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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 5]
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 >>
Censoring Israeli Violence: Western Media Outlets Capitulate
Tuesday, 12 December 2023, 12:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The cathedral of censorship is a vast, airy one. In its embrace, texts are abridged, images removed, ideas scrubbed. Historical inconveniences are filed and rendered inaccessible. The only sermons tolerated will be those satisfying and serving the ... More >>
Accidents Of Eccentricity: Israel’s Pacific Hold
Sunday, 10 December 2023, 7:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cunning, subtle, understated. Israeli policy in the Pacific has seen United Nations votes cast in its favour, the foreign policies of certain countries adjusted, and favours switched. While China may be considered the big, threatening beast competing ... More >>
The View From Washington: Let The Killing In Gaza Continue
Sunday, 10 December 2023, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify ... More >>
The View From Washington: Let The Killing In Gaza Continue
Sunday, 10 December 2023, 4:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify ... More >>
Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees And Secondary Punishment
Thursday, 7 December 2023, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for ... More >>
COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go To Gloat
Wednesday, 6 December 2023, 1:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip ... More >>
Refreshing The Camelot School: Kennedy Hagiography At Sixty
Tuesday, 5 December 2023, 12:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record. With its effacing tendencies, its soppily loyal hagiographers, its ghastly, ... More >>
Banished from Pakistan: Islamabad Moves on Afghan Refugees
Sunday, 3 December 2023, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where ... More >>
Sovereignty Surrendered: Subordinating Australia’s Defence Industry
Thursday, 30 November 2023, 1:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One could earn a tidy sum the number of times the word “sovereignty” has been uttered or mentioned in public statements and briefings by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But such sovereignty has shown itself to be counterfeit. The net ... More >>
The Rise Of The Desk Clerk Academic
Wednesday, 29 November 2023, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a particularly quotidian breed in the modern, management-driven university. The desk clerk who pretends to be an academic and researcher but is neither. The desk clerk who admires rosters, work plans and “key performance indicators”, ... More >>
Rot In The Civil Service: Farewelling Mike Pezzullo
Monday, 27 November 2023, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo. In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks and bound to brief ... More >>
