Asteroid Goddesses - the undistorted Natural/Divine Feminine

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the story of Brittney Griner who is a basketball star in America that was arrested in Russia on trumped up drug charges because Russia/Pig Putin is using her as a political pawn because of war in Ukraine that the Pig started in the first place. This is a noon chart.

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Brittney Griner appears in Russian court over drug charges

WNBA star could face 10 years in jail if convicted for possessing a "significant amount" of cannabis oil

WA Post
7/1/2022

RIGA, Latvia — A Russian prosecutor on Friday accused WNBA star Brittney Griner of transporting a "significant amount" of cannabis oil, according to Russian media reports on her trial, where she faces 10 years in prison if convicted.
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Griner, seated in a cage in the courtroom with a bottle of water and a bag of cookies, said she understood the charges. She did not enter a plea. Court officials initially barred media and cameras from the court, according to Russian media, but two journalists were later admitted.

Griner arrived at the courtroom in the Moscow suburb of Khimki wearing handcuffs and a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt to face charges that she was carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her baggage at a Moscow airport in February, a week before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"According to the expert's conclusion, the detected substance is cannabis oil, which is subject to control on the territory of the Russian Federation and is classified as a narcotic drug," the prosecutor told the court, according to Russian BFM radio.

Griner's lawyer Alexander Boikov, who spoke briefly to reporters after the case adjourned, said a customs official who searched Griner's bag gave evidence to the court Friday.

He said Griner did not make any comment on the charges, reserving the right to do so later. Another of her lawyers, Maria Blagovolina, said Griner had "no complaints over the conditions of her detention."

The court adjourned until July 7 to hear more evidence from witnesses.

Everything you need to know about Brittney Griner in Russia

Griner has been in custody since February and will remain there until December, pending the outcome of her trial. U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Elizabeth Rood and other U.S. diplomats attended her hearing.

Rood said that the United States was working "at the highest levels" to bring home Griner and all other Americans wrongfully detained around the globe.

"We care deeply about this case and about Ms. Griner's welfare, as do so many Americans, and as we do with all U.S. citizen prisoners overseas. We were able to speak to Ms. Griner in the courtroom today. She is doing as well as can be expected in these difficult circumstances," Rood said in an emailed statement.

Griner's case has been complicated by the severe downturn in relations between Washington and Moscow, and her supporters say she is a hostage and political pawn.

"The Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Brittney Griner," Rood's statement added. "The practice of wrongful detention is unacceptable wherever it occurs and is a threat to the safety of everyone traveling, working, and living abroad."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied there were any political motives behind the trial.

"I can only operate with facts. The facts show that the eminent athlete was detained with illegal drugs that contained narcotic substances. Russian legislation does have laws that provide for punishments for such crimes," Peskov said.

Peskov last week dismissed claims Griner was a hostage, saying that drug offenses are treated seriously in Russia and many other countries. "We cannot call her a hostage. Why should we call her a hostage?" he said.

Griner's supporters in the United States have called on President Biden to negotiate a prisoner swap like one in April, when Russia exchanged former Marine Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut for drug trafficking. Reed had been jailed for nine years after being convicted of assault endangering the lives of police officers.

Brittney Griner's trial in Russia is set to start. Here's what to expect.

Griner is one of two Americans that the State Department says are being wrongfully held by Russia. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan has been in jail since December 2018, when he traveled to Moscow for a friend's wedding and was arrested in his hotel room. He was sentenced to 16 years after being convicted of spying in a closed trial. He denies the charges and calls the case political.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that freeing wrongfully held Americans such as Whelan and Griner was his highest priority.

"I've got no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are being illegally detained in one way or another around the world come home, and that includes Paul Whelan and that includes Brittney Griner," he said in an interview with CNN, declining to comment on whether the U.S. government was seeking a prisoner exchange involving Whelan and Griner.

Russian media have speculated that Washington could exchange Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving 25 years in the United States for conspiring to sell surface-to-air missiles to a foreign terrorist group and conspiring to kill U.S. citizens. Bout, the inspiration for the Nicholas Cage film "Lord of War," allegedly smuggled arms to warlords in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia for years — sometimes arming both sides in a conflict — until his 2008 arrest in Thailand and 2010 extradition to the United States. Russia calls Bout's arrest and conviction "unlawful and political" and has been demanding his release since 2008.

According to Russian customs officials, Griner was stopped at Sheremetyevo International Airport when a sniffer dog "indicated that drugs may be in the carry-on luggage of a United States citizen," a reference to Griner.

Customs officials said they found vapes in her luggage, which were later analyzed and found to contain cannabis oil. The customs agency posted video of the airport search apparently taken from surveillance cameras.

In early May, the State Department determined that Griner was being wrongfully held and shifted supervision of her case to Roger Carstens, presidential envoy for hostage affairs. The department has not elaborated on the basis for the judgment.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said at the time that the department weighed the circumstances in each case, "whether it's the case of Brittney Griner, whether it's the case of Paul Whelan, whether it's the case of Americans in Iran. There are going to be unique factors in each and every one of those cases."

Price said Griner was "fortunate to have a network who has supported her from day one," adding that the department had worked closely with her backers.

About a month before the invasion of Ukraine, the State Department issued a Level 4 security warning to Americans, stipulating "do not travel" to Russia because of the risk of arbitrary enforcement of the law and harassment by Russian officials, as well as tensions over Ukraine. It warned that State Department officials had a limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia.

"Russian officials have unreasonably delayed U.S. consular assistance to detained U.S. citizens and have arrested U.S. citizens on spurious charges, denied them fair and transparent treatment, and have convicted them in secret trials and/or without presenting evidence," the warning read.

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Trial of US basketball star Brittney  Griner opens in Russia

Agence France-Presse
July 01, 2022

The trial of US basketball star Brittney Griner, detained in Russia since February, opened on Friday as tensions rage over Moscow's offensive in Ukraine.

"The trial has started," Polina Vdovtsova, the spokeswoman for the court in the town of Khimki outside Moscow, told reporters.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and WNBA champion, faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of drug smuggling.

The trial was partially closed, with a limited media presence, which Vdovtsova said was "on the request of the defence, the request of Griner herself".

The six-foot-nine star was brought into court in handcuffs. She wore a white T-shirt with US music icon Jimi Hendrix on it.

The 31-year-old came to Russia in February to play there during the US off-season, and was detained at a Moscow airport after she was found carrying vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage.

Griner was detained days before Russian President Vladimir Putin defied US warnings and sent troops into Ukraine, prompting Western powers to impose sweeping sanctions on Moscow.

US authorities initially kept a low profile on the case, which was not made known to the general public until March 5.

But against the backdrop of sinking relations, Washington now says that Russia "wrongfully detained" the basketball star and put its special envoy in charge of hostages on the case.

The WNBA has also said it is working to bring Griner home.

She was due to play club basketball in Russia before the resumption of the US season, a common practice for American stars seeking additional income.

Tough sentences

Russian law is strict in such cases and other foreigners have recently been handed heavy sentences on drug-related charges.

Last month a Moscow court sentenced a former US diplomat, Marc Fogel, to 14 years in prison for "large-scale" cannabis smuggling.

Russia and the United States regularly clash over the detention of each other's citizens and sometimes exchange them in scenes reminiscent of the Cold War.

In April, former US Marine Trevor Reed, serving a nine-year sentence in Russia for violence, was exchanged for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, imprisoned in the US since 2010 for drug trafficking.

Other exchanges of this type could be the subject of possible talks, observers say.

Among the names most mentioned is that of Paul Whelan, an American sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage, and the Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, nicknamed "The Merchant of Death", who is serving a 25-year sentence in the US.

In January 2020, Putin pardoned a young Israeli-American woman, Naama Issachar, imprisoned in Russia for "drug trafficking" after then-Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met with him in Moscow, and brought her home.

She was stopped in April 209 during a transit at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport while flying between India and Israel via the Russian capital.

Authorities said they found nine grams of cannabis in her luggage.

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Russia Hints at Linking Griner's Case to Fate of 'Merchant of Death'

Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States.

Click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/us/politics/brittney-griner-trial-russia.html

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Her natal Lilith is 29 Capricorn, N.Node 8 Sagittarius, S.Node 18 cancer. Her natal Amazon is 29 Aquarius, N.Node 4 Gemini, and the S.Node is 16 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment of ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

Yulia Tymoshenko is the former prime minister of Ukraine. This is a noon chart.

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Yulia Tymoshenko on war in Ukraine: 'It's a chance for the free world to kill this evil'

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv

Exclusive: Former PM discusses 'cold, cruel' Vladimir Putin and the west's response to the Russian invasion
   
Guardian
Wed 8 Jun 2022

Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has described Vladimir Putin as "absolutely rational, cold, cruel, black evil" and claimed he is determined to go down in Russian history alongside Stalin and Peter the Great.

In an exclusive interview, Tymoshenko dismissed the suggestion that the Russian president was "crazy". "He acts according to his own dark logic," she said. "He's driven by this idea of historic mission and wants to create an empire. That's his hyper-goal. It comes from a deep inner desire and belief."

Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 Orange revolution and twice prime minister, had several one-on-one meetings with Putin. They held negotiations in 2009 after Putin, then prime minister, turned off the gas supply to Ukraine. Tymoshenko stood for president in 2010, 2014 and 2019, finishing second twice and then third.

Close up, Putin was "always cautious" in what he said and always suspicious that he might be being taped, she said. "He is from a KGB school," she said. Before Russia's full-scale invasion in February, he made no secret of his belief that there was "no such nation as Ukraine, and no such people as Ukrainians", she said.

His ambitions went beyond seizing Ukrainian territory and toppling its pro-western, pro-Nato government, Tymoshenko suggested. His geopolitical aim was to take over Belarus, Georgia and Moldova as well, and to control central and eastern Europe including the Baltic states, just as Moscow did in Soviet times, she said.

Tymoshenko was in Kyiv on 24 February when Russia launched a multi-pronged attack in the early hours. She said peacetime political rivalries and grudges immediately vanished. That morning she went to the presidential administration together with other senior opposition figures and met Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whom she ran against in 2019.

"We hugged each other and shook hands. Everyone was shocked, pale and afraid. None of us planned to leave Kyiv," she said. "Everyone knew we should stand until the last. We agreed to support our president and our army and to work for victory." Zelenskiy's decision to remain in the capital and to "overcome his fear" was important, she said.

As Russian bombs fell, Tymoshenko took refuge in the basement of the modern office building belonging to her Batkivshchyna political party in Kyiv's Podil district, which was hit several times by missiles. Asked if she was ready to shoot Russian soldiers, she said: "Yes. I have legal weapons. The Kremlin put me on a kill list, according to sources. We were prepared."

The Russian government had always considered her an enemy, Tymoshenko said. She pointed to her support for Ukraine's membership of the EU and Nato. In the 2010 presidential election she stood against Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by Moscow. She blamed her defeat on the outgoing president at the time, Viktor Yushchenko, a one-time Orange revolution ally.

The following year Yanukovych had Tymoshenko jailed in a case widely seen as politically motivated. "Putin and Yanukovych imprisoned me. Yanukovych was never an independent player. He was always Putin's puppet," she said. She got out of prison in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Moscow after the Maidan anti-corruption protests. Weeks later Putin annexed Crimea and instigated a separatist uprising in the east of Ukraine.

Tymoshenko spoke in her downtown office decorated with the Ukrainian flag and photos showing her with western leaders including Margaret Thatcher. She praised the "unbelievable unity" of the "anti-Putin coalition" and singled out the UK and Boris Johnson for special mention, as well as the US, Canada and Poland. "We see Britain as a part of the broader Ukrainian family," she said.

Last weekend France's president, Emmanuel Macron, said it was important not to "humiliate" Putin – a phrase interpreted as meaning Ukraine should sacrifice some of its territory in exchange for a realpolitik deal with Moscow. Tymoshenko said France and Germany – criticised for slow-pedalling on arms deliveries – should not be ostracised as Europe grappled with its worst security crisis in decades.

But she said Ukraine's international partners had to understand that the only way to end the war was to crush Russian forces on the battlefield. Without naming anybody, she said they should not become "co-conspirators with evil". She added: "There is no such thing as a peace agreement with Putin because it doesn't lead to peace. It would lead to a new war several years later."

The stakes for her country were existential, she said. The Kremlin's objective was to "depersonify" Ukraine, stripping it of its language and culture, and leaving it weak and "atomised". The civilised world had a unique opportunity to stop Russia and to prevent it from spreading "war, corruption, blackmail, disinformation and unfreedom," she said.

Russia had largely given up on the pretence that it was only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure, Tymoshenko said. The murder of civilians – in cities in the Kyiv region such as Bucha and Irpin, as well as in other areas – was cruel and deliberate, she said, with Russian soldiers following Moscow's instructions.

"It's an inseparable part of their genocide against the Ukrainian nation," she said. "What happened in Mariupol was even worse than in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel. I'm convinced we will be able to take back Mariupol and to uncover the scale of the horrible killings there. It was a tragedy, a human catastrophe of an unthinkable scale."

Considering her words, the veteran politician concluded: "This is a great battle for our territory and our freedom. It's a historic chance for the free world to kill this evil."

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

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Her natal Lilith is 21 Pisces, N.Node 17 Sagittarius, S.Node 3 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 23 Sagittarius, N.Node 16 Taurus, and the S.Node is 25 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess bless, Rad

[Helena]

Hi Rad and All,
I would like to share something I was just noticing relative to the astonishing beauty of the universe that came with new satellite images from NASA, that it was not only with the full moon in Pluto's nodes (and Pluto) but also when Ceres was also at Pluto's NNm with all trining Neptune retrograde... Remembering Ceres is about recovering something from the past and cycles of becoming, how cool is it that we got this incredible beautiful images from the past of the Universe! Wow... And venus, the ruler of the current moon's node, was in gemini conjunct ceres NN. Just amazing.

Wish blessings to all,
Helena

P.S. Lilith is also conjunct full moon axis, Pluto's NN, and Ceres

[Rad]

Hi Helena,

Just incredible. Thanks for sharing.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is an interview of Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot. This is a noon chart.

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Interview: Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova: 'You cannot play nice with Putin. He is insane. He might open fire on his own people'

The Russian artist – who spent two years in a Siberian jail for singing an anti-Putin 'punk prayer' – is using NFTs to fight the dictator, raising $7m in five days. At a time like this, she says, only activism will keep you sane
'I'm in a panic, I'm crying every day'

Zoe Williams
Guardian

Nadya Tolokonnikova is in a geographically undisclosed location, speaking to me on Zoom, in a Pussy Riot T-shirt, looking purposeful, driven and singleminded. Her feminist protest art has been deadly serious since its inception, when she founded Pussy Riot in 2011. The watching world may have been entertained by its playful notes, the guerrilla gigs in unauthorised places, culminating in the event for which she was prosecuted, in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, when she sang Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.

But the consequences have always been seismic and severe. Tolokonnikova, along with two other members of Pussy Riot, were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism in 2012, separated from their very young children, went on hunger strike, endured unimaginably harsh conditions and were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.

Tolokonnikova is "nomadic by nature", she says. "This planet is my home. I've always been an anarchist. I'm not really a big fan of borders or nation states." But beneath those abstracts there are concrete dangers. She was declared a "foreign agent" by the Kremlin in December, as was the independent news outlet she founded upon her release from prison, Mediazone.

"Putin just signed a law that said you're going to get 15 years in jail for even discussing the war in Ukraine," she says matter-of-factly. "You cannot even call it a war, you have to call it a special military operation." The jeopardy of being a known Russian dissident is greater now than it has been in decades, and nobody understands that more keenly than Tolokonnikova, who was born in 1989, too young to remember Perestroika.

Yet her focus is anything but self-protective. When Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February, she and various collaborators from the world of cryptocurrency launched the Ukraine DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation). It was a 1/1 non-fungible token (NFT) of the Ukrainian flag, and the group invited people to bid for collective ownership of the image, raising $7.1m in five days.

"We felt, me and my friends in crypto, that we had to react somehow. I'm personally convinced that in situations like this, activism is the only thing that can keep you sane. Just looking at disasters and tragedies and not doing anything about it is really detrimental for the world, but also it slowly destroys you and makes you feel helpless." The money has already been distributed to the organisation Come Back Alive, which has been mobilising support for the Ukrainian army since 2014 with medical care, ammunition, training and defence analytics.

    If you fight with a dictator like Putin, you have to show them that you are ready to die – and I was

Tolokonnikova is devastated by the invasion of Ukraine. "I'm in a panic, I'm crying every day. I don't think it was in any sense necessary, I don't think it was in any sense logical. It wasn't something that had to happen, it's a disaster that will end thousands of people's lives. I'm freaking out." Yet she never had the luxury of complacency about what Putin was capable of. "The global community was extremely complacent, and I see two reasons: hypocrisy, based on greed. People would make statements that they did not support Putin's politics, and his oppression of the political opposition, and the wars that he started – this isn't the first war by any means. But at the same time they would continue doing business with him." Nobody was interested in following the money; asking how the oligarchs coming out of Russia, fetching up in Europe and Miami, had come upon their vast wealth.

"Stupidity," she continues, bluntly. "This is the second reason. People underestimate how dangerous dictators are. In 2014, we spoke to the UK parliament, we spoke at the Senate in the US, we were asked by a lot of people how they should talk to Putin, how they should frame the conversation, and I always advised that they should be as strict as they could. You cannot play nice with Putin." This wisdom was won, not so much by her arrest for offending the thin-skinned leader but during her time in prison. "Dictators act a lot like prison wardens. They treat kindness as weakness."

During her sentence and following her release in 2014, Tolokonnikova campaigned in ways that political prisoners throughout history would recognise. First, with a hunger strike. "Starting that, I was pretty much ready to die. If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end. I think this is why Ukraine is actually winning: they might lose some cities but they are willing to fight to the end, and that is not the case for the Russian army."

She gained support worldwide, and from figures such as Madonna and Hillary Clinton. She began to exchange letters with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek which were subsequently turned into a book, Comradely Greetings. What she remembers now, though, was the concrete impact on prison conditions. A week into her hunger strike, Putin's right-hand man on human rights called her personally, in prison, to discuss the brutal conditions she was protesting against: 18-hour days of labour with only one day off every six weeks; very little sleep; horrific violence at the hands of guards and other inmates.

"This was fairly insane. I was the lowest person on the social ladder and he had to call me." Later, the prison director and architect of this slave labour system, Yury Kupriyanov, was convicted for it and served a suspended two-year sentence, and the Russian correctional headquarters "had to make a statement. They named me and said I was right."

    Everything I'm doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin

Tolokonnikova's sentence left its mark: "I was traumatised by prison. I was barely functional when I got released. I suffered from a really severe depression in 2014. I'm still on medication for depression caused by PTSD." The daughter from whom she was separated while she was imprisoned is now 14. "She's a social democrat," Tolokonnikova says approvingly, if wryly. "She says that in her generation, people want greater equality."

Her experience hasn't blunted her activism, which is now concentrated at the frontier of technological possibility. She originally thought cryptocurrencies were just a toy for rich techies but their potential for activists – being independent of central banks and governments, immune to corporate takeover – dawned on her in early 2021, and since then she has raised: "Quite substantial sums for different charitable causes. We raised money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence. We were able to move dozens of women from a really dangerous place in Russia, outside of Russia. We raised money in August of last year for political prisoners in Russia."

Besides that, today she is helping to launch the UnicornDAO, a crypto fund whose mission is to buy artworks from female and LGBTQ+ artists. "It's not going to be just buying up their works of art; we're going to be working with them, helping them in various ways to have stable and sustainable careers." Unicorn's first purchase was by the Russian-born, New York-based artist Olive Allen.

"I feel like the NFT world is a great way to redistribute money," Tolokonnikova says, "but we see these old patterns being repeated. Misogyny doesn't go anywhere, it just migrates over to digital artwork. Women account for only 5% of all NFT sales. It's so much more difficult to prove there is value in your words if you happen to be a woman."

These explorations in crypto can sound mercurial, one minute driving cultural change, the next raising money, the next trying to create democratic agency independent of nation states – and it's by no means clear what that would look like – but Tolokonnikova's reading of Russian politics, and what it would take to force change, is entirely practical. It would take "a mass uprising, millions of people coming to the streets and refusing to leave until Putin is gone. That is obviously incredibly dangerous. Putin is insane, so he might open fire at his own people. I definitely understand why everybody is not already on the streets."

Alongside that, "another force of change may come from Putin's closet circle. I honestly think Putin is digging his own grave now. The number of oligarchs who are close to him, who have publicly supported Ukraine and are standing against the wa is significant, and that hasn't happened in 20 years."

She sees a worthy successor to Putin in opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "Better social programmes, and redistribution, that's all part of his programme. I've known him since 2007 – it has been really interesting to witness his platform become more and more social democratic, even though he doesn't describe himself as that. He doesn't use labels. I think it's smart. He doesn't want to divide people." And as she recalls her own time in prison, Tolokonnikova urges the world not to forget that Navalny still languishes in jail. Her own work, specifically the UnicornDAO, "is not connected to Putin directly anyhow. But everything I'm doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin because it's so personal to me."

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Her natal Lilith is 9 Sagittarius, N.Node 12 Sagittarius, S.Node 14 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 22 Sagittarius, N.Node 26 Taurus, and the S.Node is 20 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

This is the story of Maria Ressais a Filipino-American journalist and author, the co-founder and CEO of Rappler, and the first Filipino recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She previously spent nearly two decades working as a lead investigative reporter in Southeast Asia for CNN. This is a noon chart.

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Defiant Philippine Nobel laureate Ressa fights for her freedom

Agence France-Presse
July 14, 2022

Less than a year after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to protect free speech, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa is fighting to stay out of jail while her news site Rappler faces possible closure.

But the spirited veteran reporter -- a vocal critic of former president Rodrigo Duterte and his deadly drug war -- refuses to be cowed into silence.

"This is a newsroom that's been under attack for six years and we've prepared ourselves," Ressa, 58, told AFP this week at Rappler's office in suburban Manila.

"We will not voluntarily give up our rights."

Rappler, which Ressa co-founded a decade ago, had to battle for survival under Duterte as his government accused it of violating a constitutional ban on foreign ownership, as well as tax evasion.

Days before Duterte's term ended on June 30, the company received a shutdown order from the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Less than two weeks later, Ressa lost an appeal against a 2020 conviction for cyber libel, putting her one step closer to serving up to nearly seven years behind bars.

Drawing on decades of experience working as a journalist across Asia, including in conflict zones, Ressa said she had to be "ready for anything".

"This is something I do as a person, whatever it is I'm most afraid of, I think about the worst-case scenario and then I plan it out," said the former CNN correspondent, who is on bail.

Ressa is facing seven court cases, including the cyber libel conviction, while Rappler faces eight.

Their lawyers describe the cases as "state-sponsored legal harassment".

Trouble for Ressa and Rappler started in 2016 when Duterte came to power and launched a drug war in which more than 6,200 people died in police anti-narcotics operations, official data show.

Rights groups estimate tens of thousands were killed.

Rappler was among the domestic and foreign media outlets that published shocking images of the killings and questioned the crackdown's legal basis.

Local broadcaster ABS-CBN -- also critical of Duterte -- lost its free-to-air license, while Ressa and Rappler endured what press freedom advocates say was a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks.

Duterte's government said previously it had nothing to do with any of the cases against Ressa.

After the SEC shutdown order, Ressa said the online harassment increased "exponentially" and has continued since the son and namesake of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos succeeded Duterte.

"This was the largest spike for sure. It hasn't stopped, it's been pretty much non-stop," said Ressa.

"The attacks are always connected to a defense of the Marcos administration."

- 'Make or break' -

Ressa became a journalist in 1986, the same year that the elder Marcos was ousted in a popular revolt and his family chased into exile in the United States.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr won the May 9 presidential polls by a landslide, completing a remarkable comeback for the clan, helped by relentless online whitewashing of their past and powerful alliances with rival elite families.

Ressa said she was hopeful Marcos Jr would rule differently to his father, who presided over human rights abuses, corruption and the shuttering of independent media.

But the pattern in the past three weeks, including the social media attacks, "bodes ill for press freedom and for Filipino journalists", she said.

"It hasn't been magnanimity in victory," said Ressa.

"This is not one or two people not being nice -- these are concerted information operations."

Some of her colleagues at Rappler, where the average age of staff, including reporters, is about 25, have also been targeted.

As Ressa and the company fight to have the SEC and cyber libel decisions overturned, their future is uncertain.

She had hoped that winning the Nobel Peace Prize in October, which she shared with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, would shield her and other journalists in the Philippines.

While Marcos Jr has given few clues about his views on Rappler and the broader issue of freedom of speech, activists fear he could make the situation worse.

Ressa said the outcome of the cases against her and Rappler could have broader implications for Filipinos and their rights.

She points to the controversial cyber libel law, which she has been accused of violating. It was introduced in 2012 and applied to an article published by Rappler months before the law took effect.

"This is make or break," Ressa said.

"What's at stake goes beyond my freedom or Rappler. It really will determine where this country will go."

© 2022 AFP

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

Her natal Lilith is 1 Sagittarius, N.Node 5 Sagittarius, S.Node 17 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 7 Leo, N.Node 9 Gemini, and the S.Node 12 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

HI All,

I am posting a short documentary on various women in Russia who are trying to oppose Pig Putin's war on Ukraine in the best and only ways they can. To me these women are true Goddesses.

Please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHzPrayS8dU

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the chart of Joni Mitchell who is true goddess in our times. The chart is accurate relative to her time of birth

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'She Schooled Us All': Inside Joni Mitchell's Stunning Return to Newport Folk Festival

Festival organizers and performers share the joyful, surprising story behind Mitchell's first full set in 20 years

Rolling Stone
7/29/2022

Last July, Brandi Carlile had a provocation for her friend Jay Sweet, the head of Newport Folk Festival. "One year from now," Sweet remembers her telling him. "I bet you we can bring Joni Mitchell to this stage."

The festival head was skeptical. A few years back, he had witnessed a magical moment at a show in Los Angeles when Mitchell was reunited with her old friend Mavis Staples, whom she hadn't seen in many years. When the two singers met, they butterfly-kissed, nose to nose, for a full 30 seconds without speaking. It was an unforgettable moment, but that evening had also left Sweet with the impression that Mitchell was not in any physical condition to perform for a live festival audience. "I gotta be honest with you," Sweet remembers telling Carlile when she proposed her idea. "You are the manifester of miracles, but you may have overshot on this one."

One year later to the day, Joni Mitchell made a triumphant, emotional return to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, where she had performed multiple times in the Sixties, and where she now gave her first full set in over 20 years. Mitchell's performance was the culmination of the singer's strength, determination, and resilience after spending years teaching herself how to walk, sing, and play guitar again in the years following her 2015 aneurysm. "I'm learning," the 78-year-old songwriter told CBS before her Sunday evening performance. "It's amazing what an aneurysm knocks out — how to get out of a chair....You have to relearn everything."

By the time she left the stage on Sunday, Mitchell had relearned all of those things and more. She thrilled and devastated the crowd with a 13-song set in which she reinterpreted her older material, told stories, sang cover songs from her childhood, and even stood up for a thrilling electric guitar solo on "Just Like This Train."

"She schooled us all in real time," says Celisse, the singer-guitarist who performed a reimagined "Help Me" as part of the all-star cast of musicians (also including Blake Mills, Lucius, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, Allison Russell, and more) accompanying Mitchell on stage. "Joni did this brilliant thing where would be singing these lyrics you've heard a million times, but all of a sudden, she would beat you to the punch and phrase the line in a new, even more musical way. And you'd think, 'Fuck, what a new, interesting way to think about it.'"

Celisse continues: "She's not the soprano she used to be, but my god, her alto is so rich and deep and wise, and her sense of how to interpret her music today, in her seventies, is even more profound than it was when she wrote the music."

She singles out Mitchell's performance of songs like "Come In From the Cold" and "Both Sides Now" as radically vital present-day artistic regimaginations. "The way she was using rhythm as a storytelling device was really profound," Celisse says. (In the former song, Mitchell sang the song's chorus early, ahead of the beat, as if to exaggerate the respite and longing expressed in the song's refrain.) Over the years, Celisse has taken part in many tribute concerts to aging legends before, but if one thing was clear to her, it's that Mitchell's performance was no ordinary case of honoring someone who's past their artistic prime. "This was not a situation in which we were pulling her along," she says. "She was pulling us along. We were the dead weights, quite frankly."

Mitchell put it more simply just days before she took the stage: "I've never been nervous about being in front of an audience," she told CBS. "But I wanted it to be good."

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiluPSmAF8

And although she's received a lot of attention and credit for helping coordinate this historic performance, in the days after the performance, Carlile has made it clear that this moment is ultimately about only one person. "Watching [Joni] get herself to this point has changed my whole outlook on life," Carlile tweeted. "What she's accomplished with her body belongs to Joni Mitchell and Joni alone."

The first time Celisse played her version of "Help Me" for her hero, it was at one of Mitchell's now-legendary "Joni Jams" at her Los Angeles home this past October. Mitchell loved her interpretation, so much so that, as Celisse remembers, she asked Celisse to promise she'd return for another jam. When Celisse joked to Mitchell that she'd be happy to move in and start sleeping under the pool table, Mitchell replied, "Sarah Vaughan slept right under that pool table many times."

Several months after that unforgettable October evening, Celisse says she received a request to play at Newport as part of a set billed as "Brandi Carlile and Friends." She was aware of the rumblings about what such a set could end up becoming, but says she didn't know of any definite plans for Mitchell to return to the folk festival of her youth until a few months ago.

A few weeks before the show, a potential set list circulated, and Celisse learned that she would be playing "Help Me." The musicians involved all hopped on a Zoom call to discuss keys and musical specifics a week before Mitchell took the stage; two days before the performance, Mitchell rehearsed with the band in Rhode Island. But according to Sweet, no one was absolutely certain Mitchell would take the stage on Sunday night until the moment the show began. There were times, the festival organizer says, where it seemed like she might not perform. Then, four hours or so before the set on Sunday, Carlile called Sweet: "I think it's gonna happen," he remembers Carlile telling him.

Mitchell has a strong personal connection to the folk festival. She met Leonard Cohen and James Taylor on its grounds ("Good friends for my life," she told CBS). Singers of Mitchell's generation still hold a special reverence for Newport, so much so that when Paul Simon surprised the festival by making his debut there the day before Mitchell's set, Sweet recalls him being amazed by photos in his dressing room of artists like Big Mama Thornton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe at the festival. "He was bragging, like, 'I'm playing Newport,'" says Sweet.

Pulling off the logistics of Mitchell's return to the stage wasn't easy. The festival operates on a small non-profit budget, and none of the artists who appeared onstage with Mitchell received any fee for their performance. The entire performance would not have been able to happen had George Wein, the festival's late founder, not left money when he died last year specifically to help Sweet book his most sought-after artists.

In the days since her performance with Mitchell, Celisse has hardly been able to contain her own joy and amazement. "I'm calling you from the clouds," she says when she speaks with Rolling Stone two days after the show. But more than anything, she's astounded by what she witnessed on Sunday evening: the artistic, physical, and musical triumph of a legend who's overcome as much as Mitchell has.

"All of us have been witness to this progression, but I don't think anybody, quite honestly, other than Joni, understood what she was capable of," she says. "Watching her on stage, it was like, 'Oh my god, there's even more in there than any of us even expected. There's more."

***********

Her natal Lilith is 11 Gemini, N.Node 12 Sagittarius, S.Node 14 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 29 Sagittarius, N.Node 27 Taurus, and the S.Node is 20 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

To enlarge the chart simply click on the 'jpg' and it will enlarge in your browser or phone window.

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the story of Droupadi Murmu the first tribal person to have power in India. This is noon chart.

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


Droupadi Murmu sworn in as India's first tribal president in 'watershed' moment

Agence France-Presse
July 25, 2022

Droupadi Murmu was sworn in as India's president on Monday, making her the first person from one of the country's marginalized tribal communities to serve as head of state.

The former school teacher and state governor was elected to the largely ceremonial position last week with 64 percent of the vote by members of India's parliament and state assemblies.

Murmu, who is from the Santhal tribe and was born in eastern Odisha state, paid her respects before her inauguration at a memorial dedicated to India's independence hero Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi.

"I started my life journey from a small tribal village," Murmu, 64, said after taking the oath of office in parliament.

"From the background I come from, it was like a dream for me to even get elementary education," she added.

"But despite many obstacles, my resolve remained strong and I became the first daughter from my village to go to college."
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Murmu's win was considered a certainty because of the strength of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies in the parliament and state assemblies.

Analysts said the move will likely help Prime Minister Narendra Modi extend his base among the poor tribal communities ahead of his re-election bid in 2024.

"Her assuming the Presidency is a watershed moment for India especially for the poor, marginalized and downtrodden," Modi said on Twitter after Murmu's address.

Murmu said her election would give hope to those left behind by India's recent economic growth.

"It is a matter of great satisfaction to me that those who have been deprived for centuries, who have been away from the benefits of development... are seeing their reflection in me," she said.

India's prime minister wields executive power, but the president can send back some parliamentary bills for reconsideration and also plays a guiding role in the process of forming governments.

Murmu is the country's second woman president after Pratibha Patil, who held the position for five years from 2007.

She succeeds Ram Nath Kovind, the second president from the Dalit community, the bottom of the Hindu caste system.

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

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

Her natal Lilith is 2 Libra, N.Node 17 Sagittarius, N.Node 23 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 7 Leo, N.Node 1 Gemini, and the S.Node 9 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

Linda Jean Burney (born 25 April 1957) is an Australian politician and is an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian House of Representatives, representing Barton since the 2016 federal election. She is Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Albanese ministry, and the first Aboriginal woman to serve in that position.

Burney was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing Canterbury for Labor from 2003 to 2016. She was the New South Wales Deputy Leader of the Opposition and was also Shadow Minister for Education and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. In the Keneally ministry, she was the Minister for the State Plan and Minister for Community Services. During 2008 and 2009, Burney was National President of the Labor Party.

Burney was the first Aboriginal person to serve in the New South Wales Parliament in 2003, and also the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 2016.

After the election of a federal Labor government in the 2022 election on 21 May 2022, Burney was appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians.

Early life and education

Burney was born on 25 April 1957 in Whitton, a small town in south-west New South Wales near Leeton, and grew up there. She is of Wiradjuri and Scottish descent. She said in her inaugural speech to NSW Parliament that she did not grow up knowing her Aboriginal family, and only met her father, Nonny Ingram, in 1984. She subsequently met ten brothers and sisters. She was raised by her elderly aunt and uncle, siblings Nina and Billy Laing, who "gave [her] the ground on which [she] stood" and taught her "the values of honesty, loyalty and respect".

Burney attended the local primary school in Whitton. She did her first four years of secondary school at Leeton High School and final two at Penrith High School.

She was the first Aboriginal graduate[citation needed] from the Mitchell College of Advanced Education, where she obtained a Diploma of Teaching and a PhD.

Career in education

She began her career teaching at Lethbridge Park public school in western Sydney from 1979[6] to 1981, after which she worked at the Aboriginal Education Unit (Policy) of the NSW Department of Education from 1981 to 1983.

She was involved in the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (NSW AEGG) from the 1983 to 1998,[2] participating in the development and implementation of the first Aboriginal education policy in Australia.[6] She became president of AEGG in 1988.

Aboriginal Affairs

In 1998 Burney was appointed deputy director general of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (NSW), and assumed the role of director general from 2000 to 2003.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Burney and https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/16/linda-burney-launches-campaign-to-raise-support-for-referendum-on-first-nations-voice-to-parliament

Her natal Lilith is 28 Gemini, N.Node 7 Capricorn, S.Node 6 Gemini. Her natal Amazon is 3 Gemini, N.Node 18 Taurus, and the S.Node is 00/08 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the story of Sacheen Littlefeather. This is a noon chart.                                             

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

Academy Awards apologises to Sacheen Littlefeather for Oscars speech abuse

Nearly 50 years after her speech on behalf of Marlon Brando about depiction of Native Americans, academy apologises for 'unwarranted and unjustified' response

Andrew Pulver
Guardian
Tue 16 Aug 2022 01.14 BST

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), the body that oversees the Oscars, has issued a formal apology to Sacheen Littlefeather, the Native American activist who appeared at the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony as part of Marlon Brando's refusal to accept his award.

Brando was awarded the best actor Oscar for his role as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, but did not attend as a protest in support of Native American rights, in part inspired by the ongoing two-month occupation of the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre by the American Indian Movement (AIM). Instead, Littlefeather declined to accept the statuette from presenters Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann, and made a short speech, in which she said that Brando's stance was due to "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry ... and on television, in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee."

'I promised Brando I would not touch his Oscar': the secret life of Sacheen Littlefeather ..Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/i-promised-brando-i-would-not-touch-his-oscar-secret-life-sacheen-littlefeather

The speech was greeted with jeers from the audience, and Littlefeather, then 26, later reported that actor John Wayne had to be restrained by security guards backstage from assaulting her, while other individuals backstage made offensive gestures.

Ampas has issued a statement of reconciliation signed by its former president David Rubin that described her appearance as "a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity".

"The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration." The organisation has also planned an evening of "conversation, reflection, healing, and celebration", including an appearance by Littlefeather with Bird Runningwater, co-chair of the Academy's Indigenous Alliance.

Littlefeather, now 75, responded by saying: "Regarding the Academy's apology to me, we Indians are very patient people – it's only been 50 years! We need to keep our sense of humour about this at all times. It's our method of survival."
Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars.

"I never thought I'd live to see the day," she added. This is a dream come true. It is profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago."

Watch: https://youtu.be/2QUacU0I4yU

The Wounded Knee occupation started in February 1973, and was a highly publicised protest by a 200-strong group of Oglala Lakota and members of AIM on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, on the same site where some 290 Lakota were killed by the US army in 1890. The Oscars took place in March, and the occupation ended in May after agreement with federal authorities to disarm.

In 2021, Littlefeather told the Guardian that she arrived at the ceremony only a few minutes before Brando's award was announced, and had been given an eight-page speech by Brando to read if he won. However, the show's director Howard Koch told her she could only have 60 seconds and so she improvised a speech instead. She also said she promised Brando that she would not touch the statuette. "I went up there like a warrior woman. I went up there with the grace and the beauty and the courage and the humility of my people. I spoke from my heart."

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

Here natal Lilith is 19 Libra, N.Node 14 Sagittarius, S.Node 11 Cancer. Her natal Amazon is 19 Leo, N.Node 23 Taurus, and the S.Node is 22 Scorpio.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless,Rad
 

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the story of Glennon Doyle. This is a noon chart.

                                                       ***********

Glennon Doyle chose honesty. Now fans are following her lead

Doyle, the parenting writer turned feminist icon, bares even more of herself on her podcast — inspiring listeners to do the same

By Ellen McCarthy
August 27, 2022
WA Post

Monica Huckabay, who works at an emergency response company in Texas, stopped straightening her natural hair day after day. And she stopped letting bigoted comments slide at the office.

Abby Mercer, a nonprofit executive in Indiana, stopped hanging out with friends who weren't supportive. She rethought everything she had learned growing up in a culture that prized "purity" in girls. And she started dating women.

Rachel Zentner, a therapist in Wisconsin, started being more honest with the people in her life — about her own eating disorder, her alcoholism, her relationship problems.

The women don't know each other, but they share something in common: The changes they made in their lives were inspired, at least in part, by Glennon Doyle, the former Christian parenting blogger turned feminist icon. They are part of the latest chapter of the Doyle story, the one where women who watched with fascination as she hit the eject button on her old life start questioning the confines of their own.

You remember Doyle's story, right? Her viral blog posts about parenting young children and finding her place within Christianity were turned into a best-selling essay collection. Which was followed up by another bestseller about how she learned that her husband had been cheating on her and how they struggled to save the marriage. Which was published just as Doyle was separating from the aforementioned husband after falling madly in love with soccer legend Abby Wambach, to whom she is now married.

Doyle regrets none of it. She opened her most recent book, "Untamed," with an essay about a conversation she imagines having with a cheetah named Tabitha she encounters at a zoo. "Something's off about my life," Doyle imagines the cheetah saying, lamenting her cage and fantasizing about "fence-less, wide-open savannas" — then chiding herself for doing so, saying: "I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It's crazy to long for what doesn't even exist."

"Tabitha, you are not crazy," Doyle imagines herself responding. "You are a goddamn cheetah."

Doyle thought the book was doomed when it published in March 2020, as the pandemic was changing people's lives in all the wrong ways. As it turned out, a period of interminable lockdowns — which proved uniquely disruptive and burdensome for women — had plenty of people in the mood to imagine themselves as cheetahs accelerating across a distant plain. Doyle's book sold more than 2 million copies. (Actress Sarah Paulson is slated to play Doyle in a television adaptation, which is being developed by J.J. Abrams's production company.)

Then, in May 2021, Doyle launched a podcast, "We Can Do Hard Things," featuring conversations with her sister, Amanda Doyle — a quick-witted former lawyer with two little kids and a degree in gender studies. "Since everyone has their own podcast, I felt, like, embarrassed to even entertain the idea of starting a podcast," Glennon Doyle told The Washington Post in a Zoom interview from the home she and Wambach share outside of Los Angeles.

Still, she was eager to continue the conversations "Untamed" had started and was increasingly convinced that social media is a toxic, polarizing environment in which to do that. So she went ahead with it.

"Our hypothesis here is that we can make life for ourselves and you just a teeny smidge easier by talking about hard things," Doyle said on a recent episode. She has talked about her own depression and alcoholism, her control issues, her eating disorder and her trouble forming close friendships. About her fury at patriarchal norms. About how enraged she is at the industrial complex that keeps women laser-focused and ever insecure about their physical appearance — and how, despite that awareness, she is still terrified to appear on television without makeup.

Wambach sat in as a guest for an early episode and then kept coming back, offering optimism and stories of her own struggles with addiction and self-acceptance. Together they talked about orgasms (real and fake), fun (or their lack of it), how to know when it's time to quit something and the pressure of modern parenthood. In one episode Amanda Doyle unpacked a simmering resentment familiar to most moms who find themselves in a position of carrying an outsize share of domestic and emotional labor. Women responded in droves, most of them saying "same here."

By the end of the year, "We Can Do Hard Things," which is produced by Audacy's Cadence13, had been named Apple's most popular new podcast. It routinely shows up among the top 20 podcasts on the Apple charts.

"Where we live we have a little walking path, and women will be walking past us and they'll go, 'We're listening to you right now.' It's just so unbelievable," says Wambach, who has joined the podcast as a third host, to The Post. "I don't think people even remember I played soccer."

Fans have gotten together on text message chains and in WhatsApp communities and Facebook groups, where they compare photos of their cheetah tattoos and tell each other hard things about their own lives.

After reading Glennon Doyle, country singer Brooke Eden decided to stop keeping her relationship with Hilary Hoover a secret.

"I have so many life regrets," one woman wrote to members of a Facebook group inspired by Doyle. "I did what 'the Good girl' should do, and didn't think for myself. ... I find myself almost 50, incredibly sorrowful for the life I never lived, yet terrified to make decisions for a future because I don't even know who I am to myself."

"Babies are a gift," wrote another. "I am mad at myself for getting pregnant [and] I am mad for not wanting to be pregnant."

"My skin crawls when he touches me, date night was SO awkward, and romantically/emotionally/physically, it's just not there for me anymore," wrote a third. "How do you know when to leave?!?"

Alyson Weaver, a 37-year-old who works in college administration, formed a "pod squad" of fellow Austin residents as devoted to Doyle's podcast as she was. The goal was to replicate what the three podcast hosts seem to have with each other: "fellow human women discussing things you don't feel comfortable talking to your own friends about, or even your own family." Weaver's pod squad, which meets twice a month, is now 14 members strong, including a handful of men.

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" poet Muriel Rukeyser once asked in a poem. In the next line, she answered: "The world would split open."

We know what happened when Glennon Doyle told the truth about her life. What happens as the women who follow her do the same?

"I struggle with people-pleasing and perfectionism and wanting to fit in," says Monica Huckabay, the wavy-haired Texas woman.

She started listening to "We Can Do Hard Things" and was impressed by the bravery of the hosts. The 54-year-old started to feel a little braver herself. When a colleague said something hurtful or racist, she spoke up — something she never would have done in the past "because it makes them uncomfortable," says Huckabay, who is Hispanic. "And women always try to make people feel comfortable, even at their own expense."

Those colleagues don't ask Huckabay to join them for lunch anymore, she says, but "it's so worth it. I feel more myself than I ever have in my life."

Abby Mercer, the 39-year-old Indiana nonprofit executive, came to Doyle's work by way of "Untamed," which she read on a plane when she was newly divorced.

"I was a different Abby before getting on the plane than I was getting off it," she says. "It gave me permission to do what I want to do."

She let go of friendships that "had substantially more withdrawals then deposits." She stopped trying to fit into a conservative brand of Christianity that didn't seem to want her. She decorated her house with rainbows and sometimes jokingly refers to herself as a "baby gay" or a "late bloomer."

These days, Mercer listens to Doyle's twice-weekly podcast religiously. "I can recall so many times on my commute home bawling my eyes out and screaming, 'Yes, that's exactly what's happening,' " she says. "It's exactly what I've always wanted to talk about and no one ever talks about."

This is, of course, the whole idea. "Sometimes the most idiosyncratic, personal and individual things turned out to be the thing that makes people take a deep breath and be like, 'Oh, my God, yes. Why aren't we talking about that?' " Amanda Doyle told The Post from a coffee shop near her home in Falls Church. "What is the thing that you're actually thinking about as you're going about your day? We're saying all the things out loud that you feel like you're not allowed to say."

Rachel Zentner, the Wisconsin therapist, struggled with that, at first. The podcast cut too close to home. The hosts are always inviting listeners to call and email them, so Zentner left a few voice mails expressing her discomfort hearing them talk openly about subjects she had long kept hidden. "I felt a weird betrayal," she says. "I'll say, 'Hey, you weren't supposed to talk about the eating disorder stuff because that was going to be a secret for us forever.'

Attempts to speak her own truth would often make Zentner's body physically shake. But she's trying, in conversations with her friends and clients and, especially, her daughters. She doesn't want them to internalize the same message she did. "That I was supposed to make my body small," she says. "I was supposed to make my opinions small."

Because Doyle started out writing largely about parenting, she was pigeonholed for years as a "mommy blogger." But Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, a sociology professor at Valencia College who studies gender and media, says Doyle has long since ascended to more rarefied heights.

"If we're going to put her in the lineup of books that have changed women's lives — Betty Friedan, Erica Jong, Gloria Steinem — she fits there," Trier-Bieniek says. "But she's learned from where their misses were. She's figured out that you can't tell your story without also talking about your flaws, or where you don't know something, or where you've made your epic failures." Doyle is conscious of her privilege as a cisgender White woman, for example, and "does a great job at saying 'I have a seat at the table, and I'm going to bring up as many diverse voices as I can, and I'm going to let them speak, and I'm going to listen.' "

Trier-Bieniek thinks of Doyle's podcast as akin to the sewing circles women held at the turn of the 20th century, where women who had gathered ostensibly to do their stitching would trade stories and scheme about getting the right to vote. Doyle's gift is her ability to articulate women's internal experiences. She and her co-hosts talk about menopause and self-care and knowing when it's time to quit a job or a relationship, but Trier-Bieniek sees something deeper happening: "What she's doing," says the professor, "is saying, 'Guess what? You don't have to sit in that seat just because that's where someone says you should go. You can step outside.' "

So, if an acutely personal conversation on the podcast about female sexual function leaves listeners fired up about science's lack of attention to the matter, that's very much by design.

"Truth-telling, for me, is always tied to making women feel less alone, making women understand there's not anything wrong with them," Doyle says.

"If 98 percent of the women just realize there's nothing wrong with them and take a deep breath, that's enough for me. But if a few of them are also like, 'Wait a minute' — and start to go to the polls and start to march, start to organize — that's one of the end goals."

Zentner, the therapist, is down for revolution. But for her the impact of Doyle's work is more immediate, more intimate.

"These days," she says, "I shake a little bit less. I get a little bit less sick when I tell the truth."

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

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

Her natal Lilith is 29 Scorpio, N.Node 9 Capricorn, S.Node 28 Taurus. Her natal Amazon is 4 Virgo, N.Node 10 Taurus, and the S.Node is 8 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment of ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad
 

[Rad]

Hi All,

Here is the story of Emmy Noether. This is a noon chart.

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

Emmy Noether: the woman who developed one of the most beautiful theorems in physics

It's one of the most beautiful ideas in physics.

Paula Ferreira   
July 8, 2022

Conservation laws are very useful for physics. Basically, when a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change in time (and it is conserved), that is described by a conservation law.

Conservation laws are useful in a number of different fields of physics, but sometimes, they can become very complex. That's where a 1910s theorem developed by a German mathematician comes in handy. Emmy Noether's theorem connects symmetry and conservation laws, and its simplicity and elegance can be easily described as one of the most beautiful theorems in physics.

Symmetry

Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician whose work focused especially on algebra. Her work was also extremely influential in a branch called mathematical physics — which deals with (you've guessed it) the development of mathematical methods in physics.

The development of many physics laws relies on something very abstract, the concept of symmetries. Symmetry can mean different things in different fields; in geometry, geometric shapes can be symmetrical, in chemistry, molecules can be symmetrical, but symmetry means something different in physics.

If you throw a ball upwards with an initial velocity, the kinetic energy turns into potential energy. Think of it this way: kinetic energy depends on motion, potential energy depends on position; when you throw the ball up, it starts by having a lot of motion energy — it's going up. Then, when it reaches the maximum height, it has no motion energy, because it stops (and then goes down) — at that moment, it only has potential energy.

In other words, potential energy transforms into kinetic energy, and kinetic energy converts into potential energy, and then back again.

If you were to set up a kinetic energy-potential energy experiment, the experiment would work the same if you try it again under the same conditions. Tomorrow, the day after, and so on, you'd get the same thing — this means that the energy conservation is the same regardless of the time. In other words, the time transformation doesn't change the system at all. This circumstance in which nothing changes in a law of physics/ feature of a system even with the action of a transformation is called symmetry.

The two theorems

In 1918, Emmy Noether published a seminal article connecting symmetries and conservation laws.

The German mathematician's career was already showing signs of brilliance. Her interest in mathematics came from her father who was a mathematics professor at the University of Erlangen. Later on, Noether would go on to become a student and also a professor — but without a salary. Little had she known her most famous contribution, the Noether Theorem, would unify ideas that developed slowly century by century by René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, and Joseph-Louis Lagrange.

Noether published a key mathematical paper discussing transformation groups, but without discussing a direct relation to physics. Her work was divided into two theorems, the first of which gave a global relationship between continuous symmetries and conservation laws, and the second applied to systems with local symmetries.

The ball experiment regarding the conservation law is the simplest example. The energy is conserved because there is symmetry under time translation. Now consider a more sophisticated idea about the conservation of angular momentum (momentum of a rotating object). Ice skaters are the masters of this conservation: they know that if they spin with their arms tucked in, this makes them rotate faster — and if they open their arms, their rotation speed decreases.

Think of it this way: angular momentum is mass times velocity times radius (L = m*v*r). The mass of a skater remains constant, so if the radius increases, the speed must decrease to compensate for that, and vice versa.

So what is the symmetry in this case? If momentum is conserved, then space has to be isotropic. That means if there is no extra torque (angular force), the angular momentum does not change. In simple words, isotropy means things are the same even if you rotate them. For example, a perfect sphere, without any marks, is invariant under rotation, no matter which way you turn it, it looks the same.

This, believe it or not, relates to one of the most important theories in physics: general relativity.

Matter bends space-time

General relativity (GR) is the theory that describes gravity with a lot of precision. During its development, Emmy Noether gave contributions to interpreting the theory.

Between 1915 and 1918, she got involved in debates with David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Einstein himself about conservation equations in GR. Einstein had arrived at an expression that was quite similar to the energy conservation we are more familiar with. However, one component of the equation was invariant under a specific transformation called affine transformation. Affine transformations preserve parallel structures like a symmetric leaf. This is not expected from a general equation which is supposed to incorporate the big picture of energy conservation.

In 1918, Klein pointed out the difference between Einstein's field equations and the usual conservation of energy. Einstein didn't agree, he believed the conservation was analogous to the classical mechanics at least in part of his equations.

For Hilbert, a leading mathematician of his time, the fact that GR didn't show a similar type of energy conservation was simply because ...it is what is. Noether, and later Klein, agreed that there was no conservation law in General Relativity, and that conclusion came from her famous theorem.

From Noether's second theorem, the matter in GR shows a conservation similar to energy and momentum conservation, but without equations of motion. As a matter of fact, any theory that is the same for any coordinate system shows a weird conservation law, one that does not give solutions with direct physical interpretations.

Supersymmetry

Noether's symmetry theorem spills into several other fields of physics.

The Standard Model of particle physics divides particles into two categories: fermions and bosons. All known fermions (the particles that make up ordinary matter) have half-integer spin. The spin number describes how many symmetrical facets a particle has in one full rotation; a spin of 1/2 means that the particle must be rotated by two full turns (through 720°) before it has the same configuration as when it started. Meanwhile, bosons, which are not matter particles, have integer spin (0, 1, 2, etc). Spin is a property in particles that indicates where they would point if immersed in a magnetic field. A proposed theory called Supersymmetry (SUSY) suggests that for every discovered fermion there would be a superpartner boson with similar property.

Why would that be good? It makes things elegant for sure, but it also makes things much simpler. SUSY's lightest particle would make an excellent dark matter particle. Moreover, other particles can be predicted from SUSY, not of them were observed experimentally though.

According to Noether's theorem, it is possible to find conservation if it is connected to symmetry. SUSY's conserved quantity is the supercharge, some sort of general idea of charge as we understand it.

Recognition

Noether struggled in a sexist society like most other female science figures. For her to study, she couldn't officially be a student. To give lectures, she couldn't be an official professor. After finally being recognized as a mathematician, she became a professor, but without a salary.

As one of the most brilliant scientists, her talent was fundamental in convincing her peers to be respected. But that wasn't enough. Unfortunately, she needed the support — or maybe we should call it approval –of important mathematicians to be taken seriously by universities. Hilbert took part in that, he convinced others to accept her at Göttingen, saying "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bathhouse.".

Noether's theorem has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics". Her contributions to mathematics were immense, especially relative to her short life. She discovered one of the most elegant, and quite possibly the most profound ideas in modern physics, often facing great adversity from male-dominated fields. It's one of those that are absolutely worth knowing if you're interested in science.

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

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Her natal Lilith is 12 Pisces, N.Node 9 Capricorn, S.Node 28 Taurus. Her natal Amazon is 12 Taurus, N.Node 10 Taurus, and the S.Node 7 Sagittarius.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

Goddess Bless, Rad

[Helena]

Hi Rad and All,

I was observing the chart for the next upcoming mercury retrograde and think is interesting to share a mention to the asteroid Goddesses in this upcoming period as They are very much linked to all of it. So the Mother, can indeed help us uncover the deeper meanings of this times, in my view.

Mercury retrograde conjunct asteroid Psyche which is then opposing Jupiter in aries and square Pallas in cancer. Both Mercury and Jupiter are trine and sextile Mars, which is then in exact opposition (mars) to the asteroid lucifer. Sun,Amazon and Eros are trine Moon's north node and Uranus, and Moon is conjunct Juno. Lilith conjunct Ceres in Leo is opposed Vesta rx conjunct Saturn rx in Aquarius, which are then both square moon's nodes.

Wow... this a lot going on. Rad, would this be right? That relative to the potential time for creating or maintaining skipped steps, the time is also right , with the sun and Uranus in trine (rulers of the planets creation the skipped stes) and the trines to mars from Jupiter and Mercury, that an exceptional  opportunity is here for the recovery of true soul desires in a conscious way, seeing Phsyhe and mercury conjunct trine mars in gemini (it's interesting for example how this is present in the context of the United States and Biden's speech for the recovery of the soul of the nation...) with the "trick" in noticing old instinctual messages and patterns of thinking that are limited or false and can keep the soul in old secure patterns, seeing the t-square between mercury/pshyce, Jupiter and Pallas, and the grand square of mars, lucifer, venus/eros/amazon, and moon/juno.

The message Jesus said in the desert, If I recall correctly, "Satan get behind me" really comes to mind with the mars Lucifer exact opposition as a theme of the retrograde, as also an unwavering faith in the path ahead and the immense progress in the long term of taking one step at a time, throwing off limited patterns of thinking, which then leads to an actualisation of the true nature/rebirth -the sun in virgo ruling lilith ceres square the nodes.

One other question I would have is, the chain of "pointers" in retrograde and how to correctly see it from an evolutionary point of view, because mercury retrograde leads to Jupiter, which is then retrograde, which would leads to all the outer planets in retrograde with the exception of venus, mars (which will follow retrograde soon), ceres and lilith. In my view, we would probably be given the time to actualise more precisely all that comes up now in the next months mars is retrograde, so taking a long, calm step by step process would be the way to move, which would then be so beautifully illustrated with Psyche's path along the way... But wonder what could be added more to that.

Thank you,
Helena

[Rad]

Hi Helena,

Rad, would this be right? That relative to the potential time for creating or maintaining skipped steps, the time is also right , with the sun and Uranus in trine (rulers of the planets creation the skipped stes) and the trines to mars from Jupiter and Mercury, that an exceptional  opportunity is here for the recovery of true soul desires in a conscious way, seeing Phsyhe and mercury conjunct trine mars in gemini (it's interesting for example how this is present in the context of the United States and Biden's speech for the recovery of the soul of the nation...) with the "trick" in noticing old instinctual messages and patterns of thinking that are limited or false and can keep the soul in old secure patterns, seeing the t-square between mercury/pshyce, Jupiter and Pallas, and the grand square of mars, lucifer, venus/eros/amazon, and moon/juno.

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Yes, this is right. The underlying key with Uranus on the N.Node in the context of this whole signature is for all of us, as Souls, to inwardly monitor the repetition is the 'messages' from the Soul to itself wherein the repetition directly correlates with the immediate and long terms evolutionary intentions and NEEDS for the Soul to liberate itself from it's binding past: a past defined and determined by inner dynamics that need to be jettisoned in order for the core evolutionary needs/ desires to evolve in an accelerated way.

I have asked Mary Blue to read what you wrote as well and have her respond to these important dynamics that you are asking about.

God Bless, Rad