Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 39]
Bongbong Politics: Rehabilitating The Marcos Family
Sunday, 8 May 2022, 4:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Children should not pay for the sins of their parents. But in some cases, a healthy suspicion of the offspring is needed, notably when it comes to profiting off ill-gotten gains. It is certainly needed in the case of Filipino politician and presidential ... More >>
Leaking For Roe V Wade
Thursday, 5 May 2022, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The US Supreme Court Chief Justice was furious. For the first time in history, the raw judicial process of one of the most powerful, and opaque arms of government, had been exposed via media – at least in preliminary form. It resembled, in no ... More >>
Noise Matters: Wind Farms, Nuisance And The Law
Wednesday, 4 May 2022, 2:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For years, the Australian wind farm has been reviled as ugly, noisy and unendearing by a certain number of prominent figures. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott pathologized them, calling wind turbines the “dark satanic mills of the modern era”, being ... More >>
Panic In Kooyong: The Threat To The Australian Liberal Party
Tuesday, 3 May 2022, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He has been seen, not always accurately, as the more moderate in an otherwise conservative Liberal Party, which has governed Australia since 2013 in an at times troubled alliance with the Nationals. He has served as party deputy to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, ... More >>
Australia’s Pacific Neglect: Distractions From Climate Change Security
Saturday, 30 April 2022, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The hysteria in Canberra and Washington over the Sino-Solomon Islands security pact has shown, again, how irrelevant the individual affairs of Pacific Island states are in the chess game of geopolitics. The one thing conspicuously missing has been ... More >>
Slaying The Dragon Of Net Zero Emissions
Thursday, 28 April 2022, 12:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan is a jewel of parochialism, a darling of nutty consternation. As a member of a party historically hostile to cutting fossil fuel emissions, he has been, for the most part, at home. But some of his colleagues ... More >>
Fibbing On Anzac Day
Tuesday, 26 April 2022, 1:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
April 25, 2022 was one of the less edifying days in the annals of commemorating the fallen. The day is regarded as special for Australians and New Zealanders for being a solemn occasion, a moment to consider those who gave their lives up for King ... More >>
Anzac Day: The Slaughter Of The Unthinking By The Unaccountable
Monday, 25 April 2022, 5:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Secular religions are hard to battle in terms of their misplaced assumptions. In some ways, they are even harder to fight than those based on mythical gods and superstitious foundations, many drawn from desert religions and sandy practice. ANZAC, the name ... More >>
Forgotten Sovereignty: Hysteria And The Solomon Islands-China Security Pact
Saturday, 23 April 2022, 5:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Visits to Honiara, part plea, part threat. Delegations equipped with a note of harassment. That was the initial Australian effort to convince the Solomon Islands that the decision to make a security pact with Beijing was simply not appropriate in the lotus land ... More >>
Bernard Collaery’s War Against Secret Trials
Friday, 22 April 2022, 3:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In terms of labyrinthine callousness and indifference to justice, the treatment of lawyer Bernard Collaery by the Australian government must be slotted alongside that of another noted Australian currently being held in the maximum-security facility ... More >>
To The Home Office We Go: The Extradition Of Julian Assange
Thursday, 21 April 2022, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a dastardly formality. On April 20, at a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, Julian Assange, beamed in via video link from Belmarsh Prison, his carceral home for three years, is to be extradited to the United States to face ... More >>
Obscene Outsourcing: The UK-Rwandan Refugee Deal
Wednesday, 20 April 2022, 5:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
This month, the government of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined an ignominious collective in announcing a refugee deal with Rwanda, seedily entitled the UK-Rwanda Migration Partnership . The fact that such terms are used – a partnership or deal ... More >>
The “China Threat” And The Solomon Islands
Thursday, 14 April 2022, 2:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Rarely has the Solomon Islands had as much attention as this. Despite being in caretaker mode as it battles the federal election, the government of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison still had room to politicise its anti-China twitch. The person given ... More >>
Stumbles And Fictions: The Australian Election Campaign Begins
Wednesday, 13 April 2022, 4:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
That a figure like Scott Morrison comes across as competent, able and free of imbecility after a day of electioneering in Australia suggests a broader sickness in politics. This is not to say that the incumbent will not be skewered and bayoneted at the ballot ... More >>
Law’s Limits: The Passage Of The Antilynching Bill
Monday, 11 April 2022, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In 1900, Representative George Henry White of North Carolina, the sole Black law maker in Congress at the time, dared to introduce legislation (HR 6963) that would make lynching a hate crime. To back his case, he submitted an anti-lynching petition ... More >>
Political Appointments: Downgrading The Australian Human Rights Commission
Monday, 11 April 2022, 5:07 am | Binoy Kampmark
With all the hollering and scolding of Russian barbarity in Ukraine and Chinese viciousness against the Uighur populace, one could be forgiven for thinking that Australia’s politicians were presiding from the summit of human rights superiority. ... More >>
AUKUS In The Hypersonic Missile Wonderland
Thursday, 7 April 2022, 1:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If further clues were needed as to why AUKUS, the security pact comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, was created, the latest announcement on weapons would have given the game away. Australia, just as it became real estate ... More >>
Joe Biden’s Democracy Gaffe
Monday, 4 April 2022, 1:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It does not pay to be too moralistic in politics. Self-elevation can lead to tripping up. Sermonising even as your stable needs cleaning can enfeeble the argument. But Bidenism, this gaffe-prone ideology currently doing the rounds in a barely breathing ... More >>
Give Me That Flipper Shane
Saturday, 2 April 2022, 5:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For more terrestrially grounded people, writing about cricket can be seen as an exercise in distant planetary speculation. The Nobel laureate Harold Pinter did not think so, calling this old English game “the greatest thing that God ever created ... More >>
A Nine-Year Obscenity: The Australia-NZ Resettlement Deal
Thursday, 31 March 2022, 2:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Obscenities occupy the annals of State behaviour, revolting reminders about what governments can do. One of Australia’s most pronounced and undeniable obscenities is its continuing effort to gut and empty international refugee law of its relevant ... More >>
