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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 126]
The Darwin Bombing: The Hidden Story
Sunday, 19 February 2012, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
History is a mannequin with many dresses. These can be removed in the latest fashion or substituted depending on the latest interpretation. As the Polish aphorist and novelist Stanislaw Lec explained, truth tends to remain the same, whatever fashion ... More >>
The MTC and Melodrama: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
Thursday, 16 February 2012, 5:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been 55 years since Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll premiered at the Melbourne University Union Theatre, beginning a sequence of events that made it an essential part of Australian theatre. More >>
The Unexceptional End: The Death of Whitney Houston
Thursday, 16 February 2012, 5:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Even if one is not a fan of such songs as Saving All My Love for You and I Will Always Love You (mush, garnished by a touch of sweet spice), there is no question that the person who sang them – Whitney Houston – was someone the music industry took ... More >>
The Farce of Protection: Humans, human rights, and Syria
Thursday, 16 February 2012, 2:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian intervention is often premised on a fetishizing exercise. Protecting civilians has become the time immemorial justification for interventions that rarely achieve that. Often, the slaughter is exacerbated. Undesirable substitute regimes ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Glasgow Rangers in Administration
Thursday, 16 February 2012, 9:45 am | Binoy Kampmark
The shock was palpable at the making of the announcement – Glasgow Rangers, Scottish champions 54 times and winner of some 100 trophies, has been placed in administration. The foe, as football fans will identify, is the ever vicious tax man seeking to come ... More >>
Traveler in Transit: Bangkok and the Miracle Hotel
Monday, 13 February 2012, 5:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Transitory states are often uncomfortable. One is neither truly dead or truly living. The tourist in transit can only ever hope that time will kill more quickly than he will kill it. Airports offer a sterile state, and the regular traveler who does have ... More >>
Bald Men, Combs and the Malvinas: Cameron-Kirchner Showdown
Monday, 13 February 2012, 5:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Argentinean wordsmith Jorge Luis Borges could be cryptic. But his powers of perception were always daunting. The 10 week conflict in 1982 that took place over the Falklands, or the Malvinas, as the Argentineans prefer to call it, has provided ... More >>
Baltasar Garzón and the Problem with Transitional Justice
Saturday, 11 February 2012, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those experts in the field of human rights lead charmed and dangerous lives. Sometimes, they also find themselves in the dock, grilled for their efforts and persecuted for their inclinations. In the case of the famed human rights warrior, the Spanish High ... More >>
The EU Fiscal Compact: Righting the Bad Budget
Tuesday, 7 February 2012, 5:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On Monday, the EU carousel stopped, briefly, for another round of note taking, deliberation and navel gazing. With so much chatter and babble over fiscal discipline, the leaders of the Eurozone seem to be marching to some orchestrated tune that is all too of ... More >>
Two out of Three: Serbia, Sport and Super Sunday
Tuesday, 31 January 2012, 11:30 am | Binoy Kampmark
Novak Djokovic has won – again. A suggestion about how sport does have a habit of seeping through the pores of every day life can be gathered last Sunday, when Serbia found itself with sporting representatives in three grand finals – the Australian ... More >>
Kodak’s Last Snap: The End of The Great Yellow Father
Saturday, 21 January 2012, 11:28 am | Binoy Kampmark
It went into popular circulation as a term: the Kodak moment. The captured snap to be preserved, be it for posterity, or some other inconsequential reason. The Eastman Kodak Company is seemingly destined to become another parceled bit of posterity. ... More >>
Kodak’s Last Snap: The End of The Great Yellow Father
Saturday, 21 January 2012, 11:23 am | Binoy Kampmark
It went into popular circulation as a term: the Kodak moment. The captured snap to be preserved, be it for posterity, or some other inconsequential reason. The Eastman Kodak Company is seemingly destined to become another parceled bit of posterity. ... More >>
Human Arachnids: The Joke about Monster Bug Wars
Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 3:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It all starts with a disastrous human presumption: the animal world is there it be used, abused and mocked. Cage it, memorialize it, idealise it, and worship its remains with a sickly reverence through cable television subscriptions. Animals are merely ... More >>
Desecrating the Enemy: The US Marines and the Taliban
Saturday, 14 January 2012, 11:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
Modern wars, fought with what are often misplaced high-minded ideals, are often the stuff of public relations. Indeed, the public relations feature is paramount – to be a good war, the circulated story needs to be good. In the case of Afghanistan, ... More >>
Killing Nuclear Scientists: The War on Iran
Thursday, 12 January 2012, 6:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In the last two years, lethal attacks have been conducted on Iran’s nuclear scientists with increasing regularity. A pattern is emerging – assassinations and attempted assassinations are gathering pace as tensions between Iran and its opponents, primarily ... More >>
Doomed to Slow: Britain’s High-Speed Rail Line
Thursday, 12 January 2012, 5:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
‘By following in the footsteps of the 19th century railway pioneers, the government is signaling its commitment to providing 21st century infrastructure and connections – laying the groundwork for economic growth.’ These are the words of praise and ... More >>
ET Wars with China: Future Engagements in Space
Monday, 2 January 2012, 11:37 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was central to old occidental fantasies of the east that Cathay stood tall and strong as a majestic force, an intangible entity that mystified and terrified with its technological prowess and despotic enchantments. In a sense, the language of ... More >>
Absurdity and Truth: The Passing of Václav Havel
Wednesday, 21 December 2011, 10:35 am | Binoy Kampmark
In certain countries, theatres do not merely hire half-starved performers to act out the writings of half-starved writers. They also launch revolutions. The activity on the stage of a theatre assumes a force that moves beyond its confines, seeping ... More >>
Remembering Hitch
Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 9:51 am | Binoy Kampmark
There is little doubt that Christopher Hitchens was a fine scrapper who could be searing in sharpness. He was one who did enjoy his battles with a certain manic relish. ‘Hitch’ did have a habit of sniffing out places where revolution and violence ... More >>
Assaulting the Libraries: Austerity’s Attack on Learning
Saturday, 17 December 2011, 2:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If libraries are bastions of intellectual freedom where repositories of knowledge can be trotted out to dispel darkness, closing them implies the converse. The intellectually hungry are to be starved in the Britain of David Cameron, and writers and readers ... More >>
