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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 73]
The Kosovo Blunder: Moves Towards a Standing Army
Sunday, 16 December 2018, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There never is a time not to worry in the Balkans. The next conflict always seems to be peering around the corner with a malicious enthusiasm, eager to spring at points of demagogic advantage and personal suffering. The centrepieces of future disaster ... More >>
Be Offensive and Be Damned
Thursday, 13 December 2018, 4:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been an ordinary year for universities in Australia. While the National Tertiary Education Union pats itself on the back for supposedly advancing the rights and pay of academics, several face removal and castigation at the hands of university management. ... More >>
William Blum: Anti-Imperial Advocate
Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 1:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In the incessant self-praise of the US imperial project, kept safe in a state of permanently enforced amnesia, occasional writings prod and puncture. Mark Twain expressed an ashamed horror at the treatment of the Philippines; Ulysses Grant, despite being ... More >>
Charters and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 10:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was a gathering of activists masquerading as deep thinkers. Ostensibly, it was to celebrate seven decades of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one devised in the aftermath of a traumatised world and easier to do so for that fact. But this ... More >>
Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Immemorial Divisions
Monday, 10 December 2018, 4:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Of course there’s one Spain. If there was another, we’d all be in that one.” Joke on Franco’s Spain, in London Review of Books , 37, July, 2015 More >>
The Security Derangement Complex
Friday, 7 December 2018, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia is being seen as a test case. How does a liberal democracy affirm the destruction of private, encrypted communications? In 2015, China demonstrated what could be done to technology companies, equipping other states with an inspiration: encryption keys, ... More >>
Julian Assange, Manafort and The Guardian
Thursday, 6 December 2018, 4:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“This is going to be one of the most infamous news disasters since Stern published the ‘Hitler Diaries.’” WikiLeaks, Twitter , Nov 27, 2018 More >>
In Contempt of Parliament: The Legal Advice of Brexit
Wednesday, 5 December 2018, 1:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is attrition, suffocation and contortion. While Theresa May’s Brexit program, weak, compromising and cobbled as it is, endures that bit longer, her opponents from within and without government have been essentially undercutting her on various fronts. More >>
Lying About Age: The Legal Efforts of Emile Ratelband
Wednesday, 5 December 2018, 10:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
Oscar Wilde famously warned that one should never trust a woman who revealed her true age; anyone so inclined to do so was bound to tell you anything. He also, in his characteristic stab at modern manners, suggested that no woman should be quite ... More >>
George H.W. Bush: Cold War Ends and New World Orders
Tuesday, 4 December 2018, 9:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
The death of certain political figures, notably those of a vast imperium, is bound to provoke less criticism or critical insight than soul searching pursuits. With the US in the mauling clutches of Donald J. Trump, the nightmare that was supposedly ... More >>
Journey into Obsolescence: The Adani Carmichael Project
Sunday, 2 December 2018, 4:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Carmichael mine being pursued in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland is a dinosaur before its creation. On paper, it is hefty – to be some five times the size of Sydney harbour, the largest in Australia and one of the largest on the planet. ... More >>
Mutual Decline: The Failings of Student Evaluations
Friday, 30 November 2018, 2:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
That time of the year. Student evaluations are being gathered by the data crunchers. Participation rates are being noted. Attitudes and responses are mapped. The vulnerable, insecure instructor, fearing an execution squad via email, looks apprehensively at ... More >>
A Parliament of Irresponsibility: Peter Dutton
Thursday, 29 November 2018, 1:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It took place as the blades were being sharpened for a palace coup in August. On Radio National’s breakfast program, Deputy Leader of Labor, Tanya Plibersek was tight lipped to her interlocutor. The issue posed to her party was the eligibility ... More >>
Eyes Without The Prize: Stripping Aung San Suu Kyi’s Awards
Thursday, 29 November 2018, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is impossible to see peace prize or freedom awards as anything other than fragments of an industry. In time, ideals become marketable and matters of commodity. Those who go against this market rationale face the fires of moral outrage. The business ... More >>
Steve Bannon at Oxford
Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 11:30 am | Binoy Kampmark
Steve Bannon. The Oxford Union. A university that has been the breeding, sculpting and minting ground for British prime ministers for centuries and the Establishment. Here , Bannon, strategist of the Trump campaign in 2016, was in full swing, spearing ... More >>
Fanciful Notions: European Armies, Trump and NATO
Tuesday, 27 November 2018, 10:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
The idea of a standing European army, one dedicated to the specific needs of Europe as opposed to being an annex of another power is far from new. In gestation alongside notions of European federalism and its defence have come the idea of a force filled ... More >>
Coming Up Against Yellow Vests: Emmanuel Macron’s Fuel
Sunday, 25 November 2018, 12:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Governments and ruling regimes tend to face revolution in the face of harsh hikes in prices. Margaret Thatcher’s rule in Britain was rocked by the poll tax. In France, the once enthusiastically embraced Emmanuel Macron has decided to leave the ground ... More >>
Bringing God and Finding Death
Friday, 23 November 2018, 1:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Curiosity for the undiscovered last tribe, that tantalising moment when eyes are cast upon the previously unseen, remains the anthropological Holy Grail. But to do so would lead to the natural consequences that come with contact and invasion: the ... More >>
Forgetting Jamal Khashoggi: Donald Trump
Thursday, 22 November 2018, 1:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.” Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), Twitter , Nov 20, 2018 More >>
Big Mouthed Blue-Eyes: Frank Sinatra in Australia
Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 11:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
The demigods are rarely tempered, and Frank Sinatra, who considered himself one, along with a horde of adulating fans, was one who rarely faced the sharp tongue or chastising hand. Accusations about mob connections, thuggery and darker impulses ... More >>
