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Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 1]
Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees And Secondary Punishment
Thursday, 7 December 2023, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for ... More >>
COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go To Gloat
Wednesday, 6 December 2023, 1:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip ... More >>
Refreshing The Camelot School: Kennedy Hagiography At Sixty
Tuesday, 5 December 2023, 12:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record. With its effacing tendencies, its soppily loyal hagiographers, its ghastly, ... More >>
Banished from Pakistan: Islamabad Moves on Afghan Refugees
Sunday, 3 December 2023, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where ... More >>
Sovereignty Surrendered: Subordinating Australia’s Defence Industry
Thursday, 30 November 2023, 1:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One could earn a tidy sum the number of times the word “sovereignty” has been uttered or mentioned in public statements and briefings by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But such sovereignty has shown itself to be counterfeit. The net ... More >>
The Rise Of The Desk Clerk Academic
Wednesday, 29 November 2023, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a particularly quotidian breed in the modern, management-driven university. The desk clerk who pretends to be an academic and researcher but is neither. The desk clerk who admires rosters, work plans and “key performance indicators”, ... More >>
Rot In The Civil Service: Farewelling Mike Pezzullo
Monday, 27 November 2023, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo. In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks and bound to brief ... More >>
Pallywood Tactics: Al-Shifa Hospital And Israel’s Propaganda Effort
Friday, 24 November 2023, 12:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It resembles a chronology of desperation, shifting narratives, and schoolboy howlers. From the outset, the mass lethality of Israeli strikes against Gaza and the collective punishment of its populace needed some justification, however tenuous. If it could ... More >>
Eco-Camouflage And The Fossil Fuel Lobby: The War Against Wind Farms
Friday, 24 November 2023, 1:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front. Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the east coast of the United States. Suddenly, opponents of wind turbine technology ... More >>
Rigging Avian Ballots: New Zealand’s Bird Of The Century Competition
Tuesday, 21 November 2023, 2:21 am | Binoy Kampmark
They can be a serious lot in New Zealand. They got upset at – forgive this author such reference – the use of a rule in cricket back in February 1981 which led to expressions of misty anger from the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon. While ... More >>
The Politics Of Indefinite Detention In Australia
Thursday, 16 November 2023, 2:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions. The Australian Parliament is usually given a generous hand in making policies that ... More >>
Sunak’s Dad’s Army Option: David Cameron Returns
Wednesday, 15 November 2023, 12:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Openly ignored by his incendiary, now ex-Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was left with few options. Retaining her would continue a process of blighting his already precarious prime ministership, suggesting weakness and a ... More >>
The Militarised University: Where Secrecy Goes To Thrive
Tuesday, 14 November 2023, 5:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, ... More >>
The Militarised University: Where Secrecy Goes To Thrive
Tuesday, 14 November 2023, 2:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, ... More >>
Unintended Ironies: Condemning The Armistice Day Marches
Monday, 13 November 2023, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Armistice Day is one of those disturbing occasions of the year when humanity’s folly is laid bare. It should be an occasion to remind said humanity about the stupid waste occasioned by war and its war-crazed planners who generally elude the dock; ... More >>
Viciousness Regnant: Humanitarianism As A Weasel Word
Thursday, 9 November 2023, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
It may be time to reconsider the use of such words as “humanitarian” and “humanitarianism”. There has been little of that sort evidenced in the Israel-Hamas War, marked by industrial-mechanised atrocities, enforced deprivation and starvation, orders to evacuate (read expulsion ... More >>
Showboating For War: Johnson And Morrison In Israel
Tuesday, 7 November 2023, 11:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
Banished Prime Ministers are an irritation. They clog the airwaves of punditry with their views about how things were and how things should be. But even there, degrees of severity and competence should be observed. The more noble sorts would pursue ... More >>
Taking The Refugee Hysteria Off Ice
Sunday, 5 November 2023, 3:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There are many reasons why Australian foreign policy can be viewed from the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. For one, it is largely dictated, in terms of security, by the competitive, acquisitive urgings of the United States. Fictional reassurances ... More >>
Rishi Sunak’s AI Pitch: The Bletchley Declaration
Saturday, 4 November 2023, 2:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks as much a deep fake projection as a thin, superficial representation of reality. His robotic, risible awkwardness makes a previous occupant of his office, Theresa May, look soppily human in comparison. But at the ... More >>
NATO Provoked Putin: Stoltenberg Comes Clean On The Ukraine War
Wednesday, 1 November 2023, 4:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For years, John J. Mearsheimer, that seemingly ageless, if somewhat chilly presence at the University of Chicago, has been a thorn of irritation to certain establishment ideas. With his pugnacious sense of realist politics, he has little time for the ... More >>
