire at peaceful demonstrators? To turn on Bahraini civilians with live fire within 24 hours of the earlier killings seems like an act of lunacy.

But the heavy hand of Saudi Arabia may not be far away. The Saudis are fearful that the demonstrations in Manama and the towns of Bahrain will light equally provocative fires in the east of their kingdom, where a substantial Shia minority lives around Dhahran and other towns close to the Kuwaiti border. Their desire to see the Shia of Bahrain crushed as quickly as possible was made very clear at Thursday's Gulf summit here, with all the sheikhs and princes agreeing that there would be no Egyptian-style revolution in a kingdom which has a Shia majority of perhaps 70 per cent and a small Sunni minority which includes the royal family.
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And the stakes here are high. This is the first serious insurrection in the wealthy Gulf states – more dangerous to the Saudis than the Islamists who took over the centre of Mecca more than 30 years ago – and Bahrain's al-Khalifa family realise just how fraught the coming days will be for them. A source which has always proved reliable over many years told me that late on Wednesday night, a member of the al-Khalifa family – said to be the Crown Prince – held a series of telephone conversations with a prominent Shia cleric, the Wifaq Shia party leader, Ali Salman, who was camping in Pearl Square. The Prince apparently offered a series of reforms and government changes which he thought the cleric had approved. But the demonstrators stayed in the square. They demanded the dissolution of parliament. Then came the police.
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A doctor who gave his name as Hussein stopped me leaving the emergency room because he wanted to explain his anger. "The Israelis do this sort of thing to the Palestinians – but these are Arabs shooting at Arabs,".. "This is the Bahraini government doing this to their own people. I was in Egypt two weeks ago, working at the Qasr el-Aini hospital – but things are much more fucked up here."

The Shia make up 70% of Bahrain's population, controlled by the Sunni Royal Family. As you can see by this 2009 article, Shia dominated Iran has an affinity for Shia-majority-but-ruled-by-minority-Sunni Bahrain. Now that Iran has ships cruising the Suez Canal, is it beyond the scope of possibility that Iran might come to the aid of the Bahrainis and do a little ass kickin' on the Bahraini military, if the opportunity arises? How would the Saudis' react to such provocation, or more accurately, how quickly would this crisis escalate to a regional inferno? Note: Bahrain is also home to America's 5th Fleet, so the U.S. is involved with this uprising whether we like it or not. "On the one hand, Bahrain is a flash point between the United States and Iran," he told CNN. On the other, it's "a flash point between Saudi Arabia and Iran."

The potential for more bloodshed is almost assured. It's really a matter of how this plays out, and how the three outside interests proceed. This very well could be the country that turns this regional unrest into something much, much bigger. And the actions of the bloodthirsty thugs who(for now) rule Bahrain have inflamed their people and won't be forgotten.

Astrology: The Beginning of A Widespread 21st Century Revolution

From Aquarius Papers. Robert Wilkinson breaks down the astrological energies in place during the initial events that sparked the revolutionary movement taking hold in the Mid-East, which began in Tunisia as an altercation between a street vendor and a policeman. Wilkinson uses Dane Rudyhar's Sabian symbols to illustrate more clearly the meaning of not only the house location of individual planets, but the different aspects those planets make to each other, fully fleshing out the implications and meaning of the astrological forces at work. Excerpts:

It is generally known that the beginning of the revolutionary spark began in Tunisia, when police seized a fruit and vegetable cart run by a vendor who then set himself on fire. After that, within 48 hours of the initial incident, crowds gathered, riots broke out, things got out of hand, and a revolution broke out in short order.
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What follows is an examination of the astrological factors in play during the critical moments the morning of December 17 that set up a spark that lit a revolution.
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The initial confrontation occurred "less than an hour" before his self-immolation at 11:30 am. At 10:45 am we see 19 Aquarius (the "forest fire"!) on the Ascendant, so we can assume that the Ascendant of the initial incident was somewhere between 17 and 22 Aquarius.
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The act of self-immolation at 11:30 am shows us 4 Pisces on the Ascendant and 15 Sagittarius on the MC. The ruler of the Ascendant is Jupiter in the 1st conjunct revolutionary Uranus. Jupiter also rules the Sun in the 10th at 26 Sagittarius, a degree of "the flag bearer," a symbol of selfless dedication to a greater collective ideal.
..the Solar degree is where things of "enduring significance... overshadow the more immediate interests or wholely selfish concerns of man, and the emphasis... on the natural supremacy of common ideals over mere individual ambitions." He says this degrees "is the call for a high self-sacrifice... (to) permit the self to realize its transcendental aspirations." The keyword is NOBILITY, and he states "the degree is spiritual exaltation through some dramatic or vital service to all."
..One major revolutionary indicator is the Sun just off the square to Jupiter while still forming one to Uranus. This would definitely indicate things evolving at breakneck speed, where change can happen in a heartbeat.
And:
It's interesting to note that at the inception of this revolution, Mercury was retrograde at 2 Capricorn, a degree of seeing how violence or wrong use of force damages compassion. This was certainly the case with the policewoman who confiscated the vendor's food, spit on him, and insulted his dead father.
And:
He goes on to say that 8 Taurus is about "using knowledge and skill" to meet a future event, and "independence of the will of the self from outer circumstances," and the "power to mould life upon the pioneer's prophetic vision." 9 Taurus is a "symbol of the promise which outer life offers to the pure in heart; of immortality through giving of self to the race." We are told it offers us the chance to create "inner happiness in dark hours" through sounding a counter-tone to harshness or barrenness in the outer world. Sounds like Tunisia before and during these events!

And no, Wilkinson is not implying that astrological forces caused the unrest or the revolution in the Mid-East, these were the energies in place at the time of the initial event in Tunisia. They could have been just as easily not acted upon. After all, Free Will is still the most important factor in human events. These energies are part of the Cardinal Crisis and Grand Irrationality, subtle planetary forces that have been around for several years now. This is simply his analysis of those energies at work in relation to recent events, through the event's ending in 2012. Remember, the forces that facillitate great change can also cause great instability. What we just witnessed were examples of both.. Welcome to the birth pangs of the Age of Aquarius!

Oppressive Regimes To People: If Everyone Else Was Overthrowing Their Governments, Would You?

To which Algeria and Yemen reply: Why, yes! At the moment, Algerian protests have been stifled by the police, but the desperation is just as palpable as it was in Egypt.

''They can't kill us because we are already dead,'' said jobless Bilal Boudamous, 29. ''At 30 we are unemployed, we live with our parents, and we have no future.''

Algerians didn't really buy the token concessions from their government, so the regime shut down Facebook and the Internet, and gave the hackneyed Ike Turner response: If things turn violent, it's all your fault. Damn it baby, you made me hurt you..

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the dynamic seems to be playing out a bit differently. For now, the protests are still smaller, but the clashes between pro and anti-government protesters are already marred by violence, as both sides(not counting the police) are fighting with sticks and knives.

Also, 23 million Yemenis are hooked on Qat, so demonstrations fizzle out by the afternoon so everyone can get high. It'll be interesting to see if The People can give up the HappyHappy for a few weeks in order to rid themselves of a soul crushing regime. We shall see.

All Hail The Peoples' Peaceful Revolution!

Amazing. I went to bed at 4a.m. last night with a terrible, ominous feeling, fully expecting to wake up to a full scale Mubarak blow-back in the form of some globally broadcast massacre. It's a testament to the collective will and temperament of the Egyptian people that they weren't, throughout the course of this uprising, baited into any kind of violent response. The demonstrators were resolute, the crowds got bigger, the class distinctions blurred, the working infrastructure ground to a halt, and finally, Mubarak had no alternative but to step down. The way in which Egyptian society handled this crisis was note perfect, and will be studied for years to come, both by advocates of non-violent resistance, and those wanting to crush those future movements.

In the coming weeks, the Egyptians(along with Israel, the rest of the Middle East, and the World) will have a host of issues to contend with, including fixing the damage done to the economy, how the Military will transition power , what form of government will emerge, and what the dynamics of the region will finally become.

But for the next few days, let the Egyptians celebrate what they have given themselves and the entire world: Hope upon hope for a happy ending under the most impossible of circumstances. The rest of us are indebted to your courage and strength. Thank you.

Geopolitically, This Is A (Really) Big Deal..

Vatican body asks UN to 'end Israeli occupation' Key excerpts in italics:

Israel cannot use the Biblical concept of a promised land or a chosen people to justify new "settlements" in Jerusalem or territorial claims, a Vatican synod on the Middle East said on Saturday.
And:
US-brokered peace talks have stalled since Israel rejected appeals to extend a temporary moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank that expired last month.

Since the freeze expired, Israel has announced plans to build another 238 homes in two east Jerusalem neighborhoods, drawing the condemnation of Palestinians and world leaders.

In a separate part of the document, a section on cooperation with Jews, the synod fathers also took issue with Jews who use the Bible to justify settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.


"Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable," the document said.

Many Jewish settlers and right-wing Israelis claim a biblical birthright to the West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria and regard as a part of historical, ancient Israel given to the Jews by God.

Asked about the passage at a news conference, Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, said:


"We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

"The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians," he added. "The justification of Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine cannot be based on sacred scriptures."

This is big. The Vatican is criticizing THE Fundamental Justification of Israel's Military Strategy and doing it to the United Nations. Whatever your thoughts are on either organization doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that this bit of information means jack-shit your little corner of the world.

To the entities involved, this is a big slap in the face and won't be forgotten anytime soon. My prediction is that Israel will take a much more defensive posture, thereby escalating tensions, not only in the region(including Iran), but with Russia, China, and the U.S. What alliances actually occur is something I won't speculate on, at least, not at the moment..