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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 137]
Banning LA Zombie: The Aussie Way
Friday, 23 July 2010, 6:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Censors are paid to have dirty minds. The Film Classification Board of the office of Film and Literature Classification is being paid to have particularly filthy ones. A few little darlings, scant qualified to examine anything coming close to art or ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The US Intelligence Colossus
Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 9:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
‘The intelligence world,’ says claim the authors of a CIA document on collection and analysis of intelligence on Iraq, ‘is one of ambiguity, nuance and complexity’ (Jul 15, 2007). All the more dire then, that the US intelligence effort since the ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Case of William Jacques
Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 6:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
People are imprisoned for an assortment of offences against the social order. These rarely involve infractions against reading books, or their acquisition, unless one so happens to be living in a state suspicious of the written word. But in Britain, ... More >>
The Moat ‘Execution’: The Reason of Force
Tuesday, 20 July 2010, 11:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It all seems grim. Some called it an execution by police forces. But the debate on Raoul Moat continues to rage. Britain’s most wanted man has become something of a poster boy of sickened violence, responsible for having shot his former girlfriend ... More >>
Spectral Duties: Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer
Wednesday, 14 July 2010, 5:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Roman Polanski might have been having his legal troubles of late, but that has not put him off his stroke with the screen adaptation of Robert Harris’s The Ghost Writer . It is impressive to see that Polanski, even under house arrest, can feed ... More >>
Matters of Opinion: The Sacking of Octavia Nasr
Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 1:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Where does opinion start and objectivity stop in the labours of a journalist? If we want investigative scribblers who are incapable of meshing value judgments with the material they come across, they might as well give the game up. There is, quite ... More >>
Matters of Opinion: The Sacking of Octavia Nasr
Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 12:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Where does opinion start and objectivity stop in the labours of a journalist? If we want investigative scribblers who are incapable of meshing value judgments with the material they come across, they might as well give the game up. There is, quite ... More >>
Vino & Vinyasa: An Orgasm of Life in San Francisco
Monday, 12 July 2010, 9:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
Yoga stretched bodies, taunt and in various shades of exercise, in a mocking show of entertainment, seeing how far their litheness would take them. Then, bottles of tart California Sauvignon Blanc gazing at their projected derrieres, ready to be ... More >>
Ways of Seeing: The Secret of Their Eyes
Friday, 9 July 2010, 4:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The truth of Michel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (originally À la recherché du temps perdu ) according to the critic Howard Moss is this: that reality exists within ourselves as much as it does, if not more so, than without, and that salvation ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Death of ‘Big Australia’
Friday, 9 July 2010, 2:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
‘Big Australia’ has shrunk as a motif for both its population and its politicians. At the start of this year, Australians were pondering projected figures that the country would grow to 35 million by 2050, from its current figure of 22 million. ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The failings of the G20
Friday, 2 July 2010, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The positioning of the powers at the latest G20 conference made an odd spectacle. For one, a prominent supporter of the G20 conference Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, was absent, ambushed by a party vote at home. But in the broader picture, ... More >>
The US Supreme Court and Gun Control
Friday, 2 July 2010, 12:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The amendment on bearing arms has always teased, tormented and thrilled the American psyche. On the one hand, it is revered with totemic intensity, the marker of a people free to adopt the necessary force to protect their welfare. The essentially antiquated ... More >>
The Israeli Lobby in San Francisco
Wednesday, 30 June 2010, 10:57 am | Binoy Kampmark
‘I was the child of the survivors of the Holocaust.’ With that, Roz Rothstein of the activist group Stand With Us that hopes to transform the image of Israel on US campuses sets the moral authority before a small audience at an office on Howard ... More >>
The Passing of Robert C. Byrd
Tuesday, 29 June 2010, 5:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few in American politics can lay claim to long periods of durability, but Robert C. Byrd, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, was one of them. He thrived in the soil (some might say the manure) of Congressional debate and won nine terms. ... More >>
Pride and Parades in San Francisco
Tuesday, 29 June 2010, 12:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Gyrating hips, oiled bodies, many naked and lithe with physical promise. Brilliant shows and incandescent displays of festive colour under an unusually warm sun. Outfits of leather and super hero costumes, underwear prominently displayed. Then, no costumes ... More >>
The Hunt for a Russian Silicon Valley
Friday, 25 June 2010, 2:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When Petty officer 3rd Class Pamela J. Manns took a photo of the Russian Federation Navy Missile Cruiser Varyag on June 20, it proved quite a sight. Small Coast Guard boats provided a seemingly unnecessary zone of security around the vessel as it powered ... More >>
The Resignation of Stanley McChrystal
Friday, 25 June 2010, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Bitter wars often result in bitter decisions between civilian commanders and their military subordinates. Dissatisfied commanders in the field can stray. Comments can be made out of turn. General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as the United States’ ... More >>
Parables of Irony: José Saramago
Tuesday, 22 June 2010, 12:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
A world of blindness that reduces those of civilized sight to barbaric sightlessness; a world where death ceases to reap, leaving the living unmolested. These were just a few visions put to print by the Portuguese writer and Nobel Laureate José Saramago, ... More >>
Parables of Irony: José Saramago
Sunday, 20 June 2010, 2:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A world of blindness that reduces those of civilized sight to barbaric sightlessness; a world where death ceases to reap, leaving the living unmolested. These were just a few visions put to print by the Portuguese writer and Nobel Laureate José Saramago, ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Violence and Rivalry in Kyrgyzstan
Saturday, 19 June 2010, 1:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Soviet Union, and indeed much of historical Russia, was an ethnic jigsaw held together by the force of arms and a brutally strong executive. When the executive weakened, the temptation to revolt grew. Historical scores needed to be confronted ... More >>
