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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 70]
Volodymyr Zelenskiy as Actor President
Wednesday, 24 April 2019, 2:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The world is not so much a stage as a simulacrum for those who think it so. And if the stage goes bad, it is fitting that those who get thrown onto it change it in the most daring and provocative way. Politics is now as much a director’s production ... More >>
Lethal Bungling: Sri Lanka’s Easter Bombings
Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 12:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The number of dead is bound to rise, already standing at more than three hundred. The bombs, worn by seven suicide bombers, struck at three churches during the period of Easter Sunday worship, and three hotels. As the dead were counted and the wounded ... More >>
The General and Libya
Sunday, 21 April 2019, 7:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The richly disastrous mess that is Libya has been moving into another phase of inspired aggression at the hands of General Khalifa Haftar. As he does, UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj is anxious. For some three weeks, the General’s eastern forces, ... More >>
Julian Assange as Neuroses
Saturday, 20 April 2019, 12:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange continues to ripple and roam as a cipher through the political and media scape of the world. Detained in Belmarsh maximum security prison, the sort of stately abode only reserved for the most dangerous of criminals, many with indeterminate ... More >>
Burning Gothic: Reflections on Notre-Dame de Paris
Thursday, 18 April 2019, 3:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The destruction of the sacred will engender moving responses. But the scope, and the particularity of that response varies. The conflagration affecting Notre-Dame de Paris, located on the Île de la Cité, has become a twenty-four-hour saturation ... More >>
Permissible Influences: Israel and the Australian Elections
Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 3:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
So much hullabaloo; so much pent-up anger and, let’s face it, so much opportunity for the political classes of Australia. The theme since 2016 is electoral interference; the object: whichever power so happens to afford an opportunity to gather support ... More >>
The European Union and Refugees in the Mediterranean
Tuesday, 16 April 2019, 2:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The modern UN Refugee Convention is now so flea-bitten it’s been put out to the garbage tip of history. At least the enthusiastic fleas think so, given their conduct as political representatives across a range of parliaments keen on barbed wired borders ... More >>
The Effort to Relabel Julian Assange
Monday, 15 April 2019, 3:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Your honour, I represent the United States government”. The Westminster Magistrates Court had been left with little doubt by the opening words of the legal team marshalled against the face of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange was being targeted by the imperium ... More >>
Clashes of Management: Rugby Aust’s Israel Folau Problem
Sunday, 14 April 2019, 6:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was no hearing, no semblance of trial. But there was swift summary judgment: Israel Folau, a star member of the Australian Rugby Union team, had been banished from the national team. There was only one problem: he was avoiding taking any calls ... More >>
Shredding Asylum: The Arrest of Julian Assange
Friday, 12 April 2019, 11:57 am | Binoy Kampmark
The man seemed like a bearded emissary, a holy figure nabbed in his sleep. He looked similarly pale as to how he did in 2013, but he cut a more shocking figure. Most prisoners would have had room to move in a compound. The Ecuadorean embassy in London ... More >>
Absence of Proof: The Approval Process for Adani
Thursday, 11 April 2019, 7:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Much hot air is coming out from the public relations unit of Adani, and the language used is that of a hostage taker seeking to earn a rich and ill-deserved ransom. With the date for the Australian federal election looming, the Indian mining giant received ... More >>
Trump and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps
Wednesday, 10 April 2019, 2:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s designed to give the US more leg room in the sanction stakes but may end up having its own hemming consequences. The designation by the Trump administration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation ... More >>
Lethal Fluctuations: The Death Penalty in Asia
Monday, 8 April 2019, 2:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Malaysian government last year expressed a surprise change of heart on a policy long held dear; it would reconsider the death penalty. The case of Muhammad Lukman, sentenced to death in August for the purchase and sharing of medicinal marijuana, ... More >>
Night Parrot Confections
Thursday, 4 April 2019, 12:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Discoveries of natural flora, fauna and phenomena are not necessarily straightforward things. The discoverer may wish to conceal the source. The discoverer may also have various motivations. In certain grave instances, the entire claim might be fabricated. ... More >>
Terms of Asylum and Distraction: Moreno’s Assange Problem
Wednesday, 3 April 2019, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Political asylum is an accepted if often ignored right. It is also at the mercy of those interests that grant it. Ecuador’s repeated insistence on conditioning Julian Assange’s stay in its London abode is tantamount to corroding the idea of asylum ... More >>
The Slovak and Ukrainian Elections
Tuesday, 2 April 2019, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The structures of politics have become so rigid, so distant, and ultimately so irrelevant to those who vote for them that a trend through countries can now be confirmed. Brittleness has set it. The part and election strategists have few answers, they, who saw the ... More >>
Unnecessary Expansions: The Australian War Memorial
Monday, 1 April 2019, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
War is not merely a matter of sowing death, much of it needless; it entails preserving a rationale to perpetuate it. The mistake often made about reading, consulting and listening to the harrowing tales of those who have perished in battle or those who ... More >>
Angles of Tolerance: Yusuf Islam in Christchurch
Saturday, 30 March 2019, 4:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Let’s not be too churlish about this; but then again, let us not be ignorant. The singer once known as Cat Stevens (in pre-conversion state), and known as Yusuf Islam to others, made a considerable impression on the stage in Christchurch. The slaughter ... More >>
Golan Heights and Israel
Friday, 29 March 2019, 4:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any measure of annexation is based on the extension of a military’s boots. Diplomats tend to be silenced before the noise of tanks, weaponry and garrisons. Countries may claim to possess territory but can only dream in the absence of military weight. ... More >>
Michael Jackson, Convenient Freak
Thursday, 28 March 2019, 3:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The comedian Dave Chappelle put it like this: why were accusations of inappropriate conduct directed at Michael Jackson always so superbly timed? “Listen Michael,” goes Chappelle’s mock white executive voice, “we need you to jerk off another ... More >>
