In a neoliberal society health, illness, and public attention are all commodities – items for businesses to make a profit from. Neoliberal is a fancy word that sounds progressive but it was marketing, image oriented and misleading on purpose. It refers to in reality policies and regulations that help assure that consumers will only be able to buy from certain approved companies, whether private or publicly owned. Public attention may be the most valuable because with it, products or messaging can be promoted and repeated as often as needed to encourage the majority to buy into the trend.
Media manipulation and control is important to totalitarian takeover because the nation’s people do outnumber the dictator and staff/military/etc., however they may not outnumber the dictator’s ability to imprison or kill. The larger number of people might get upset though at obvious unfairness by police and military or dictators, so a subtle takeover that seems to be for their welfare – much easier, smooth sailing even when the press is already in your pocket.
- LearnfromEurope.org is a website created during the 2016 election as a warning or guidance from those who lived through a transition to totalitarianism. (learnfromeurope.org)
- #3: Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to control mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban critical press from their briefings, calling them “liars”, “fake news”. They will brand those media as “unpatriotic”, acting against the People (see point 2). Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked or labelled an “enemy of the state” – there’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press. (learnfromeurope.org)
Today provided an unfortunate example of manipulative media and manipulative gotcha traps used for political or agenda controlling purposes: Author Naomi Wolf gets duped into Tweeting out fake anti-vaxxer quote from porn star. (1) Someone sent a faked quote to a journalist who has been speaking out about the real science regarding COVID19 as an aerosolized virus, and the unknown risks of the experimental gene treatments. The quote itself is merely a question that is not untrue. The attribution is false claiming to be a doctor pictured in the image. The person in the image is an adult industry movie star, aka a porn star. (1)
Today the journalist’s social media account was suspended and the article was shared as a possible reason, for maybe violating the site’s stringent vaccine information policy, however the article predates today’s suspension. The article did work as clickbait – clickable titles to get more viewers of advertisements on a website, to read more about the sensationalized headline.
The title alone is manipulative in the use of ‘anti-vaxxer’ – a term used to discredit anyone interested in more investigation into the safety of vaccines and the schedule of numerous shots for young children.
The title is also potentially adding more untrue assumptions about what happened in implying that the faked quote image was truly sent by the person in the photo that was used for the quote meme. Anyone can set up a fake name account and send images that are publicly available or which might have been a screenshot from a publicly available video.
Anything ‘porn’ might be used in an attempt to smear someone, link them to something viewed negatively. That negative image is built up and added to daily by the manipulative media. Sex sells, so it is a commodity, not something natural and healthy, something to incite fear about because fear also sells, so sexy fear -> double the sales maybe! Advertisers sell with fear – fit in with the crowd, don’t have offensive body odor, throw out last year’s fashion or people will think you look old-fashioned. Control of a commodity, limiting the availability of something drives up the price and profit potential.
Statement from the journalist who was suspended from a social media platform:
STATEMENT FROM NAOMI WOLF RE ACCOUNT SUSPENSION:
“Hi friends and colleagues, I was suspended on Twitter for trying to post a two minute video in which I read verbatim a press release from State Sen Kim Thatcher’s (R-OR) office about SB 872, her bill to ban vaccine passports and mask mandates in Oregon. While news of my suspension is trending on Twitter, news outlets are generally omitting the reason. Can you please post a statement about this, in support of freedom of speech and civic transparency?
This is the text I read that got me banned from Twitter. Please include it. It’s un-American, generally illiberal, and a very dangerous precedent, to censor civic engagement. Thank you, friends and colleagues. Yours, Naomi”
(oregonlegislature.gov)/ via (@BrianOSheaSPI)
- Interview with Sen Thatcher about the bill: (@LincolnGraves)
Rentier Economy & the commodification of sexuality.
Breaking up traditional family structures, disempowering women, and increasing any kind of divisions between people are all tactics in authoritarian takeover of a once free society.
By making something saleable and controlling who can sell it, you are also controlling who can get rich. Turns out prostitution isn’t really that legal in Nevada, more so, brothel ownership was legalized, while workers have limited freedom in some ways and are being used to make the brothel owner rich.
The U.S., per economist, Michael Hudson, has become a rentier economy instead of a productive one, (previous post), and that trend extends to much of the modern global marketplace. Another macroeconomist, Michel Chossudovsky, is also concerned that the COVID19 illness has been dramatized and used to shift even more of the economy away from small businesses, making it illegal for them to be open, and towards the big conglomerates. (2, 3) Catherine Austin Fitts shared that concern as well – and added that the riots after George Floyd’s public murder by policeman seemed to be located (allowed) in areas involved in the financial sector and that it seemed like a purposeful move to devalue real estate for later purchase en masse at bankruptcy type prices. (another post)
In a rentier society, the majority of business profit is being made from renting a product or service/labor of another person or business, instead of producing a product or directly providing the service.
“China and Vietnam won’t ever drop their industrial economy because it is antithetical to Marxism. And many capitalist economists and Hillary Clinton recently admitted that Marx was right on the part where a realistic economy (manufacturing real physical goods!) is more crucial than a rentier financial economy.” – Olala(金龙) @olalakl1·Jun 1
Producing a good or service leaves a product with value, collateral in a banking sense, while renting something leaves the renter with no property after the end of the leased time.
Women’s work as the main caregivers of children, disabled and elderly people, is often unpaid and not counted in the economic value of a nation. Gross Domestic Product, GDP, is used to compare the economies of different nations, yet it only counts taxable profit on whatever the nation produces. Care of children in a daycare center adds to that national GDP number, while unpaid care within family homes does not count, though it is reducing the monetary earning capacity of the household. (book summary post)
Females historically have had to fight for the right to own property rather than be considered the property of a man. In modern times in most places women have more rights now but the invisible nature of caregiving and female sexuality still exists, yet may still be used to make profit for someone else – rented sexuality. Humans benefit and need touch and affection. It increases beneficial mood chemicals and pain killing endorphins in addition to increasing immune function. Some people enjoy it too.
Human trafficking awareness tends to focus on people or children trafficked for sex, however many dangerous jobs may use trafficked laborers. Human Trafficking – a worker’s rights problem – (post with hotline numbers).
Brothel owners are renters, while the sex worker is the producer of sexual health services. The brothel owner is renting space, if the worker is being trafficked without freedom, rights, or their own earnings, the brothel owner is also renting the work of a slave laborer. Rentier economy example: Nevada legalized brothel ownership, while independent sex work by an individual is still illegal. (4) Sexual health is an important part of health, and is a need. And males may need sexual release in a way that females may not, however that doesn’t mean there is a right to force that need on someone else.
Decriminalization of some sort led to a significant drop in complaint calls to the police about people on the sidewalks. If something isn’t called illegal-bad, then maybe it isn’t bad? Some people may get a thrill or feel good about reporting people for breaking rules – so the rules need to be well designed.
Devaluing the actual physical act of sexuality seems to be part of the capitalization of sexuality, along with over-emphasizing the dream relationship of high school sweethearts happily married and now great grandparents. The dream relationship narrative adds an element of unattainability to sexuality, which always increases the price of something. Now everyone wants that dream – that they know they probably won’t get -, but they will wait for it, instead of enjoying the here and now with someone who seemed friendly and nice but not quite that elusive struck by lightening perfect person that the media myths told me that I would recognize instantly.
It probably doesn’t work that way. More likely, friendly and nice may grow into love, given more time to get to know someone well, and now I can’t stop thinking about them and I get a silly smile whenever that happens too. OH, was that the lightening bolt?
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare
Globalization seems like a good thing, more work for poor nations? But what if it is at the expense of the environment and small businesses? What if it keeps wages lower across regions, or the world?
We all need a lightening bolt to wake up and recognize that being productive ourselves is better than renting an economy from someone else – someone who may be living in a foreign nation in miserable conditions making tennis shoes for a sport they will never play, or picking cocoa beans for a candy they will never taste.
Years ago when there was a devastating factory accident at a garment making business I wrote a series about the event and the globalization of the garment industry. My grandmother was a seamstress in the garment industry – in the U.S. around the time of the flappers of the Roaring Twenties – before the economic crash.
An excerpt:
“My grandma had a lot more patience than me. She earned seven dollars per week for a few years working Monday through Friday plus a half day on Saturdays sometime around 1925. And in 1985 I earned the U.S. minimum wage of ~ $3.75 an hour / $150 per week sewing futon covers. In 2013 garment workers in Bangladesh are being paid only a little more money (~$38 per month) than my grandma earned in 1925 ($28 per four weeks) and importers can purchase a t-shirt for as little as $1.68 each. That doesn’t seem right to me.” (Series of posts, 2013)
It is not right that it would cost me more to buy just a spool of thread for a sewing project, then it is to buy a T-shirt that someone else took the time to make. It is not right that globalization means that clothing is still being made for less than a dollar an hour wages. The U.S. call for an increase in minimum wage is valid, however, we need an increase in the global minimum wage also.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.
Reference List
- Ken Meyer, Author Naomi Wolf Gets Duped Into Tweeting Out Fake Anti-Vaxxer Quote From Porn Star. March 21, 2021, mediaite.com, https://www.mediaite.com/online/author-naomi-wolf-gets-duped-into-tweeting-out-fake-anti-vaxxer-quote-from-porn-star/
- Taylor Hudak, Michel Chossudovsky Interview – Engineered Destabilization Of The Global Economy & The “Reimagining”. May 16, 2021, https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/michel-chossudovsky-interview-engineered-destabilization-global-economy-reimagining/
- Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. 2nd Ed. https://fdocuments.in/document/michel-chossudovsky-the-globalization-of-poverty-andnew-world-order.html http://www.gbv.de/dms/zbw/48905756X.pdf *insecure
- Las Vegas Nevada Prostitution & Solicitation Laws, shouselaw.com, https://www.shouselaw.com/nv/defense/laws/solicitation-of-prostitution/