Gefira #43: The Virus and the World

Description

Gefira 43 is accompanying the reader through the erratic behaviour that has seized hold of governments and peoples of the Northern Hemisphere among the pandemonium of fear caused by a virus that is meticulously and almost reverentially referred to by its name plus assigned number, as if the recipients of the news were expert virologists, physicians or biologists. The event is already advantageous to governments and organizations: unbridled money printing, pacification of political opposition without any resort to law enforcement, introduction of restrictions of which – as we know from experience – not all will be lifted and a wonderful, legitimate, plausible excuse for all and any measures taken and many other things. Look, the blame for all failures within the next two or three years will be conveniently put on the pandemic and everybody will understand! Isn’t it a godsend!

Gefira 43 invites its readers to dispel fear and make an effort to see through the props and pay attention to those parts of the stage which are not made visible by the spotlights. What is being arranged in the dark now, that’s a fundamental question. From Beijing through Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris to Washington we are seeing more or less the same measures imposed by the authorities acting as if in unison. Gone are the old animosities! Does the event spell a thorough reshuffling of world politics? Is globalization going to be strengthened on the pretext of creating a unifying mechanism capable of combating such calamities in the future or are we witnessing the end of the process of rounding all countries and nations up into one shed? The latter can be substantiated by the observation that all national states in Europe have been acting on their own and the European Union was nowhere to be seen.