The Covid Mask, An Emperor With No Cloths & Colonialism Redux? Whose ‘Free & Open Indo-Pacific’?

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake –OCTOBER 28, 2020

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

The Covid-19 narrative has colonized the world, attacking and shutting down global and local economy and society, as well as, trade and transport systems with a face-mask as its telling symbol. 

In strategically located Sri Lanka more people have died of random elephant attacks, or in car accidents than from Covid-19, which has claimed a grand total of eighteen (18) lives in the past year in this island of 22 million people. However, livelihoods, education and good governance including the right to protest have been dealt a massive blow by the Covid 19 narrative that has whipped up fear-psychosis and resulted in lockdowns recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), and its partners in crime.

Beneath the Covid-19 mask, however, there are signs of a full-blown hybrid Cold War unfolding in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), as United States Secretary, Mike Pompeo pivots with all the pomp and circumstance of visiting royalty to South and Southeast Asia this week, seemingly to re-set and re-boot Euro-American colonialism. Secretary Pompeo, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accompanied by Mark Esper, Secretary for Defense was in New Delhi on the first leg of his four-day IOR trip that also includes visits to Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia, which recently refused to let US maritime surveillance, P8-Posidon spy planes, land and refuel in its territory. As Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the US, said the “very aggressive anti-China policy” of the US had unnerved Indonesia and the region. 

Indeed, there are increasingly good arguments to suggest that a Third World War has commenced beneath the Covid-19 banner, and narrative to distract the global media and public, and recolonize the Global South, by rebooting a hollowed out and imploding Euro-American economic imperialism that is increasingly challenged by the rise of China: The Asian and Indian Ocean region has emerged as the economic and technology powerhouse and growth center of the world. Hence, there has been an increase in the number and intensity of proxy wars on going at this time in Asia and Africa – particularly along the borders of China, Iran, India, and Russia, and the Indian Ocean Region, which is considered the world’s trade and energy “superhighway”, where Sri Lanka commands a strategic perch.

 Sri Lanka is also located at an Undersea Data Cable (UDC), ‘choke point’, essential to control for strategic cyberwar and data tapping. Simultaneously in a classic colonial and hybrid war strategy, internal religious and ethnic identity politics have been increasingly weaponized by external parties in the highly multicultural and multi-religious Asian world – a tried and tested tactic in hybrid war. The Trump regime seems to be inciting violence and spoiling for a war between Asian giants, China and India, to make a debt-strapped and imploding Euro-American-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), ‘Atlantic axis’ look “great again”.

Preparations for full on ‘hybrid war’ in the IOR had been on-going for a while: Strategically located Sri Lanka witness staged suicide attacks against coastal churches and sea-front luxury hotels at Easter Sunday last year. The attacks were mysteriously claimed by the Islamic State leader (ISIS), as the US and IS seemed to pivot in unison to the IOR on Easter Sunday to set up Caliphate bases. 

A recent book titled “IS is US’ may help explain the mysterious timing of events and US and IS movements in the IOR in recent times. After all, there was no prior history or motive for violence among Muslims and Christians, both minority communities in Buddhist and Hindu majority Sri Lanka. The April 2019 attacks on coastal churches and hotels, were directed at the country’s economy and society, a tried and tested tactic in colonial and hybrid wars whereby ethnic and religious identities are weaponized in order to divide, distract and rule colonized populations.  

The Easter attacks that killed 250 happened a month before US Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan’s planned trip to Sri Lanka last year to sign the controversial Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact (MCC), and to discuss the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Government of Sri Lanka, which would enable American boots on the ground to protect Sri Lanka from IS terrorists. That trip was aborted however, amidst protests against the MCC and SOFA agreements, as well as, Cardinal Malcom Ranjith’s statement that the Easter Sunday attacks that killed 256 people were caused by foreign actors and networks that profit from chaos and sell arms. 

Covid curfews clearly have other than health benefits for hapless natives in Indian Ocean colonies: This time around, citizens in strategically located Sri Lanka have been well prepared and placed in a Covid-19 curfew with the “Second Wave” narrative, to coincide with Mr. Pompeo’s visit. Behind his stars and stripes face mask Mr. Pompeo would certainly be talking about the MCC and SOFA agreements with the powers that be in Colombo unimpeded by noisy protestors or obdurate Buddhist monks. An initial partial lockdown of the citizens of Sri Lanka came into effect after a special US Air Force plane with a special delegation landed ahead of Pompeo’s visit, despite the country’s airports being sealed due to Covid-19 for months. Train services have been cancelled, and the parliament is being sanitized during Pompeo’s visit, while and a full country-wide curfew is threatened in the island.

The curfew does not make any policy sense if we follow the local and national data for Sri Lanka. According to World Health Organization seasonal flu kills more than 7000 people annually in Sri Lanka, so Covid-19 which has claimed 15 lives is far milder than seasonal flu, and Covid-19 PCR tests have recorded a very high incidence of false positives, suggesting that the data is being rigged. But Sri Lanka is increasingly in the cross-hairs of big power rivalry as a new great game unfolds in the Indian Ocean region and the island’s economy, society and democracy are once again battered by the much hyped Covid-19 second wave narrative, that has targeted global trade and transport systems. The democratic right to protest has been hardest hit by the Covid 19 narrative-infodemic and militarized response, 

But as Pompeo pivots to the Indian Ocean region, the world seems to be pirouetting away from a declining Euro-American-Atlantic axis towards the rising Asian and Indian Ocean Region (IOR) led by China, although Hindu nationalist, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, seems increasingly in lock step with the Christian fundamentalist Trump regime, as world religions are weaponized, amidst a propaganda infodemic against China and other emerging Asian economies (BRICS). 

An Emperor with no cloths? A Celebrity virus and a nightmare narrative

There is the virus, and then there is the (media) narrative: Or perhaps, it was the other way round? Which came first to the colonies and the Global South, where bio-political and medical ‘knowledge’ and information is consumed rather than produced? The fear psychosis inducing narrative or the virus? 

Significant differences in Covid-19 Data among countries; especially between countries in the Global South and northern hemisphere that indicate the need for country and region specific policy responses have been ignored: Countries like Sri Lanka with fewer than 20 deaths have been subject to socially, politically and economically devastating curfews on the instructions of the United Nation’s World Health Organization (WHO). 

Curiously, Covid-19 has infected more celebrities per capita than any other virus in human history – from Prince Charles, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, to Ronaldo, to Tom Hanks in Hollywood where it all began, and thence to Bollywood’s “Bachans in Covid Hospital” show – for the grand global “second wave” narrative. However, there is increasing evidence that while the world focusses on the vaccine that would enable big pharmaceutical giants hit the jackpot, PCR tests deliver very high false positives, as doctors in the Netherlands, Ireland and US have pointed out. In Tanzania a Papaw and Goat tested positive for Covid-19! All this raises a question about the data and the panicdemic epidemiology models generated by Johns Hopkins University which has known links to the CIA and was involved in the infamous Covid-19 Event 201 Pandemic simulation exercise with the Gates Foundation and WHO. 

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