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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 38]
Normal Butcheries: Saudi Arabia’s Latest Mass Execution
Friday, 18 March 2022, 1:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Great reformers are not normally found in theocratic monarchies. Despite assertions to the contrary, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains archaic in the way it deals with its opponents. In its penal system, executions remain standard fare. With liberal ... More >>
Homicidal Drives: US Dreams Of Killing Putin
Thursday, 17 March 2022, 2:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Wars disturb and delude. The Ukraine conflict is no exception. Misinformation is cantering through press accounts and media dispatches with feverish spread. Fear that a nuclear option might be deployed makes teeth chatter. And the Russian President ... More >>
Rotten Rulings: Julian Assange And The UK Supreme Court
Tuesday, 15 March 2022, 2:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange, even as he is being judicially and procedurally tormented, has braved every legal hoop in his effort to avoid extradition to the United States. Kept and caged in Belmarsh throughout this farce of judicial history, he risks being extradited ... More >>
Foreign Policy Tripe: Scott Morrison’s “Arc Of Autocracy”
Thursday, 10 March 2022, 1:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Grand foreign policy speeches are not usually the specialty of Australian Prime Ministers. Little insight can be gleaned from them. A more profitable exercise would be consulting the US State Department’s briefings, which give more accurate barometric ... More >>
Cutting Ties: The West, Ukraine, And The Russian Academy
Tuesday, 8 March 2022, 3:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Working with Russian academics and institutions. The attack upon Ukraine by Russia. These are two features playing out heavily in university discussions. As typifies such chitchat, nuance features rather less than cant and sanctimony. As writer and ... More >>
Advertising Gimmicks: Australia’s Nuclear-Powered Submarines
Monday, 7 March 2022, 3:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Never trust anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth in an election year. Pledges are made to be broken; promises are made to seduce, not convince. When the subject matter involves fictional submarines, even greater care should be taken. ... More >>
The Ukraine War And The “Good” Refugee
Friday, 4 March 2022, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“These people are not people we are used to… these people are Europeans.” Kiril Petkov, Bulgarian Prime Minister, Associated Press , March 1, 2022 In the history of accepting refugees, countries have shown more than an erratic streak. Universal ... More >>
Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine: Outing The Iraq War White Washers
Thursday, 3 March 2022, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The guilty can be devious in concealing their crimes, and their role in them. The greater the crime, the more devious the strategy of deception. The breaking of international law, and the breaching of convention, is a field replete with such figures. Vladimir ... More >>
The She’ll Be Right Mate Syndrome: Australia’s Doomed Koalas
Tuesday, 1 March 2022, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In a country expert in killing off mammal species at a rate exceeding that of others (to be fair, there are so many more to destroy, with more to come), Australians now face the prospect that the koala, one of its most singularly recognisable animals, ... More >>
Antarctica: Where Realpolitik And Science Meet
Friday, 25 February 2022, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A frozen continent. Another potential frontier for conflict and competition. Antarctica is a part of the world were realpolitician meets scientist; the desire for finding exploitable resources meets environmental expectations and fears. Countries have ... More >>
Bipartisan Consensus As Myth: The Manchurian Candidate In Australian Politics
Friday, 25 February 2022, 6:28 am | Binoy Kampmark
A few dragons have been breathing fire of late, and these need to be slayed. One is the notion that Australia has had some miraculous sense of bipartisan understanding about national security, its politicians well briefed, cooperative and objective ... More >>
Paralysing Afghanistan: Washington’s Regime Change Agenda
Monday, 21 February 2022, 4:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Nation states are habitually doomed to defeat their best interests. Conditions of mad instability are fostered. Arms sales take place, regimes get propped up or abandoned, and the people under them endure and suffer, awaiting the next criminal regime change. ... More >>
Tapping Fortress Australia: Priti Patel’s Border Force Review
Saturday, 19 February 2022, 6:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When in opposition, Alexander Downer, destined to become Australia’s longest serving foreign minister in the conservative government of John Howard, was easy to savage. The Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating was particularly keen to skewer ... More >>
Failure In Moscow: Liz Truss Loses Britannia’s Way
Thursday, 17 February 2022, 11:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
Incompetent politicians and diplomats are on the level with ill-prepared generals fighting current wars with dated methods. They err, they stumble, and they may well be responsible for the next idiotic slander, misfire or misunderstanding. UK Foreign ... More >>
Compulsory Voting And Its Antipodean Ills
Tuesday, 15 February 2022, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Time and time again, we are told that making people vote improves representation and representativeness. Herding them on pain of penalty will somehow keep politics honest, and ensure that those in Parliament, or whatever chamber it may be, will ... More >>
Blinken Foreign Policy
Monday, 14 February 2022, 3:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It must be a sure handicap to be saddled with such a name when piloting a large government department, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shows no sign of that bothering him. It has, however, become a hallmark of a policy that is markedly ... More >>
Great Barrier Reef Fantasies: The Morrison Government’s Electoral Ploy
Tuesday, 8 February 2022, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There are some things that strain credulity. There are the dubious accounts of virgin births. There are the resolute flat earth theorists and denialists of the moon landing. To this can be added the environmental stance of Australia’s Scott Morrison and ... More >>
Hemispheric Gangsterism: The US Embargo Against Cuba Turns 60
Sunday, 6 February 2022, 6:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It all seems worn, part of an aspic approach to foreign policy. But US President Joe Biden is keen to ensure that old, and lingering mistakes, retain their flavour. Towards Cuba, it is now 60 years since President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential ... More >>
Special Privileges: Charlotte Bellis, Fortress New Zealand And The Taliban
Wednesday, 2 February 2022, 3:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Not wishing to be left out from the brutal closed border system that has characterised COVID-19 policy in Australia, New Zealand has also been every bit as extreme in limiting the return of its nationals. Pandemic policy, if not logic, has taken issue with ... More >>
With Intent To Harm: The CIA, Schizophrenia And Denmark’s Children
Monday, 31 January 2022, 4:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has become common fare to read ghoulish stories of child abuse in institutions supposedly created to care for the vulnerable. Orphanages, homes, religious orders have tended to feature, along with their assortments of innumerable sadists and pederasts. ... More >>
