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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]
Binoy Kampmark: Writing from Heathrow’s Terminal 5
Tuesday, 25 August 2009, 2:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Most people desire leaving airports rather than staying in them. They are points of departure and arrival, not places of long residencies and contemplation. They are, of course, exceptions. Such figures as the Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti might ... More >>
Slaughtering for Freedom: The Normandy Campaign
Friday, 21 August 2009, 11:51 am | Binoy Kampmark
The British writer and Catholic convert, Malcolm Muggeridge can be found writing that the liberated do, in time, come to hate their liberators. In the case of freeing France from Nazi rule, the problems were particularly acute: do we let the Americans ... More >>
Feudal Lords & Concubines: Raising the Red Lantern
Monday, 10 August 2009, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Love is much like commerce, and often ends up bankrupting its participants. Much is put into it for often small returns, and with it come its sufferings, its perversions, and the ultimate lamentations. The luxurious ballet, Raise the Red Lantern , which ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Colleges and Alms in the Antipodes
Friday, 7 August 2009, 4:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A certain note of fear of the outside world resonates with every message to the students of Newman College, which has been accommodating Catholics from the University of Melbourne since 1918. The Rector is much like a governor general, a titular head ... More >>
Legacies Bright and Dark: Corazon Aquino
Monday, 3 August 2009, 10:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
Department of Defense" > Brutality in Filipino life has proven as natural as its inclement weather. Corazon (‘Cory’) Aquino had more than a passing acquaintance with this. Her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino, was imprisoned in 1973 by the megalomaniacal ... More >>
Swine Flu: When the ‘Sick’ Well Panic
Monday, 27 July 2009, 11:32 am | Binoy Kampmark
We should give the pigs a rest, and get on with living. Frank Füredi, ‘Swine Flu and the Dramatisation of Disease,’ Spiked , April 28, 2009 More >>
Babble & Bluster: The First Ashes Test at Cardiff
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, 1:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The conclusion of the first Ashes test of 2009 has come amidst a touch of English defiance, alleged perfidiousness and Australian complaints about unsportsmanlike time wasting. The ‘whingeing’ Pom has been replaced by the indignant Aussie, ... More >>
Compromising England: Big Ben's Birthday
Sunday, 12 July 2009, 6:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Big Ben turned 150 on Saturday to the music of composer Benjamin Till, but confusion still exists as to what the birthday is actually for. Tourists travel to London convinced they are seeing the tower and the fabled clock of ‘Big Ben.’ The confusion was ... More >>
The Death of the Manager: Robert McNamara
Wednesday, 8 July 2009, 1:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Robert McNamara, the managerial Übermensch of the American establishment, the ‘best and brightest’ of the brightest in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, is no longer with us. But his death on July 6 at the age of ninety-three leaves a complicated ... More >>
Michael Jackson: The Issue of Ownership
Tuesday, 7 July 2009, 11:05 am | Binoy Kampmark
The death of a celebrity tends to be a shock in a society which values it as an achievement onto itself. It produces addled reactions. The latest was Jamie Foxx’s idea that Jackson was a black man who was owned by America’s black community. More >>
‘Returning’ Iraq: The Withdrawal of US forces
Wednesday, 1 July 2009, 1:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
No one genuinely likes liberators. After the initial enthusiasm wears off, the term ‘occupation’ rapidly succeeds it. The English writer Malcolm Muggeridge noted how British soldiers were purposely precluded from a prominent role in the liberation ... More >>
Michael Jackson: The Issue of Ownership
Wednesday, 1 July 2009, 12:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The death of a celebrity tends to be a shock in a society which values it as an achievement onto itself. It produces addled reactions. The latest was Jamie Foxx’s idea that Jackson was a black man who was owned by America’s black community. The British ... More >>
Losing Marbles: The British Museum and Lord Elgin
Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 1:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s never quite gone away, and the issue burns more brightly than ever now, given Greece’s insistence that it has established a solid basis for the return of the Elgin marbles, still resident in the British Museum. A superb facility, judging from ... More >>
End of ‘Fair Play’: The Football Transfer Market
Thursday, 18 June 2009, 12:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The recent shuffling and dealing in the football transfer market has caused some consternation. Football watchers in the Spanish press have saluted Florentino Pérez’s powers of conviction in getting the mercurial Portuguese player Christiano Ronaldo ... More >>
The Iranian Elections: The Appearance of Democracy
Friday, 12 June 2009, 11:38 am | Binoy Kampmark
Iran goes to the polls on Friday, and will find an assortment of individuals to pick from who have been approved by the Islamic establishment in that country. The presidential incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces two reformist candidates in the form of former ... More >>
Populism and Legitimacy: The EU Elections
Wednesday, 10 June 2009, 10:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
The European political left and centre-left have suffered a bruising in the recent European elections. Conservative governments in power (France, Germany, Italy) have done well; those not in power (the UK, Spain) have managed to woo the protest vote. ... More >>
When Copyright is Specious: Salinger & The Catcher
Thursday, 4 June 2009, 12:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
J. D. Salinger is not a happy chap. His one significant work, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is a well-guarded bastion of literary worth. On Monday, he sought to block the publication of a supposed sequel by John David California, 60 Years Later: Coming ... More >>
General Motors: Fall of an Ignoble Giant
Wednesday, 3 June 2009, 8:44 am | Binoy Kampmark
General Motors, so much seen as the exemplar of American business, with its strengths and, for sometime now, glaring weaknesses, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The writing had been on the wall for sometime. Its bankruptcy petition documents ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Amnesty’s International Report
Monday, 1 June 2009, 11:48 am | Binoy Kampmark
Amnesty International, those determined scribblers and activists on human rights, have released their annual report State of the World’s Human Rights . Irene Khan, Amnesty’s Secretary General, has emphasized the link between the economic malaise ... More >>
Gore on the Croisette: The Cannes Film Festival
Wednesday, 27 May 2009, 1:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Beauty, elegance, restraint. Films that made these qualities their métier were shunned on the Croisette this year. Notably, Jane Campion’s Bright Star , celebrating John Keats love for Fanny Brawne in a manner penetrative and balanced, was ignored. Bloodthirsty ... More >>
