Forget Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine – Newt Gingrich wants to colonise the moon.

"By the end of my second term [2020], we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," the Republican US presidential hopeful told a cheering crowd in Cocoa, Florida, a town with links to the space industry.

A whopping budget deficit and cuts to the military do not seem to have dampened Gingrich’s astronomically expensive plans for a lunar colony with 13,000 residents.

from Crikey .....

all's well in an intelligence community overseeing itself

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

ASIO, ROBERT CORNALL, WIKILEAKS

from Crikey .....

Australia Day spirit: kill politicians. 

A Crikey reader sent in this nuanced and charming political message on a shop front in Southport on the Gold Coast. 

According to a CNN exit poll of South Carolina Republican primary voters, Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic, won twice as much support from evangelical Protestants as Mitt Romney, a Protestant. And among voters for whom religion meant “a great deal,” 46 percent voted for Mr. Gingrich and only 10 percent for Mr. Romney.

Neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott were in any direct danger from Aboriginal protesters yesterday, but those concerned for their security must be appalled that they were allowed to be put in the situation they were in.

It had long been known that the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal embassy would bring a major contingent of people to Canberra, and entirely predictable that some of them would notice comings and goings at The Lobby restaurant and that the presence of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition (or in this case both - a real bonus) would be a magnet for those inclined to shout slogans or abuse, or wanting to wave their fists.

You are not allowed to visit Pheasant Island, which lies near the Atlantic Ocean terminus of the French-Spanish border. But "it can easily be seen from the Joncaux bank, on the Bay Path," the Web site for the local tourist office [1] suggests, without a hint of irony.

The Prime Minister has let us all down, particularly young people ....

Some things transcend politics and policy and the lust for power. Truth, honesty, integrity, decency and fairness are immutable values. They are the ethical substance of life. They ought to be cherished. To sell them out is to sell one's soul. It is even worse when a leader expediently betrays these values, because it undermines the entire community.

When you listen to street interviews with people in the troubled countries of the euro zone, a common complaint emerges: whereas some people waxed fat in the boom that preceded the crisis, it's ordinary workers who suffer most in the bust, and they and even poorer people who bear the brunt of government austerity campaigns intended to fix the problem.

In other words, achieving a well-functioning economy is one thing; achieving an economy that also treats people fairly is another. Economists and business people tend to focus mainly on economic efficiency; the public tends to focus on the fairness of it all.

The genesis of the tennis grunt is disputed. Some say the grunt was invented in Nick Bollettieri's tennis laboratory where, convinced a noisy expulsion would help a player hit the ball harder, the famed coach played soundtracks from pornographic movies near the test tubes in which his ''Deci-belles'' were incubating.

Others are adamant the shriek was secretly encouraged by the WTA Tour marketing department, which hoped to keep spectators awake during early-round matches.

For better or for worse, unlike most commentators, my judgments about Australian politics are generally formed not by conversations with Canberra insiders but almost solely by reading history books, listening to radio, watching current affairs television and following the newspapers. As it happens, opinion polls are among my most valuable sources of information. They provide, for example, the only reliable evidence about the question I want to discuss in this blog: the relative popularity of our two most recent Prime Ministers - Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

What is it about Australia that makes it the greatest place on earth to live? It is very easy to reflect on your homeland with rose-coloured glasses. When living in the US, I would reminisce about Australia's magnificent beaches and national parks, the irreverent humour of Doug Mulray, the natural beauty of Australian girls. I conveniently forgot about the Sydney traffic, the tall poppy syndrome, the flies in summer and the hidden and sometimes overt racism.

The use of unmanned aircraft belies America's rhetoric about its values.

The CIA recently launched its first drone attack of 2012. Three people in North Waziristan were killed. If you haven't yet heard of these Terminator-style US drones, it is likely you will soon. Their usage in surveillance, modern warfare and covert ''counter-terrorism'' measures is rapidly expanding.

It is hard to know what was more surprising for the average online file-sharer - that sleepy New Zealand was home to the likes of Kim Dotcom, the corpulent magnate behind the Megaupload website; or that the FBI had hunted him halfway around the world and arrested him in the panic room of his $30 million mansion.

But we should be surprised on neither front. The US will go to the ends of the earth to protect its big entertainment corporations and Australia could be the scene of a bigger coup in coming months.