by

Locked down in my fifth floor apartment in Geneva, Switzerland with a view across the French border dominated by the snow-capped Monte Blanc, I began to wonder whatever happened to the forever wars we used to hear and read about every day in the main stream media. For weeks, now, our newspapers and TV seem to fill their missions with nothing but Covid-19 and/or Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Maybe a mention about things such as using the bidet to wash our asses, because of a shortage of toilet paper!

So today I decided I would try to find out how things are in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Palestine. Has the Ukraine joined NATO yet? I found nothing on TV; I skimmed through the NYTimes. Not a word about war, or even a mention of those countries. Is it possible those wars have ended while I’ve been self isolating, social distancing? Is Iblid no longer being bombed?

As serious as the pandemic seems to be, taking lives almost as rapidly as the bombs over the Middle East, one is tempted to believe that it was intentionally contrived to take our minds off the wars. The wars were never ending, neither being won nor lost. What better way to take our minds off the slaughter than to create an even greater disaster so the world would be distracted from them. The MSM seems to have taken the hint and turned their attention to the new slaughter which is attacking not only the mongers of war, but more widely, the innocents. The virus may be killing fewer people at a time but it is not limited to a geographical area. It is killing, wily nilly, anyone who falls in its path.

Or, perhaps, star wars is upon us, and the virus is a message from outer space invoking us to get our acts together and unite to fight the common enemy, instead of our brothers and sisters. Maybe Arthur C. Clark can answer that. I can only hope that the wars have truly disappeared.

Stay home; wash your hands.