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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 81]
Planning for Aggression: Netanyahu’s Nuclear Archive
Monday, 7 May 2018, 3:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It all seems like an effort to confirm offensiveness and instability, to be appalling in order to be relevant. The Israeli prime minister, handicapped by domestic travails and a watchful Knesset, is very keen to push the Iranian demon into the spotlight, ... More >>
Nobel Nonsense: Nominating Donald Trump for the Peace Prize
Friday, 4 May 2018, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It seems like rich nonsense, but should peace be attained on the Korean peninsula, with arrangements entrenched to ensure durability as opposed to unconvincing window dressing, President Donald Trump might well join the list of frauds and charlatans ... More >>
Irresistible Urges: Surveilling Australia’s Citizens
Thursday, 3 May 2018, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The authoritarian misfits in the Turnbull government have again rumbled and uttered suspicions long held: Australian residents and citizens are not to be trusted, and the intelligence services should start getting busy in expanding their operations ... More >>
Macron’s Travels in Trumpland
Wednesday, 2 May 2018, 1:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
All smiles and hugs is the current French President, Emmanuel Macron. In the White House, there seemed to be an emotional equation generated by the supposedly warm relationship between President Donald Trump and his guest. In entertainment vision, ... More >>
Sugar Demons, Sweet Lobbies and Taxes
Tuesday, 1 May 2018, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It came across on the ABC’s Four Corners as something of a junkie’s confession: I am an addict, and I know. The conservative MP for the Australian federal seat of Dawson, George Christensen, was not mincing words so much as spouting them in crude ... More >>
Without a US Ambassador: Australia Awaits
Monday, 30 April 2018, 4:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was cheered and embraced with enthusiasm bordering on self-praise: Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr. of the Pacific Fleet would be making his way to Canberra to assume the post of US Ambassador. Washington had supposedly appointed a big fish to monitor ... More >>
Review: Incremental Destruction - The Death of Stalin
Friday, 27 April 2018, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The literature on his blood-soaked rule has reached Babel Tower proportions. Joseph Stalin, who presided over a state transformed and tormented, has been a difficult subject to portray. His period of rule, its cruelty stupendous and murderous, has ... More >>
Plunder Down Under: Rot in Australia’s Financial Services
Wednesday, 25 April 2018, 4:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has all the elements of a crudely crafted if effective tale: banks and other financial services, founded, proud of their standing in society; financial service providers, with such pride, effectively charging the earth for providing elementary services; ... More >>
Enoch Powell: Blood Speeches and Anniversaries
Tuesday, 24 April 2018, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“What struck me re-reading it, and thinking back to how I felt at the time, was how in a way the ghost of Enoch Powell still stalks British politics.” Lord Hain , BBC, April 15, 2018 More >>
Clamouring against Russia: The Cyber Attack Platform
Friday, 20 April 2018, 1:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In a time when such revelations as those of Edward Snowden pass a person’s lips with ease and awareness, political clamouring for action and measures against Russia on the subject of cyber attack seem risible. This is not to say that Russia does ... More >>
The Unintentional Extremist: Israel Folau
Wednesday, 18 April 2018, 1:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What limits opinions? Especially by sportspeople, who are often confused for geniuses of the mind and ambassadors of tact outside their very limited field of endeavour. (Yes, he can dribble a ball with sigh-inducing majesty, so he must know a thing or ... More >>
Macron’s Syria Game
Tuesday, 17 April 2018, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a certain bullishness in French circles these days, even if there was an initial attempt, with the Macron government, to calm matters down. The need to assert Gallic might in the face of brutality has again surfaced; and has a familiar ring ... More >>
Blind Assault: Trump Strikes Syria
Saturday, 14 April 2018, 4:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Feeling that some display of force was needed, US president Donald Trump issued orders on Friday to demonstrate some form of muscle, albeit exercised some thousands of miles away. “A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch ... More >>
Admiring Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg goes before Congress
Thursday, 12 April 2018, 1:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This is a dance of confused ends and mistrustful glances, mixed with occasional moments of misplaced adoration. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has never been an empathetic sort and his testifying before the US Congress has done nothing to dispel that assessment. ... More >>
Pacific Moves: China, Vanuatu and Australia
Thursday, 12 April 2018, 1:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Washington’s vigilant deputy, doing rounds on the beat in the Pacific, has been irate of late. The central issue here is the continuing poking around of China in an area that would have been colloquially termed in the past “Australia’s neighbourhood”. More >>
Trump’s Corporate Cursing: The Case of Amazon and Jeff Bezos
Tuesday, 10 April 2018, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the President of the United States forgets that he is no longer running the set of The Apprentice, with its faux callousness and elevated brutality, he can prove devastating to certain stocks. Even in the land of the plutocrat and the capitalist, ... More >>
Indulgent Violence: The Legacy of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Saturday, 7 April 2018, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was nothing of the Siddhartha about her. Modest and sombre middle ways are not the stuff of revolutionary ardour. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s mark on history was always going to render the violent normal, the blood stain a perceived, even ... More >>
YouTube, Censorship and Nasim Aghdam
Friday, 6 April 2018, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“People like me are not good for big business, like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses. That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us.” Nasim Najafi Aghdam discussing YouTube More >>
Justified Slaughters: The Kangaroo Industry Debate
Thursday, 5 April 2018, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Mass killings, massacres and general culling; butchering made normal, sanctified by State practice, and the scientific establishment. This is the killing of Australia’s national symbol, reviled and idealised in various measures, but generally considered, ... More >>
Atmospheric Burnings: The Re-entry of China’s Tiangong-1
Tuesday, 3 April 2018, 6:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The precipitous demise of China’s prototype space station, Tiangong-1, was the sort of event that took earthbound discussions to more heavenly matters. Human beings, as is their wont, tend to follow the rules of colonisation with a certain automatism. ... More >>
