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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 141]
The Conservative Dissident: Hosein-Ali Montazeri
Monday, 21 December 2009, 3:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri has passed into the history of the Iranian Revolution as he was, potentially at least, about to create another. Thirty years ago, he was a vital figure in unseating the Shah, and well placed within the circle of the Ayatollah ... More >>
The ‘inevitable’ War: Blair and Iraq
Thursday, 17 December 2009, 10:21 am | Binoy Kampmark
Even after he has left office, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s remarks on the Iraq War are a source of concern. Surely there can be little surprise about his latest opinions on the subject. More >>
Invictus: Dreams and Realities
Wednesday, 16 December 2009, 10:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
When the Springboks, South Africa’s famed rugby team, returned to the international fold after decades of isolation, suggestions were made to change the name. Drop the label and jersey, went the cry, those hated symbols and reminders of apartheid. More >>
Scripting Climate History: The Copenhagen Talks
Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 12:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
At the opening of the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, assembled delegates were told to write the ‘right’ kind of history. Short films portraying gloomy scenarios were shown as an incentive, one featuring a girl’s plea. More >>
A Crusade or Nothing: Brown and the Banks
Monday, 14 December 2009, 10:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is seen as punitive, a populist reaction. There is little doubt that some people in the City end of London will think so. But Gordon Brown’s government is intent on winning votes by ‘supertaxing’ banks, exercising a veto over the payment of ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Just Wars and Obama’s Nobel
Friday, 11 December 2009, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The greatest example of how peace prizes can sometimes morph into war accolades was given by President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize address. Far from being a message about peace, ‘A Just and Lasting Peace’ was a discourse on just war, ... More >>
The Conviction of ‘Foxy Knoxy’
Wednesday, 9 December 2009, 12:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a sordid tale, enrapturing audiences in Italy and globally. The murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher, who was found with her throat slit in her Perugia apartment in November 2007 after being sexually assaulted, continues ... More >>
Film Review: None too Precious
Tuesday, 8 December 2009, 12:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is one to make of this extraordinarily gritty, brutal film by Lee Daniels? An obese 16-year-old girl from Harlem is cooking for her abusive, welfare-addicted mother in a room that rarely sees the light of day. The mother hurls an object at ... More >>
Transgressing with Tiger: The Fall of Mr. Perfect
Monday, 7 December 2009, 11:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
It has been called the spoiling of a good walk and similar to watching flies fornicate, but golf has decided to provide a touch of entertainment for the rest of us. And it should come as little surprise that it has nothing to do with golf itself. But ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The charge of the 30,000
Friday, 4 December 2009, 2:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
President Obama’s decision to deploy a further 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan looks like, on the surface, a chance to people more cemeteries. Politically, it has the effect of reaching out across the spectrum of political attitudes, hoping to, as ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Banning Minarets in Switzerland
Friday, 4 December 2009, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Swiss are in a spot of bother, at least before the disapproving eyes of international opinion. 57 percent of those from a country described by Jonathan Raban as full of phobic hand washers in a Barclays Bank have voted in favour of banning minarets. ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: When men do stare at goats
Tuesday, 1 December 2009, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a line at the start of Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats : ‘More of this is true than you would believe.’ The line is off putting – what is, or isn’t true? The audience is none the wiser, and the traces to the original book ... More >>
Coco Chanel: The Fashion of Androgyny
Thursday, 26 November 2009, 3:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The scene is an orphanage in late nineteenth century France, a place where children’s dreams are stifled and crushed. Even here, the eyes of a perceptive child gaze with wonder at the funereal habits of nuns. More >>
Contradictory Friends: Rudd and Copenhagen
Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 12:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cynicism, observed H.G. Wells, is humour in ill-health. There is much of that variety of humour present as the Copenhagen talks on climate change approach. Instead of building bridges to the conference, existing ones are being removed or modified. ... More >>
The Evil that Remains: Apologising for the Past
Tuesday, 24 November 2009, 11:35 am | Binoy Kampmark
Repentance hangs thickly in the air, at least when it comes to some institutions and government authorities. The late Jacques Derrida noted near the end of his life that the world was bearing witness to a ‘proliferation of scenes of repentance.’ ... More >>
The Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry
Saturday, 21 November 2009, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
That much air time, and column space, is being given to this issue might be seen as worrying. But football matches have a habit of transfixing global audiences. No sport attracts more money or tribal interest. The largest sporting event on the planet ... More >>
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem
Friday, 20 November 2009, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In 1987, the conservative author Midge Decter described her association with Israel and those willing to place it above conventional judgment. ‘We know ourselves to be bound by ties so deep, so essential, so unconditional, that they are beyond daylight ... More >>
The Sensuous Revolt: An Education
Friday, 13 November 2009, 4:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Sixteen-year old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is predictably impressionable. Intelligence and the odd cutting remark might equip her for the classroom joust and parents in suburban Twickenham. But she has much growing up to do, something which is given ... More >>
Tearing Down Walls: Berlin Twenty Years After
Thursday, 12 November 2009, 12:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Twenty years have passed since a vision collapsed. For it was not just the Berlin Wall that fell in November 1989, but a social and political project that began with Vladimir Lenin at the Finland Station. The novelist Günter Grass’ version of two ... More >>
Nothing in a Name: The Fort Hood Killings
Wednesday, 11 November 2009, 9:13 am | Binoy Kampmark
Virginia-born Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in a ten-minute orgy of killing at the Texas military base of Fort Hood last week, is now in custody recovering from his wounds. Thirteen people (twelve soldiers and a civilian) were killed, and thirty injured. ... More >>
