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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 65]
Julian Assange and Remaining in Belmarsh
Tuesday, 1 October 2019, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Much ink has been spilt in textbooks describing situations where autocratic states can behave badly. They abuse rights; they ignore international law and they ride roughshod over conventions. Liberal democracies may boast that they follow matters ... More >>
Leaking, Whistleblowing and the Democrats
Monday, 30 September 2019, 8:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The entire Trump presidency has been a sequence of “watch this space” moments. Dismissals and political executions; attacks and distractions; gestures of deal making and promises of apocalypse. Perhaps it was high time for another bit of material ... More >>
Jacques Chirac: The Art of Being Vague
Sunday, 29 September 2019, 7:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The tributes have been dripping in heavy praise: former French president Jacques Chirac and mayor of Paris, the great statesman; the man who said no to the US-led war juggernaut into Iraq; the man loved for being loved. Many of these should have ... More >>
Scott Morrison’s China Thesis
Friday, 27 September 2019, 2:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
China has rattled Western observers for centuries, and the idea that it might be approaching a level of formidable heft is troubling to those who, condescendingly, see it as a naughty child who aspired to economic growth but could only do so as ... More >>
Boris Johnson fails in the UK Supreme Court
Wednesday, 25 September 2019, 3:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It delighted Labour supporters and party apparatchiks who had been falling over each other in murderous ceremony at the party conference in Brighton : Prime Minister Boris Johnson would come to the unwitting rescue with his own version of a grand ... More >>
Tempered Emergency: The Climate Change Summit in New York
Tuesday, 24 September 2019, 2:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It had a good deal of desperate scolding. Sweden’s Greta Thunberg assumed the role of punishing advocate, a Joan of Arc of fury. The main culprit in her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit was the hideous, super ego, the big bad “You”, ever ... More >>
Rotten in Tunisia: The Corrupt Rule of Ben Ali
Saturday, 21 September 2019, 6:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He was the prototypical strong man softened by tactical reforms, blissfully ignorant before the fall, blown off in the violent winds of the Arab Spring. Having come to power in 1987 on the back of a coup against the 84-year-old Habib Bourguiba, whom ... More >>
Extinction Rebellion: Leaving it to the Students
Friday, 20 September 2019, 4:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The protestor of school age sported a placard featuring a distorted caricature of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison: “Scomo was liking it hot”. A glorious spring day, and a gathering was already fussing and buzzing outside the Victorian ... More >>
Strong Men in Europe: Tony Abbott Visits Hungary
Thursday, 19 September 2019, 7:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I extend a special welcome to Australia’s former prime minister. It is in part due to his tough policy that we regard Australia as a model country. We especially respect it for the brave, direct and Anglo-Saxon consistency which it has shown on ... More >>
Lotteries and Rights in the Sporting Life
Wednesday, 18 September 2019, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts. It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian football (soccer to some) player Craig Foster. Foster has been ... More >>
Fake Arguments on Fake News
Tuesday, 17 September 2019, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The constipated tedium that follows each call, denial and condemnation after another round of fake news and its giddying effects has become daily fare. Entire episodes with the sanctimonious and the solemn are being created to show up the citizen journalist, ... More >>
Oiling for War: The Houthi Attack on Abqaiq
Monday, 16 September 2019, 3:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia southwest of Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran had a few predictable responses. Given that the facility has a daily output of some 5.7 million barrels, damaging ... More >>
Doctored Admissions: The US University Admissions Scandal
Saturday, 14 September 2019, 4:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Not so much a Desperate House Wife as a desperate mother, a contrite Felicity Huffman, known for playing Lynette Scavo, has been convicted for her role in the university admissions scandal in the United States. The scene is set for another dramatization, ... More >>
Improper Purposes: Boris Johnson’s Suspension of Parliament
Friday, 13 September 2019, 4:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was something richly amusing in the move: three judges, sitting in Scotland’s highest court of appeal, had little time for the notion that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension, or proroguing, of parliament till October 14, had been lawful. ... More >>
Farewelling Dr No: The Sacking of John Bolton
Thursday, 12 September 2019, 11:02 am | Binoy Kampmark
“Every time the president, or Pompeo, or anyone in the [Trump] administration came up with an idea, they had to face Dr No.” More >>
Spikes of Violence: Protest in West Papua
Monday, 9 September 2019, 12:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Like Timor-Leste, West Papua, commonly subsuming both Papua and West Papua, remains a separate ethnic entity, acknowledged as such by previous colonial powers. Its Dutch colonial masters, in preparing to leave the region in the 1950s, left the ground ... More >>
Boris Trips: Duvets, Toothbrushes and the House of Lords
Monday, 9 September 2019, 8:39 am | Binoy Kampmark
In 2017, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory creature trapped in cold storage, suggested that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union was tantamount to fighting the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar, a true statement of British strength. ... More >>
Robert Mugabe’s Legacy: Revolution, Amity and Decline
Sunday, 8 September 2019, 11:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
Robert Mugabe is the sort of figure that always caused discomfort. He was a permanent revolutionary, becoming, in time, the despotic ruler who frittered away revolutionary gain. He played multiple roles in international political consciousness. As Zimbabwe’s ... More >>
The Courage of Saying No: Children, Rebellion and Greta
Friday, 6 September 2019, 1:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is something to be said of wariness when it comes to revolutionary voices. As Albert Camus argued in that beautiful tract of illumination and contradiction, The Rebel , “All modern revolutions have ended in the reinforcement of the power ... More >>
Inevitable Withdrawal: The US-Taliban Deal
Wednesday, 4 September 2019, 3:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth to a deal of some consequence. (The stress is on the some - the ... More >>
