Friday Bite 11 September 2026

Desperate Measures

“Right after the election, the war is going to end. I think the war will end… because they [Iran] can’t hold out any longer. They’re desperate.” Donald Trump, 9 September

“Here is my promise. If the Republican Party wins the House of Representatives and the Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like, in history we’ve never had what’s happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the USA for $5000… So, if the Republicans win, you’ll get $5000… It will be called The Trump Dividend.” Donald Trump, 9 September.

“The charitable work of the Duke and Duchess is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity… in short, their position is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests”. King Charles, 7 September

IT IS GETTING harder and harder to keep up with global developments. Any one of the past week’s events would be worthy of an entire Friday Bite, so here they are in brief.

• 6 September: Germany experienced a major political earthquake, the aftershocks of which could prove even mightier. Germany’s AfD (Alternative Für Deutschland) party came first in the Saxony-Anhalt region of the country. The state party leader, Ulrich Siegmund campaigned on a platform of closer ties to Russia, mass deportations and separating refugees from German children in the classroom. It is the first far-right party to govern part of Germany since the Nazi era.
• 5/6 September: Black clad, balaclava-headed figures gathered in their hundreds in Portsmouth and Dover to protest the continuing arrival of migrant-bearing boats on Britain’s shores. The protests were organized by Daniel Thomas, better known as Danny Tommo, leader of the far-right Patriot Platform group, and Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man.
• 9 September: The fallout from last week’s Channel Four broadcast on the far-right Reform Party’s funding practices gathered momentum with the Metropolitan Police announcing that it was to carry out criminal investigations into allegations that the party broke the law in relation to foreign donations.
• 6 September: Jared Kushner and Steve Witcoff travelled to Kyiv for the first time in their shuttle “diplomacy” efforts to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine. Prior to their arrival in Kyiv, the two had met with Putin and other Russian officials. The hapless duo was meant to fly to the Ukrainian capital, but it was deemed too unsafe and they travelled by train instead. Trump’s emissaries proceeded to lavish praise on the Russian president and determined the meetings to be “substantive”. Putin told the pair that Russia was making “real progress” on the battlefield and was confident of achieving its goals, while stressing the necessity of addressing “all the root causes of the conflict”.
• 6 September: The Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to allow its plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms.
• 7 September: The Lord Chamberlain sent a letter on behalf of King Charles to Harry and Meghan reminding them that they were still private citizens and not part of the royal firm.
• 8 September: Britain’s airports were plunged into chaos when thousands of flights were cancelled across Britain due to a malfunction in the flight processing system at National Air Traffic Services. This was the third such incident in the past eighteen months.
• 9 September: The Republican midterm convention opened in Dallas. Texas. The president spoke for one hour forty-four minutes surpassing his own record. The speech was predictably full of exaggerations, self-congratulatory remarks, fabrications and barefaced lies, “I won three presidential elections”. And then there was the offer of $5000 to every adult in the United States. Americans would do well to remember that in 2025, Trump promised a similar amount to every citizen as a consequence of DOGE’s successful mission to gut government spending. Apparently, that dividend has been “held up in Congress”.
• Last but not least, the US and Iran have been trading missiles again. The US said it had attacked and destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday while Iran claimed it had struck two US ships and eight oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. In consequence, the price of oil rose over $100 a barrel.
• And how could I forget. Yesterday, a top safety researcher at Anthropic said that he believes AI is advancing so rapidly that there is “a greater than 10 percent chance it could kill all humans within the next decade.”

Well, lah-di-dah.

2026 has been a year like no other. In times past, I would be able to look at a week’s transits and confidently predict that the astrological weather was calm and accordingly we could go about our business with confidence. Not so this year. In part, this is to do with the grand alignments continuing to remain in play so that even amidst a beautiful Venus-Jupiter influence, they are exerting their influence. So, I might have looked at the current astro-scape and the forthcoming new moon in Virgo and considered that a new season was on its way and we could put the past behind us. Sadly, not. We are dealing with the effects of a series of disastrous moves, primarily those made by the Trump administration, and we cannot turn back the tide. We are heading into increasingly perilous waters.

There is a collective sense of frustration which is driving people in more and more extremist directions. This we can perceive from the list above. Germany electing a far-right party? England at risk of doing the same? And France, even more likely to see a far-right government in power in 2027. This would have been unthinkable five years ago. But it is part of a growing populist wave. People have lost their faith in governments that have failed to alleviate their problems. And since most of those governments are democracies, the freedoms many of us have known for the past seventy-five years are in jeopardy. Old systems are simply not working and something – anything – that is radical and new offers hope.

I have from time to time talked about the Uranus-Neptune-Pluto triad, which is at the helm of all the major configurations that have been in play since 2025 to today. And this alignment will continue to hold sway into 2027. Neptune, Uranus and Pluto were in the same formation in the nineteen-forties, the World War II years, years which saw suffering, sacrifice (Neptune) devastation and obliteration (Uranus and Pluto) yet out of these years of conflict came great innovation. We emerged from World War II different people. As we will do again, once we have traversed this dark and dangerous passage.

The times we are living in also have a reference to the nineteen-thirties and rise of fascism. After Germany lost the first World War, it was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which held the country to blame and forced it to pay massive debts. Many Germans felt disgraced so when Hitler promised to tear up the treaty, rebuild the military and restore national pride, the people followed him in their droves. He was their saviour. He would make Germany great again. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat and economic pain, which lead to the purges and ultimately the genocide of the Jewish people.

So, there is a clear resonance with those times.

Which brings us to today and the anniversary of 9-11.

Most of us who weren’t tiny children at the time will remember where we were on that day. I was in Haslemere, Surrey, getting ready for my then husband to arrive from the United States that evening. I was collecting some printing material from a shop when a woman burst through the door exclaiming “a plane’s crashed into the Twin Towers!”. I returned home to find my middle son staring horror-struck at the television which was showing footage of smoke and flames pouring out of the North Tower. I have written an article about this day, which you can find here on Astrolutely.

One of the most significant aspects of the chart of 9-11 is that at the time the first plane hit the North Tower, 14 degrees of Libra was rising, which is the USA’s natal Saturn. Mercury was also on that same degree, as if to make the point that the attack was delivering a powerful message to America. The Saturn-Pluto opposition was straddling the United States’ Ascendant-Descendant axis and Neptune was conjunct the US’s nodal axis. Pure astrological poetry in terms of the loss of life, the devastation incurred and the War on Terror that followed.

You will see that I have drawn in a configuration involving Saturn, Venus, Mercury/Ascendant and Pluto. That configuration may seem familiar because it is a Barbault Basket, an alignment that was in play in July and early August this year. If you remember, André Barbault saw the 2026 configuration, which involved all the outer planets and Jupiter, as the start of a “Golden Age”, albeit one in the making born during a time of strife. Looking back on that day in 2001 and the years that followed, there was certainly no golden age but years of conflict, which continues to this day.

A quarter of a century later, and we find Saturn at 13 degrees of Aries – the opposite point to its natal position in the United States chart, and also the Ascendant and Mercury at the time of 9-11. At Saturn oppositions, we reflect on what has passed and assess what we can take away from events in order to avoid repeating them.

I have drawn in the configuration presiding over this anniversary, which involves the aforementioned trio and Mercury, which is trining Uranus and Pluto and opposing Neptune.

This twenty-fifth anniversary comes at a time when America is at war, not with an Islamic terrorist organization but an Islamic republic, Iran. The resonance could not be clearer.

And the question we must ask, is why the Trump administration is failing to heed the lessons of the past.

And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.” Republican Convention Dallas, 10 September.

Friday Bite 4 September 2026

Murky Waters

The lie is the elemental matter of the Trump administration. The value of lying is Donald Trump’s deepest belief. He built his celebrity image through shameless and constant deceit that permitted him to bounce from blunder to blunder while constantly reeling in new suckers. Lying is also what binds his loyalists to him: The highest calling of any figure in Trump world is to refuse any concessions to reality when Trump commands it, and the surest ticket to oblivion is to speak the truth. Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic, 28 August

‘So, your country’s not doing well. Don’t forget, you get a big percentage of your oil from the Strait of Hormuz, and you weren’t there to help me. Your country was not there to help me. We didn’t need help, but I did ask Nato, and I asked your former leader, “Why didn’t you send a couple of ships?” He said we don’t have any, and it was pretty sad… But the Falklands is very interesting because your country is not the same country it was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. It was a long time ago. And you went there and you just took it back very quickly and there were no games. So I don’t know if you’re prepared to do that. I just don’t know if you have the capacity to do that.’ Donald Trump, 3 September

ANY WEEK THAT opened on a Mars-Saturn square was destined to be painful, and it didn’t disappoint. Whether it was the desperate search for survivors in the mud-clogged valleys of Nepal or the warnings from governments across the world about the effects of the upcoming Super El Niño which could make this summer’s wildfires and floods look like a Sunday picnic or Russia’s new wave of attacks on Ukraine’s railway network – the “backbone of Ukraine’s economy” – they painted a grim picture. When the Lesser Malefic and the Greater Malefic are aligned we expect to be challenged by circumstances and to reap a harvest from our past actions, but it doesn’t make them easier to bear. It’s about time Jupiter and Venus got together and gave us some great good news and a happy ending or two.

Despite being mired in domestic and international problems that would have felled another president, on Monday, Donald Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling that the construction of his Big Beautiful Ballroom could go ahead. On the strength of the victory, work started on the 250-foot-high triumphal arch near Washington’s Arlington Cemetery.

Roll on the midterms.

Head of Estonian intelligence has warned that Vladimir Putin could be “overthrown at any time” – not necessarily tomorrow, but when it happens it will be sudden and quick. Which goes along with my thinking on the Russia situation. Adding fuel to the fire of the Russian president’s imminent/not so imminent demise, in a conversation with Prime Minister Modi of India, Putin revealed that he could lose his life over the failure to win the war in Ukraine.

There is certainly something going on in Russia’s corridors of power, but of one thing we can be sure, when Vladimir Putin’s back is against the wall, he doubles down.

AND SO TO the Falkland Islands. In an address to his country on Thursday night, President Javier Milei, a right-wing populist and ally of Donald Trump, announced that he is imposing sanctions on oil companies drilling in the waters surrounding the British owned Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas). In so doing he dredged up Argentina’s claim to the Islands. (You may remember the stir caused at the World Cup Final in July when two Argentinian players held up a banner declaring the Falkland Islands belonged to them.)

The ownership of the Falklands, some three hundred miles east of Argentina, has long been a thorn in its side, even though it wasn’t a country when Great Britain landed on the islands in 1690.

Just over forty-four years ago, in April 1982 and at the time of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Libra, Argentina sent several thousand troops to seize control of the Falkland Islands. Britain, then under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, responded with a major military deployment. On 14 June, Argentina surrendered and the islands have continued to retain their British sovereignty.

I should also add that this week in an interview with the GB News channel, Mr Trump would not commit to helping the United Kingdom in the event of a territorial dispute saying, “it [UK] wasn’t there to help me…”.

The astrology of the piece is fascinating. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982, the Sun was placed at 12 degrees Aries 14ʹ, and as Javier Milei made his sabre-rattling speech on Thursday evening, 12 degrees Aries 17ʹ was rising side by side with Saturn. That Saturn has reached the Sun of Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands sends a powerful message. It is time, era ora, in this case to right a perceived wrong.

Also at the time of the Argentinian president’s speech, Mars was at 15 degrees Cancer, conjunct Argentina’s Mid-heaven and Sun. Quite the call to arms. And if this wasn’t enough to demonstrate how the planets resonate with certain degree areas across time, Uranus is currently opposing both Argentina’s natal Uranus and that at the time of the 1982 invasion.

Last but not least, when Milei gave his speech on Thursday evening, the moon had recently conjoined Uranus and so triggered the all-important configuration involving the three outer planets – Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

I’m not sure all these synchronicities and signals point to push coming to shove and Britain once again being forced to defend its territory, but I do think that it serves as another nail in the coffin of the UK’s “special relationship” with the United States. That Milei has suggested oil sanctions on companies in the vicinity of the islands is interesting. Drilling of the Sea Lion Field in the Falklands’ northern waters is due to begin in a matter of months and is expected to generate billions for the islands and the Israeli and British businesses that have invested in the project.  This, if nothing else, is probably the motive behind the new threats to “take back” the islands, almost certainly goaded on by Donald Trump who, as we know, prizes oil above all.

I WAS GOING to wade into the scandal that just hit the Reform party – Nigel Farage’s chart has roughly the same angles as the party’s chart (three degrees of Aquarius rising and four degrees of Sagittarius on the Midheaven) which means that Pluto is transiting both Ascendants and Uranus conjoining their ICs, however, time got the better of me. Based on these transits and on Saturn sitting on Farage’s Sun, I think the party is in real trouble.