Dharmaruci at Astrotabletalk has a great article today.  Mars is gearing up to square Pluto on the 27th, and a stressful aspect between those two can be quite intense.  Mars deals with the more personal issues of anger and boundaries, and Pluto, as the higher octave of Mars, addresses the larger scale issues of rage and nuclear war.

There is a particularly pokey aspect in the sky at the moment: Mars conjunct Venus, square to Pluto. Mars has just entered Aries, and Venus will do so tomorrow (Friday). Pluto is at 3 degrees Capricorn, so this square will be intensifying until Sunday.

No wonder Hillary Clinton has announced that the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan represents a ‘mortal threat’ to world security, and also that the US is preparing to up the ante over Iran’s nuclear programme. In today’s New York Times we read: Pushing deeper into Pakistan, Taliban militants have established effective control of a strategically important district just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, officials and residents said Wednesday. “They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that’s the end of the game,” a senior law enforcement official in North-West Frontier Province said. …

Venus has in fact been stationing at 29 Pisces. What a place to station, the final degree of the zodiac! The end of an era. How fraught with significance are the outcomes we are now seeing! And the sign Venus is in, Pisces, is one in which she can be very powerful. But not in an aggressive way: we have to wait for Aries for that. You could say that Venus stationing at 29 Pisces means you are, in a sense, helpless: you have to yield. What can the USA do about the Pakistan insurgency? Not much. What can she do about the Iran nuclear programme? Not much, it seems, apart from threatening sanctions, which isn’t going to stop Iran….

Venus is also a planet of money, and Pluto a planet of riches and money as power. So we are now seeing the outcome of the first task of the Obama administration, which was to pump loads of government money into the economy. As Venus has gone direct, so are there the first signs of stability in the economic crisis. Venus stationing at 29 Pisces is also saying, however, that yes you may have had some success in stabilising the economy, but all that could have been done has been done. You can only pump in so much money without building up ridiculous levels of government debt, and there is growing political resistance to further fiscal stimuli. You can’t do much more at this stage beyond waiting and seeing. The US Venus is at 3 Cancer, hard-aspected by the current Venus-Pluto cycle, which shows how economically defining the past few months have been. Obama’s Venus is at 2 Cancer, again hard-aspected by Venus-Pluto, which shows how defining in terms of personal popularity the last few months – his first real test – have been. Stage one of his Presidency – ‘the first 100 days’ – is coming to a close.