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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 72]
Everybody Else’s Business: Coup Fever in Venezuela
Sunday, 27 January 2019, 12:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This could have been seen as audacious. Instead, it had the smell of a not so well concealed sponsorship, the backing of a meaty foreign hand. Venezuelan opposition leader and President of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó decided to take a quick ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Shutting Down in Trumpland
Friday, 25 January 2019, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a political idiosyncrasy that most political systems avoid: the state, as if suffering a stroke, operating at only partial capacity, incapable of paying certain employees and incapable of fronting certain services. And so it is in the United ... More >>
Eyeing the White House: The Democratic Field
Tuesday, 22 January 2019, 12:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Not so much hunting season as declaratory season in US politics. The US presidential candidates from the Democratic side are making promises spiced with forced excitement in anticipation of the 2020 elections. This early morning of the public holiday of ... More >>
Spy Theories and the White House: Donald Trump and Russia
Saturday, 19 January 2019, 11:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
The level of absurdity in US politics has now reached such vertigo inducing levels as to render all manner of things permissible. Contact with the unwashed implies collaboration; discussion with the enemy implies assent. To go to a dinner party ... More >>
No-Confidence Survivor: Theresa May and Brexit
Friday, 18 January 2019, 11:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
Theresa May’s prime ministership remains one of torment, drawn out, and weakened daily. But does it really matter? If it is true to claim that people deserve the government they elect, then there is something madly representative of the debacle ... More >>
Trump, Bolton and the Syrian Confusion
Wednesday, 16 January 2019, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s a messy, though typical picture. US President Donald Trump wants to pull out forces in Syria. When announced in December, jaws drooped and sharp intakes of breath were registered through the Washington establishment. Members of the military industrial ... More >>
Ice Matters: A Meditation on Snow
Monday, 14 January 2019, 10:44 am | Binoy Kampmark
Most speak of floods in the age of climate change, when the cooked and the roasted take precedence over the snowed in and the freezing, and the parliaments of lost islands shall be convened in the sea. Comparatively cruel fates should never be entertained, ... More >>
Dances of Disinformation
Monday, 14 January 2019, 9:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
Is there such a plane of blissful, balanced information, deliberated and debated upon? No. Governments mangle; corporations distort. Interest groups tinker. Wars must be sold; deception must be perpetrated. Inconsistencies must be removed. There ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Donald Trump, Mexico and the Democrats
Thursday, 10 January 2019, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
New year occasions, given the pleasant fiction it entails, are times to change. Resolutions are made by that delightful species Homo sapiens, hope packaged for quick delivery to those who promise change. The weak will become stronger; the strong will show ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Oaked Christmas in Serbia
Wednesday, 9 January 2019, 2:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They set out early in the morning, men with axes, boys in tow and, for some, the odd girl champing at the bit. The woods are some way from Bujanovac, but these columns of individuals resembled statues who have moved off their plinths, heading to the ... More >>
Suspending Choice: The Patrick Melrose Series
Monday, 31 December 2018, 11:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
Ashes, even when washed way, can haunt the living. A cracked Patrick Melrose has come to retrieve the cremated remains of this late father. He is addicted, indulgent, outrageous. He drinks and doses to excess; his moments of brief sobriety are nothing ... More >>
The Hand that Won’t Sign the Paper: Adani’s Stalling Project
Saturday, 29 December 2018, 1:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It should be a sign for this Indian giant, a company that has done much to illustrate the ethical and moral bankruptcy in Australia’s political classes. Despite support stretching from Canberra to rural Queensland, lifted by the fantasy of job creation, ... More >>
Cooking Books and Limiting Responsibility: Goldman Sachs
Wednesday, 26 December 2018, 5:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Managing a bank will always be a more lucrative criminal enterprise than raiding one but this Brechtian styled analysis only goes so far. A closer look at the extraordinary nature of Goldman Sachs and its operations reveals not merely a bank but a flesh-eating ... More >>
The Misuses of History: The Christmas 1914 Truce
Monday, 24 December 2018, 10:45 am | Binoy Kampmark
All memorialised events, when passing into mythology, must be seen critically. In some cases, there should be more than a hint of suspicion. The Christmas Truce of 1914 remains one sentimentalised occasion, remembered less to scold the mad mechanised ... More >>
Orbán’s Latest Dance
Saturday, 22 December 2018, 8:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Viktor Orbán of Hungary is not to be hectored to. Arching with fury at the EU’s September motion to sanction Hungary for bad behaviour under the Article 7 process, he was resolved to ratchet things up. The motion, while getting 448 votes concerned ... More >>
Leaving Syria: President Trump’s Withdrawal
Friday, 21 December 2018, 8:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The President announced an apparently impulsive decision that shook the world, showed little sign of nuanced consideration, confounded top advisers and by the end of the day left Washington in chaos and confusion.” So goes a typical contribution ... More >>
Agreed Rules, COP24 and Climate Change Protest
Thursday, 20 December 2018, 4:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“If children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we can all do together if we really wanted to.” Greta Thunberg at COP24, Dec. 2018 More >>
Tumblr and the Cult of the Safe
Tuesday, 18 December 2018, 1:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Be aware of the titty. Or pudenda. Or anything else suggesting a copulative angle familiar to most adults with a decent constituency of desire. The world of Tumblr, home of the expressive identity and sexual subculture, has shrunk before the pressings ... More >>
May Days in Britain
Monday, 17 December 2018, 4:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is hard to envisage sympathy for a person who made a name as a home secretary (prisons, detentions, security and such) taking the mast and banner of her country before hopeless odds, but inadequate opponents will do that to you. Vicious, venal ... More >>
Having it All Ways: Scott Morrison’s Jerusalem “Compromise”
Monday, 17 December 2018, 9:17 am | Binoy Kampmark
The pieces were already put in place during the Wentworth federal by-election, a hopeless, needless gambit that reduced the Coalition government’s majority whilst giving the outgoing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull a crack at some vengeance. His ... More >>
