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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 80]
Dazzled by Tech: Universities, Googlification and Microsoft
Thursday, 7 June 2018, 1:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The mechanical, robotic striving of university politburos and their jack boot managers have always been interesting when it comes to one particular topic: the role of technology and its adoption. For it is in technology that the mediocre paper clip shuffler can ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Power of Self-Pardon
Wednesday, 6 June 2018, 1:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“If a president was dumb enough to pardon himself that would be such an arrogant statement of power that the House would probably impeach him in a week and the Senate would convict him.” Newt Gingrich , Jun 5, 2018 More >>
Twats and Tweets: Roseanne Barr and the Issue of Proportion
Tuesday, 5 June 2018, 12:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Can anything be said that doesn’t warrant an empaneled jury of twitting twats to determine the fate of an individual? It is evident that branding, marketing and selling can only be done in a context of controlled hypocrisy. Companies long happy to use ... More >>
A Literary Vice: Me Too Enthusiasm and Junot Díaz
Tuesday, 5 June 2018, 10:31 am | Binoy Kampmark
It all happened at break neck speed. Before the dust settled, Junot Díaz was on plane from Sydney back to the United States. The Sydney Writers’ Festival had received a severe spiking of flavour from another Me Too, stop that and what to do skirmish. More >>
Universities, Branding and Saudi Arabia
Wednesday, 30 May 2018, 3:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The modern university is a tertiary colonising institution. Like the old mercantilist bodies – the Dutch East India Company and its equivalents – the educational world is there to be acquired by bureaucrats, teachers and, it is hoped, suitable recruits. More >>
Cover Ups and Confessions: Pope Francis and Child Abuse
Monday, 28 May 2018, 2:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is the season for exposures and exposes, and the Catholic Church has been making regular ripples of the wrong and undeniably crude sort. Globally, the church is finding itself being picked bare in terms of institutional malfeasance, not merely on the ... More >>
Donald Trump, Summits and Cancellations
Sunday, 27 May 2018, 1:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was the sort of party you would be reluctant to turn up to, and its cancellation would have caused a sigh of relief. But when the US president replicates the feigned hurt of a guest who has been impugned, the puzzlement deepens. A mix of crankiness ... More >>
States of Cruelty: The Dead Refugees of Manus
Friday, 25 May 2018, 12:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In those seemingly interminable refugee debates being held in various countries, cruelty is pure theatre. It is directed, stage managed, the victims treated as mere marionettes in a play of putrid public policy and indifferent public officials. Barriers ... More >>
Eternal Disappearance: MH370 and the Hangar Gossipers
Thursday, 24 May 2018, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has fuelled enough speculation to fill libraries and populate databases at catchy speed. The disappearance of MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, one of two Malaysian Airlines flights to perish that year, continues to ... More >>
Australia’s China Syndrome
Wednesday, 23 May 2018, 1:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Syndromes can make for cringe worthy, nervous laughter. To see the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, struggle with reconciling China the bully of influence with China the resource hungry friend supplied the press with one such spectacle ... More >>
Tom Wolfe the Parajournalist
Tuesday, 22 May 2018, 3:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As is the nature of his creepy totality, President Donald Trump has a habit of suffusing the obituaries of the famous and pampered. Tom Wolfe, it is said by such figures as Maggie Haberman in The New York Times , conceived of Trump as a formidable figure ... More >>
Unsettling the Summits: John Bolton’s Libya Solution
Monday, 21 May 2018, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The inevitable stop, start and stuttering of the Korean peace process was bound to manifest itself soon after the hugs, expansive smiles and sympathetic back rubs. Dates have been set – the Kim-Trump summit is slated to take place in Singapore ... More >>
A Very Republican Sickness: Loving Royal Weddings
Sunday, 20 May 2018, 2:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Thinking that you actually know a public figure – in the intimate, best-friend kind of way – is not healthy.” Katie Stow, Harper’s Bazaar , Oct 17, 2017. More >>
The Decency of Violence: Massacre in Gaza
Thursday, 17 May 2018, 12:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has the makings of another Intifada: appalling timing in terms of commemoration (the founding of the state of Israel; the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem in all-Trumpistan affair); popular protest with all its untidy trimmings; then a ... More >>
Remembering Big Dead Place
Wednesday, 16 May 2018, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The image of Antarctica in common circulation is environmental and utopian. The scientist of valour, the investigator thirsting for discovery in a litmus test environment that will give warning about current and impending variations in temperature that ... More >>
The Commercial Heavens: The New Australian Space Agency
Tuesday, 15 May 2018, 2:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Politicians have been clambering to the top extolling something that has yet to exist. Scientists are claiming a job boom that has yet to transpire. Much fantasy and speculation dominate the creation of Australia’s Space Agency, an organisation that remains ... More >>
The Spectre of Torture: The Gina Haspel Hearings
Friday, 11 May 2018, 4:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I’m not going to sit here with the benefit of hindsight and judge the very good people who made hard decisions who were running the agency in very extraordinary circumstances.” Gina Haspel, May 9, 2018. More >>
The Mummy Returns: Mahathir Mohamad
Thursday, 10 May 2018, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a victory, but it could hardly count as a truly revolutionary one. Grizzled, aged but formidably stirring, Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister, is set to form government as the world’s oldest elected leader. His Pakatan Harapan ... More >>
Withdrawal Symptoms: Trump and the Iran Nuclear Deal
Wednesday, 9 May 2018, 1:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Hot on the heels of the Benjamin Netanyahu “nuclear archive” show supposedly revealing Iranian perfidy, US President Donald Trump added succour to the Israeli cause by promising to withdraw from the Iran Nuclear deal, more lengthily known as ... More >>
Revisiting Love Serenade
Tuesday, 8 May 2018, 4:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian life can seem defiantly absorbed, the defiance induced by insularity and isolation. The characters that inhabit the continent are mere specks of life before the enormity that is its nature, one bound, at any point in time, to swallow them ... More >>
