From Gaza to Iran, hypocrisy reigns Australia backs U.S. strikes while shedding even the pretence of principles or international law.Tom Tanukireports.

FROM MY FRINGE-POLITICS VANTAGE,Im too familiar with the effortless double standards of a little merry-go-round of chameleonic far-right political opponents over the years.

Men guilty of domestic violence who boldly campaign on violence against women, men who arent white who become white supremacists without batting an eyelidand migrants who have country-shopped (their own lingo) their way into Australia before insisting that they own it and no other migrants should ever be allowed in.

These sorts of influencers and grifters.Theyre shameless, and it doesnt behove them to feel any shame; it isnt profitable to feel it, and anyway, nobody in the memory vacuum of the social media age remembers what it is they should be ashamed of anyway.

Ultimately, I think these vipers and vultures know to attach themselves to the perfect place for them: politics.The umbrella culture that weve all come to recognise is that mainstream politics is a place where you conduct spin, and manufacture consent for whatever line youre peddling, ethics be damned.We dont have to have readNoam Chomskyto understand that.If were old enough, weve seen it anyway.

Israel has started a war with Iran while continuing its onslaught inGaza andthe U.S. is turning on its own citizens,but our PM didn't get to meet the U.S. despot, so that's just "abject failure".

You dont have to be too old, for example, to have listened to Western political leadership uniting in shameless dishonesty to furnish tacit popular consent to go bathe the Middle East in blood after 9/11.They didnt really bother with the details, flinging out a flimsylieabout "weapons of mass destruction"to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

No huge swathes of the Australian population ever really believed this spin.Certainly not the hundreds of thousands ofpeoplewho stood around me in Melbourne in that year, chanting "NO WAR", shaking the citys streets with their roars.

It all happened anyway, with millions of Arabs dying for nothing. Thats the world we inherited, and thats the framework for Western politics that we all intuited, whether by theory or by osmosis.

At least back then, the liars in power and their stenographer journalist allies enjoyed a more centralised network of communications.Now, information and news, and who gets to distribute it, is a diffused affair in the social media age.Its easier to find out when theyre lying, and its easier to log on and see that popular opinion is against them.

But now that theyre bombing Iran, theyre still lying and forwarding effortless double standards.

Israel launched its second wave of attacks on Iran after an inept and failed negotiation by the incapable Trump Administration, over which U.S. President Donald Trump notoriouslysnappedto a reporter:

Three days ago, I logged on to see a line of ABC live reportage that said:

Ceasefire? Retaliation?Our media are so talented at rendering a state defending itself into an aggressor.I believe they do it to belligerent Middle Eastern states in a reflexive manner, finessed after decades of practice.

Abraham Edwardswrote about the double standards of suddenlycondemningbombing hospitals again now that Iran has done it, after two years of stooping so low as to equivocate over that same practice in defence of Israel.TheAustralian Jewish News'slammed'the Australian Medical Association for silence over the bombing of the Soroka Medical Health Centre. No word on whether any of these lobbyists, or Zionist journalists, recognise that this is a principle that they have lost all right to defend. Its beyond hypocrisy.

In the upside-down logic of Western diplomacy, bombing is peace and retaliation is provocation.

And now, after nearly two years of practised fence-sitting over Israels Gaza genocide borne of some kind of sense of political self-preservation, our Labor leaders have no qualms with siding with attacks on Iran.TheSydney Morning HeraldsNick Bonyhadytangiblydemonstratedthat Labor have slid backwards here in contrast to their stance on Iraq two decades ago: Labor signed a stern 2004 letter of protest over that US-backed invasion, whereas now they run cover for this one.

Is there nothing to preserve politically for them here at the bare minimum, abstaining from taking a real stance, just as theyve managed to do for the most part with Israel?There absolutely is:Antoun Issawrote forDeepcut Newsabout the manywarningsfor Labor over potentially dire consequences for supporting these US strikes.The U.S. broke international law by attacking Iran.We should not support the breaking of international law.

But we have already thumbed our nose at the rule of international law for nearly two years, in running cover for Gazas genocide.So whats the difference? Its easier to have double standards after youve thoroughly demonstrated you have no standards left at all.Two decades ago, they didnt bother to lie well, but at least they lied first.Now they just bomb first, and manufacture consent later.

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.