Former Silicon Valley computer scientist William Stickevers is now a full-time international astrologer specializing in archetypal, financial and geopolitical astrology. In the first half, he outlined his forecasts for financial markets, cryptocurrency, geopolitics, and President Trump, analyzing planetary positions and patterns of alignments which have meaningful correlations with events. The horoscope of Bitcoin includes a Saturn/Uranus opposition, which indicates periods of disruptive innovation, he reported. Bitcoin, he added, along with other decentralized blockchain technologies, could have the potential to replace fiat currency as well as "radically reconfigure the central banking fractional reserve system altogether."
He sees a convergence of factors with planetary alignments in the second half of 2018 going into 2020 where there will be intense changes in the geopolitical and psycho-spiritual realms, with possible breakdowns in social institutions. There could even be a global crisis related to an extraterrestrial force, he cited, adding that an "X-event"-- an unexpected event that changes the course of world history, typically occurs in the second decade of a new century. Donald Trump has a 73% chance of being re-elected based on the charts of the current assumed Democratic candidates to oppose him, Stickevers said. Regarding the situation with the US and North Korea, he views it as a 70% probability for conflict, with military action increasingly likely from May 2018 onward. For more, check out his related materials.
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Author of books about marketing, culture, and the human condition, Ryan Holiday has had his work translated into twenty-eight languages. In the latter half, he discussed how powers behind-the-scenes manipulate publicity, media, and even justice. "Marketing," he declared, "is inherently a deceptive practice" that is trying to get someone to buy something they wouldn't have purchased otherwise. Political advertising is often a form of manipulation, he commented, and the content of journalism is sometimes shaped by highly-paid publicists who lobby and pitch reporters to write a particular story with a specific angle.
Conspiracies, he explained, generally disrupt the status quo, whether it's an assassination, a plan to change a law, an attempt to create something new, or even just to inject an idea into the public consciousness. He cited the case of the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker as a kind of conspiracy because Hogan's defense was secretly funded by Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor who was angered at Gawker for outing him. Thiel spent nearly nine years and $10 million plotting against Gawker, the media industry blog Holiday characterized as publishing almost anything as a kind of clickbait. In the end, Thiel was victorious and left Gawker's founder Nick Denton bankrupt, Holiday recounted. In a way, he continued, we're living in a "reality show" where people are constantly performing for the cameras, bloggers, or media chatter, and this makes you question everything that is happening around you.
News segment guests: Charles R. Smith, Catherine Austin Fitts