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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 121]
Weariness Foretold: The EU Budget Summit
Friday, 23 November 2012, 4:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There were always going to be disagreements about next year’s EU budget, which started in the evening instead of a sensible morning hour, and occupied officials into the early morning. Various MEPs pitched for an increase in spending for this ... More >>
The Wiener Directive: Banning Nudity in San Francisco
Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 4:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The law might be an ass, but its parents tend to be unwise law makers. A nice, even depressing example of this is the attempt by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to make it illegal for anyone over five (why not six, seven or eight?) to “expose ... More >>
Operation Pillar of Defence: Death via Social Media
Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 5:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Social media has become a fixation for those dying the slow lonely life in suburbia to residents of frenetic inner metropolises. It galvanises political movements and enables groups to challenge mummified structures of power. But what is often forgotten ... More >>
Filtering the Net: Conroy’s Fantasy of Control
Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 11:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
Regulation is second nature to Australia’s paternal puritans, who feel that citizens are mere infants in swaddling clothes terrified of the world beyond. The arrival of the Internet must have suitably terrified many of them, and one such figure has ... More >>
In Bed with the CIA: The Resignation of Petraeus
Tuesday, 13 November 2012, 5:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Another affair, another moral paroxysm. Not that we should be concerned about extra renditions, torture, and subversive tactics – the CIA’s Director can resign, not because of a vicious policy, but because of a considerable lack of bed room judgment ... More >>
The Hollow Victory: Obama and the Triumph of Small Margins
Friday, 9 November 2012, 5:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
‘No way Mittiepoo!’ ‘Mitt Romney is checking the math. That’s why its taking so long.’ The hubris, the excitement, and the ugliness of the cheering. The swear words on social media are being cast with a good dosage of bile. There have been ... More >>
Something to Cheer About: Bloomberg and the NY Marathon
Saturday, 3 November 2012, 1:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The show must go on – or so claimed Mayor Michael Bloomberg after scolding New Yorkers for not knowing the difference between 311 and 911 calls as the water levels were rising in the city. Reporting a fallen tree was not quite the same as reporting ... More >>
Reheating the Beans: The Gillard White Paper on Asia
Tuesday, 30 October 2012, 12:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has a familiar ring to it. Australia, that White Tribe of Asia, is now sounding desperate, hoping for recognition in a region it has struggled to comprehend since the days of British colonisation. If human beings are seeking to find the common ... More >>
Catching Il Cavaliere: Berlusconi’s Conviction
Monday, 29 October 2012, 6:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The fundamental defect of Mr. Berlusconi’s governing style is that he often confuses private interests with public ones. The Economist , Jun 9, 2011 More >>
The Jimmy Savile Row at the Smutty Beeb
Thursday, 25 October 2012, 2:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Why the surprise, the sense of shock, the orchestrated gasps of revulsion? The late ghastly, self-indulgent radio and television presenter Jimmy Savile, who would effectively confess on live television that he would so anything to everything, is now sending ... More >>
Prelude to Election: The Third Presidential Debate
Wednesday, 24 October 2012, 11:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
There were no spectacular implosions, no remarkable points of stumbling. The third and last debate between President Barack Obama and contender Governor Mitt Romney was not the most exciting affair, though it showed Obama to be far more accomplished, ... More >>
Hate Crime Against the Elite: The Oxbridge Boat Race
Tuesday, 23 October 2012, 4:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been said before: the definition of a crime, at least in its English context, is determined by what the upper class feel the underclass should not be doing. Elite disapproval finds its way into the criminal statutes with astonishing regularity. More >>
Good Bile and Bad: Tolerating Alan Jones
Tuesday, 9 October 2012, 11:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
Oh what fun it is to be a maligned shock jock. The shoe, sitting now so well on the other foot, and the attack being waged on several fronts against the man whose voice has filled Australian airwaves for years. More >>
Paper King of the Gray Lady: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger
Monday, 1 October 2012, 3:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger has left us aged 86, though the old gray lady he was a steward to still remains, casting her lingering shadow over the publishing world, wrinkles and all. The shadow of the New York Times has not always been a consistently cast ... More >>
Going Mad With Drones: The Tony Abbott Formula
Wednesday, 26 September 2012, 5:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Without imagination, predictability is bound to become a vice. Australia’s explosive, uncontainable opposition leader Tony Abbott has made his latest splash in policy waters by suggesting that his frightened country should propel itself into the twenty ... More >>
A Fatuous Exercise: Australia and the Security Council
Wednesday, 26 September 2012, 5:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Why do countries bother? In a sense, a position as a temporary member on the UN Security Council is merely an award to the best and smoothest briber – such a country can claim some ceremonial status, not more. More >>
At Arm’s Length: NATO’s Shift in Afghanistan
Wednesday, 19 September 2012, 5:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The deceptive ways a loss in war is described can be contagious. Retreats are often regarded as odious, but sometimes necessary. These can either have the genius of the British spirit of tactical withdrawal, or a more laughable concept of an honourable ... More >>
David Hicks: The Man Who Was Chemically Tortured
Monday, 17 September 2012, 5:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One sensed they were out to get him from the start. David Hicks, a misguided, foolish man, who found himself at a paramilitary camp in Afghanistan, had to be punished. Since the Australian authorities struggled to find a basis to get the former Guantánamo ... More >>
Chicago Teachers’ Strike: Targeting the Teaching Evaluation
Wednesday, 12 September 2012, 5:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“This was a strike of choice, a bad choice for our children and not necessary,” decried an irritated Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. 350,000 students and 26,000 teachers have stayed out of classes now for two days as contract negotiations take place between ... More >>
For Queen and Vegas: Prince Harry and the Press
Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 11:00 am | Binoy Kampmark
Naked in Vegas, and then taking on arms to fight for Queen (granny) and country in Afghanistan –this is the tomfoolery and entertainment that Prince Harry offers the British public. The prince, at least a piece of him, wound up via the TMZ site ... More >>
