Friday Bite 19 June 2026

Turning Points

“By President Trump’s own terms, the war is a failure. The Iranian regime is intact and its military wing more empowered, while the Iranian people are more impoverished, repressed and desperate…. The only ‘achievement’ of the ceasefire is the likely re-opening [of] the Strait of Hormuz—which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so…. Antony Blinken, former US Secretary of State, 17 June

“People who disagree with the MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] are either jealous, bad people or stupid.” Donald Trump, 18 June.

“If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.”, Volodymir Zelenskey, 17 June.

EENY MEENY MINY moe, where shall I begin? It has been yet another momentous week in a year like no other. Maybe I’ll start on Sunday, Donald Trump’s eightieth birthday, which, despite warnings that it would be a complete washout due to violent storms, was celebrated in trailer-trash style with cage-fights under an 80-foot claw on the green and pleasant White House lawn – a spitting distance from the newly painted Reflecting Pool, now a sludgy green covered in algae. As I suggested in last week’s Bite, Mr Trump was able to claim a victory on his birthday by announcing that an agreement had been reached between the United States and Iran. It took until Wednesday for the Memorandum of Understanding to be signed, by which time Venus and Pluto had aligned with the Moon squaring a Scorpio Midheaven. More on this shortly.

Earlier on Sunday, British armed forces intercepted and boarded a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker sailing under a Cameroonian flag in the Channel, some twenty miles off the coast of the Isle of Wight. It was the first time the United Kingdom had led a naval capture since the legal framework to perform such an act was put in place in March. It was not the first time Russian vessels had passed through these same waters.

Russia did not take long to retaliate. On Tuesday, a Russian warship, The Admiral Grigorovich, stationed in the same area, fired shots across the bow of a 40-foot yacht owned by a retired British couple. According to the Kelveys, the Grigorovich sent neither radio messages nor flares before firing shots. Russia, however, claimed the yacht was on a collision course with the warship, although it has been confirmed that the couple was a good 500 metres from the Grigorovich and sailing in a south-easterly direction toward France.

It has been a very, very bad week for Russia. In the early hours of Thursday, Ukraine launched its biggest attack on the capital. Waves of drones hit a major oil refinery blanketing the suburbs in smoke and flames and necessitating the closure of Moscow’s airports. And while the refinery burned, lines of vehicles formed around Moscow’s gas stations. (Rationing has already been implemented.) The drone strikes came as a response to Russia’s attack last week on one of Ukraine’s most iconic buildings – the 1000-year-old Kyiv–Pechersk Lavra – according to the United Nations, “a masterpiece of Ukrainian art”.

If you consider these developments alongside Zelensky’s recent open letter to Putin, calling for a meeting to find a way to peace – a clear indication that the Ukrainian president feels he is in a position of strength – it seems as though Russia might be on the backfoot and certainly struggling economically, signalling a turn in the tide of the war in Ukraine. Thirty thousand Russian soldiers are lost every month. How is that sustainable?

Already, Uranus is in range of Putin’s natal Moon (2 degrees Gemini) and Russia’s Moon (3 degrees Virgo) while Saturn is closely opposing Putin’s Sun and Pluto conjoining Russia’s Saturn. All of which suggests Russia is ripe for revolution or at least a season of major social and political unrest. Of course, a wounded animal can be dangerous, as former major general and lawmaker in the Putin government, Andrei Guruhyov illustrated. “We must strike the enemy mercilessly and without hesitation… eliminate the entire leadership, destroy all command centres and bring the entire industrial sector to its knees.”.

Here in Great Britain, there is a not-so-quiet revolution taking place in the Labour government. Prime minister Starmer, already seriously wounded, is grimly sticking to his guns and insisting that he was elected to do a job by the British people and, by Jove, he’s going to keep on doing it. However, the victory of Andy Burnham in Thursday’s by-election in Makersfield could prove a bridge too far. Clearly, Burnham is a fine politician and has proved himself capable of great leadership in his nine years as Mayor of Greater Manchester, so the question is not if he can take-over as prime minister but when.

The above sunrise chart is the best we can do since there is no known time of birth for Andy Burnham, however, I would hazard a guess, given his appearance, that he has Cancer rising. As it is, we know he is a Sun Capricorn – the Moon, Venus and Mercury also in this Saturn-ruled sign – and he has Mars in Pisces. He is thus both a dreamer and a realist. Organized, sensible, reliable (to a point) and strong. Venus and the Sun, and possibly the Moon, are all squaring Uranus so he has some trailblazing capacities and he’s not afraid to buck a trend. However, you wouldn’t want to cross him. He has the great benefit of a Jupiter-Saturn opposition, which provides a perfect balance between optimism and realism and gives him a powerful sense of purpose.

Given his progressions and transits, there is little to show for this hugely significant moment in his life – Saturn squaring Venus is hardly the epitome of unbridled joy – so we must assume that the angles of the chart are being transited by Jupiter or one of the outer planets, but Pluto is squaring his Jupiter-Saturn opposition, and that spells transformation in capital letters.

We must now wait to see how this transition in power pans out. Even though as we approach the end of the month with its explosive and unsettling configurations, I’m not sure there will be a leadership contest. If Starmer means what he says that such a contest is bad for government and not in the best interests of the country, then he must, with all that Libran content in his natal chart (see last week’s Bite) agree to a civilised hand-over of power.

There’s going to be a lot of Machiavellian goings on behind closed doors this weekend.

AND SO TO the memorandum of understanding. Somewhat surprisingly, Donald Trump signed the memorandum just before the post conference dinner on Wednesday night. Expectations were that it would happen today (Friday) in Geneva, but now even the scheduled talks are off due to Israel launching a wave of deadly attacks on southern Lebanon. 

Hours before the memorandum was signed, the United States revealed its contents. I’m not going to run through them here, but you can instead read former Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s thoughts on the matter, which I’ve included at the top of this article. And it’s a view almost universally shared. This declaration amounts to nothing less than a capitulation for the United States.  And as if to press home the point, the other peace treaty to be signed at the Palace of Versailles one hundred and seventeen years ago, almost to the day, was the Treaty of Versailles, which officially marked Germany’s surrender after World War One.

I do not know the exact moment Donald Trump placed his signature of the MOU, but it would have been somewhere between 22:10 and 22:30 on the night of the seventeenth. Trump arrived at the Palace of Versailles at 10 pm for the dinner, and signed the document surrounded by members of the G7 before the meal was served. The Ascendant moved into Capricorn just after 22:05 and would have reached 5 degrees of Capricorn by 22:30. Whatever the case, Venus was exactly opposed to Pluto, and the Moon barely a minute away from a conjunction to Venus, all of which was squaring the Midheaven.

Poetry in motion.

Venus, as I have mentioned before, isn’t all sweetness and light. She may represent love, peace and harmony, but in her most ancient form, she was also the goddess of war. My reading of this powerful Venus-Pluto opposition is that each side must behave impeccably for the memorandum to have any chance of succeeding. And with Israel not bounden to the interim agreement and already defying Trump’s orders, I think we can see where this is going. Today, just over thirty-six hours since the signing of the memorandum, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and it will remain closed, apparently, until Israel withdraws from Lebanon. And the longer it stays closed or barely functioning, the threat of economic catastrophe hangs over the world

Friday Bite 12 June 2026

So near and yet so far

“Tonight’s operation is a warning declaration, and in the event of repeated aggressions, the response will be more extensive and will encompass all American-Zionist targets in the region.” Spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 8 June.

“You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal”. Donald Trump, 8 June

“We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today,” Donald Trump, 11 June

“Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening.” Donald Trump, 11 June

IT CAN ONLY get better, we say, then it gets worse. I could be talking about Iran, Ukraine or the Ebola outbreak but I am referring to Great Britain in general and Sir Keir Starmer in particular. The prime minister has been on life-support for some weeks but with yesterday’s resignation of the Secretary of Defence, that lifeline has been effectively severed.

On Thursday, John Healey, one the most loyal, wise and tempered members of the government and a close confederate of Starmer, made clear his feelings about the prime minister and the defence of the country. “You have been unable and the Treasury has been unwilling to commit resources that the nation needs to defend the country at a time of rising threats… [the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan] falls short of what is required for the defence of the country at this dangerous time.”

Healey’s resignation was followed hours later by that of the Armed Forces minister, Al Carns.

Despite this double, and probably mortal, blow, Sir Keir remains unbowed. In an interview with the BBC yesterday, he maintained that it was his “duty” to carry on and that he would fight any contest should one be mounted. “And let me just be clear… that’s not about personal vanity. It’s not about stubbornness.”

Virgo and duty go hand in hand. This is a sign of service and selflessness. We see a lot of Virgo’s great qualities in Starmer and we see a lot of its negatives. He is relentless in his attention to detail and his aim always to do the right thing. Yet he fails to manifest whatever vision he may have through trying to dot every I and cross every T. Endeavouring to please all of the people all of the time is another problem for Sir Keir, and with the Moon, Mercury and Venus in Libra, we know why.

His Sun-Pluto conjunction, however, is powerful. And it underpins his extraordinarily successful career as a barrister and a politician. (He was Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service). This conjunction has a Scorpio aura to it, which is why he can withstand any amount of heat, and also why he has a sting in his tail. Not one warm word was there in his reply to his close ally’s letter of resignation: it was cold, clinical and final.

Since we do not know Starmer’s time of birth, we cannot be sure that his Moon in Libra is currently opposed by Saturn, but we can be sure that his solar-arc progressed Mars is conjunct his Sun-Pluto conjunction, which is presiding over the battle for his political career. Uranus is also squaring Uranus bringing out his inner-rebel while Pluto is hovering over his natal Saturn and generating life and death scenarios.

Great Britain’s natal Pluto is currently being squared by Uranus, which is one reason why we are experiencing such radical shifts in power (witness the rise of Nigel Farage and the Reform party) and such huge cultural and political change and upheaval (witness the huge wave of protests against immigration and the rise of antisemitism across the country.) Pluto is none too far from the nation’s Mars while Neptune is closing in on the Midheaven and the Sun, so we are in the early stages of a massive transformation. And we are very, very vulnerable. Given that Mars is involved, it is absolutely vital that we get our defence ducks in a row. Already, Russia’s ships are near our northern waters, and there have been clear (and successful) attempts to cut our digital communication cables on the North Sea bed.

I want to draw your attention to John Healey’s Moon-Pluto conjunction in Virgo. The Moon moves thirteen degrees in twenty-four hours, so whatever time Mr Healey was born it is still going to be conjunct Pluto. And what is so interesting about this Moon-Pluto conjunction is that it sits on Starmer’s Sun-Pluto conjunction. No wonder they are kindred spirits, although now, presumably, remorseless enemies.

IT IS INCREASINGLY hard to keep up with all the important world events. I almost forgot that the week opened with riots in Belfast over a vicious knife attack on a local man by a Sudanese asylum-seeker. On Monday, gangs of masked men scoured the Belfast streets setting fire to homes belonging to immigrants and terrifying the residents. Belfast is, of course, part of Great Britain.

On the same day, an Iranian drone took out a US helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz and America responded by striking Iranian air defences in the same area. On Thursday, after threatening yet another wave of air strikes on Iran, Donald Trump performed an about-turn and announced that an agreement with Iran, or rather, a memorandum of understanding, was at hand. However, Iran, while not denying the possibility of an agreement, was less bullish about its nature. According to Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, “The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding has never been closer. Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from entering speculation about its content,”.

I have to say, despite the approach of the new moon, the astrology isn’t a picture of kum by yah.

The above chart for the new moon of the 14/15 takes place as Venus makes her way to an opposition with Pluto – exact on Wednesday/Thursday. And Venus-Pluto aspects while raising passions in the best of ways can also preside over confrontations. I recently put up a short video on Venus, explaining that Venus isn’t just the goddess of love, pleasure and all things nice; to the Romans, she was the goddess of war too, or rather the goddess of victory in war, while to the ancient Mesopotamians she was Ishtar, the deity of war. This dual role is well worth considering in light of any forthcoming Memorandum of Understanding being signed in the next few days.

Could the promise of the new moon and a new chapter be marked by signatures on paper, and if it does, will it lead to a similar agreement of the ilk of the Abraham Accords or will it collapse in the weeks that follow due to irreconcilable differences? Or are we back in rinse and repeat mode so that talks of an agreement are but another device intended to boost the markets?

We can’t forget that it is Donald Trump’s eightieth birthday on Sunday, and what better event to mark this historic day but a signed piece of paper declaring “peace in our time”. I would place a bet on such a scenario. But the astrology does not lie. That Venus-Pluto opposition is there for a reason and it is a sign that the dark arts are in charge, and sooner or later we will discover what is quietly fermenting under the cover of darkness.