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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 76]
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 >>
Unnecessary Fussing: China, the United States and APEC
Tuesday, 20 November 2018, 7:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The parents on the global stage of power are bickering and now, such entertainingly distracting forums as APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum) are left without a unifying message. This should hardly matter, but the absence of a final ... More >>
US Prosecutors Get Busy With Julian Assange
Tuesday, 20 November 2018, 10:29 am | Binoy Kampmark
Those with a stake in the hustling racket of empire have little time for the contrariness that comes with exposing classified information. Those who do are submitted to a strict liability regime of assessment and punishment: you had the information (lawfully ... More >>
The Jerusalem Tangle: ScoMo’s Recognition Policy Stumbles
Friday, 16 November 2018, 12:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Jerusalem, deemed a holy city, and seen as trade item, bargaining chip and bartering tool over the centuries. Sought by the major faiths, despoiled at stages by various empires, revived and chalice of poison in international law. Australia’s Scott ... More >>
The Disgruntled Former Prime Minister
Thursday, 15 November 2018, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The disgruntled former prime minister is a rather large, and growing club, on the Australian scene. The country has become known for its killing seasons, those occasions when spear wielding apparatchiks within respective political parties feel the need ... More >>
Convenient Demonologies: Stopping Migrant Caravans
Tuesday, 13 November 2018, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
President Donald J. Trump has been engaged with berating human caravans, a spectacle that might have been odd in another era. At first instance, it all seems fundamentally anachronistic, a sort of history in reverse. It was, after all, the caravan packed ... More >>
Remembering the Peace Makers
Monday, 12 November 2018, 4:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those in the war industry and the business of commemorating the dead have little time for peace, even as they supposedly celebrate it. For them, peace is the enemy as much as armed opposing combatants, if not more so. Dr Brendan Nelson of the Australian ... More >>
Concepts of Nonsense: Australian Soft Power
Sunday, 11 November 2018, 4:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Soft power was always a term best suited for eunuchs. It relies on persuasion, counsel and an air of seduction. It does not imply actual force as such (often, that side of the bargain is hidden). At its core are the presumed virtues of the product being ... More >>
Ukraine’s Holodomor, Genocide and Intent
Friday, 9 November 2018, 3:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The impression hits you immediately. An opening of an exhibition held to commemorate survivors and families of one of the darker atrocities of human experiments; and it features ample food and wine. The commemorative occasion, however, was in stark ... More >>
Mid-Term Divisions: The Trump Take
Friday, 9 November 2018, 1:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
President Donald J. Trump has a special, strained take on the world. Defeat is simply victory viewed in slanted terms. Victory for the other side is defeat elaborately clothed. Both views stand, and these alternate with a mind bending disturbance that ... More >>
Shark Attack: Fearing Monsters in the Whitsundays
Wednesday, 7 November 2018, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It begins with a gruesome account: a tourist, paddleboarding and swimming in an idyllic setting baked by sun – in this case, Cid Harbour in the Whitsundays, Queensland – attacked by a shark. He suffers a massive loss of blood; he goes into cardiac ... More >>
The Tricks of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Tuesday, 6 November 2018, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The surgical dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi has sent the military establishments of several countries into a tizz. Arms manufacturers are wondering whether this is an inconvenient blip, a ruffling moral reminder about what they are dealing with. ... More >>
Closing Loopholes: Taxing the Digital Giants
Monday, 5 November 2018, 7:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The treasurers of various countries seem to be stumbling over each other in the effort, but taxing the digital behemoths has become something of an obsession, the gold standard for those wishing to add revenue to state coffers. Back in May, when Australia’s ... More >>
Losing Users: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Problems
Friday, 2 November 2018, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
His detractors and enemies have been waiting some time for this, but it must have given them moments of mild cheer. Facebook, the all-gazing, accumulating system of personal profiles and information, poster child, in fact, of surveillance capitalism, ... More >>
Moving Right in Brazil: The Rise of Jair Bolsonaro
Thursday, 1 November 2018, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Moving left has been a Brazilian political tendency for some time, a tendency affirmed through the 1990s and 2000s with the presidential administrations of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But this is the same country also famed for ... More >>
Angela Merkel’s Last Days
Wednesday, 31 October 2018, 1:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cultural compilations such as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough are rich with these accounts: the high priest or leader of a tribe, whose lengthy tenure is wearing thin, is set for the sacrifice, either through ritual or being overthrown by another member. ... More >>
Julian Assange, Ecuador and the Dangers of Farce
Monday, 29 October 2018, 5:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This is the next stage of the Julian Assange chronicles: from the summit of information disclosures and meddlesome revelations on classified state matters, the Australian rabblerouser now finds himself the subject of a new round of jokes and ribbing. WikiLeaks, ... More >>
