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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 36]
Terms Of Condescension: The Language Of Australia’s 'Pacific Family'
Saturday, 2 July 2022, 5:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When will this nonsense on familial connection between Australia and the Pacific end? In 2018, Australia’s then Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, drew upon a term that his predecessors had not. On November 8 that year, he announced ... More >>
Convenient Omissions: The Ukraine-EU Candidacy Show
Thursday, 30 June 2022, 3:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Instances of sympathy are rarely excuses to throw out the rule book. In the case of the European Union, throwing out the rule book about admission has tended to be a feature of enlargement. Credentials of candidate states have been, when needed, ... More >>
Overruling Roe v Wade: The International Dimension
Thursday, 30 June 2022, 5:50 am | Binoy Kampmark
American exceptionalism can be a dreary thing, and no more so than each time a US president promotes the country’s imperial credentials and continued prowess. But in matters of literacy, shared wealth, and health care, the US has been outpaced ... More >>
The First Attack On The Independents: Albanese Hobbles The Crossbench
Tuesday, 28 June 2022, 12:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It did not take long for the new Australian Labor government to flex its muscle foolishly in response to the large crossbench of independents and small party members of Parliament. Despite promising a new age of transparency and accountability after ... More >>
The Brutality Of “Bulldozer Justice” In India
Monday, 27 June 2022, 7:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It looks all too eerily similar as a method: the expulsion of individuals from their home, the demolition of said home and the punishing of entire families. All excused by a harsh reading of local regulations. But this method, used by Israeli authorities ... More >>
Top Gun: Maverick: The Pentagon Recruitment Drive
Thursday, 23 June 2022, 12:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Hollywood, like the US press, has not been spared the influential hand of government. Under the mask of various projects, the defence establishment has sought to influence the narrative of Freedom Land’s pursuits, buying a stake in the way exploits are ... More >>
Deadly Games: The Labour Casualties Of Qatar’s World Cup
Tuesday, 21 June 2022, 12:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A sordid enterprise, nasty, crude and needless. But the World Cup 2022 will be, should anyone bother watching it, stained by one of the highest casualty rates amongst workers in its history, marked by corruption and stained by a pharisee quality. The ... More >>
Predictable Monstrosities: Priti Patel Approves Assange’s Extradition
Saturday, 18 June 2022, 4:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The only shock about the UK Home Secretary’s decision regarding Julian Assange was that it did not come sooner. In April, Chief Magistrate Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring expressed the view that he was “duty-bound” to send the case ... More >>
Julian Assange In Ithaka
Wednesday, 15 June 2022, 5:54 am | Binoy Kampmark
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is where you’re destined for.” C. P. Cavafy, trans. Edmund Keeley John Shipton, despite his size, glides with insect-like grace across surfaces. He moves with a hovering sense, a holy man with message and ... More >>
Weapons Of Faith: The Arming Of American Schools
Monday, 13 June 2022, 11:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
The United States remains a country of tenacious faith. The nature of that faith stretches from the digital pulpits of Silicon Valley, where cool technology occupies the seat of majesty, to the hot Bible Belt of spiritual endurance and suffering, ... More >>
A Spanish Court Calls: Mike Pompeo, We Want You
Wednesday, 8 June 2022, 5:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On June 3, Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s national court, the Audienca Nacional, issued a summons for former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify in an ongoing investigation into the conduct of private security firm UC ... More >>
Dear Times And Costly Cricket: Australia’s Sri Lankan Tour
Tuesday, 7 June 2022, 3:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For a country experiencing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence in 1948, the picture of a touring team pampered and fussed over might cause consternation. But the Australian cricket tour to Sri Lanka has only been met by praise from the ... More >>
Platinum Jubilees And Republican Questions
Sunday, 5 June 2022, 6:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The platinum jubilee will bore and cause some to yawn. It might certainly agitate the republican spleen in the fourteen countries where Queen Elizabeth II remains a constitutional head of state. But the question remains: How does the institution ... More >>
New Brooms, Old Stories: The Australian Labor Party And Julian Assange
Friday, 3 June 2022, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
After having a few lunches with Australia’s then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, John Shipton felt reason to be confident. Albanese had promised Assange’s father that he would do whatever he could, should he win office, to bring the matter to ... More >>
Turkey Spoils The Big NATO Party
Thursday, 2 June 2022, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Complacency has been the hallmark of NATO expansion. Over time, it has even become a form of derision, notably directed against Russia. As with many historical matters, records ignored can be records revisited, the second time around sometimes nastier ... More >>
Election Gambit: Australia, Sri Lanka And Politicising Asylum
Tuesday, 31 May 2022, 2:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When it comes to the tawdry, hideous business of politicising the right to asylum, and the refugees who arise from it, no country does it better than Australia. A country proud of being a pioneer in women’s rights, the secret ballot, good pay conditions ... More >>
Reactionary Succession: Peter Dutton, Australia’s New Opposition Leader
Monday, 30 May 2022, 2:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The devastation wrought on Australia’s Coalition government on May 21 by the electorate had a stunning, cleansing effect. Previously inconceivable scenarios were played out in safe, Liberal-held seats that had, for decades, seen few, if any challenges, ... More >>
George W Bush, Freudian Confessions And Foiled Assassinations
Sunday, 29 May 2022, 5:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Death, remarked Gore Vidal about Truman Capote’s passing, was a good career move. The novelist Saki also considered the good qualities of shuffling off the mortal coil. “Waldo,” he writes in “The Feast of Nemesis”, “is one of those people ... More >>
The Economy Of Tolerable Massacres: The Uvalde Shootings
Thursday, 26 May 2022, 2:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices. Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting. To an extent, crime and violence can be allowed to thrive. In the United States, ... More >>
Biden In Tokyo: Killing Strategic Ambiguity
Wednesday, 25 May 2022, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Could it have been just another case of bumbling poor judgment, the mind softened as the mouth opened? A question was put to US President Joe Biden, visiting Tokyo and standing beside Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida: “You didn’t want ... More >>
