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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 77]
Battling Contamination: Erin Brockovich Down Under
Sunday, 2 September 2018, 3:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Australian press have been in a state of drooling ecstasy. Part of it is because Australia can be relevant, however negative it might be, to their monster cousin, defender and protector known as the United States. This time, its cultural - in the ... More >>
The Carnival of Homelessness: How the Filthy Rich React
Saturday, 1 September 2018, 5:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
An aggressive sign of an affluent society can usually be gauged by its invidious misuse of its privilege. Poverty is deemed necessary, and the rich must try to understand it. To be privileged is to be guilty, a tickling of the conscience as the pennies ... More >>
Banning Chelsea Manning: The Dubious Tests of Character
Friday, 31 August 2018, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
National security advocates have been crotchety ever since the release of Chelsea Manning for a sentence they hoped would go the full, crushing 35 years. Her sins were intimately tied up with making WikiLeaks the publisher of fame, less than fortune: ... More >>
Repudiating the Global Commons: Trump’s Militarisation
Thursday, 30 August 2018, 4:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In international law, a category regarded by certain legal philosophers as non-existent (there being no overarching sovereign to police it), aspirations reign like obstinate fantasies. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty is one such example, decorated by such expressions ... More >>
John McCain’s Imperial Complex
Wednesday, 29 August 2018, 3:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Obituaries are not the best places to identify faults unless they assume the form of a hatchet job. The opposite is more often the case: worshipful and respectful to the point of being cloying. As the tears dry, and the sobs of reflection pass, ... More >>
Ambushing Pope Francis: The Accusations of Cardinal Viganò
Tuesday, 28 August 2018, 6:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Now that the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths.” Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganò, Aug 25, 2018 More >>
Modern Memories: The Invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968
Monday, 27 August 2018, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a year of manic tumult. Students revolted in Paris and other global capitals; the Tet Offensive permanently impaired the US war effort in Vietnam, at least on the home front; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both felled by ... More >>
Sodding the Australian Voter: Accidental Prime Ministers
Saturday, 25 August 2018, 3:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a continuation of Malcolm Turnbull by other means. The new Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison and his freshly appointed Deputy, Josh Frydenberg have ensured that the “insurgents”, as Turnbull deemed them, did not come through. ... More >>
Hijacked Democracy: Normalised Instability in Australia
Friday, 24 August 2018, 1:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
You can sense Australian politicians – or at least a good number of them – fuming at being cobbled together with the counterparts of other states deemed less worthy of the tag of “stable”. Take, for instance, entertaining Italy, tenaciously temporary ... More >>
Cultures of Death: Pope Francis, Apology and Child Abuse
Thursday, 23 August 2018, 12:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was long overdue, but Pope Francis’s letter of condemnation and apology regarding the abuse of children by Catholic priests did sent a few ripples of comfort and reckoning. He conceded that the Church “showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them”. ... More >>
Prime Ministerial Chaos: Turnbull’s Last Days
Wednesday, 22 August 2018, 4:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
No one is in charge in Australia. Monday’s leadership challenge by Home Affairs minister, the potato-headed former police officer Peter Dutton, was cutting enough to leave Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull a wounded animal. The 48 to 35 margin of ... More >>
Charisma and Banality: Kofi Annan and the UN
Tuesday, 21 August 2018, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being the head of a creature essentially without spine, and, even more to the point, with vague form, must be something of a challenge. Part of the failing of the United Nations probably lies in its disparate existence, a scattered composition of bureaucratic ... More >>
Readying Knives: The Mortality of Australian Prime Ministers
Monday, 20 August 2018, 2:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The opinion poll prime ministership is a modern Australian disease. Not only does it suggest an ailing in the Westminster system, but a profound contempt for the democratic sensibility on the part of party representatives, hacks and the industry that supports ... More >>
Genoa’s Morandi Bridge Disaster
Monday, 20 August 2018, 11:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
Bridges are the great symbols of human connection. They suggest a certain animal pride in the human race, a technological capacity to trick, and even subordinate nature. Across ravines, rivers and bodies of space, the bridge suggests the raising ... More >>
Warring against Encryption: Australian proposals
Friday, 17 August 2018, 4:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is it with Australia’s law enforcement authorities? Their uncontrollable appetite for encrypted data – primarily the data of private users – is so voracious it has become a parody of itself. There seems to be little that will restrain such politicians ... More >>
Great Barrier Reef Politics
Thursday, 16 August 2018, 12:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia’s environment has been in precarious hands since European settlement found its lengthy and persistent way to the continent. It has been mined, mauled, drained, farmed, deforested and despoiled at a rate that was only restrained by the ... More >>
Meaningless Titles and Liveable Cities
Wednesday, 15 August 2018, 2:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has gone about its annual business of releasing its World’s Most Liveable City index, the sort of flotsam that matters less to urban planners than hedge-fund managers. The previous seven time winner had been ... More >>
Using the Burka: Boris Johnson’s Bid for Popularity
Tuesday, 14 August 2018, 1:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Comedy, Boris Johnson, and the Tories – these three share a certain comforting, if chaotic affinity, lobbed together in some nightmarish union that risks consuming itself. But times are serious – profoundly so, we are told: Brexit exercises the ... More >>
Authoritarian Revocations: Australia, Terrorism and Citizens
Sunday, 12 August 2018, 4:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Contrary to any popular perceptions of Australia’s legal system, a dislike of rights reigns with pious conviction on both sides of the political aisle. Rights are the stuff of nonsense and nuisance, revocable for those deemed undesirable. The Australian ... More >>
Trump versus Journalism: The Travails of Fourth Estate
Saturday, 11 August 2018, 2:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
You have to give it to him: President Donald Trump loathes the Fourth Estate with a dedication verging on caricature. He splutters at the members and rails at their observations with adolescent rage. He sees some of its members, not without a few ... More >>
