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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]
Binoy Kampmark: Malcolm Turnbull, the ADF and Islamic State
Friday, 2 September 2016, 4:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The oldest political trick of a leader in domestic strife is to emphasise the unholy nature of a threat from without. When the polls are low, nothing provides quite the necessary panacea than a military action, or promise of action, on a scale deemed ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: A Trip To Charters Towers
Friday, 2 September 2016, 4:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Cult of Mining in ‘The World’: A Trip To Charters Towers by Binoy Kampmark More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Hillary Clinton’s Extreme End Game
Monday, 29 August 2016, 12:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The loathsome two are moving into full view, mustering weapons and taking aim at each other in a US election campaign that continues to be filled with colourful missives. But the one to lose most is Hillary Clinton, whose nasty appropriation of the high ... More >>
The Terrors of Free Speech: Australia’s Discrimination Act
Monday, 29 August 2016, 12:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When sections in a piece of legislation assume their own properties, the state of debate is bound to be strained. In Australia, the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), notably section 18C, has again become a central ball of political play. More >>
Unwanted Images: The Nauru Incident Reports
Thursday, 25 August 2016, 4:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the first reports came through about the unfolding Holocaust during the Second World War, audiences were incredulous. Surely no industrialised society could quite go so far? Killings, yes; butcheries, certainly. But a mass-scale industrialised ... More >>
Labouring Hours: Sweden’s Six-Hour Working Day
Tuesday, 23 August 2016, 5:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The establishment of a normal working-day is the result of struggle between capitalist and labour.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital , Ch 10 More >>
The Sri Lankan Abyss: Australia’s Crushing Defeat
Friday, 19 August 2016, 4:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Everything that seemed to unravel in a side that had enjoyed top ranking status before coming to Sri Lanka did on this most abysmal of tours. But any cricket commentary directed against Australia’s performances should also account for what was a memorably ... More >>
The Hypocrisies of Commemoration: Dispute at Long Tan
Friday, 19 August 2016, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One of the stranger sights in international relations is that of a defeated State seeking to commemorate its fallen in a country whose affairs it sought to disrupt. Australia is particularly adept at this, having obtained near exclusive entitlements ... More >>
Fingers on the Button: “First Use” and US Nuclear Weapons
Wednesday, 17 August 2016, 5:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Do you wait till the prospect of obliteration is upon you? Or initiate, blithely, a nuclear holocaust upon your enemy as a matter of what is termed “first use” by the nuclear weapon high priests? Neither prospect is particularly attractive, ... More >>
Triggers, Morals and Drones in the Sky
Tuesday, 16 August 2016, 4:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.” Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), Eye in the Sky (2015) More >>
Donald Trump and the ISIS Factor
Tuesday, 16 August 2016, 3:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Ever straddling that fine line between the absurd and the puncturing revelation, Donald J. Trump’s “ISIS” remarks about the Obama administration and the Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, were vintage. “[Obama] was the founder of ... More >>
The Flagging TPPA: The US Election and Free Trade Politics
Friday, 12 August 2016, 4:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being savaged by Donald J. Trump on one side of the electoral aisle, and modestly beaten by the Democratic presumptive candidate, Hillary Clinton, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is lying somewhere between near death and miraculous survival. ... More >>
Detained for Terror: Proposed Indefinite Detention Laws
Tuesday, 9 August 2016, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The reactive dimension of global politics – at least at the level of many states – is a broader statement about how far things have rotted. Nothing is more reactive than a State’s response to terrorism, actual or perceived. The pure evidentiary ... More >>
The Washington Vaccination Ploy
Thursday, 4 August 2016, 12:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Should you fear receiving the needle from a stranger? Yes. Should you fear receiving it from a person you know all too well as a historical abuser? Even more so. Empires do it, states do it, and even local agencies do it. Let’s all, as it were, vaccinate ... More >>
Rubbishing Pauline Hanson: the Campaign Continues
Tuesday, 2 August 2016, 3:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I blame Tony Abbott [and] John Howard for my imprisonment and no one will ever change my opinion about that.” Pauline Hanson More >>
Olympic Chaos: The Rio Games
Tuesday, 2 August 2016, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Wounds have opened; recriminations are all around. The Rio Olympic Games, even before the first act, has already shown how it will be one of the more interesting ones for all the wrong reasons. (Eventually, such wrong reasons tend to seem right.) More >>
Humanising Hillary Clinton: The DNC
Monday, 1 August 2016, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“He [Bill Clinton] wanted people to know the real Hillary.” John Podesta, Jul 28, 2016 More >>
Kevin Rudd’s Failed UN Secretary General Bid
Monday, 1 August 2016, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few sights are sadder in international diplomacy than seeing an aging figure desperate for honours. In a desperate effort to net them, he scurries around, cultivating, prodding, wishing to be noted. Finally, such an honour is netted, in all likelihood ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Kevin Rudd’s Failed UN Secretary General Bid
Friday, 29 July 2016, 5:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few sights are sadder in international diplomacy than seeing an aging figure desperate for honours. In a desperate effort to net them, he scurries around, cultivating, prodding, wishing to be noted. Finally, such an honour is netted, in all likelihood ... More >>
Cults of Security and Terror in Rio
Friday, 29 July 2016, 12:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Olympics remains a black hole of needless expenditure, sucking services into it with impending and merciless doom. Unused stadia, tracks left to moulder, services supposedly linked to urban renewal turned into dilapidated wonders. That is the Olympic ... More >>
