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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 13]
Second Endings: Terminating Neighbours (Again)
Saturday, 22 February 2025, 2:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time. More >>
Feeling Very Fine: Picasso The Printmaker At The British Museum
Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 8:42 am | Binoy Kampmark
In 1905, the print Salomé announces a serious yet teasing effort by Picasso to depict the body of the naked dancer before Herod much “like a blind man who pictures an arse by the way it feels”. The outstretched leg suggests the Moulin Rouge. More >>
Far From Benign: The US Aid Industrial Complex
Friday, 14 February 2025, 9:06 am | Binoy Kampmark
To provide aid suggests a benevolent undertaking delivered selflessly. It arises from charitable mission, an attempt to alleviate, or at least soften the blows of hardship arising from various impairments. But the provision of aid is rarely benign, ... More >>
Why Fly In Europe? The Dark Triumph Of The Ryanair Effect
Thursday, 6 February 2025, 8:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
With the triumph of the Ryanair model, ruthlessly emulated by belt tightening carriers who seem to treat their passengers as mere units of income, taking the plane in Europe is no longer an interesting, let alone palatable prospect. More >>
Trump, Tariffs And Russia: A Very Muddled Policy
Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 10:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
When it comes to dealing with Russia, though, the matter of tariffs sits oddly. In 2024, US imports of Russian goods came in at US$2.8 billion. What is imported from Russia is certainly of value: radioactive materials indispensable for US power stations, ... More >>
Funeral Atmospherics At The British Library
Friday, 31 January 2025, 1:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The exfiltration of data was also accompanied by an encryption of data and important operating systems, a devilish effort effectively shutting out staff and users from any engagement. Certain services were also destroyed to frustrate recovery efforts ... More >>
Frankfurt Airport: A Special Kind Of Loathing
Tuesday, 28 January 2025, 8:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
The errors begin with a rather jaunty announcement by a cabin crew member that the flight from London is ahead of schedule. “You will have plenty of time to make your connecting flight. Take your boarding pass and head to the gate. That is all ... More >>
Pity The Poesy: Mark Rutte, NATO And Spending For War
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
A chief function of NATO’s public relations efforts lies in justifying its own existence. Instead of dismantling or finding more peaceful pursuits at the end of the Cold War, it became the groomed emissary of US power in Europe, while never being ... More >>
Justifying The Egregious: John Howard And Spying On East Timor
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 8:53 am | Binoy Kampmark
The best assessment offered of this episode in Australian history comes from Galbraith: both Howard and his foreign minister, had shown themselves to be mere “shills for the corporations”. This amoral approach towards a country in dire need undercut ... More >>
Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire
Sunday, 19 January 2025, 6:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Whoever claims credit for these latest developments hardly lessens the bitterness of the harvest. The prevarications, delays and obstructions have permitted massive destruction and loss of life to take place. Cowardice and bad faith have been the ... More >>
Situation Critical: UNRWA And Its Continued Operations
Saturday, 18 January 2025, 6:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any ceasefire, already soured by the killing of over 100 Palestinians since its announcement, does little to address the institutional chasm that will be left were UNRWA to cease operating in any meaningful way. More >>
AUKUS: Flawed And Sinking
Monday, 13 January 2025, 1:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Announced in September 2021 as “an enhanced trilateral security partnership”, AUKUS has hobbled and stuttered its way into 2025. Commentary from the pompom holders for war at such outlets as The Economist continue with such mild remarks as “ambitious ... More >>
Detained Without Charge: Eleven Yemenis Leave Guantánamo
Friday, 10 January 2025, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They are reminders about what the German jurist and Nazi enthusiast Carl Schmitt called a state of exception, a rather sinister way of saying that states, and leaders, can behave abominably if their position enables them to do so. More >>
Arresting And Killing Greenies: Targeting Climate Change Protests
Wednesday, 8 January 2025, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In wealthier states, the climate change protester may be safer, but hardly immune from state violence. Arrests of protestors in both Australia and the UK are above the international average: 20% and 17% respectively. More >>
Take Your Money And Shove It: The Second Long Telegram, US Aid, And Russia’s Economic Trauma
Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While historical forces, local conditions and cultural idiosyncrasies will always guide the development of any state and community, there is something to be said that post-Cold War Russia might have taken something of a different path had Merry’s ... More >>
Join The Army; Travel To Exotic, Distant Lands; And Radicalise
Monday, 6 January 2025, 3:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those with such records were also abundantly linked to far-right domestic extremist groups and movements (73.5%), while 15%, or 24 offenders, “were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups” such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic ... More >>
Frail Egos And Sandpit Colonialism: Australia, The United States And Invading Iraq
Saturday, 4 January 2025, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What makes Australia’s own involvement even worse, was that the reason to go to war lay less in an international security threat than a weak ego and reputational yearning: to be cringingly worthy to Washington. More >>
Ignoring A Leopard’s Spots: The UK, Syria And Courting Dictators
Friday, 3 January 2025, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In an echo of history, the current UK government has found a new man of transactional worth in Damascus. The great usurper, Jolani, has taken Bashar’s place. His Al Qaeda and Islamic State past is being strategically sanitised, the revolutionary ... More >>
Far From Ignorant: The European Union, Arms Exports And Israel
Thursday, 2 January 2025, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the European Union dithers and stalls on responding to this subject, despite the ICJ’s interim rulings that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, bureaucrats have been busy. More >>
Jimmy Carter, Israel And The Apartheid Question
Tuesday, 31 December 2024, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Beyond his stint in office, the tongue worked more easily, and opinions expressed with greater ease. Over time, for instance, he frowned with matronly disapproval at Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. More >>
