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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 62]
Australia Burns: Fireworks, Bush Fires and Denial
Wednesday, 1 January 2020, 4:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As 2020 approached, the sense that the barbarians were not only at the gates but had breached the walls of indifference had come to the fore. But these were not conventional human forms; rather, they were the agents of conflagration, driving people to the ... More >>
Scapegoats for Jamal Khashoggi
Sunday, 29 December 2019, 2:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The hit squad that went about its deadly business with varying degrees of competence in Istanbul last year is set to be thinned. Five members of the group tasked with strangling and carving up the Saudi journalist and out-of-favour Jamal Khashoggi ... More >>
Christmas Revolutions: The Fall of Ceauşescu
Friday, 27 December 2019, 10:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
Christmas might be associated with nativities, but in the context of Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, it came with a butchering. As a couple, they ruled Romania with heavy doses of megalomania (“A man like me comes along only ... More >>
Medical Opinion, Torture and Julian Assange
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 6:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On November 27 this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, delivered an address to the German Bundestag outlining his approach to understanding the mental health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. These comprised two parts, the initial ... More >>
The Politics of Trump’s Impeachment
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 10:47 am | Binoy Kampmark
Several features stand out in the impeachment quest against President Donald J. Trump. There is constitutional discourse as mythology and fetish. There is outrage that the executive office could have been used to actually investigate political opponents ... More >>
Boris Johnson’s Britain
Wednesday, 18 December 2019, 2:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Britain is looking drenched at the moment; colours blue and yellow seem to be streaking through the country. The Scottish Nationalists have re-asserted control lost to the Conservatives in 2016. In the rest of the country, seats never touched by Tory Blue ... More >>
A Mined History: The Bougainville Referendum
Saturday, 14 December 2019, 11:30 am | Binoy Kampmark
It would be an understatement to claim that Bougainville, that blighted piece of autonomous territory in Papua New Guinea, had been through a lot. Companies have preyed upon its environment with extractive hunger. Wars and civil strife have beset ... More >>
Authoritarianism, Money and US Presidential Politics
Thursday, 12 December 2019, 11:22 am | Binoy Kampmark
Political rottenness may be bottomless. Consider the following description of a political aspirant for the White House, this person being from the Democratic Party. His “liabilities as a political candidate are so glaringly obvious that it’s ... More >>
Lethal Visits: Volcano Tourism and the White Island Eruption
Tuesday, 10 December 2019, 3:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It might have come across as written by a killjoy, but geographer Amy Donovan’s observations on “volcano tourism” in Geo , published by the Royal Geographical Society in 2018, remain timely. Be wary, her study suggests, of this particular brand ... More >>
Paranoias of Interference: Russia, Reddit & the UK Election
Monday, 9 December 2019, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In some ways, it is a very British thing: fair play is expected; the reasonable person with all faculties intact, going about the business of living and voting. Little thought is given to the fact that these assumptions are as much constructions, façades ... More >>
A Troubled Family: NATO turns 70
Sunday, 8 December 2019, 10:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
Summit anniversaries are not usually this abysmally interesting. While those paying visits to Watford, England on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are supposedly signatories to the same agreement, a ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Myanmar, Genocide and Aung San Suu Kyi
Wednesday, 4 December 2019, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Leaders currently in office rarely make an appearance before either the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court. International law remains affixed to the notion that heads-of-state are, at least for the duration of their time in ... More >>
Julian Assange in Videoconference
Monday, 2 December 2019, 4:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, had been facing a good deal of stonewalling on the part of his British colleagues. He is overseeing an investigation into the surveillance activities of a Spanish security firm aimed ... More >>
Legitimised Surveillance: Kim Dotcom’s case against GCSB
Sunday, 1 December 2019, 3:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Surveillance activities and the law are often at loggerheads. The former specialises in destroying privacy; the latter, in so far as it might be adequate, sometimes furnishes a means of preserving it. When it comes to exposing overly-eager surveillance activity, ... More >>
The Liveris Formula: Dow’s Inclusive Capitalism
Friday, 29 November 2019, 3:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Parasites have a certain weight in history. Donors to a system, a state, a company, always claim to be giving back what they advertise as their hard earned cash. Andrew N. Liveris is one such character. Former CEO of the Dow Chemical corporation, he ... More >>
Borat versus Social Media
Wednesday, 27 November 2019, 2:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Having made a name for himself causing cringing controversy, forging alter egos with the ease of a spam producer, Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat, Bruno) has taken a plunge into waters swum by every indignant activist, commentator and show pony worth ... More >>
Popes Against Nuclear Weapons
Monday, 25 November 2019, 4:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Vatican comes with its ills, contradictions and blatant hypocrisies in the field of moral theology and human existence, but on the issue of atomic and nuclear weapons, the position has been fairly consistent, if marked by gradual evolution. On February ... More >>
Through the Yellow Looking Glass: Australia’s China Wars
Friday, 22 November 2019, 1:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This year, China as Intimidating Monster has become the popular motif in Canberra circles. Australian government members Andrew Hastie and Senator James Paterson have become vigorous moral, if hollow enthusiasts. Their criticism of China has led to ... More >>
Dropped Investigations: Julian Assange, Sex and Sweden
Wednesday, 20 November 2019, 3:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Sex, the late Gore Vidal astutely observed, is politics, and not merely from the vantage point of those who wish to police it. In the case of whistleblowers, claims of aberrant, unlawful sex serves the purpose of diminishing credibility, tarring ... More >>
Letting the Side Down: Prince Andrew
Monday, 18 November 2019, 6:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time. It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity, warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal Family, ... More >>
