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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: 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 >>
Binoy Kampmark: Benedict XVI & the Anglican Churh
Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 10:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
Pope Benedict XVI is nothing if not wily. The Catholic Church issued a call last week stating that it would enable Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism, thereby undermining an already conflicted Church amounting to 77 million followers. Disaffected ... More >>
That Dirty Colonial War: The Boer Conflict
Monday, 12 October 2009, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was some 110 years ago that the Boer War commenced, a nasty conflict with a miscellany of atrocities befitting a classic colonial engagement. It was waged in the true imperialist mould, revealing an unvarnished desire on the part of an insatiable Britain to acquire ... More >>
Defending Polanski: The excuse of Art in Sex
Friday, 9 October 2009, 2:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The arrest of Roman Polanski at Zürich’s airport on a 31-year-old fugitive warrant from the United States involving sex with a 13-year-old girl has generated its fair share of support for the aging director. Polanski’s move was ill-advised. Some ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: McChrystal and the Afghan Problem
Tuesday, 6 October 2009, 1:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Times are desperate. The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal meets the US President for 25 minutes in a Scandinavian capital. A potential scolding is on offer. From what we gather, there was a ‘frank’ exchange of views. ... More >>
Audacity of Hype? A world without Nuclear weapons
Friday, 2 October 2009, 1:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Last Thursday, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a U.S-drafted resolution that did much to place Barack Obama’s views regarding a ‘world without nuclear weapons’ on the table. Opinions on the calamitous use of nuclear weapons were plentiful. ... More >>
Trembling on the Nuclear Trigger
Tuesday, 29 September 2009, 9:47 am | Binoy Kampmark
history of international relations is often a register of false perceptions, innuendo and dangerous gossip. A certain sense of terror often fits the bill in that regard. ‘Fear is a very dangerous thing,’ explained Britain’s post-World War I Prime ... More >>
Beleaguered Indians: ‘Curry Bashings’ in Oz
Thursday, 24 September 2009, 1:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Indian officials and figures are not happy. At least when it comes to gestures on the part of Australian politicians to pacify them over claims that Australia is a safe destination for their vast pool of students. Attacks on Indian students, whether ... More >>
The Rogue Chef: Keith Floyd & the Cult of Cooking
Monday, 21 September 2009, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Saving Spiders: Celebrities & the cult of Arachne
Monday, 14 September 2009, 4:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One has to have a certain sense of fun in the name-game of the scientific world. Spiders have been rather prominent of late, propelled to fame by zealous zoologists keen to preserve them. The latest in this line, according to the English Daily Telegraph ... More >>
