Tony Abbott and abortion Sir, Politics is about two things: leadership and the art of the possible. What is possible can ultimately only be changed by leadership. Victorian DLP Senator John Madigan (“Bill to end Medicare-funded abortions for sex selection”, News Weekly, March 16) is showing social leadership around the issue of abortion. Liberal Opposition leader Tony Abbott is focusing on achieving power…

Confiscating the savings of depositors to bail out banks, as is being done in Cyprus, is to become the preferred method of dealing with future bank failures in the European Union. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the board of governors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), has announced that the EU’s Cyprus policy would be a template for bailing our failing banks across Europe.…

A multi-award-winning film, Amour (rated M), is reviewed by Symeon Thompson. Georges Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and ailing wife Anne (Emmannuelle Riva). Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s Amour is an undoubtedly important film. It has won 43 awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d’Or at Cannes, as well as receiving another 36 nominations. At the same time, it has…

  DEFEATING HITLER: Whitehall’s Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the War edited by Paul Winter (London: Continuum) Hardcover: 432 pages ISBN: 9781441196354 RRP: AUD$59.90   Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel   A year after the defeat of Nazi Germany, a top-secret report, entitled Some Weaknesses in German Strategy and Organisation 1933-1945, was produced by the British government’s highest intelligence body, the Joint…

  EXPOSING VULNERABLE PEOPLE to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide by Alex Schadenberg Foreword by Kevin Andrews MP (Ballan, Victoria: Connor Court) Paperback: 80 pages ISBN: 9781922168276 RRP: $19.95   Reviewed by Paul Russell   Since the mid-1990s and, perhaps even earlier, the precautionary principle has made law-makers wary about legalising euthanasia. Until very recently, practically every official review of the pros and cons…