dangerous 2 weeks ahead! - dangerous 20 years ahead?

We are entering a dangerous time band for the next two weeks and that is not only relevant for markets. Mars is opposite Uranus on August 6th and Mars will square Pluto on the August 17th (close to the full moon lunar eclipse on August 15th.). These are the most aggressive combinations and imply the highest risk for encountering aggressive actions by terrorists or any tense enemy situation. One recent example:

Excerpt from Bloomberg

Xinjiang Border Patrol Attacked, 16 Dead, Xinhua Says (Update3)

By Nerys Avery

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- An attack on a border patrol station in western China's Xinjiang region killed 16 policemen, state media reported today, heightening concerns about terrorism four days before the Olympic Games start in Beijing.

Sixteen officers were also injured when two men drove a dump truck into a team of police jogging outside their barracks at Kashi this morning, Xinhua said in its English-language service, citing unidentified local police. Attackers threw two grenades into the compound and also hacked at officers with knives before being arrested, the report said.

This is especially important since on November 4^th, almost at the same point, Saturn will oppose Uranus very close to the US elections, which will cause some bigger turmoil in the world and financial markets. Uranus opposing Saturn happens every 40 years and is a rare event but this will happen 3 times now within 2 years, due to retrograde moves. Remember the mid 60's with all the protests, where the young generation was rocking the boat against the old establishment? The Dow was locked into a trading range of 1000 down to 500 and back up to 1000 within 18 years - that by itself does not sound exciting but the fact that this was a high inflation time (numbers were real by then) with the record around 18% inflation. If you were invested in stocks, you lost a fortune in real terms due to buying power loss. Unfortunately soon in 2009 – 2010, we will also match the configuration the stars had during the big depression in the 1930's. So were heading for a challenging time.

Coming back to the two weeks ahead expect rising volatility since this very challenging Mars aspects are wrapped into two eclipses in Leo which heightens the potential for dramatic action. The chinese olympics fall into a difficult time period although the 8 is the lucky number in China (8.8.08 start date of olympics). The tensions between Israel and Iran will be at the edge since Olmert resigned and Iran is not in any compromising mood , but very likely the outcome will be not a big confrontation, the risk of a crash of world markets is a too high price. Interstingly Ahmadinejad comes to visit Turkey on the 14th which is a strange (interesting) timing. The Mars /Uranus opposition is in exact square to Israel's Uranus which should indeed trigger some suprising acts of agression but that could also be an attack by terrorists on Israel soil.

Excerpt from Barron's

In Sight: an Amicable Endgame in Iran

By JONATHAN R. LAING | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

The U.S. or Israel are unlikely to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Here's why.

Subscribe Now With these readers: Or copy the rss link: THE MARKETS HAVE BEEN buzzing for months about an imminent attack by the U.S. or Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities. Don't bet on it -- or on oil prices heading higher as a result of hostilities. According to recent rumors, the U.S. and Israel have been pushed to the brink by Iran's stonewalling, in the face of global diplomacy aimed at persuading the country to suspend its nuclear-enrichment program and abandon its ambitions to join the nuclear-weapons club. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn't helped the situation with his defiant rhetoric, and a penchant for posing in a lab coat against a backdrop of uranium-enriching centrifuges. BEHROUZ MEHRI/Getty Images The Mouse That Roared: Stratfor calls Iran's nuclear capability a negligible threat, and doubts the U.S. or Israel will attack. Look for cooler heads to prevail -- and for outside inspections of uranium facilities to continue. Renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote last month in a lengthy story in the New Yorker that such an attack is likely to come before U.S. President George Bush leaves office next January. Both the U.S. and Israel already have special-operations teams active inside Iran, gathering intelligence and seeking to destabilize the country and prepare the battlefield, Hersh's sources told him. Yet, the possibility of an attack on Iran seems remote to George Friedman, founder and head of Stratfor, the Austin, Texas-based global-intelligence company. The risks to the global economy of such a move far outweigh any potential benefits, he says, especially as Iran poses what he views as a negligible nuclear threat. America's "all-options-are-on-the-table" bluff seems to have had a salutary effect, Friedman says. For example, Iran has helped reduce the level of sectarian violence in Iraq in the past six months by reining in some of the rogue Shiite militias that it trains and supports. Likewise, the U.S. and Iran have begun to take tentative steps toward diplomatic rapprochement after 29 years of enmity, he notes.