Whilst war engulfs the Middle East, all manner of legislation slips through Parliament, says Neil Oliver

In the December 2022 issue of Time Magazine, Ukraine President Volodimir Zelensky was named Person of the Year. The message was clear and unequivocal. He was officially to beloved in those days, and without question, his cause was presented as all but holy. The order from on high was that Zelensky was the embodiment of all that was good, brave and honorable. He was, we were told, from every screen and stage, fearlessly and almost single handedly defending democracy. World leaders and a list celebrities queued for the chance to be seen in his presence.

Fast forward to an article in last month's issue of the same magazine and Zelensky is described as delusional on account of his continuing belief that he will achieve ultimate victory over Russia. Quote, he deludes himself a Zelensky aide apparently told a Time journalist. We're out of options. We're not winning, but try telling him that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the last time I looked we were being assured every minute of every day by every organ of the mainstream media that victory over Russia was all but inevitable, just as Zelensky has continued to say. Furthermore, the official message was that Russia had really always been our enemy. A real life Nazi was treated to a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament in front of a grinning and clapping Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in recognition of the fact he had fought against the Russians in World War 2. It was a rewriting of history, inviting an assumption that in truth we had always been at war with Russia, whether we knew it or not.

The inference to be drawn was that Ukraine's war with Russia was a continuation of a greater, older war against that nation, and that final victory was Ukraine's destiny and our only hope of salvation in the face of an always evil empire. Do you see what's happening here? Do you see how breathtakingly fast the propaganda machine moves? Discarding as though it had never been that which no longer matters. Whomever no longer matters. That which is no longer convenient or useful.

I suspect in the Great Game that the Ukraine President's card is well and truly marked. Zelensky, your bus is leaving, destination Dumpsville, population you. When war broke out in Ukraine, some of us thought it seemed a bit convenient that just as the pandemic ran out of steam, that there was something else to distract and frighten everyone out of asking any more questions about the damage done by the official response to COVID. But it seemed that anyone with questions to ask about the history of the region was to be shut down.

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, wrote the Persian poet Omar Khayyam about the remorseless and irresistible nature of fate. Not all your piety, nor whit shall loot it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

In the world of geopolitics and international intrigue, the propaganda machine is the tireless servant of the rich and powerful in pursuit of their aims, its appetites out of necessity, insatiable, all consuming, and it's utterly without pity, far less a conscience. The roving beam of the distracting light projected by that propaganda machine is as relentless as fate itself. Furthermore, it has no memory, none at all.

Whatever the propaganda machine said happened yesterday. Who was to bless and who was to blame. Those are gone now. Vanished without a trace. Memory hold. Vladimir Zelensky has evidently served its purpose. Ukraine has served its purpose, half a million Ukrainians dead. And who knows how many dead Russians have served their purpose too? The moving finger has written and moved on. Can you see it yet? Can you see that we're being played and like a Stradivarius.

Somewhere, the so-called COVID Inquiry is going through its motions, soaking up an ocean of whitewash that will surely leave all the key players as pure as the Devon snow and as blameless.

Meanwhile, despite the fact unknown numbers died, suffered or were destroyed one way or another, no one is being invited properly to notice, far less to care about the ruination wrought upon this population and upon populations around the world. This week, Doctor John Campbell posted a profoundly moving video about deaths in care homes, reported testimony of broken hearted people who had watched helplessly as their elderly relatives died for want of oxygen or food and water, or were helped on their way with cocktails of drugs.

The dying in the care homes was a huge part of the overall death toll. A person might wonder whose interests that bigger number served. Questions were asked while it was happening and were ignored. You might say the truth was shut away from prying eyes, denied the oxygen of publicity, starved to death. Three years later, and it seems the truth is still being shamefully neglected. Instead, and in the most superficial and meaningless manner imaginable, we're being invited only to go up at the naughty words Boris Johnson's former chief advisor Dominic Cummings used about former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and others of his erstwhile colleagues.

And all the while that unedifying pantomime runs its course. He said, She said, one by one. The great and the good, the relic media. Silverbacks. The subservient dependent, A listers that spent all their energies dutifully cheering on the lockdowns, driving the fear, mindlessly pushing the experimental gene therapies that were marketed as vaccines. Of turning their coats and spouting new scripts as they pretend to clutch their perils and outrage the revelations. Revelations in inverted commas of unforgivable, unmeasured harms done in those far off days of the pandemic.

Too late, I say. Years too late. So late that nothing being revealed, revealed in inverted commas by the so-called inquiry matters are damn now. Someone, somewhere has evidently calculated that in the foreshortened time scale of carefully choreographed and curated drama, a couple of years is long enough to ensure that whatever conclusions, conclusions in inverted commas are drawn by said COVID inquiry, none of it will lead to consequences for the guilty parties. And do you think any of the billions, the hundreds of billions, will be ranged from the hands of the politicians chums, the chums whose bank accounts ever more bloated with the proceeds of bogus PPE and ineffectual testing kits? Do you think any of that will ever be seen again? No, me neither.

And in the meantime, every last recently minted Sir Lord and Dame, every professor and special advisor, every obedient media editor who helped spread the debilitating nonsense will walk away without a care in the world. In any case, who cares about the pandemic now? Who cares about defending democracy in Ukraine? Those battles already seem as distant as lost in the midst of history as any Carthage or Thermopylae.

COVID and lockdown like Zelensky and half a million dead Ukrainians have long since served a purpose, populations conditioned to live always with chaos and uncertainty. The moving finger has moved on and is writing instead about Israel and Gaza, about imminent enveloping war in the Middle East and all the time the unspeakable, unbearable suffering of civilians. Pawns on the board. Forget the pandemic. Forget Ukraine. Turn all your trusting attention now to what the same voices say is happening in the Holy Land. This is the only thing that matters, the only show in town.

And so I ask again, do you see it yet? The same powers that be, and the same media that lied and spread misinformation and propaganda about COVID and about lockdowns and face masks and the war in Ukraine are now shouting from the rooftops the desperate odds around the clock about what we must accept and trust about the next thing. Across the pond, Americans were told Donald Trump had colluded with Russians to gain power. Exhaustive inquiries proved he had not. The contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden were deliberately suppressed by compliant social media moguls, lest the revelations harm the election hopes of the big guy Joe Biden. They lied about those old things, about the stuff of yesterday's news. We know that now. I know. We know.

The lockdown policy was suicidal, as many warned at the time, gaining only ridicule in reply. We know the slogan about the injectables being 100% safe and defective was always misinformation at best. And yet, to ask questions at the time was to invite more ridicule and censorship. And so why? Why, in a million years, would any of us trust that they're telling the truth now about anything that's happening now?

But as well as growing wise to the tricks about the past and the present, the more important than any of that is the necessity to be looking out at all times, the better to spot what those rich and powerful and their obedient media pull next. Having learned that they lied about the past and the present, further progress along the road to recovery demands keeping one step ahead, looking out for what the next next thing is. And you can bet your last cent that any moment now that next next thing will come along. While war engulfs the Middle East and surely spreads, all manner of legislation slips through Parliament. King Charles prorogued Parliament. Did you notice? Such a move by the government? Might be interpreted in more than one way, but I would suggest it's like kicking over the snakes and ladders board when your pieces in a place not to your liking and you'd rather not play anymore.

No bills on the long march to Royal Assent go back to the beginning. I must start again. Questions being asked of officials and ministers about topics they don't care to contemplate are thrown in the bin and must be resubmitted, while black smoke rises over the Middle East, barely noticed and largely unremarked. The Online Safety Bill scuttled through, the Energy Bill scuttled through, and the amendments to the WHO pandemic treaty amendments that will cast straight our parliament and make impotent our national sovereignty, not ever closer to the line.

In December, all of that happened while too many were distracted by pandemic lies by war in Ukraine that enriched the few at the expense of the lives of the millions. And that's for what's being prepared for our detriment while the Middle East is on fire. Well, your guess is as good as mine. Here's the thing. The past is past and the present is gone before you know it. What matters is to look ahead to the future energy crisis and blackouts this winter. Anyone. Maybe food shortages or a financial crash. But hey, why trust me? I'm just a conspiracy theorist.