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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 122]
The Pathology of the Pool: Australian Loss in London
Tuesday, 31 July 2012, 2:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian athletes used to mock swimmers as big fish in a small pool. No longer; the pool is huge, and deadly, too. Greg Baum, Sydney Morning Herald , Jul 30, 2012 More >>
Romney in Blighty: How Mitt the Twit Talks
Tuesday, 31 July 2012, 1:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Mitt Romney is now going about the business of inflating Israeli expectations as being their most staunch of friends. He had just been in London for the Olympics opening ceremony. He saw fit, on his visit to Blighty, to comment on the inadequacy ... More >>
Let the Muddle Begin: Opening the London Olympics
Saturday, 28 July 2012, 3:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has begun. Oscar-winning Danny Boyle is one of the artistic gatekeepers who was commissioned to deal with the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, and was given £27m to do it. There was Mary Poppins, the Red Arrows, there was the Tour de France ... More >>
Banning the Snip: The Debate on Circumcision
Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 8:28 am | Binoy Kampmark
Chancellor Angela Merkel has a plateful of matters to deal with, most of them of an economic nature. Europe is stuttering and staggering, and the Dame of Austerity is finding herself with fewer friends by the day. With the recent decision by the ... More >>
Backing Horses: The Civil War in Syria
Thursday, 19 July 2012, 9:14 am | Binoy Kampmark
While the Russians are being painted as international law’s bogeymen, indifferent to choosing sides in a conflict when the only side to pick can only ever be that of peace, the Syrian opposition forces are nibbling, if not slaughtering their way, ... More >>
Missiles in the Metropolis: Militarising the London Olympics
Saturday, 14 July 2012, 12:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
We’ve been universally very much impressed with everything we’ve seen. As far as I can see they [London’s police] have done an excellent job preparing all their forces. Commissioner Raymond Kelly, NY Police Chief, May 23, 2012. More >>
Meet the City Bankster: The Decline of Barclays
Saturday, 7 July 2012, 12:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Meet the City Bankster: The Decline of Barclays There is a putrescence coming from the banks of what Londoners term ‘The City’, an intense odour of disgust suggesting old tricks from the seasoned and the crooked. The resignation this week of Barclay’s ... More >>
TomKat and the Scientology Craze
Thursday, 5 July 2012, 12:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The gossip columnists are compiling their ill-composed scribbles, and their latest find (or non-finding) is working out what is transpiring in the dissolution of the Tom Cruise –Katie Holmes union. Could it be an issue of parenting and religion? More >>
Everyone’s Assange
Thursday, 28 June 2012, 12:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange has a few tricks left up his sleeve after his 16-month battle to avoid extradition to Sweden, and seeking asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London has been one of them. He has managed to throw an assortment of spanners into the works ... More >>
Subtracting from Rio+20: The Continuing Problem
Monday, 25 June 2012, 11:42 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was a very busy conference, or at the very least, a very crowded one. 100 heads of state and government formed the head of 40,000 delegates which was meant to hammer out a plan for sustainable development in the 21st century at Rio. More >>
The Greek Nadir: Going to the Polls
Monday, 18 June 2012, 4:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The European political scene as the Greeks go to the polls is one of foreboding. Germany’s Merkel government refuses to renegotiate terms of the bailout that has been arranged for the Greek ‘non-government’ – or whoever is willing to implement ... More >>
Twittering First Ladies: The Trierweiler Case
Friday, 15 June 2012, 5:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The ‘First Girlfriend’ of French politics, though many would prefer such benign, uncommitted terms as ‘partner’, has become somewhat anomalous to students of French politics. Political roles for the companions of any high office tend to be ... More >>
Palin’s America: Jay Roach’s The Game Change
Thursday, 14 June 2012, 4:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Oh, the torments that can be inflicted on language, notably by American political strategists. But in HBO’s recent ‘The Game Change’, an effort by Jay Roach to chart the political emergence of Sarah Palin as a force of the Republican Party ... More >>
Platini and the Race Card
Monday, 11 June 2012, 4:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Michel Platini, the UEFA President ever lurking in the shadows of global football, was seeking to pull his weight just prior to the opening fixture of Euro 2012, which is now underway in Poland and the Ukraine. The way he is doing so, notably on race, ... More >>
Border Security and Fantasies of Control
Monday, 11 June 2012, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The program Border Security on Australia’s Channel 7 network begins with the over-egged tones of valour – Every year, thousands of men and women protect Australia’s borders. Symbols are flashed across the screen – a target sign, suggesting a shooting ... More >>
Eyes Stuffed with Wonder: Ray Bradbury’s World
Thursday, 7 June 2012, 5:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The legacy wagon is encircling the subject of Ray Bradbury on his passing. Liberals will be gazing back at his achievements such as Fahrenheit 451 , a work Bradbury himself regards as his only science fiction book, and chew over the MaCarthyist credentials ... More >>
Staged Delusion: Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee
Tuesday, 5 June 2012, 5:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Incoherent Australians taking to the Thames in body tight suits waiting to row in the procession, disgruntled West Indians in their social club in London wanting compensation for past wrongs, banked up traffic in the city, and the obsession with catching a ... More >>
Mabo Twenty Years On
Tuesday, 5 June 2012, 5:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The destruction of ideas, suggested the British aphorist Geoffrey Madan, is much like the setting of a beautiful sunset. With the stoning of the terra nullius doctrine in the Mabo case and the pronouncement in the Mabo Case in 1992 that native title ... More >>
Off to Sweden? Assange and his Anti-Politics
Tuesday, 5 June 2012, 5:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Confused, perhaps a tad neurotic, unhinged and overall an unstable mix, Julian Assange now faces a ratcheted assault on his badge as ‘freedom fighter’. His loss in the British Supreme Court has imperilled him, though he does, unusually, have a fortnight ... More >>
John Wolfe Jr. and the Democratic Party
Tuesday, 5 June 2012, 4:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The assumption that a candidate has won it all before the final cast of the ballot is always a dangerous precedent to follow. Politically speaking, it is foolish. Not much will be known outside the United States of John Wolfe Jr., a Democratic presidential ... More >>
