A Review
By Edward Curtin
This book is a brilliant and comprehensive analysis of the Covid-19 crisis and the worldwide states of siege instituted under its cover. Reading it, one cannot help but shake one’s head in outrage at the long-planned nature of the wealthy global elite’s seizure of power under the guise of a germ emergency and the revolutionary crisis it has created.
I say this not only because I am predisposed to the author’s thesis, but because he buttresses his argument with overwhelming documentation that is meticulously sourced and noted. This is a work of genuine scholarship of the highest order, and to read it closely and with an open mind one can’t help but be convinced of its essential truth.
Kees van der Pijl, the author of The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class and the winner of the 2008 Deutscher Prize for Nomads, Empires, States: Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy, introduces his study with these words:
The psychological shock of the proclamation of a pandemic, like the purpose behind torture, is intended to induce acceptance of a ‘new normal’ and to turn off critical judgment. This state of mind is achieved by withholding information about what is really going on, through the extremely one-sided information by politicians and mainstream media. Divergent views by often highly qualified experts are not mentioned or are dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories.’ This can be compared to the sensory deprivation in psychological torture. . . .We are dealing with a biopolitical seizure of power, initiated at the level of global governance and reaching deep into the sovereignty of the individual, a seizure that involves a whole range of forms of violence. [my emphasis]
The reason van der Pijl’s analysis is so powerful is because he clearly sees the historical context for the Covid crisis, how it is linked to issues of geo/economic-politics going back thirty-five years or more, culminating in the 2008 economic crash that ended years of capitalist speculation. Then when President Barack Obama, serving as the front man for the big speculators, banks, and shadow banks, bailed out those entities and created a new financial order, popular revolts, such as those which were brewing on the eve of the New Deal in the 1930s, broke out around the world in the ensuing years and had to be subdued. “Strikes, riots, and antigovernment demonstrations have broken existing records in every category during this period [since 2008].”
The elites knew that such revolts of an uncontrollable world population had to be kept under control, and that the growing numbers approaching 8 billion people had also to be culled. But van der Pijl’s subtitle, while intimating both with its double-entendre, leads him to focus on the former that he deems “much more important.” While popular unrest and rage have been more or less suppressed since 2020 with the Covid crisis effectively used to put down its latest signs of eruption and to replace it with a permanent sense of anxiety, fear and trembling was first introduced on a massive scale with the attacks of September 11, 2001, the connected insider anthrax attacks, the Patriot Act, and emergency propaganda measures used to fuel the war on terror that has no end. This terrorizing of the world has taken multiple forms with an ongoing series of U.S. wars on other countries – Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., not to mention the proxy wars – supported by massive digital propaganda meant to take populations hostage to the lies.
Van der Pijl cogently shows how the Covid crisis fear campaign’s official account is untrue; how it is a political and not a medical emergency; and that it will collapse, as it has, at least temporarily, but how its deeper purpose is to create a permanent authoritarian, surveillance social order controlled by transnational elites through global digital IDs, etc. This “new normal” relies on the corporate mass media to do the dissemination of the propaganda of fear and lies, and so he correctly emphasizes the central importance of the IT revolution and the single complex triangle of intelligence services-IT-media, which are in essence one entity. The information warfare of mind control of the ruling class is fundamental, as he writes:
This is the core around which the ruling class in the West began to regroup after 2008 and which is now waging the information war against the global population by means of the Covid state of emergency.
He sees the elites’ seizure of power as an effort to foreclose a democratic transformation through the Information Technology (IT) revolution that he compares to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which as such could potentially serve as a liberating force. However, he also views IT, digitization, and the Internet from its inception as fundamental to the elites’ repressive control. This double-edged perspective (about which I will return later) raises important questions.
But the body of the book is devoted to all the ways the intelligence-IT-media triangle has conducted its information warfare campaign based on techniques developed years ago in CIA counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam – Operation Phoenix – and its Strategy of Tension operations in Italy and Europe in the 1970s, and Lebanon and Central America in the 1980s.
He shows how these operations, stretching back so many decades, are connected to events today, greatly enhanced by the digital devices – particularly the cell phone.
He shows how Barack Obama’s 2012 initiation of aggressive global cyber operations – Total Information Awareness – whose details Edward Snowden made public, expanded the war against the population through cyber pacification techniques.
He tells the reader how the methods of such warfare that were used in Afghanistan and Iraq were brought home with the return of JSOC commander Stanley McChrystal, who just so happens to head an advisory group, the McChrystal Group, that plays a pivotal role in the Covid crisis by allegedly countering disinformation and promoting the government’s version of Covid truth.
He reminds readers about McChrystal’s journalist enemy, Michael Hastings, who after writing an article about McChrystal that led to his recall from Afghanistan and firing, would just so happen to be killed when his Mercedes was “hacked and detonated by remote control in a collision” in Los Angeles a few years later.
Van der Pijl shows how it just so happened that the new digital technologies were privatized in the defense and intelligence areas to form “Private-Public Partnerships” and how the World Economic Forum (WEF) hosted the UN’s 2030 Vision with all its multivarious connections to the imposition of the Covid crisis from above.
He draws the connections between the WEF, Bill Gates, U.S. intelligence, vaccines, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Carnegie institutions, journalists on the CIA’s payroll, In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture capital arm), Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Black Rock, and so many other individuals and groups with the goal of establishing The Great Reset when the elites will try to exert total electronic control over people’s lives through a digital world economy, artificial intelligence, etc.
He details the U.S./Nazi connections going back to WW II and the U.S. biological weapons research and warfare targeting China and Russia, including the bio-laboratories in Ukraine. He tells us how:
This goes back to a 2005 agreement between the Pentagon and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health. It prohibits the Kiev government from disclosing sensitive information about the program; Ukraine is required to hand over the dangerous pathogens produced there to the U.S. Department of Defense for further biological research. . . . One of the Pentagon’s laboratories is located in Kharkov where at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers succumbed to a flu-like virus within two days in 2016 . . . . In 2014 there was an outbreak in Moscow of a new, highly virulent variant of the Cholera agent Vibrio Cholera, related to the species identified in Ukraine.
He connects Anthony Fauci, the director of EcoHealth Alliance Dr. Peter Daszak, Christian Drosen of PCR notoriety, Fort Detrick, Wuhan, the World Military Games held in Wuhan between 18-27 October 2019, etc.
He explains how the Covid pandemic and lockdowns are a form of disaster capitalism that is a global project whose tentacles stretch extensively from the Gates Foundation to the Poynter Institute to the McChrystal Group to Philip Zelikow to the pharmaceutical companies and their “vaccine” push and propaganda to DARPA … to… to… He writes:
It appears again and again that behind both the biopolitical and the IT-media power blocs lies the strategy of the American national security complex. . . One of the most alarming aspects of the transition from mechanical to psychological warfare against the population is that the authorities have now set their sights on the human genetic code as well.
In seven densely packed chapters, van der Pijl weaves and documents a vast tapestry of devious conspiratorial forces behind the states of emergency aimed at world control. Reading them and following his sources, one would have to be brain dead to not realize that what is now happening throughout the world is not an accident or the result of things just happening but is a long planned operation conducted by very sophisticated forces interconnected in the group he calls the “intelligence-IT-triangle” that is waging mind control warfare to disguise the truth about their deadly bio/germ-weapons, their military wars around the world, and their economic assault on regular people. It is a world war conducted on multiple fronts whose goal is elite control, the extinguishing of democracy, and the reduction of human being to appendages of the mega-machine.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I think his conclusion may be too optimistic. For even though he argues that the Information Technology revolution is central to elite propaganda and control, he believes IT – this “social brain” – holds revolutionary democratic potential if it can be liberated from elite dominance. I don’t see how this can happen, though I wish he were right. A decentralized, democratic internet seems like a pipe dream to me. A dream not unlike that of so many others who have assumed technology’s beneficence and inevitability even when they sense its insidious, destructive capabilities.
He is right to say that ”everything revolves around the one universal currency, information,” and that digital infrastructure is now at the center of social organization. This is beyond dispute. However, those intelligence/military/IT forces that created and control the internet and digital technologies will not voluntarily cede control. They will wage information war with it, censor it, de-platform people and sites, etc. I believe this technology is intrinsically anti-democratic. Nevertheless, his concluding chapter on this issue is very important for broaching this dilemma and getting people to debate it.
This book should be read by anyone who cares about our world. It is brilliant and extremely timely.
In what appears to be a clear orchestrated effort to suppress this book I’ve watched the price on Amazon go from $28.95 when I ordered the book a few weeks ago, to a price today of – $49.95. Shades of the efforts to suppress Udo Ulfkotte’s book on the CIA’s influence on global news media.
No one ever speaks to the “Chosen people” issue[for fear?]…organized Jewry reigns supreme and is control of AI and practically everything else! Start giving them credit for Christ’s sake they are the only ones with the organizational power and control of money to abtain a “world of their own”.
I am mystified by the whole scheme , regrdless of who is behind it or benefited from it, the state of the humanity is no longer sustainable. How could they bear to witness this global misery? Is wealth that sacred?
Is it possible that they are not capable of thinking? Can they think that we are loosing our capability to produce necessary foods and other commodities for life sustenance?
Good morning XY…, What could humans learn from closely observing a Tree ? Who is Being and who is nothingness ? The Tree or the human ?
There is an interview with this man that is so thought provoking and sane:
https://jermwarfare.com/blog/kees-van-der-pijl-russia-ukraine
Well worth watching.
Question is: Will the MSM ignore Kees book or will they resort to character assassination ?
Either way, the voyeurs of pain will lose what little humanity they have left.
Given the historical accounts I’ll refer anyone who hasn’t read this essay by Dustin Broadbery which I found to be most comprehensive. It’s relatively long as an essay, but clearly shorter than a book on the subject.
What I was most interested in was how the state (USA) essentially eliminated what those of us of a certain mid-twentieth C age consider the “left” to be. In any case, I found Broadbery’s account very interesting and would recommend reading it.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/15/counterinsurgency-psyops-and-the-military-origins-of-the-internet/
I had not yet heard of this book, and I am grateful for the insightful review.
It sounds like this book connects a lot of the dots, suggesting that everything that has been done was toward a unified purpose, one that the vast majority of those employed in its achievement would not believe if you told them.
One of the things I think we can expect soon is that cyber attack they have promised. So in one way or another, our access to the internet and maybe other things like cell phone service will be limited or shut off entirely.
I have read that the internet was designed by DARPA (or Al Gore, if you talk to him), and that it is designed to prevent it being taken out easily. But DARPA (or bloody Al) are the ones who would know how to do it.
So, as wiser and more prescient people than I have advised, download anything you don’t want to lose and store it in hard copy if possible. Also, look up the actual numerical IP address of any sites you may want to access and write it down, in case it is only the URL system which has been scrambled. (I am going to research how to do that, as I have forgotten myself.)
I have read some discussion of how a decentralized internet could be constructed, but obviously that would better be done before the current one is shut down.
Given how dependent people have become on the internet and cell service, I cannot imagine the chaos if the system went down for an extended period.
Of course, it could go down for natural reasons, as well. The sun could send a large coronal mass ejection our way. My information is that such an event is more likely while the sunspot numbers are low, like they are currently.
So, as always, becoming personally less dependent on the system is a good idea. And you can read “system” in as broad a sense as you wish.
Ed is right, the system in general and the electronic personal surveillance system in particular, is ultimately an instrument of evil – always intended to enslave the people. Whether it can be redeemed is unknown.
Well, I’ve still got my landline and Ed doesn’t use smartphones I think. I shout it from the rooftops! ANALOGUE!
Actually, DARPA was first developed to connect academic institutions involved in the development of nuclear weapons, largely because of the vast amounts of data involved in the calculations but its conception was based on work done by students! The cry ‘All information is free’, originated with them.
How awful too that academia is now completely the servant of the military-industrial complex! Nobody listened to Eisenhower.
Having found van der Pijl’s book quite compelling, I was very glad to read Ed’s review here. I concur with Ed’s thoughts about Kees’ final chapter, which brings up so much that’s perplexing about the moment we’re living through. I’ve encountered Ed and his writing, and the thoughts of so many other worthwhile people, living in various places and sharing significant thoughts (including KdvP), through this technology—whose origin is beyond suspect—and yet whose impact seems to be both opressive and liberating. We’re not likely to see it go away… might there be a way to defang it? Or is a series of monster EMPs ultimately our only hope?
Thank you Ed for this in depth review. It is very much appreciated.
First, much of this I do agree with, and Edward, I agree that the author may be too optimistic regarding technology.
However, I think there’s real problem with assuming the USA ever had a democracy. Not to quibble over the words “republic” versus “democracy”, one can always conflate the two and say the US once had a democratic republic. Much like the word “pathogenic virus” the word can morph into many meanings to dodge the underlying fact that it has lost all meaning. I don’t think the US has ever had much if any “democracy” except perhaps amongst frontier settlers and some New England communities that practice town hall governance.
Civilization seems to be the illusion (delusion) in that it purports to be a trajectory toward a better life, a just world, a safe world for all. (In other words, pure Orwellian.) When in fact civilization has always really meant rule of a few over the many, a hierarchical arrangement. That is the crux of our dilemma (a dilemma is a problem which is more like a Gordian knot, without a clear solution, or solutions that turn into more and greater problems).
Whether it’s tools such as technology or governance such as democracy, the problem is who rules? The technocracy as a practice of mass management and control (ownership) is an elite undertaking which has existed for eons. This didn’t just come about. People get use to (accommodate) many things. Abrupt disruption does create unease and revolt. The elite, over time, have domesticated the masses so the COVID operation has worked because enough have gone along. Those who don’t seem to have one thing in common – a deep belief in the spiritual, the desire to stay human.
As long as the arrangement is the few over the many, we will have evil, war, slavery, deprivation, dominance (regardless the so-called ideological labels). The technology seems to run parallel with that trajectory we refer to as “progress” (another word used to manipulate).
Our life on this planet seems to have two paths – the technocratic rule by a few and the human spiritual path which includes a freedom not to be controlled by clocks and calendars, and so much more.
Pax
Thank you Art…, I think when we talk about democracy, civilization, describing various countries governments; I think we are simply dealing with, reciting words.
There have always been the ‘rulers’ kings, presidents and so forth and there have been those who are only required to be obedient. Obviously some people have wealth, other people never get by very well economically. Some people make 65 million dollars a year while other people make 15 thousand dollars a year. Everything has been lopsided, ‘unfair’ , ‘unfair’ unequal for a very long time. Many people have accepted their place in poverty and some may actually enjoy being impoverished as long as they can pay the king, the guards, the managers, the councilors and other parasites. Perhaps we need to discuss matrifocal societies and discover how female focused communities existed. Perhaps we need to look at indigenous people’s way of living that is probably more harmonious with other life forms. Oh yes, someone will say there was violence among the indigenous people’s as well. Then we can compare what kind of weaponry these people possessed. Anyway it becomes insane and what we have after the discussion is a gross man-designed and enforced inequality, economically and fewer people have power or privilege to do much of anything. The power factions have their guards and police, the poor people have little of anything. When I hear people say; ‘write your representative’, I could scream since they are a major driver of the problem with seldom an objection to anything. Poor people do not even have the right to tell the head of their state CDC to go to hell ! Would this accomplish anything worthwhile? I think there is a point when we need to break through our invisible shields of apathy and fear and start ‘demanding’ integrity, equality at which point we might be met by guards and guns. We can also simply hide in our homes and toss around words and quotes.
I agree that focus on Operation Paper Clip and the cooptation of the Japanese biological weapons studies only perpetuates the false notion that the allies were somehow less criminal beforehand. As though that was a shift.
Thank you Barofsky. And the ‘citizens’ simply stand by waiting for the next command. No independent thought about any subject! Regurgitate the ‘authors’s, the ‘speakers’, the junkies and sailors too! No real evaluation of the relevance of anything !
Absolutely!
As one who has been writing about the ‘pandemic’, almost since day 1, this book confirms my view that the ‘Pandemic’ was the pretext for the creation of some kind of surveillance state Fascism. The proof is all around us. One minute our lives are organised down to the smallest detail — who to meet, where to meet, how to meet, or not as the case may be. Masks, distancing, isolation, fear campaigns (‘Mask up and keep your distance or you’ll kill your grandmother!’), psychological warfare techniques (the ‘Nudge Unit’, behavioral scientists, pushing our fear buttons) — and the next? Covid 19 disappears as if it never existed!
But what’s left behind aside from a population living in fear of one another? Of entire communities devastated, unemployment, hunger and deprivation?
A raft of laws that can be enacted without any kind of democratic oversight, at any time that can lock us down, isolate us, censor our words and indeed, even our thoughts, the denial of the right to information, to views that differ from the State/Big Business. The denial of Science. Fines, prison, ostracisation. In other words, all the framework necessary for the creation and maintenance of the Corporate, Security State. In a word, Fascism! I maintain that that was the objective of this nightmare in the very first place!
From at least 2011, committees, plans, ‘dry runs’, ‘expert committees’, universities and think tanks, the entire ediface of the State and Big Business, has been employed in preparing for Covid 19, however inefficiently, incompetently and corruptly, it has been executed.
And all of this has been done because people living in a state of fear cannot think straight. What has been done to humanity is comparable to the Fascism of Nazi Germany in its scope, which I, for one, will never forgive our ruling eites! Ruling elites I might add (along with a complicit intelligentsia) who have actually benefitted from this obscenity inflicted on a hapless and defenceless population, living every day in a state of fear.