After watching President Obama's state of the union, plus the first Republican response to it by Rep Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and the second response by Rep Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, chair of the Tea Party caucus in Congress, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that if nations survive and prosper by realistic assessment of their problems, America really is finished.

Obama surely instructed his speech writers to capitalise on his successful outing to the memorial in Tucson, where he gave a speech that essentially reprised the campaign rhetoric of 2008 that got him elected in the first place. The result in Congress last night was the quintessence of gasbaggery.

A key resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict is now before the UN Security Council. Largely echoing stated US policy, the resolution embraces negotiations, endorses the creation of a Palestinian state and demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

But even though the resolution echoes US policy, President Obama is under pressure to veto the UN resolution from forces in Washington who want to protect the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

The political fallout from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal has intensified amid claims of a Scotland Yard cover-up and friendly dinners between Downing Street and the Murdoch family.

Despite the resignation of Andy Coulson as Downing Street's director of communications, the links between the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Rupert Murdoch's empire have once again been thrown into the spotlight just days before the media tycoon is due to fly to London.

Just two text-ready words may have punctured the delusion of cyberspace 'connectedness' that has gripped a twittering new world: 'Alone Together'. They are the title of a book from a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has finally plucked up the courage to tell us something we all secretly know: we are losing our minds to a mania for the social media of Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging.

We are in danger of relinquishing our humanity to "social robotics" and a "new social confusion." We are swapping real life for vicarious life.

This is a rare election in that we already know the result. No one on either side of the political fence believes Labor can win. There are increasingly few who believe it will be anything but a Liberal landslide of historical proportions.

It would seem natural in those circumstances for debate to centre only on what a new coalition government will do to solve problems like roads and transport.

Instead, Barry O'Farrell has managed to keep the spotlight on the death throes of the government, with the electricity sell-off inquiry providing the stage for the final act.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has acknowledged that he ignored the warning of his then-Attorney General that attacking Iraq was illegal without United Nations approval.

Mr Blair, who was summoned on Friday for a second time by the official inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war, said he believed the warning was provisional.

During a four hour appearance, he said he thought the Attorney General would change his mind on whether a second UN resolution was necessary when he knew the full details of negotiations that had been taking place.

He just cannot help himself. With half of eastern Australia a quagmire of endless heartbreak, with bodies still to be found, mourned and buried, there is Tony Abbott playing cheap politics yet again.

The government should abandon the $36 billion national broadband network and spend the money on reconstruction, he said on Tuesday. The network was "a luxury that Australia cannot now afford. The one thing you don't do is redo your bathroom when your roof has just been blown off.''

The Department of Homeland Security has released a trio of chilling PSA video clips in which ordinary everyday activities are characterized as signs of potential terrorism, with the public being indoctrinated to assume the role of domestic spies reporting on their friends and neighbors as America sinks deeper into a decaying police state.

from Crikey .....

The discredited agencies that drive Labor policy

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

"A fabulous Easter gift," commented Monsanto Director of Development Initiatives Elizabeth Vancil.

Nearly 60,000 seed sacks of hybrid corn seeds and other vegetable seeds were donated to post-earthquake Haiti by Monsanto. In observance of World Environment Day, June 4, 2010, roughly 10,000 rural Haitian farmers gathered in Papaye to march seven kilometers to Hinche in celebration of this gift.

Upon arrival, these rewarded farmers took their collective Easter baskets of more than 400 tons of vegetable seeds and burned them all!!

Tony Blair has appeared a day early at the Iraq Inquiry.

The iconic picture of him photographing himself with Iraq in flames in the background was projected onto the building opposite the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, where the Chilcot Committee will question Blair on Friday 21 January, and where Stop the War will hold a protest to demand that he is held to account for his war crimes.

Tony Blair Appears A Day Early At Iraq Inquiry

The United States was advised to adopt a policy of "covert sabotage" of Iran's clandestine nuclear facilities, including computer hacking and "unexplained explosions", by an influential German thinktank, a leaked US embassy cable reveals.

from Crikey .....

If voters can't trust their government to give them the full story how can they trust them enough to vote them back into power?

That's the question that the Keneally government faces in light of the extraordinary events in NSW since parliament was prorogued in December, events that have been partially eclipsed by a combination of Christmas holidays and devastating floods.

And we can only presume that that's exactly what the Keneally government wants.

When it comes to criticism, sometimes the harshest but most constructive feedback comes from friends.

This month, Australia's human rights record will be reviewed on the world stage under the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review process. This is a peer review in which, every four to five years, the human rights record of each of the 192 UN member countries is reviewed by the 191 other countries.

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations - detailing massive potential tax evasion - will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.