School of Evolutionary Astrology

Asteroid Goddesses - the undistorted Natural/Divine Feminine

Started by Linda, Sep 06, 2010, 05:48 PM

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Rav

Quote from: Helena on May 19, 2022, 10:23 AM
Hi Mary, Rad, All,

I thought it's interesting to share this new exhibition from the British Museum, it is spot on in what we discussed earlier. It's definitely worth seeing for those who can visit.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/feminine-power-divine-demonic

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/may/16/goddesses-marina-warner-volcanic-power-of-witches-she-devils-divinities-british-museum

Best to All,
Helena

Hi Helena and all,

I am catching up on this thread and just saw your post about this exhibition. Thank you for letting us know about the exhibition, which I will definitely be visiting soon! I had a look on the website and it is quite timely in terms of the discussions on this thread. It opened yesterday in London, 19th May 2022 and runs until 25th September 2022 for those of you who may have a chance to visit.

I will let you know how I find it. :)

Namaste,

Rav

blue

Hi Helena, Rav and all,

Thanks so much for posting the info about the Feminine Power exhibit. Looks and sounds amazing!  Looking forward to Rav's review of it all.

Goddess Blessings,
Mary

Helena

Hi Rav, Mary, All,

So true! I had to hold myself from booking a travel the moment I saw it (I have venus in aries  ;D) because I can't estimate when I can go but making plans to :-)
There will be an event presentation online from the curators next week, that's also going to be available  for later view. Those interested can check the website.
Hope to hear from Rav first impressions too. This is a great opportunity indeed to celebrate and remember the true natural feminine.

Many blessings,
Helena

Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Marina Ovsyannikova the Russian women who became Russia's anti-war protester on their state TV. This is a noon chart.

*************

How Marina Ovsyannikova Became Russia's Most Visible Antiwar Protester

Producer for Russia's flagship news show says the invasion of Ukraine was something she couldn't tolerate

By Evan Gershkovich
WSJ
March 17, 2022 4:56 pm ET

It wasn't long after Russian troops pushed into Ukraine three weeks ago, Marina Ovsyannikova says, that she decided she had to make her voice heard.

A television producer at the Kremlin's flagship network Channel One, Ms. Ovsyannikova at first thought she would join antiwar demonstrations on the streets of Moscow. Her son, fearing she would be arrested, hid her car keys.

Then she settled on a more audacious plan. As the evening news broadcast was starting on Monday, Ms. Ovsyannikova got up from her desk. Flashing her ID badge she passed through two security checkpoints and breezed past a final guard at the studio door.

Bursting into view behind the show's anchor, she shouted, "Stop the war, no to war." Before the camera cut away, she flashed a poster before millions of viewers. It read: "No war. Stop the war. Don't believe propaganda. They lie to you here. Russians against war."

Then she walked out of the studio past the stunned guard and into the hallway, where she dropped the poster on the floor and was met by executives rushing toward her. They promptly turned her over to the police.

In the space of about 10 seconds, Ms. Ovsyannikova had transformed herself from a self-described cog in Russian President Vladimir Putin's messaging machine into one of the most visible and daring dissidents opposed to his war.

"The future of my country is being decided right now," she said in an interview. And she says she wanted to stand up and be counted.

Ms. Ovsyannikova was released from detention on Tuesday and fined approximately $280 by a Moscow court for a video she released explaining her actions. Her lawyers warn she could still face charges under a new Russian law that prohibits criticism of the military and makes it illegal to describe the Russian offensive in Ukraine as a war or an invasion. The penalty: Up to 15 years in prison.

Ms. Ovsyannikova said she has no plans to leave the country and is currently staying at a secure location provided by her attorneys. Invoking a phrase popularized by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she added: "Anyone interested in the bright future of this country needs to be here—even if for 15 years behind bars."

Since Ms. Ovsyannikova's on-air protest on Monday, at least four top journalists of state-run television channels have resigned.

The speaker of Russia's lower house of Parliament this week called on the Channel One producer to be treated "with all severity."

On Wednesday, Mr. Putin issued a broad warning against dissent. "Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just to spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths," Mr. Putin said in remarks shown on state television. "I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country."

Born in the Soviet Union in the now-Ukrainian city of Odessa to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Ms. Ovsyannikova said she views herself as Russian, not Ukrainian. Her father, who served in the Soviet navy, was a Russian speaker who died about a year after her birth. Her mother soon moved her to Russia, where she has lived ever since.

Ms. Ovsyannikova's interest in journalism blossomed when she was a high-school student in the mid-90s and her mother was working for a local radio station. In those days, she said, the Russian press was relatively free.

"Journalism wasn't constant government propaganda," Ms. Ovsyannikova recalled. "Everyone strived for intelligent and good work."

Ms. Ovsyannikova worked for state television in her hometown after graduation before moving to the capital, Moscow, in 2002, looking for loftier opportunities. After earning a master's degree she started writing news reports for well-known anchor Zhanna Agalakova. Ms. Agalakova is one of the anchors who quit this week.

It was in 2008, when Russia launched a military campaign against the neighboring country of Georgia, that Ms. Ovsyannikova says she first started feeling "cognitive dissonance"—loving her country but disagreeing with its direction.

Still, she kept up her work at the state broadcaster. Her career had taken a back seat to her personal life and children, who are now 11 and 17, and she needed to provide for them.

Then, in August 2020, when Mr. Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent, she thought about protesting. Mr. Navalny has blamed government agents. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.

"But I understood that I work for a government channel and I can't allow myself this," said Ms. Ovsyannikova. "With all these turbulent financial crises, some constant source of income is necessary. You have to feed your family."

Less than two years later came the war in Ukraine. "We arrived at this point of evil and we can no longer tolerate it," she said. "It's a fratricidal war. Ukrainians are the same Slavs and every second Russian has relatives in Ukraine," she said. "They chose their path, their direction toward Europe, to European values. That's their choice. They are free people."

A friend of Ms. Ovsyannikova, Nina Aleksa, quit working for a state television channel in 2016 and began working for a since-banned opposition organization. The two would discuss politics while watching their children at the playground.

"She always had thoughts like this," Ms. Aleksa said. "But I never pushed her or criticized her."

Ms. Aleksa, 37, moved to Tbilisi, Georgia, a growing center of Russian émigrés, in June last year, and hadn't heard from her since she had left.

Last Saturday, she said, she received a text from Ms. Ovsyannikova.

"She asked me about emigration, how is it there, how is Tbilisi," Ms. Aleksa recalled. "She said, 'It seems this is my future.' "

Then, on Monday at 6 p.m., Ms. Aleksa received another text from her friend: Please record the 9 p.m. news. "Suffer a bit," Ms. Ovsyannikova joked to her friend. "You'll like it."

"I thought she was warning me to watch for a drop of insider information, like Putin would announce his resignation or something," Ms. Aleksa said.

When she saw Ms. Ovsyannikova on her screen, she didn't believe it. She reached her about an hour later, but Ms. Ovsyannikova said she was at a police station and would text her. She sent Ms. Aleksa a prerecorded video and asked her to share it with foreign media.

Ms. Aleksa, who now works for the Washington-based Free Russia Foundation, says donors have pooled enough funds to get Ms. Ovsyannikova and her whole family out of the country. She strongly disagrees with her friend's decision to stay.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that France would grant asylum to Ms. Ovsyannikova and that he would raise the issue with Mr. Putin.

Ms. Ovsyannikova said she believes most Russians are against the war. The day Russia launched its invasion, everyone she knew—including her colleagues—were horrified and "fell into a stupor," she said.

"The life of Russians is coming apart like a house of cards," she said, pointing to the exit of foreign companies and the effects of sanctions on the Russian economy. "People just haven't fully realized it yet."

Ms. Ovsyannikova explained why she made her placard bilingual. "What was written in English was meant for the Western public, so people abroad understand that the majority of Russians are against this pointless war," she said. "The Russian was for our zombified people that believe this propaganda machine."

The protest has been welcomed by a swath of opposition activists and independent journalists, but some were also critical of Ms. Ovsyannikova for helping push the government line for years at Channel One.

Ms. Ovsyannikova says she has decided she can no longer be part of that machine, but she brushed aside the suggestion that she had really done much to further it.

"I was a cog," she said. "Don't make me out to be a super champion of injustice and super responsible over what was happening with their propaganda."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Ovsyannikova

************

Her natal Lilith is 22 Taurus, N.Node 18 Sagittarius, S.Node 23 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 27 Capricorn, N.Node 1 Gemini, and the S.Node 9 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Rav

Hello all,

I visited the "Feminine power: the divine to the demonic" exhibition at The British Museum in London on Sunday, which Helena mentioned the other day. This is an international touring exhibition which will be visiting other parts of the world over the next 3 years. It's in London until 25th September, then moves to The National Museum of Australia in Canberra from 8th December 2022 – 27th August 2023. Then heads to Spain (various locations) from October 2023 – 2025. So, if anyone can get to these locations, I would definitely advise a visit! 

The exhibition explores the various depictions of feminine power over the years and from the different cultures and tribes in the world. There are a range of objects, statues, ornaments and paintings depicting the feminine energies over time. You get to see the different cultural expressions of what feminine energy meant to people represented from Africa, Greece, The Middle East, India, China and Mexico to name but a few. 

The exhibition is divided into 6 areas:

Creation and nature
Passion and desire
Magic and malice
Justice and defence
Compassion and salvation 
Feminine power today


What interested me of course where the statues associated with the asteroid goddesses. I have outlined below the three I saw.

Isis could be seen under the section "Justice and defence" and was outlined as the "Egyptian Great Mother":

"Isis was one of the most important and widely worshipped goddesses in ancient Egypt. Her divine authority was connected to wisdom, healing and protection in both this life and the afterlife. According to myth, she resurrected the body of her brother and husband Osiris in order to conceive their son, Horus, the god whom all pharaohs were believed to personify."

Sedna was located under "Creation and nature":

"For the Inuit of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, the ocean offers up its bounty to those who take care of Sedna. Her goodwill is vital to successes in hunting. As mother of all sea's creatures, she will entangle and hide them in her hair if they are disrespected, causing any hunt to fail."

Lilith was situated under "Passion and desire":

"Lilith - the first woman. From about AD700, Jewish mystical texts identify Lilith as the first wife of Adam, created by God at the same time from the same earth. Asserting equality with her husband, she refused to lie beneath him during sex and fled Eden rather than subordinate herself to him. Long vilified for such defiance, she has more recently been celebrated as an icon of female independence."

The exhibition provides a cross-cultural look at the influence the feminine has had on earth, where the powers have been considered to be both a blessing and curse. The Lilith statue at the exhibition was the one created by Kiki Smith, 1994. As you can see the image I've attached at the bottom (not a great picture!) it's the famous bronze sculpture. I have to be honest; this was the first time I have seen it and heard about it and my first reaction was fear. It's quite an aggressive looking sculpture and that's exactly what the artist wanted to portray.

It was interesting to see the level of fear that has been associated with Lilith. There was a ceramic bowl from Iraq dated AD 500-800 and it was considered to provide protection from Lilith (see image). There is an inscription on the bowl that says "the evil Lilith who leads astray the hearts of human beings." You can see the fear that this will have installed in people about Lilith and that the natural meaning of Lilith and what she represented has been lost. Linda once explained in this thread the role of Lilith beautifully and I quote:

"The true and NATURAL expression of Lilith is that of pure, raw, feminine beauty. A woman that would choose freedom over just about anything."

I guess this shows just how the patriarchal world suppressed the natural feminine energies.

Feminine power today was the last section where there was a large screen with the question: what does feminine power mean to you? You get to see many comments from the public, with both men and women commenting. The one comment that stood out for myself was from the British author Elizabeth Day:

"It's not so much that the concept or the construct of what's feminine has changed, it's that we, as women are able more to fully inhabit our complex, multifaceted real selves and society is a little bit more accepting of that."

I personally find that it is quite timely that this exhibition is running until the end of 2025, when Pluto will have entered Aquarius. We find ourselves at a point in time where the opportunity to break down old structures and systems (Pluto in Capricorn) and to liberate ourselves from past Soul traumas (Pluto in Aquarius) is heightened. This exhibition is highlighting the repression of the feminine but at the same time the immense power there is in the feminine form. Maybe it's actually all about re-awakening the matriarchal energies which have long been repressed. 

Namaste,

Rav

Helena

Hi Rav,

Thank you so much for your preview on this beautiful exhibition. I agree it's so timely and for those of us who are in Europe and study and care for this things, a go see for sure if we can.
The Lilith portrait of instigation of fear is such an interesting thing because it goes down to the point, as you mention. I see it as what Mary explained here previously about the demonic origins and further with time belonging to the patriarchal way of dominating by creating fear. If women are made to fear their primal natures, they are easily controlled and made in the image that is "expected" of them.
Then, objects are created to symbolise that imagined danger as in that bowl.
For me this has a special appeal because some years ago I changed fields and slowly became a ceramicist, which is now my work, and that developed at the same span of time that my consciousness relative to all these themes deepened (much instigated because of this beautiful thread Linda created and to all the contributions), which is to say that this objects, so many made with clay, with the earth, have also a Capricorn essence to them as a revisit to the very essence of the matriarchal structure, what was never lost no matter what, of what belongs to the Mother and Mother Earth, and also which contains the story of the very distortions of its values. Powerful objects like this, contain collective memories that we recognise as whole without knowing why, I would say. It is such a joy. Very interesting indeed that is coming now.

Thank you again Rav,
Helena

Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story Sandra Eira from Norway who went to Ukraine to fight. This is a noon chart.

***********

Norwegian volunteer reveals her reasons for joining the fight against Russian aggression

26 May, 2022
NV: New Voice Of Ukraine

Sandra Andersen Eira, 35, has left behind a political career in Norway for military medicine. Hundreds of foreign volunteers have come to Ukraine to help the country defend itself from a full-scale Russian invasion.

Most are driven by a desire to contribute to the defense of Ukraine's democracy, and the preservation of life. NV interviewed Sandra Andersen Eira from Norway, who left her previous life as a legislator and fisherman to fight for Ukraine.

The following interview has been lightly edited for grammar.

Why did you decide to support Ukraine?

I have never been to Ukraine before, but I was living in the north of Norway near the Russian border. We all knew the war was coming and most of us, probably, have been preparing for years. For us it was a moral obligation to help because the last time there was a big war on our continent – it was a war in my country (Norway was occupied by Germany from 1940-1945) and many countries stepped up to help us. Today we are doing the same for Ukraine.

We all have individual reasons to join this war. Most fighters choose to return to combat because it's what they know and what they are trained to do. For me it's different. Until last year, I was a local parliamentary representative in Norway, and also worked as a fisherman and had my own business. I had a very safe, comfortable, and good life at home, but felt that all my life has been leading up to this decision. All my friends are military, so being a combat medic – it's all I wanted to do.

I arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of March. My combat unit was the first one to be deployed by the International Legion up to the northern area of Kyiv and helped to liberate it. We were in Bucha and Irpin and after that we went down to the southern front of the country.

Was it a hard decision to come and fight for Ukraine? What does your family at home think about it?

I did not need any thinking: I saw what was going on and 24 hours later I was at a military base in Ukraine. It was a very rapid decision, but I was never in doubt - it was right for me to do. Nevertheless, at the start I didn't tell almost anybody: I didn't want anyone to have unnecessary worries, as they may disturb me and I can lose focus on my job. So most found out where I am from the media, when the month passed. However, nobody was surprised. They are just hoping and praying that I will come home safe.

I got used to it during my life as a fisherman in Norway. It is the same - all boys and me. I like it and have no issues with that, as long as I can do what I need to do.

The Ukrainian troops I met are really amazing and they have treated me like a queen. I heard before that Eastern European boys treat girls with a lot of respect and here I had a chance to testify to that: I was stuck with Ukrainian troops for days under bomb fire and I was never treated better in my entire life.

Also, I remember, when it was cold they gave me my first cup of tea. I never had it before Ukraine, because thought I did not like it. But I surprisingly found that I do.

Even under the bombs, Ukrainian troops gave me chocolates, candies and roses on International Women's Day. For sure, they also taught me the main Ukrainian phrases like «Slava Ukraini! Heroyam slava!». It's the most important one, because people we meet need to know that we are friendly.

What did you know about Ukraine before and what impressed you here the most?

In my profession up in Norway, I met many Eastern European people – from Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania. Therefore, the culture is not new to me, but coming to Ukraine during wartime is definitely very special to me. The civilians are amazing here because they have to step up and do a lot to help us. Even though they don't have anything - they give us everything. I am very impressed by how they are handling this, how they are thanking us, how they trying to show how they much appreciate our help.

And what is the hardest part of your experience in Ukraine?

That is a lot of negatives in war, for sure: war crimes, deaths, targeting of civilians, hard combat and people who are taking advantage of war. Sometimes it is easy to lose motivation and it becomes hard to remember why you are fighting, and why you keep doing it for free.
We have to pay from our own pockets to be here - for equipment, food, fuel and whatever else. If we run out of money - we can't keep fighting.

So sometimes, you can be frustrated and tired because of all that is going on on the political level. But, I hope it will change and Westerners will help better in the future.

So what are your personal plans for the future?

We will stay here for as long as we can and as long as we are needed. We see how the war goes: hopefully, it will finish soon, but realistically we know that whenever politics are involved - there is no quick quit. Therefore, we are seeing day-by-day and week-by-week how it goes – no long-term plans.

Still, I haven't been home since the end of February, so maybe I will leave Ukraine for a couple of weeks – to take a breath, resupply, and then go back to the front.

On other hand, I made a lot of friends among Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. That is why I definitely plan to come back also in peaceful times, just to celebrate life, eat good food and enjoy the sights, which, as I heard, are beautiful here in the summer.

*********

Her natal Lilith is 16 Pices, N.Node 17 Sagittarius, S.Node 23 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 27 Gemini, N.Node is 1 Gemini, and the S.Node is 9 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

blue

Greetings to Rav, Helena and all,

Thank you Rav for attending that compelling and inspiring exhibit on this group's behalf and providing such valuable feedback. What a perfect venue for Lilith in Gemini to stir things up, and while her South Node returned to the galactic center during last week's opening.

That sculpture of Lilith is something, for sure. She seems to project a raw feminine power with such wildness that fear and trepidation naturally answer in response. As you say Helena, because women have been made to fear their primal nature. I would add a fear mainlined into consciousness perpetuated by lifetimes of trauma; wherever defiance arose, inhuman cruelty promptly answered.

It's no wonder collectively we all have the South Node of Uranus in Sag, reflecting (among other things that JWG described) collective PTSD from being denied the freedom to live a natural way of life in harmony with Natural Laws.

The fear IS primal and revolves around recovering and owning a female psychology of authority, responsibility and leadership (SN Pluto in Capricorn) based upon the yin principle of nurturance (NN Cancer) that once existed before thousands of years of being brutalized into submission, impotence and conformity.

I feel Lilith's glare is meant to awaken/shake women up and also meant to put the patriarchy on notice. Nothing the patriarchal world has created comes remotely close to fulfilling the TRUE needs of humans compared to the depth and breadth of Lilith's wisdom way. They and Lilith both know this.

They also know that Lilith, fierce protectress that she is, will challenge them with every fiber and faculty of her being to set things straight again. And it is That unbridled power with its potential to convert the bewildered masse they fear the most.

Thanks again Rav for taking the time to go to that show and share what you discovered.

Goddess Blessings,
Mary

Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Iryna Venediktova who is going after Pig Putin. This is a noon chart.

                                                                 *************

War Crimes Watch: The Woman Who Would Make Pig Putin Pay

April 15, 2022
Frontline
Erika Kinetz

LVIV, Ukraine — The messages, reports from across Ukraine, scroll in real time:

One civilian dead.
Thirteen military casualties.
Five civilians injured.

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova glances at her cell phone. The stark numbers and bare-bones accounts that unreel in her hand are just the start; her staff will catalog them, investigate them — and try to bring the Russian perpetrators of war crimes to justice.

This is her purpose: To make Vladimir Putin and his forces pay for what they have done. While courts around the world are working to hold Russia accountable, the bulk of the investigation — and the largest number of prosecutions — will likely be done by Ukraine itself.

For Venediktova, this is personal.

"I protect the public interest of Ukrainian citizens. And now I see that I can't protect these dead kids," she says. "And for me it's pain."

Venediktova, a 43-year-old former law professor, is on the move every few days, the jackets and dresses of her old life increasingly replaced by olive fatigues and a bulletproof vest. She takes meals hurriedly in the car or skips them entirely.

There are no office hours anymore. There are only war hours, which start early and end late, as Associated Press reporters who spent a day with her would learn.

Her office has already opened over 8,000 criminal investigations related to the war and identified over 500 suspects, including Russian ministers, military commanders and propagandists — even as an array of international war crimes investigations pick up steam.

"The main functions of the law are to protect and to compensate. I hope that we can do it, because now it's just beautiful words, no more rule of law," Venediktova says. "It's very beautiful words. I want them to work."
___

On a Tuesday morning, Venediktova marches up to a thick line of refugees waiting in the chill sun to register at a district administration building in Lviv. Her security detail, armed and dressed in black, hovers as she stepped into the crowd of women and children.

Venediktova has stationed prosecutors at refugee centers across the country and at border crossings, trying to collect the shards of suffering of millions of Ukrainians and transform them into fact and evidence before they vanish.

Venediktova sweeps upstairs, down a narrow hallway to a bare room with two large black desks that she calls "the heart of the war crimes office" in Lviv. Her war crimes unit has around 50 dedicated prosecutors, but she's repurposed all her staff to focus on that mission.

Many don't want to show their faces publicly. There are grave questions of security, both for her people and the information they collect. Prosecutors here tend to speak of the future with grim pragmatism. It's not just the unpredictability of war; it's a tacit acknowledgement that they themselves might not be around tomorrow to finish what they've started.

Prosecutors ply the line of refugees at Lviv's center each day, looking for witnesses and victims willing to submit a statement. Some stories are not told. People have come too far, they're too tired. Or scared. Their infants are fussing. They have places to go.

Interviews can take hours. Bent over laptops, prosecutors wait out people's tears to ask what the shelling sounded like, what kind of spray munitions made on impact. They ask what uniforms, what insignia soldiers wore. This is the raw material of accountability, the first link in a chain of responsibility Venediktova hopes to connect all the way to Russia's leadership.

Ala, 34, sits with prosecutors and explains how she'd lost her home. She doesn't want her last name published because her 8-year-old daughter remains trapped in Russian-held territory.

Ala promises to return with a fragment from a mortar that destroyed her apartment in Vorzel, a town a few kilometers west of Bucha. She'd collected the metal, dense and grey in her hands, as a memento of what she'd survived. And as evidence.

"We need proof for them to be punished," she says. "I am lucky. I am still here to talk about what happened to me."
___

Shortly before noon, Venediktova leaves the refugee center and climbs into a black SUV headed to the Polish border, an hour or so north. A police escort speeds her through a landscape of rough houses and the wintery bones of trees, past old cemeteries, rusted children's swings, the shining domes of churches. The only signs of war are defiant billboards proclaiming victory for Ukraine and death to the enemy, and checkpoints with sandbags and hedgehog barricades to stop tanks that have not yet come.

Venediktova knows these roads well. She rides them endlessly back and forth to meet foreign officials who don't dare venture into a country at war.

"I live in a car actually," she says. "I need help, support, advisers. I need people who understand what will be next."

Her office cooperates closely with prosecutors from the International Criminal Court and nearly a dozen countries, including Poland, Germany, France and Lithuania, all of which have opened criminal investigations into atrocities in Ukraine.

She has taken on high-level legal advisers from the U.K. and is working with the United States and the European Union to build mobile investigative teams with international expertise. Clint Williamson, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues, helps oversee that effort, which is funded by the U.S. State Department.

"We have to confront this," Williamson says. "There's a need to show that countries are determined to stand up for international humanitarian law and hold people so flagrantly violating it accountable."

Part of their task now is to make sure that the evidence being collected is up to international standards, so the testimony of people like Liudmila Verstiouk, a 58-year-old woman who survived the siege of Mariupol, won't be thrown out of court.

Venediktova meets Verstiouk in a makeshift office at the Krakivets crossing on the border with Poland. She arrived from Mariupol with her papers, her phone and the clothes on her back – a velour dress, black stockings, white winter boots. Her apartment was bombed on March 8, and she told prosecutors that when she fled, she left her 86-year-old father behind in the burning building. He has Alzheimer's and cannot walk.

Verstiouk says she spent a week sheltering at Mariupol's drama theater. She left the day before bombs killed an estimated 300 people there.

She has not been able to reach anyone who was inside by phone. Or her father.

"Why did Russia attack me?" she says. "It destroyed my city — for what? For what? Who will give me an answer to that, and how do I go on living?"

In the course of a five-hour interview, prosecutor Stanislav Bronevytskyy takes Verstiouk's statement. "She can remember every detail, each minute and second," he says.

He types out Verstiouk's story and uploads it to a central database.
___

Vast swaths of Ukraine have been transformed into potential crime scenes. Each day, the tragedies multiply, creating an insurmountable pile of facts that must be established and saved.

There is far too much work even for the more than 8,000 staffers who work for Venediktova.  Back from the border by midafternoon, Venediktova continues her campaign for support, on Zoom calls with Amal Clooney and a group of international donors.

When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed Venediktova, in March 2020, she inherited an office plagued by allegations of corruption and inefficiency and a legal code outside experts have said is badly in need of reform.

She has pitched herself as a reformer. Thousands of prosecutors have been fired for failing to meet standards of integrity and professionalism, and so she's got an office that is not fully staffed, preparing war crimes cases against what she predicts will be 1,000 defendants.

Venediktova has been building alliances with human rights groups — some of which have a history of antagonism with Ukrainian authorities — and an often-distrustful public.

In March, a group of 16 Ukrainian civil society groups formed the 5AM Coalition to document potential war crimes. In addition to analyzing open-source material, they manage networks of trained monitors who gather evidence across the country to share with prosecutors.

They're joined by researchers around the world, at places like the Centre for Information Resilience, Bellingcat and the International Partnership for Human Rights, who have been scouring the flood of social media postings to verify what happened and who is responsible.

Venediktova also has encouraged ordinary citizens to help by collecting information with their smartphones and submitting it online to warcrimes.gov.ua. Five weeks into the war there were over 6,000 submissions.

Artem Donets, a criminal lawyer who joined the territorial defense forces in Kharkiv, says he is part of a Telegram group of 78 lawyers who are all pitching in on evidence-gathering, picking up incidents that prosecutors and police may not have time to get to.

"We are a law battalion," he says.

On the day he spoke with the AP, Donets had gone out to document the latest attack on civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv. He found himself in front of his own home.

As usual, he pulled out his mobile phone. He took GPS coordinates and trained his camera on a crater in the asphalt, tracing its shape with his finger. "Damage to the facade of the building," he said in a flat, professional voice. "Destruction of glass, windows, doors."

Donets reported finding a rocket from a cluster munition sticking out of the ground 100 meters (328 feet) away. Cluster munitions split open and drop bomblets over a wide area and have been banned by over 100 countries. Using such indiscriminate weapons in what was a residential area with no Ukrainian military presence could count as a war crime.

He sends his incident report to the International Criminal Court and uploads it to Venediktova's database.

"It was quite a strike for me," Donets says. "I hope when this war ends to build a better house for me and my family. I hope. We have no options. Either we win this war, or we will be occupied and swept from history."
___

The horrors Venediktova and her networks of allies are documenting — mass graves, apparent assassinations of civilians, indiscriminate shelling, repeated attacks on hospitals, forced disappearances, torture, sexual violence, cities under siege, denied food, water and humanitarian aid — are not new.

Putin's military and his proxies have used similar tactics in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Despite years of copious documentation, Western powers never really pushed back.

That changed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, when Russia started dropping bombs on its neighbor. Those years of unanswered atrocities now weigh on Venediktova.

"I was a university professor, and for me rule of law wasn't just a song. When I spoke with my students about rule of law, about human rights, I actually trust in this. And now I feel that what I trust, it does not work," Venediktova says. "Maybe we should take the best minds in the legal system, in jurisprudence of the world and create something new."

In the meantime, she has a more concrete objective: money.

As evening falls, she sits with her deputies in a darkening room and asks for another espresso. The jarring notes of an inexperienced clarinetist waft in from a music school next door.

Venediktova's team reports on progress in their ongoing search for the overseas assets of war crimes suspects. One of her priorities is to seize the money of war criminals and give it to victims. She will need cooperation from countries around the world where Russian suspects have stashed their wealth. Many countries can't legally seize assets for a foreign court.

Ukraine is also crowdsourcing this global treasure hunt, with a portal in English, Russian and Ukrainian, where anyone can upload tips about assets.

There is, of course, an even bigger prize that lies just out of reach: Hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets frozen by the U.S., E.U., U.K., Switzerland and others. Maybe one day that too could be used to fund reconstruction and reparations in Ukraine.

Shortly before 9 p.m., Venediktova appears on national television, as she does most evenings. She reassures her people that guilt will be punished and suffering compensated.

"My first joy will be victory when we sell someone's villa, yacht, and our ordinary Ukrainians, who were forced to flee their homes, will physically receive this compensation," she says. "Thank you, good evening, see you soon."

Video watch: https://youtu.be/t3OL0dsrmSw

************

Ukraine reports 15,000 suspected war crimes 

BBC
6/5/2022

Around 15,000 suspected war crimes have been reported in Ukraine since the war began, with 200 to 300 more reported daily, its chief prosecutor said.

Some 600 suspects have been identified and 80 prosecutions have begun, Iryna Venediktova told reporters in The Hague.

The list of suspects includes "top military, politicians and propaganda agents of Russia", she added.

Russia has denied targeting civilians or involvement in war crimes.
 
Of the 15,000 alleged war crimes, Ms Veneditkova said several thousand had been identified in the eastern Donbas region - the scene of fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops.

Alleged war crimes in the region include the possible forcible transfer of people - including cases of adults and children - to different parts of Russia, Ms Venediktova said. Torture, the killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure are also suspected war crimes, she added.

Though investigations relating to the eastern region have started, Ukrainian authorities do not have access to Russian-held areas, AFP news agency reports Ms Venediktova as saying. They were, however, interviewing evacuees and prisoners-of-war, she added.

"Investigations are very difficult when fighting is going on at the same time," she is quoted as saying by German news agency DPA.

Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia have also joined the investigation efforts, Ms Venediktova said. Poland and Lithuania were already helping.

The International Criminal Court described Ukraine as a "crime scene" and has despatched its largest team of investigators ever to Ukraine to assist in the investigations. It said it was also hoping to open an office in Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

The announcements came as two Russian soldiers were jailed for 11 and a half years in Ukraine on Tuesday for shelling civilian areas. The first Russian soldier to be put on trial in Ukraine, Sgt Vadim Shishimarin, was sentenced to life in prison for killing a civilian last week.

Ukraine's ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova, was also sacked by Ukraine's parliament. She was criticised for not organising humanitarian corridors and facilitating prisoner exchanges, as well as her handling of alleged rape cases against Russian soldiers, according to local media reports. Ms Denisova said she would appeal the decision.

On the ground, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled for control of the eastern city of Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region.

The city is said to be divided between the two sides - but not equally. Regional governor Serhiy Haidai said "70%-80% of the city is controlled by the Russian army".

An explosion also reportedly hit a nitric acid container in the city, which is thought to have been caused by an airstrike, Mr Haidai said. He told the BBC toxic fumes were released into the air following the explosion, but only in a small area.

Russia now occupies almost all of Luhansk, as it focuses on seizing it and neighbouring Donetsk.

Away from the fighting, European Union leaders reached political agreement to ban 90% of oil imports from Russia, excluding pipeline oil, which Hungary had opposed. But EU members remain split over Russian gas exports.

Russian oil giant Gazprom also announced it would be cutting gas supplies to Denmark's Orsted, as well as Shell Europe for its supplies to Germany, after both companies failed to make payments in roubles - something Russia has demanded.

***************

Her natal Lilith is 6 Cancer, N.Node 3 Sagittarius, S.Node 16 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 16 Cancer, N.Node 11 Gemini, and the S.Node is 10 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Rav

Hi all,

Helena & Mary - you are both welcome!

I plan on visiting again before the exhibition finishes in London. I found on bookshelf, the book "Lilith: Keepers Of The Flame" by Mary Blue, which I never got around to reading, so I will be reading this before visiting the exhibition again. The timing is perfect for me. :)

Also - for those of you interested, there is a book about the exhibition on amazon - "Feminine power: the divine to the demonic" Paperback – 19 May 2022. I have provided the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/Feminine-power-demonic-Belinda-Crerar/dp/0714151300/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22XFWTJTW20KQ&keywords=Feminine+Power%3A+the+Divine+to+the+Demonic&qid=1654504685&sprefix=feminine+power+the+divine+to+the+demonic+%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-1

Namaste,

Rav.

Rad

Hi All,

I am posting the chart of Liz Cheney because of her political courage to stand for the truth relative to Donald Trump and the coup, insurrection, that he created against the government of the United States. She is standing almost as a person of one relative to Republican party itself that has not only drawn the wagons around Trump in order to defend him, but has been attacking Cheney in every way they can. She is up for re-election in November yet virtually has no chance because the Republican people of the state she represents, Wyoming, are also in a state of total denial of actual reality and choosing to live in a self-created delusional reality in order to protect themselves from being exposed for the types of human beings they actually are: bigots, hypocritical, and white supremacists who try to hide behind God so as to add yet another layer of delusion, 'religious' delusion, that reinforces, to them, how righteous and superior they actually are according to themselves.

Cheney has chosen to stand with the actual truth of what happened in America on January 6th   
because her commitment is the constitution of the United States itself AT ALL COSTS to herself relative to the racist Republican party who is persecuting her in every way they can including Satan's agent Donald Trump himself.

The birth chart below is based on her actual time of birth. I have included the transiting chart to her natal chart so that you can see, from an EA point of view, just how dramatic the timing of all this is.

The below article is from the New York Times that was written on the day following the first day of the Jan 6th hearings taking place in  America now.

                                                                          **************


Liz Cheney Takes On Trump, and Her Own Party

NYT
6/10/2022

WASHINGTON — Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, had just matter-of-factly rattled off a string of damning revelations illustrating how former President Trump had stoked the mob who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when she paused to address the members of her own party who she said were "defending the indefensible."

"There will come a day when President Trump is gone," Ms. Cheney said. "But your dishonor will remain."

Her rebuke, part of the searing opening remarks she delivered at the first prime-time hearing to lay out the Jan. 6 committee's findings, marked the culmination of a remarkable arc for Ms. Cheney, the daughter of a prominent conservative family, from one of the most powerful leaders in her party to one of its most vocal critics, and a reviled foe of its de facto leader.

She has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack, and her Republican colleagues for following his lead by spreading the lie of a stolen presidential election. That stance has left her marginalized by her party, with her colleagues ousting her from her leadership position and seeking to purge her from the House by boosting a MAGA-styled primary challenger to her at home in Wyoming.

Now, from her perch as the vice chairwoman of the committee investigating the attack, Ms. Cheney is leading the charge to hold Mr. Trump to account for his efforts to overturn the election.

On Thursday night, Ms. Cheney illustrated in remarks studded with new details how, "over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power."

Unfurling new testimony, she illustrated how Mr. Trump had persisted in pushing the fiction of a stolen election even as his top officials told him his claims of election fraud were false. And she emphasized how Mr. Trump had responded blithely when told that the rioters storming the Capitol threatened his vice president, chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."

"The president responded with this sentiment: 'Maybe our supporters have the right idea.' Mike Pence 'deserves it,'" Ms. Cheney said, quoting from testimony collected by committee investigators.

Mr. Trump, she argued, had thrown the republic into "a moment of maximum danger" not seen before.

"The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president — except one," Ms. Cheney said.

They were striking words coming from Ms. Cheney, who had been one of the most powerful Republicans in the House when she was ejected from her leadership post last year for bluntly and repeatedly condemning Mr. Trump's false election claims and blaming him for the riot.

But Ms. Cheney did not back down, and in taking a leadership role on the Jan. 6 panel, she has elevated herself as perhaps the foremost critic of Mr. Trump in today's Republican Party. She has said she views the assignment as the most important of her political career, and she often uses language borrowed from the criminal code — delivered in a characteristically blunt tone — to make clear that she believes the former president faces criminal exposure.

"Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president," Ms. Cheney said. "President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack."

Behind the scenes, Ms. Cheney is known to be one of the more engaged and aggressive questioners on the panel. Video shared during the hearing on Thursday showed Ms. Cheney personally pressing Jared Kushner, the former president's son-in-law and adviser, about whether Mr. Trump's lawyer threatened to resign over his false election claims. And it was she who pressed to assemble a bipartisan team of former intelligence analysts and law enforcement specialists on the committee's staff.

Before the hearing, Ms. Cheney spent much of the day polishing her opening remarks, tapping away on her laptop in her suite in the Cannon House Office Building, a floor above the sprawling, chandelier-topped hearing room where she was to speak before a nationally televised audience. The lawmaker wrote her own speech, aides said, in consultation with a small inner circle of advisers in her office and lawyers on the panel.

Her husband, Philip Perry, and one of her five children attended the evening hearing, but former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, remained in their suburban Virginia home. Ms. Cheney, however, speaks to her father every day, on the phone or in person, and discussed her remarks with him in the hours before Thursday's hearing.

Ms. Cheney is one of just two Republicans to serve on the committee, alongside Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has also openly condemned Mr. Trump. Both were selected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, after Republicans boycotted the committee in protest of her decision to bar two of their members from serving on it.

At nearly every turn since the riot, Mr. Trump and House G.O.P. leaders have sought to drive her out of the party, including by backing her Trump-endorsed primary challenger, Harriet Hageman. There are few Republicans the former president is more determined to beat than the Wyoming's at-large House member, and polling shows that Ms. Cheney faces an uphill battle to keep her seat in a ruby-red state that still favors the former president.

"Nancy Pelosi loves her hand-picked minion," Ms. Hageman wrote on Twitter, sharing a news article about Ms. Cheney's work on the committee. "Wyoming? Not so much."

The congresswoman finds herself in political jeopardy because, unlike some Republicans who have found themselves in Mr. Trump's cross hairs, she has neither sought to repair her relationship with him nor ignored his criticism.

In seemingly embracing political martyrdom, Ms. Cheney had invited speculation that she might not seek re-election — up until the moment last month when she filed to do just that, shortly before the deadline.

Her broadsides against Mr. Trump have fueled speculation that, win or lose this summer in Wyoming, she will mount a long-shot campaign against the former president should he seek to reclaim the presidency.

In a video she posted as she filed for re-election last month, Ms. Cheney used the sort of lofty language to which she has often turned since breaking with her party last year, invoking her state's distinctive sense of western honor — and perhaps previewing what she may offer voters in 2024.

"In Wyoming, we know what it means to ride for the brand," Ms. Cheney said. "We live in the greatest nation God has ever created, and our brand is the United States Constitution."

Ms. Cheney has made little secret of the fact that she considers her work on the Jan. 6 panel — and the political price she has paid for it — historic.

"As you're listening to some of my colleagues and others who think that the way to respond to this investigation is with politics and partisanship — those people are not acting in a way that is healthy for the country," she said in an interview with The Dispatch this week. "And if we really want to understand why Jan. 6 is a line that can never be crossed again, then we really do have to put the politics and the partisanship aside and say what happened."

On Thursday, she was accompanied throughout the day by one of Mr. Cheney's old friends, David Hume Kennerly, the famed photographer who forged a relationship with the future vice president when both served in President Gerald R. Ford's White House, Mr. Cheney as chief of staff and Mr. Kennerly as official photographer.

Mr. Kennerly, who remains close with the family, has shown up, camera in hand, on other momentous days for Ms. Cheney, including last year when she was ousted from her leadership post by her Republican colleagues.

                                                                  *****************

Her natal Lilith is 1 Virgo, N.Node 4 Sagittarius, the S.Node 4 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 7 Sagittarius, N.Node 8 Gemini, and the S.Node is 4 Scorpio.

Here is a link to her opening and devastating statement at the Jan 6th hearings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAbt1LDQOOY

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess bless, Rad

Tashi

Dear Rad

Thank you so much for sharing this chart, it is so edifying. Her nodal return, at the same time as her Saturn return, while Neptune sits on her Saturn Chiron certainly paint a picture of a woman on a mission.

Could we say that her Neptune transits is working to expose the deceit of her political colleagues fueled by a Natal new phase Uranus to Pluto opposition and a concurrent nodal return in Scorpio, supporting that Pluto Uranus?

When the Summer Solstice opposes her Moon on the Galactic Center I am interested to see if the power ( mutual reception) of her Jupiter ruler of the Moon on the Nodes of Jup/Venus/Mercury/Pluto/Amor/Saturn kick up some real cardinal movement in the Law.

Can she bring him to justice?

Always grateful to EA

Tashi
be the change you wish to see in the world
Tashi
www.enlighteningtimes.com

Rad

Hi Tashi,

Could we say that her Neptune transits is working to expose the deceit of her political colleagues fueled by a Natal new phase Uranus to Pluto opposition and a concurrent nodal return in Scorpio, supporting that Pluto Uranus?

******

Yes ............

**********

Can she bring him to justice?

**********

She is doing all she can, and that certainly is her intent. Others as in the Attorney General of the U.S. are all involved in terms of he gets indited/ prosecuted or not.

God Bless, Rad

Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Nadya Karpova a Russian football striker. This is a noon chart.

                                                                         **************

Nadya Karpova: The Russia striker speaking out against war in Ukraine

By Alexandra Vladimirova
BBC Sport
6/16/2022

Karpova has played 24 times for Russia and has relatives in UkraineNadya Karpova's full first name - Nadezhda - means 'hope' in Russian. She has a small tattoo with the word in English on the front of her neck. She had it done when she was 21, but doesn't even remember what hopes she had at that time. Now it has real significance.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in the early hours of 24 February, only a small number of Russian sportspeople have spoken out against it.

Among the country's current international footballers, just three have done so.

From the Russian men's team, Dynamo Moscow's Fedor Smolov posted a 'No war!' message on Instagram in February. He has been silent since. Aleksandr Sobolev from Spartak Moscow also posted a message on the day the war started but deleted it a few hours later.

Karpova, who plays club football for Espanyol in Spain, is the third. She is the only member of the Russian women's team to have voiced her opposition, and she does so almost every day. Since the war started, more than three months ago, she has been posting anti-war messages on Instagram, where she has 143,000 followers.

"I can't just look at this inhumanity and stay silent," she says. "I don't know what would happen if I was in Russia, not in Spain, but I feel a special responsibility to speak out."

Our interview takes place in Barcelona, where the 27-year-old lives, having moved to Spain in 2017. She has played 24 times for Russia, including at the last European Championship, five years ago. The next are just around the corner - in England from 6-31 July - but the Russian team won't be there. They are banned - a result of the country's invasion of Ukraine.

Meeting at a Chinese restaurant, she doesn't touch her food once we start talking about Ukraine. She'd arrived early, hungry, and ordered hotpot; a broth that's placed on to a small stove burner built into the table. Diners finish the dish themselves - adding vegetables, meat and noodles.

While we are talking, the broth starts to bubble, then boil away. Karpova doesn't even look at it.

She is careful with her words. But it is not that she is trying to censor herself - even though a new Russian law can lead to up to 15 years in jail for spreading anything the authorities consider to be 'fake news' about the military.

She isn't afraid to say something wrong, as is common among Russian athletes. Instead she is afraid of forgetting something important. And she is also trying hard not to speak only in swear words. The longer the interview goes on, the less careful she becomes.

"Russian propaganda is trying to persuade Russians that we are a very special nation and the whole world is against us and our 'unique mission'," she says.

"What unique mission are you talking about? I don't think that Russians are special. At the same time, I am not ashamed to be Russian, as Russia doesn't mean the government and Vladimir Putin.

"Putin took everything from us, he took our future. At the same time, he did it with our tacit consent. They [the government], didn't witness strong resistance. Most people were just closing their eyes to injustice, thinking it's not their business.

"I took part in two opposition rallies, the last one in support of [the main Russian opposition figure Alexei] Navalny when he was poisoned and imprisoned, but still, I don't think that I've done enough.

"These people who justify the war, they are hostages to propaganda. I feel sorry for them, and I believe we need to do everything to release them from it."

Russia are banned from Euro 2022, being held in England from 6-31 JulyKarpova was 22 when she arrived in Spain. Valencia had seen enough to offer her a contract after Euro 2017, even though she only made three substitute appearances as Russia failed to reach the knockout stage in the Netherlands.

A year earlier she'd been 'Backed by Lionel Messi' - the only female among nine young footballers from all over the world chosen to feature alongside the Argentine in an Adidas advertisement campaign.

Karpova's main motivation for relocation was mainly the level of women's football. The weather was a factor too - it is not much fun to play football in winter in Russia. But after moving to Spain, something fundamental changed within her.

"I stopped being afraid of certain things, for instance to speak out," she says. "I also understood that no one would blame me for living with a girl and that there is no stigma here for being a lesbian.

"Your coach can ask you here: 'Will your girlfriend come to a game?' I just thought wow. In Russia, people only ask if you have a boyfriend, here they say 'partner' - 'pareja'.

Since childhood, Karpova had been trying to hide her homosexuality, or least not to talk about it publicly. She tells a story about talks over her first professional contract.

The owner of the club, Rossiyanka, was trying to persuade her father to sign, promising that they would "look after your daughter, a lesbian".

Karpova says: "According to these people, lesbians needed special treatment. I was 18 then. My dad told this guy to... go away. He said that he was ready to discuss only football, not my sexual orientation.

"The difference between here and Russia, as an LGBT person, was huge."

In 2013, the 'promotion of homosexuality' among minors was made illegal in Russia under a new law supporters said was designed to protect so-called "traditional Russian values". There are no openly gay national team athletes in Russia. Karpova has never spoken publicly about her sexuality before. She even only told her mother a year ago.

"It's not a secret to anybody that the main problem of gay kids is that you are always in the closet," she says. "You are afraid to be judged by society. And when your state becomes the one who bullies you, it's just absurd.

"Now Russian propaganda is trying to discredit people who speak out against the war, by outing them.

"For instance, when Margarita Simonyan [editor-in-chief of state media outlet RT], was talking about [comedian and presenter] Maxim Galkin's anti-war position, she said: 'He is actually gay!' Like being gay means that you are a bad, disgusting person with no moral values."

Karpova has also played for Sevilla and Valencia in Spain, moving to Espanyol in 2020In March, Karpova was joined at Espanyol by fellow striker Tamila Khimych, who is Ukrainian. "When I first met with her, she looked at me cautiously," Karpova says. "Like she was not sure if I was pro-war and considered Ukrainians enemies.

"I wanted to cry. I was thinking about her family and friends, and if they are OK. It was such a horrible feeling to understand that she could lose loved ones.

"I'm just overwhelmed with emotions. I still can't believe sometimes that it is real, and it is happening."

Karpova was very glad to learn that her new team-mate's relatives are safe. But thousands have been killed, a lot of Ukrainians are still in danger as the war continues, and no one knows when it will end.

She admits that she is very glad that her current job is not connected to the Russian state in any way - in contrast to most professional Russian athletes. She thinks that it will probably be wise to skip a trip to Russia to visit her parents and friends this summer. But still, she hopes for change.

"I wish more and more Russians - Russian athletes too - would speak out so other people who are against the war know that they are not a minority," she says.

"You can't just pretend that nothing is happening, not any more. The time of silence should be over.

"They [this government] will go away one day, they are all old. When this happens, we will still be alive, and we should be ready to sort everything out.

"I hope it will happen very soon."

*********

Her natal Lilith is 1 Pisces, N.Node 8 Capricorn, S.Node 25 Taurus. Her natal Amazon is 22 Sagittarius, N.Node 8 Taurus, and the S.Node is 9 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

Rad

Hi All,

Here is the story of Sasha Skochilenko. This is a noon chart.

*************

'The rules don't require it' Jailed protester Sasha Skochilenko has an autoimmune disease. Prison officials are ignoring her needs.

Meduza
Alexander Koryakov / Kommersant

In mid-April, Russian artist Sasha Skochilenko was charged with spreading "knowingly false information" about the Russian military's invasion of Ukraine after she replaced the price tags in a St. Petersburg grocery store with anti-war messages. She now faces up to 10 years in prison.

Skochilenko has now been in custody for over two weeks, or since April 11, when she was arrested at a friend's house after police reportedly forced the friend to trick her into coming over. Since the prosecution began, Skochilenko's relatives, supporters, and friends have been warning officials that she needs to stay on a gluten-free diet because she has celiac disease. The court ignored the warnings when choosing her pre-trial restrictions. Two weeks later, the fears have been confirmed: Skochilenko has been largely unable to obtain safe food, and, according to her lawyers, her health is deteriorating.

Until this past weekend, Skochilenko was being held in a temporary detention facility (IVS), despite the fact that the court decided to arrest her (and move her to a pre-trial detention center, or SIZO) on April 13. In the days immediately after the trial, the IVS staff cited the supposedly quick transfer to the pre-trial detention center as the reason they could not take any of the gluten-free food Skochilenko's supporters tried to send her; "during the transfer to the pre-trial detention center," they said, "most of a detainees' items get destroyed." Over the following week, reports that Skochilenko was slated to be transferred to SIZO No. 5 appeared on Telegram channels created by Skochilenko supporters, but the transfer still didn't happen. On April 19, supporters attempted to send Skochilenko some food, but a prison employee said she was not at SIZO No. 5. The IVS where Skochilenko was supposed to be transferred also refused to take the food.

On April 20 lawyer Yana Nepovinnova met with Skochilenko; afterwards, she reported that Skochilenko was "very sick," having being unable to maintain her gluten-free diet. By April 25 (by which time Skochilenko was transferred to the SIZO), according to Nepovinnova, Skochilenko's health had further deteriorated. "She met me with tears just now. It is clear that this person is very emotionally unstable," said Nepovinnova.

As far as her diet is concerned, nothing has changed; nobody has provided her with a gluten-free diet, and as a result, Sasha is experiencing major difficulties with nutrition. [...] She's not eating the food they give her in the SIZO, she doesn't even touch that food. Instead, she tries to get a little bit of food from her fellow inmates or eats from the small amount [of gluten-free food] that she has left.

Her well-being has absolutely not improved. She continues to experience pain, she feels very sick, and she's very afraid of having a nervous breakdown; it seems to me that her psychoemotional well-being is on the verge. She's trying hard to avoid this and to not give in to the circumstances surrounding her.
According to Nepovinnova, "she hadn't received a single package in the SIZO," and the food that was sent to her in the IVC "didn't make it" to the SIZO. On the following day, April 21, Skochilenko's partner, Sonya, managed to deliver her a package, but she says the prison's employees refused to deliver many of the foods she brought, including dates, protein bars, and protein mix. "So Sasha will now effectively only be eating instant food," said Sonya.

On April 25, the local division of Russia's Federal Prison Service (FSIN) told Interfax that the current rules "don't require the provision of separate or individual meals for people who need gluten-free food," but that deliveries of gluten-free food to inmates "are not prohibited" and will be accepted. The FSIN also claimed that no packages had arrived at SIZO No. 5 for Skochilenko, despite the fact that she had already received one package of food.

A petition in support of Sasha Skochilenko has received over 100 thousand signatures on Changes.org. Both Amnesty International and PEN America have criticized the Russian authorities' treatment of her. Costume designer Ksenia Sorokina, who recently won Russia's Golden Mask award, donated her award to Skochilenko "in appreciation for all that she's doing." A charity music festival was held in St. Petersburg to support Skochilenko. Local deputy Boris Vishnevsky has called on the St. Petersburg Prosecutor to intervene and alleviate Skochilenko's pre-trial restrictions.

Mental health activists and journalists have started a separate petition in Skochilenko's support. "Alexandra has made a huge contribution to the fight against prejudice against people with mental health disorders. In her "Book about Depression," she explained in simple terms what causes depression, which millions of Russians suffer from, and how it can be treated. The book was one of the first Russian language resources to draw attention to depression, which affects over 300 million people worldwide," said their statement.

***********

Her natal Lilith is 26 Capricorn, N.Node 3 Sagittarius, S.Node 15 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 2 Pisces, N.Node 11 Gemini, and the S.Node is 9 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad