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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 142]
Sexing the Politician: The Della Bosca Scandal
Thursday, 10 September 2009, 10:27 am | Binoy Kampmark
Sex is boring ‘down under’. When it is exposed as something that politicians do, notably with those who are not their spouses, it thrills. The reaction to a person who was supposedly a contender for the New South Wales premiership tells us as much. ... More >>
Australia’s Salvos and the Devil’s Brew
Tuesday, 8 September 2009, 3:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
‘2.3 million Australians had their first alcoholic sip or drink when they were just 10 years of age or under.’ So starts a brief from the Salvation Army (7 September) in its launch of the Alcohol Awareness Campaign for this year, fronted by a meaty ... More >>
‘Mad Dog’ Qaddafi: The Eternal Trickster
Friday, 4 September 2009, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s rule has matured to a ripe 40 years, sealed by blood and firm revolutionary credentials. The ‘mad dog’ continues to bark from Tripoli, though noises of aggression are muzzled these days by concessions to the West and ... More >>
Australia’s Emergency Response and the UN
Wednesday, 2 September 2009, 10:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
When the statement of the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Human Rights on the situation in Australia’s Northern Territory was released last week, there was a howl of protest from politicians and activists across the country. Professor James ... More >>
Ted Kennedy: The Art of Compromise and Tragedy
Thursday, 27 August 2009, 7:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It can never be a pleasant thing to be shaded by the greatness of one’s historically hefty siblings. In this sense, US Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, dead from brain cancer at the age of 77, was blameless. He came from one of America’s most famed political ... More >>
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 >>
