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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 4]
Bypassing Parliament: Westminster, The Royal Prerogative And Bombing Yemen
Tuesday, 16 January 2024, 3:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is something distinctly revolting and authoritarian about the royal prerogative. It reeks of clandestine assumption, unwarranted self-confidence and, most of all, a blithe indifference to accountability before elected representatives. That prerogative, ... More >>
Israel’s Argument At The Hague: We Are Incapable Of Genocide
Monday, 15 January 2024, 4:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Israel’s relationship with the United Nations, international institutions and international law has at times bristled with suspicion and blatant hostility. In a famous cabinet meeting in 1955, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously knocked ... More >>
Tall Tales And Murderous Restraint: Blinken On Gaza And Israel
Thursday, 11 January 2024, 3:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The role of the US State Department regarding Israel’s continued obliteration of Gaza is becoming increasingly clear. As the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces continue, the Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is full of meaningless statements ... More >>
Holstering A Career: Wayne LaPierre Resigns From The NRA Executive
Tuesday, 9 January 2024, 3:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The now departed chief executive of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) should know. Wayne LaPierre’s time had come to resemble a dictatorship in a hurry, pinching the silver and stomping ... More >>
Circle Of Secrecy: The Iraq War’s Missing Cabinet Documents
Monday, 8 January 2024, 6:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They are unlikely to be revelatory, will shatter no myths, nor disprove any assumptions. Cabinet documents exist to merely show that a political clique – the heart of the Westminster model of government, so to speak – often contain the musings of invertebrates, ... More >>
Funding The Imperium: Australia Subsidises US Nuclear Submarines
Friday, 5 January 2024, 1:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
AUKUS, the trilateral pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, was a steal for all except one of the partners. Australia, given the illusion of protection even as its aggressive stance (acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, becoming ... More >>
Killing Australians In Lebanon: Selected Targets; Selective Morality
Thursday, 4 January 2024, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The killing of an Australian-Lebanese national Ibrahim Bazzi, his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud, and his brother Ali Bazzi by the Israeli Defence Forces in a missile strike in southern Lebanon, has been an object exercise in selective outrage, selective ... More >>
The Economic Incentive: Blocking Israel’s Supply Chain
Tuesday, 2 January 2024, 5:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If demography is destiny, as Auguste Comte tells us, then economics must be current, pinching reality. The Israel-Gaza conflict is invigorating a global protest movement against the state of Israel which is seeing various manifestations. From an economic ... More >>
Criminal Assumptions: The Howard Cabinet And Invading Iraq
Monday, 1 January 2024, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When war criminals can daub canvasses in blithe safety, rake in millions of dollars in after dinner speeches and bore governments to death with their shoddy words of wisdom, the world is not so much as it should be, but merely as it is. Former US ... More >>
Genocidal Tremors: Taking Israel To The International Court Of Justice
Sunday, 31 December 2023, 6:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
Litigating against countries is the stuff of esoteric delight for international lawyers. Such matters become yet more complex when it comes to claims of genocide or broader crimes against humanity. Accusations, however motivated, are always easy ... More >>
Amoral Compass: Palantir and its Quest to Remake the World
Friday, 29 December 2023, 7:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Finance analysts free of moral scruple can point to Palantir with relish and note that 2023 was a fairly rewarding year for it. The company, which bills itself as a “category-leading software” builder “that empowers organizations to create ... More >>
Constitutional Violations: Julian Assange, Privacy and the CIA
Thursday, 28 December 2023, 6:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As a private citizen, the options for suing an intelligence agency are few and far between. The US Central Intelligence Agency, as with other members of the secret club, pour scorn on such efforts. To a degree, such a dismissive sentiment is understandable: ... More >>
A Growing Butcher’s Bill: Israel’s War Spending
Wednesday, 27 December 2023, 7:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron is worried. He is keeping an eye on the ballooning costs of his country’s war against Gaza and the Palestinians. Initially, the Netanyahu government promised to increase its defence budget by NIS 20 billion (US$5.48 billion) ... More >>
Red Sea Deployments: Canberra Says No
Tuesday, 26 December 2023, 6:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The failure of the United States to convince the Australian government to send one vessel to aid coalition efforts to deter Houthi disruption of international shipping in the Red Sea was a veritable storm whipped up in a teacup. The entire exercise, ... More >>
Day X Marks The Calendar: Julian Assange’s ‘Final’ Appeal
Friday, 22 December 2023, 1:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter. For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant. ... More >>
A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia!
Thursday, 21 December 2023, 7:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The secretive Australian government just cannot help itself. Clamouring and hectoring of other countries and their secret arrangements (who can forget the criticism of the Solomon Islands over its security pact with China for that reason?) the Albanese ... More >>
Cardinal Crimes: Absolute Rule And Fleecing The Holy See
Monday, 18 December 2023, 3:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Like a bank with branches everywhere, the Catholic Church will go after its own when circumstances permit, wherever they are. In other instances, it will take the opposite tack, shielding the detractors or deviants from local scrutiny, and concealing ... More >>
False Transitions and Global Stocktakes: The Failure of COP28
Sunday, 17 December 2023, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The time has come to treat the sequence of UN Climate Change Conferences, the latest concluding in Dubai, as a series of the failed and the abysmally rotten. It shows how a worthless activity, caked (oiled?) with appropriately chosen words, can actually ... More >>
Flirting With Nuclear Energy Down Under
Friday, 15 December 2023, 3:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a policy that was bound to send a shiver through the policymaking community. The issue of nuclear energy in Australia has always been a contentious one. Currently, the country hosts a modest nuclear industry, centred on the Australian Nuclear Science ... More >>
A Flawed And Dangerous Presence: US Troops In Syria
Wednesday, 13 December 2023, 11:48 am | Binoy Kampmark
Despite a focus on boxing China in the Indo-Pacific, US involvement in the Middle East continues to be widespread and problematic. While Israel is given its regular steroid diet of murderous arms, US military personnel find themselves scattered throughout ... More >>
