Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 15]
Frankfurt Airport: A Special Kind Of Loathing
Tuesday, 28 January 2025, 8:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
The errors begin with a rather jaunty announcement by a cabin crew member that the flight from London is ahead of schedule. “You will have plenty of time to make your connecting flight. Take your boarding pass and head to the gate. That is all ... More >>
Pity The Poesy: Mark Rutte, NATO And Spending For War
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
A chief function of NATO’s public relations efforts lies in justifying its own existence. Instead of dismantling or finding more peaceful pursuits at the end of the Cold War, it became the groomed emissary of US power in Europe, while never being ... More >>
Justifying The Egregious: John Howard And Spying On East Timor
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 8:53 am | Binoy Kampmark
The best assessment offered of this episode in Australian history comes from Galbraith: both Howard and his foreign minister, had shown themselves to be mere “shills for the corporations”. This amoral approach towards a country in dire need undercut ... More >>
Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire
Sunday, 19 January 2025, 6:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Whoever claims credit for these latest developments hardly lessens the bitterness of the harvest. The prevarications, delays and obstructions have permitted massive destruction and loss of life to take place. Cowardice and bad faith have been the ... More >>
Situation Critical: UNRWA And Its Continued Operations
Saturday, 18 January 2025, 6:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any ceasefire, already soured by the killing of over 100 Palestinians since its announcement, does little to address the institutional chasm that will be left were UNRWA to cease operating in any meaningful way. More >>
AUKUS: Flawed And Sinking
Monday, 13 January 2025, 1:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Announced in September 2021 as “an enhanced trilateral security partnership”, AUKUS has hobbled and stuttered its way into 2025. Commentary from the pompom holders for war at such outlets as The Economist continue with such mild remarks as “ambitious ... More >>
Detained Without Charge: Eleven Yemenis Leave Guantánamo
Friday, 10 January 2025, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They are reminders about what the German jurist and Nazi enthusiast Carl Schmitt called a state of exception, a rather sinister way of saying that states, and leaders, can behave abominably if their position enables them to do so. More >>
Arresting And Killing Greenies: Targeting Climate Change Protests
Wednesday, 8 January 2025, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In wealthier states, the climate change protester may be safer, but hardly immune from state violence. Arrests of protestors in both Australia and the UK are above the international average: 20% and 17% respectively. More >>
Take Your Money And Shove It: The Second Long Telegram, US Aid, And Russia’s Economic Trauma
Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While historical forces, local conditions and cultural idiosyncrasies will always guide the development of any state and community, there is something to be said that post-Cold War Russia might have taken something of a different path had Merry’s ... More >>
Join The Army; Travel To Exotic, Distant Lands; And Radicalise
Monday, 6 January 2025, 3:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those with such records were also abundantly linked to far-right domestic extremist groups and movements (73.5%), while 15%, or 24 offenders, “were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups” such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic ... More >>
Frail Egos And Sandpit Colonialism: Australia, The United States And Invading Iraq
Saturday, 4 January 2025, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What makes Australia’s own involvement even worse, was that the reason to go to war lay less in an international security threat than a weak ego and reputational yearning: to be cringingly worthy to Washington. More >>
Ignoring A Leopard’s Spots: The UK, Syria And Courting Dictators
Friday, 3 January 2025, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In an echo of history, the current UK government has found a new man of transactional worth in Damascus. The great usurper, Jolani, has taken Bashar’s place. His Al Qaeda and Islamic State past is being strategically sanitised, the revolutionary ... More >>
Far From Ignorant: The European Union, Arms Exports And Israel
Thursday, 2 January 2025, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the European Union dithers and stalls on responding to this subject, despite the ICJ’s interim rulings that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, bureaucrats have been busy. More >>
Jimmy Carter, Israel And The Apartheid Question
Tuesday, 31 December 2024, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Beyond his stint in office, the tongue worked more easily, and opinions expressed with greater ease. Over time, for instance, he frowned with matronly disapproval at Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. More >>
Greenland Redux: Trump And America’s Continuing Obsession
Monday, 30 December 2024, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
History shows that empires acquire territories in various ways. Dynasties link arms through marriage, as the Habsburgs were famous for doing. Territories are pinched by means of arms or stolen through sham contracts and undertakings. They might also ... More >>
Sinking Mike Pompeo: Tucker Carlson, Assange And Trump
Saturday, 28 December 2024, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the return of Trump to the White House, whose campaign was aided by various figures sympathetic to Assange’s publishing efforts, the eyes shifted, once again, to Pompeo. Would the now leaner figure make a return, probably as Defense Secretary? ... More >>
Jesting On The Environment: Australian Mining Gets A Present
Thursday, 26 December 2024, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The institute pointed out that the three mines, in the current state of operation, “were already so large that they could almost cover greater Sydney, or most Australian cities.” More >>
Concentrated Markets And Iceless Fokkers
Monday, 23 December 2024, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s a scheme that has become the central strategy of governments, administrative and corporate entities the world over. More >>
Catching Pegasus: Mercenary Spyware And The Liability Of The NSO Group
Sunday, 22 December 2024, 5:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In this woefully unregulated industry, Israel’s poster child of spyware will most likely cough up and continue to make money from the pathologies of government insecurity. They will just have to be mindful of the US market from hereon in. More >>
The Strawman Of Antisemitism: Banning Protests Against Israel Down Under
Thursday, 19 December 2024, 2:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Ever the opportunist, Netanyahu saw a chance to see unsubstantiated links between the bombing in Melbourne, Australian foreign policy and antisemitism. The conclusion was childishly simple: “Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism.” More >>