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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 102]
Defining Art: Pranks at the SFMOMA
Tuesday, 7 June 2016, 5:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Never underestimate the power of the puncturing prank. It acts as subversion, and before you know it, that April Fool’s joke becomes the order of the day, the next gospel, the affirmed orthodoxy. Consider, for instance, a pair of glasses left on ... More >>
Hunting Sharks: Unnatural Justice and Human Revenge
Tuesday, 7 June 2016, 3:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Every so often, when a human wades in absurd company with a majestic shark, a predictable spectacle unfolds. The shark, interest piqued, attacks human. The human can be fatally wounded, though not always. Shark is thereby hunted – this, deemed the automatic ... More >>
Trump University and Selling Images
Saturday, 4 June 2016, 7:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The problem with the critics of Trump University is that they only provide a veneer for a collective tendency in US political life. Image counts and those with stellar university educations (consider the current President, of constitutional law fame) ... More >>
Colluding in Lies: The Brexit Debate
Wednesday, 1 June 2016, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Brexit argument (whether Britain should remain or otherwise in the European Union), has become hysterically hyperbolic. That was the view of former Tory MP Gyles Brandreth, expressed with usual alacrity on the news quiz show Have I Got News For You. More >>
Trump and the Polls of Loathing
Friday, 27 May 2016, 2:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Caught between a cynical Clinton machine and a shape-changing reality television show, US politics has featured its latest twist in the saga of surges and poll ratings. Now, we are being told that Donald Trump does have a chance against Hillary Clinton, ... More >>
Turkey as Terror: Ankara's role in the Brexit Referendum
Tuesday, 24 May 2016, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Either we influence Europe, or it influences us.” David Cameron, The Telegraph , May 8, 2016 More >>
Leakers Down Under: The Australian Federal Police Raids
Monday, 23 May 2016, 11:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is election time in Australia, and the electioneering took a remarkable turn Thursday night with announcements that the Australian Federal Police had raided the offices of the opposition Australian Labor Party, including that of a senior frontbencher ... More >>
The Triumph of Establishment Politics
Thursday, 19 May 2016, 4:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
How to find the voice of a people? Electoral systems are the stuff of political nightmare and experiment, all attempting the same goal: how best to capture an appropriately, accurate choice. Australia’s preferential election system is regarded as better ... More >>
Boris Johnson’s Hitler Comparison
Tuesday, 17 May 2016, 3:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Hitler’s main aim was to create an empire in the east and violently subjugate Europeans. Any connection between that and the EU is simply laughable.” Lord Bramal, The Guardian , May 16, 2016 More >>
Killing Carp in Australia: Genocidal Fantasies Down Under
Monday, 16 May 2016, 3:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Trying to decide whether I side with the carp or Barnaby Joyce.” Jeff Sparrow, Twitter, May 1, 2016 More >>
Ugly London: The Mayoral Race
Tuesday, 10 May 2016, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What a disaster for the conservatives, though hardly a glory for British Labour either. Sadiq Khan, a Labour technocrat rinsed in the chummy spinelessness of the Blairite spin machine, won the London Mayoral election after a campaign that could only be ... More >>
The Leicester City Miracle: Playing Against the Statistics
Tuesday, 10 May 2016, 3:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The biggest sporting shock of my lifetime, and it’s only my team.” Gary Lineker, May 8, 2016 More >>
Twenty-Four Hour Banality
Monday, 9 May 2016, 3:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Big fan of LBJ, me mum,” said Chris Uhlmann, journalist for the ABC’s Twenty-Four hour television news network. And that, perhaps, was the only thing of any interest in what must be regarded as one of the most boring exhibitions of television in decades. ... More >>
Fiasco in Lebanon: 60 Minutes, Privilege and Exploitation
Monday, 9 May 2016, 11:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
“The actions of a desperate mother are one thing; the extraordinary lapse in judgment and ethics of a crew of seasoned journalists getting involved in an international kidnapping scheme is another entirely.” Ruby Hamad, The Age, Apr 17, 2016 More >>
Gagarin in Space: The Politics of Cosmic Discovery
Wednesday, 4 May 2016, 2:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Aristotle thought notions of humanity as a supreme species atopos – absurd. In contrast, the Romans had a very defined term that distinguished humans as humans, impressive relative to other species: humanitas. Hannah Arendt, in considering these ... More >>
Australia’s French Connection: The Submarine Saga
Monday, 2 May 2016, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was all a funny business, but it is very clear that the Australian relationship with France, at least when it comes to matters of defence, has changed over the years. From being belligerents keen to pursue nuclear testing in the Pacific, to being “cheese ... More >>
The Failed Cruz-Kasich Pact: Trump and GOP Desperation
Monday, 2 May 2016, 2:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Having Trump as a candidate for the GOP presidential run may look bad. Having a pact against him within the Republican movement designed to quash his chances to get the nomination looks even worse. It reeks of backroom deals, frustrated officials and ... More >>
Meddlesome Empire: Obama and Client Britain’s EU Referendum
Tuesday, 26 April 2016, 12:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Good to see that history, if it does not possess historical cunning, as Hegel rather foolishly observed, has, at the very least, some humour. US President Barack Obama has been busy making it his business to make sure that Britain remains in the European ... More >>
Anzac Day Memories: The Sullen Child of History
Saturday, 23 April 2016, 1:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Periodic vigilance will protect us against new generations of lords and masters who exploit national myths to lure us into enterprises born in timidity and corrosive mateship.” Andrew Hamilton, Eureka Street , May 6, 2015 More >>
Mild Punishment And Exoneration: the Killing of Reza Barati
Wednesday, 20 April 2016, 4:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I wish those people could also have been charged, but sometimes some countries are very powerful and they can protect their own people from being charged.” Benham Satah, Manus Island detainee, ABC News, Apr 19, 2016 More >>
