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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 55]
Australia-China Relations: Down Under Squabbling
Saturday, 29 August 2020, 3:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
These are proving testy times for Australian-Chinese relations. Last week, Chinese authorities announced that an investigation would be conducted into claims that Australia has been using unfair dumping practices for its wine on the Chinese market. This ... More >>
Burying The Hatchet Act: Donald Trump’s Unconventional Convention
Thursday, 27 August 2020, 4:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Conventions suggest norms, a set of accepted rules. Behaviour is agreed upon in advance. In the case of US political conventions, there is much cant and gaudy ceremony. Certain transgressions are simply not contemplated. But the Trump administration ... More >>
Catholics Against Nukes: Archbishop Wester’s Hiroshima Vigil
Wednesday, 26 August 2020, 1:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In what is a turn-up for the books, a senior voice of the Catholic Church made something of an impression this month that did not incite scandal, hot rage, or the commencement of an investigation. It did, however, agitate a few editors. Archbishop John C. Wester ... More >>
Hymn For A Broken Empire: Republican National Security Officials For Biden
Monday, 24 August 2020, 4:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If fodder is needed for the argument that a Deep State is running wild and determined to depose President Donald J. Trump, this will surely help. In a statement by self-titled “former Republican National Security Officials”, a hand-on-heart allegiance is ... More >>
Permitted Unlawfulness: The New Zealand Coronavirus Lockdown
Sunday, 23 August 2020, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.” Lord Acton It is a study both troublesome and perplexing. To what end can a state trample on human rights ostensibly to preserve such objects ... More >>
Echo Chamber Politics: The “All About Trump” Democratic National Convention
Saturday, 22 August 2020, 2:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was hard to stomach. The usual suspects, the usual scripts tatty from overuse. The 2020 Democratic National Convention was a prolonged display of avoidance, evasion and theatrical amnesia. There were moments of formality masquerading as promise: ... More >>
Underpaying Casual Staff And Forgetting Education: The Australian University Formula
Friday, 21 August 2020, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Scandalous underpayment has become common fare at Australia’s universities. An inverse relationship can be identified here: the wealthier the institution, the more likely it will short change staff and avoid coughing up the cash. If anything is ... More >>
Google’s Open Letter: Fighting Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code
Tuesday, 18 August 2020, 5:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Tech giants tend to cast thin veils over threats regarding government regulations. They are also particularly concerned by those more public spirited ones, the sort supposedly made for the broader interest. Google has given us an example of this ... More >>
Foiled In The Security Council: The United States, Extending Arms Embargoes And Iran
Monday, 17 August 2020, 1:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There are no official policing authorities as such when it comes to international relations. Realists imagine a jungle of states, the preyed upon and the predators, a grim state of affairs moderated by alliances, agreements and understandings. But ... More >>
In Denial: Australia, Human Rights And Climate Change
Saturday, 15 August 2020, 3:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the complaint was lodged in May 2019, there was a sense of the audacious about it. Eight Torres Strait Islanders had taken the trouble to petition the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee, citing climate change and Australian violations as their ... More >>
Extreme Moderation In The Spittoon: Kamala Harris For VP
Friday, 14 August 2020, 2:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Vice Presidency has always gotten a degree of bad press in the US political system. Its ineffectuality is sometimes lost on the occupant, though not on John N. Garner, who considered it “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” (R. G. Tugwell ... More >>
Blight And Revelation: Coronavirus, Austerity And The UK
Thursday, 13 August 2020, 5:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Epidemiologist Michael Marmot begins his August 10 piece in The Guardian on a sombre note. It is drawn from The Plague by Albert Camus. “The pestilence is at once blight and revelation; it brings the hidden truth of a corrupt world to the surface.” ... More >>
Macron Lectures Lebanon: The Condescending Politics Of Aid
Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 3:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The explosion in a Beirut portside warehouse containing over 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on August 4 has done its bit to light more fires under Lebanon’s ruling powers. With the blast still bloodily fresh and traumatic – the destruction of ... More >>
Don’t Stigmatise The Nuke! Opponents Of The Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
Tuesday, 11 August 2020, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It would seem a logical step, at least from an existential perspective: to ban something so utterly horrendous to life; to forbid its use in any circumstances, whatever rationale employed to justify its use. But the nuclear weapon has its admirers. There are those ... More >>
Selective Maritime Rules: The United States, Diego Garcia And International Law
Monday, 10 August 2020, 6:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
There are few more righteous sights than the paunchy US Secretary of State savaging the People’s Republic of China with his next volley on Chinese territorial aspirations. In July, Mike Pompeo released a statement putting any uncertain minds at ease on ... More >>
Foiled At Toronto: The Tiger Squad’s Canadian Outing
Sunday, 9 August 2020, 5:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
Silencing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul was a feat of primeval brutality that sent a shudder through even the most hardened officials. The House of Saud, and in particular certain members of it, had gotten a taste for blood. Soon after ... More >>
Death From The Sky: Hiroshima And Normalised Atrocities
Friday, 7 August 2020, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When US President Harry S. Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by another on Nagasaki a few days later, he was not acting as an agent untethered from history. In the wheels of his wearied mind lay the battered ... More >>
Big Tech Antics: The Data Robber Barons Appear Before Congress
Thursday, 6 August 2020, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Silicon Valley continues to sprawl in influence, and its modern robber barons bestride the globe with a confidence verging on contempt. The technology giants that mark that region of California are praised as “virtuosos of ingenuity,” to use Steve ... More >>
Mealy-Mouthed Universities: Academic Freedom And The Pavlou Problem Down Under
Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 2:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A sorry state of affairs has descended upon Australian academic institutions like a suffocating cloak. Vice-Chancellors and their overly remunerated toadies are getting human relations departments to scribble their apologias for sins against thought. ... More >>
State Of Pandemic Disaster: Melbourne Moves To Stage Four
Tuesday, 4 August 2020, 3:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being in control of a sinking ship is not enviable. Regulations previously passed have a museum feel to them, distinctly obsolete. Directions, once dictated with confidence, lack timbre. Coronavirus is serving as that most wily and cheeky of agents, with ... More >>
