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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]
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 >>
Lambasting Australia: Cricket and National sentiment
Wednesday, 14 December 2011, 2:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The game was fabulous, the outcome stunning – the first victory for New Zealand on Australian soil in 26 years. When one should be seeing cricket as a game that bucks criticism each and every time it faces it, we are seeing panic, concern and ... More >>
Freezing out Britain: Europe’s New Accord
Monday, 12 December 2011, 12:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is much more in the way of European chatter taking place in that troubled part of the world. Discussions held at the Brussels summit on Friday saw the 27 countries of the EU attempting to forge an agreement in an effort to create what would effectively ... More >>
Going Populist: Obama’s New Platform
Sunday, 11 December 2011, 12:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
After a period of seemingly quiet dithering, it seems that President Barack Obama has moved into seizing the populist moment in his stance against the fat cat contingent of American society. The theme is ‘togetherness’ – a country can only progress ... More >>
The Postmodern Theatre: Russia, the Elections and Putin
Friday, 9 December 2011, 5:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The protest pedigree of the Putin-generation Russian is a small one. With a police state mentality well and truly in position, taking to the streets is bound to land the individual a period of true, heartfelt police inhospitality. More >>
Eco-Terrorists & Biomass Plants: Lies at Montana University
Friday, 9 December 2011, 10:14 am | Binoy Kampmark
‘We all need to remember is that what we are constructing is a public relations story, not a scientific analysis. We need to be straight with the facts but tilt the story towards our perspective. Small words, short sentences, no jargon is what ... More >>
Johnny Depp, Jesus and Blasphemy
Wednesday, 7 December 2011, 11:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
In that rather well minted British comedy Blackadder, an altered version of the Scrooge legend is offered. Baldrick, Ebenezer’s life long and putrid dogsbody, describes a nativity scene where, because of a short supply of infants, a dog has had to sit ... More >>
Herman’s Antics: Going Belly Up in the Cain Campaign
Monday, 5 December 2011, 11:39 am | Binoy Kampmark
America’s political labelers always get busy during campaigns. The ‘Black Reagan’, however complimentary one might take it, has been used to describe the rapid rise of Republican contender Herman Cain. ‘In the firmness and cheerfulness of his conservatism, ... More >>
The Two Million Strike: Eating Public Pensions in Blighty
Monday, 5 December 2011, 11:14 am | Binoy Kampmark
The pension is under global attack by the austerity, welfare allergic fraternity, and the United Kingdom is one of the countries at the forefront of the cost cutting experiment. The Prime Minister himself explained with crystal clarity why two million ... More >>
Breaking Backs: NATO and Pakistan
Thursday, 1 December 2011, 10:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was the affirmation, and for Pakistan, surely a confirmation about their rump status as a sovereign state before the military interventions of NATO. Twenty four slain Pakistani soldiers over the weekend speak of that, and the response from the ... More >>
