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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 2]
Sporting Contradictions: Athletes, The Olympics And Climate Change
Saturday, 15 March 2025, 5:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If care of the planet is what these athletes sincerely want, a swift abolition of the Olympics, along with a virtuous cancellation of the IOC, would achieve their goals. Why wait for extreme weather to either modify or even do away with the games ... More >>
Militarising Europe: The EU Defence Spending Bug
Friday, 14 March 2025, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The March 6 meeting of the Special European Council was a chance for 27 leaders of the European Union to make that point. It was time to cash in on the Russia threat and promote a strategic vision that spoke of elevated dangers. More >>
Aggrieved Speculation: The Trump Illness Hypothesis
Wednesday, 12 March 2025, 2:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cyril Connolly remarked, are bound to have their critical faculties blunted by the poor quality of books available for review, Trump as both subject and method has cut through the undergrowth of sensible discourse. The illness hypothesis is yet ... More >>
More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash
Saturday, 8 March 2025, 2:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects. Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness. Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed ... More >>
Macron’s Offer: France And The Delusions Of Nuclear Deterrence
Friday, 7 March 2025, 1:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The trouble with deterrence chatter is that it remains hostage to delusion. Strategists talk in extravagant terms about the genuine prospect that nuclear weapons can make any one state safer, leading to some calculus of tolerable use. More >>
Righteous, Confused And Unwilling: Europe’s Ukrainian Predicament
Tuesday, 4 March 2025, 7:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Given their lack of punch and prowess, one arising from years fed by the devitalising US teat, European states are simply playing with toy soldiers. Eventually, they will have to play along if peace in Ukraine, however much detested in its form, is to ... More >>
Zelensky: Victim Of Colosseum Politics
Monday, 3 March 2025, 3:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a salient reminder that support for Ukraine has iced over, that it is no longer the blue-eyed boy of US politics, Western civilisation’s consecrated prop against Russian savagery. More >>
Ho Hum At Sea: Anti-China Hysteria Down Under
Saturday, 1 March 2025, 6:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Such is the standard of political debate that something as unremarkable as this latest sea incident has become a throbbing issue that supposedly shows the Albanese government as insufficiently belligerent. More >>
Fiendish Experiments: Trump’s Guantánamo Bay Migrant Detentions
Friday, 28 February 2025, 1:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The use of the island to deal with immigrants has been a blighted practice undertaken by US administrations since the 1970s. The Trump administration’s waspish approach to unwanted immigrants replicates the pattern of deterrence and demonisation. More >>
Israel’s Annexation Drive: The West Bank And Expelling Palestinian Refugees
Wednesday, 26 February 2025, 12:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The blunt savagery of these latest actions, as with the broader campaign against militant groups by Israel, continues the reductive logic that celebrates force over peace, the use of weapons over considerations of diplomacy. More >>
Gloominess And Magical Thinking: The Comical, Frightening Mike Burgess
Tuesday, 25 February 2025, 12:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Australian public, it would seem, is not playing along with the authorities. How dare they question and debate the norms they have been told are so sacred to servile stability? “Social cohesion” – a vacuous term – is apparently eroding. More >>
Cowardice And Cancellation: Creative Australia And The Venice Biennale
Sunday, 23 February 2025, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Creative Australia's dropping of of Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale, along with the curator of the pavilion’s artistic team, Michael Dagostino, shows that true artistic subversion is not the ... More >>
Second Endings: Terminating Neighbours (Again)
Saturday, 22 February 2025, 2:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time. More >>
Feeling Very Fine: Picasso The Printmaker At The British Museum
Tuesday, 18 February 2025, 8:42 am | Binoy Kampmark
In 1905, the print Salomé announces a serious yet teasing effort by Picasso to depict the body of the naked dancer before Herod much “like a blind man who pictures an arse by the way it feels”. The outstretched leg suggests the Moulin Rouge. More >>
Far From Benign: The US Aid Industrial Complex
Friday, 14 February 2025, 9:06 am | Binoy Kampmark
To provide aid suggests a benevolent undertaking delivered selflessly. It arises from charitable mission, an attempt to alleviate, or at least soften the blows of hardship arising from various impairments. But the provision of aid is rarely benign, ... More >>
Why Fly In Europe? The Dark Triumph Of The Ryanair Effect
Thursday, 6 February 2025, 8:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
With the triumph of the Ryanair model, ruthlessly emulated by belt tightening carriers who seem to treat their passengers as mere units of income, taking the plane in Europe is no longer an interesting, let alone palatable prospect. More >>
Trump, Tariffs And Russia: A Very Muddled Policy
Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 10:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
When it comes to dealing with Russia, though, the matter of tariffs sits oddly. In 2024, US imports of Russian goods came in at US$2.8 billion. What is imported from Russia is certainly of value: radioactive materials indispensable for US power stations, ... More >>
Funeral Atmospherics At The British Library
Friday, 31 January 2025, 1:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The exfiltration of data was also accompanied by an encryption of data and important operating systems, a devilish effort effectively shutting out staff and users from any engagement. Certain services were also destroyed to frustrate recovery efforts ... More >>
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 >>
