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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 132]
The Literacy of Flesh: Naked Reading in San Francisco
Thursday, 6 January 2011, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Had there been books in the Garden of Eden, this might well have been envisaged. Bodies of various shapes and sizes, keeping company with the printed word. To get into this particular garden, however, requires payment. More >>
Farewell Arnie: The Governator Leaves Office
Tuesday, 4 January 2011, 11:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
If life is a theatre, Californian politics has provided one of its greatest stages. In cinematic terms, the state has seen the likes of Ronald Reagan and, most recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2003, Hollywood’s muscle bound creature, termed a condom ... More >>
Sex, Politics and Assange
Wednesday, 22 December 2010, 12:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Gore Vidal has reminded us regularly how sex is politics. The chance to throw sex into the political mix is hard to resist. It becomes a valuable weapon, destroying reputations and undermining credibility. By becoming a conduit for the release of ... More >>
The Stammer of History: George VI and The King’s Speech
Tuesday, 21 December 2010, 10:54 am | Binoy Kampmark
The speech is a vital part of the modern ruler’s job description. With the radio and the onset of wireless, the English Royal family found itself having to front up to a public face on a scale never before seen. Too bad, then, for the nervous, ... More >>
Blessed Sisters and Cross Dressing: Christmas in City Hall
Monday, 20 December 2010, 5:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The much admired rotunda is filled with anticipation. The audience gathered within San Francisco City Hall awaits the annual Tree of Hope Lighting ceremony. They are in for a treat of contradictions, a pastiche, a pantomime. Towering transvestites ... More >>
Brutality and Poultry: Killing Chickens in Krasnaya Polyana
Monday, 20 December 2010, 5:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The scene is harrowing. Bins filled with living gold fluff, the bodies of chicks readied for slaughter. There is, of course, nothing new about slaughtering huge numbers of poultry, a process that takes place everyday. The Krasnaya Polyana poultry farm ... More >>
The Passing of Richard Holbrooke
Friday, 17 December 2010, 4:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The New York Times titled its headline on the subject as the death of a ‘giant’ of American diplomacy. The New York Observer called him the Bulldozer of Manhattan. Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark : Death on Christmas Island
Thursday, 16 December 2010, 4:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
How visual, how cruel, and how wasteful. The death toll from official sources from a wooden fishing boat that smashed against the treacherous coastline of the Australian territory of Christmas Island has reached 28. Up to 100 might have been on to the ... More >>
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and the Virtues of Secrecy
Monday, 13 December 2010, 10:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
In John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, the subject of official secrecy crops up. A spinster lady working in the civil service is accused of leaking secrets to the press. The formidable Rumpole seeks to defend her against charges that she has ... More >>
Parked at The Saloon: The Blues of North Beach
Monday, 13 December 2010, 10:05 am | Binoy Kampmark
The lady at the front has assumed an imperial pose, like a thin cat guarding a tomb. She emits a haze of cloud from her cigarette, thick illegal plumes filling the doorway. On her lap, magazines, the local detritus leafed through with bony fingers. And the ... More >>
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and the Virtues of Secrecy
Saturday, 11 December 2010, 2:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, the subject of official secrecy crops up. A spinster lady working in the civil service is accused of leaking secrets to the press. The formidable Rumpole seeks to defend her against charges that she has ... More >>
‘They Did It’: The curious case of Rudd and Assange
Thursday, 9 December 2010, 10:31 am | Binoy Kampmark
Is anything believable these days in the wide world of information leaks? First, the government of Julian Assange’s home country, Australia, proved hesitant with providing assistance to the cause célèbre of information disclosure. Given the ... More >>
Bortko’s Taras Bulba: A Clash of Visions
Wednesday, 8 December 2010, 11:50 am | Binoy Kampmark
Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba , a bloody story of a Zaporozhian Cossack, has received much attention over the years. A continual sticking point lies in which version the reader chances upon. Two are in circulation – the earlier 1835 piece and another, ... More >>
World Cup Bidders: Winning and Losing
Tuesday, 7 December 2010, 1:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A nation consisting of over ninety percent desert will be hosting one of the world’s greatest sporting occasions in 2022. A petro-mafia state will be hosting the same event in 2018. Money is bound to be squandered, and much of it already has been. ... More >>
The Be-jeweled Cosmos: Art and Antiquities in San Francisco
Tuesday, 7 December 2010, 11:57 am | Binoy Kampmark
The day after. Slightly worn, a touch weak like William Burroughs after a narcotics gaze. Have a hankering for something restorative. It is San Francisco, and your correspondent is recovering in the galvanic city which has released another burst of current. The ... More >>
The Patriotic Hacker and WikiLeaks
Thursday, 2 December 2010, 12:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Every story requires a counter-story; every book, another. The final story will never be told on any subject. So, with the release of over 250 thousand US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, traffickers of information have adopted various stances on the subject. More >>
Going Rotten in FIFA: The World of Football Corruption
Thursday, 2 December 2010, 12:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
We are transfixed by the obvious. If WikiLeaks divulges documents that reveal commonly known antipathies between states, the guardians of the world’s worst kept secrets have little to do but squeal and condemn. ‘Principles’ become important. Prosecution ... More >>
Elevated Gossip: WikiLeaks and the Art of Diplomacy
Tuesday, 30 November 2010, 4:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
WikiLeaks is at it again, deluging the channels of the world wide web with material for public delectation. There have been previous grand releases on sensitive material dealing with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The target now has been US diplomacy ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Dirty Martinis at the Green Mill
Thursday, 25 November 2010, 11:20 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Green Mill is bouncing, alive with a current so intense it electrifies. The seating seems to be moving, winged and taking flight from its hinges. The ambience is trilling like summer larks with a naughty chord. There is a shrine resembling the most holy ... More >>
God in the Machine: The San Francisco International Car Show
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 1:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A puzzle when one turns up to a San Francisco social or business event. What to wear? Silicon valley types will don the worn jeans, shadowed by stains in the company of a jacket. The girls will glam up, overdoing the make-up like a heavy mask, walking ... More >>
