Mother courage or mother knows best? The mother of WikiLeaks founder has launched a scathing attack on Julia Gillard, claiming her son faced a lynch-mob mentality if handed over to Washington, especially after another mother, Sarah Palin, described her boy as an ''anti-American operative with blood on his hands''.

President Barack Obama didn't say much about foreign or military policy in Tuesday night's State of the Union address. To the extent he did talk about it, he spent more time on economic agreements with India, South Korea, and China than on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and, given the state of the economy and the nature of the political battles ahead, the balance was probably right.

Every US administration has its mouthpiece in Washington's think tank world, its courtier that will slavishly praise its every utterance. For the blessedly bygone Bush administration, that echo chamber was the American Enterprise Institute and the neo-conservative broadsheets in its orbit. For the Obama administration, it is the National Security Network, an operation founded in 2006 to bring "strategic focus to the progressive national security community."

One of our grand national delusions is that we are a stoic people, unflinching in the jaws of hardship and disaster, unique in all the world. Knock us down and we dig into bottomless reserves of character to dust ourselves off and get back at it. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi.

It's a myth, of course. We enjoy a good whinge as much as anybody, and it's high time to recognise this. I'm thinking of instituting a round of awards for exemplary complaining, with a gala presentation night for the Gold Whinger of the Year.

from Crikey ......

Laugh until you cry -- can we put a levy on political stupidity?

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

The fact that this story appears in Australia's leading Murdoch broadsheet is encouraging. Anything from Israel must be clearly marked as such. Why shouldn't it be? Consumers should know that Israeli products face a global boycott campaign.

When you fly over the earth's oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking.

Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where native vegetation once grew. This change is almost impossible to reverse. The first species to die are those that are most vulnerable.

The protests rocking the Arab world this week have one thread uniting them: Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next.

There is some anger at the "Saxon" economists in Davos, from the "Europeans"... The Saxons are defined as the English and the American economists who have been credited with the gloom and doom of 2007-09 (they basically caught the clap and gave it to the rest of the world) and who predicted a greater doom for 2010, which did not eventuate (they had a 50/50 chance). They are now "predicting" the demise of the Euro... which they hope will happen. But China and the Europeans are not going to let it happen...

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.

The worst of the global economic crisis may be over, but it's a weary world converging on Davos, the sleepy town in the Swiss mountains hosting the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

It's a world suffering from "global burnout syndrome", too weak to tackle another global shock, says Professor Klaus Schwab, the man who invented the annual meeting of the world's top business leaders and politicians 41 years ago.

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.