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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 82]
Fictional Free Trade and Permanent Protectionism
Tuesday, 20 March 2018, 7:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fictional Free Trade and Permanent Protectionism: Donald Trump’s Economic Orthodoxy Let’s put it out there with suitable portions of provocation: free trade has never actually taken place. There is an uncomfortable, skirmish-ridden middle ground, where ... More >>
Racial Preferences: Dutton and White South African Farmers
Sunday, 18 March 2018, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Racial Preferences: Peter Dutton and White South African Farmers It has been the great misfit Australian policy since the 1990s: a refugee and immigration policy that shows itself to be scrupulously fair, calculable and clean. Nothing shall be ... More >>
Trump’s Intelligence Circus: Tillerson, Pompeo and Haspel
Saturday, 17 March 2018, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Trump’s Intelligence Circus: Tillerson, Pompeo and Haspel It takes much to make a figure like Rex Tillerson seem not merely sane but competent. The Trump administration, with its almost paranormal sense of revisionism and fantasy, has managed to make ... More >>
Amazon: Digital Assistants, Home Surveillance and Data
Wednesday, 14 March 2018, 4:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It says a lot that societies who are still part of what is rather weakly called the free world could do this. Technology, viewed as emancipating and rewarding, can actually introduce different chains and shackles, becoming repellent and self-defeating. More >>
Viral Apologies and Jeremy Corbyn
Monday, 12 March 2018, 1:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was public, expressive and demanded. The apology by Ben Bradley, a social media hazard but also Tory member of the UK House of Commons, is something that will put detractors of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn on notice. While accusations have been made ... More >>
Bullied Relations: Aus, East Timor and Natural Resources
Thursday, 8 March 2018, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!” More >>
Donald Trump’s Tariff War
Tuesday, 6 March 2018, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“To protect our Country, we must protect American Steel!” Donald J. Trump , Twitter, Mar 5, 2018 More >>
Snow and Snowflakes: UK response to the Beast from the East
Monday, 5 March 2018, 4:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the bibliophile and aphorist Samuel Johnson claimed that people of appropriate mental discipline could avoid talking about the weather, the British have found weather an irresistible topic of conversation. Storms are recalled with nostalgic exaggeration; ... More >>
Weaponising Rumour: Australia’s New Political Sensitivity
Sunday, 4 March 2018, 6:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Weaponising Rumour: Australia’s New Political Sensitivity The hide of Australia’s political classes has been worn. Some members, admittedly, never had one. With tiptoeing around language ravaging, and in some cases savaging discussion, pondering policy ... More >>
Nuclear Bravado: Putin’s Nuclear Invincibles
Saturday, 3 March 2018, 3:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Bravado: Putin’s Nuclear Invincibles Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, seemed perplexed, sticking to a drafted script. Politicians on the Hill were troubled. The Pentagon attempted to be reassuring. The Russian bear ... More >>
Trump, North Korea and Post-Olympic Angst
Tuesday, 27 February 2018, 3:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the icicles still glinting with the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic games, US President Donald Trump, like any disgruntled child, wanted to reassert his relevance. Little Rocket Man had assumed diplomatic pose, or at the very least ... More >>
Arming Educators: Trump, Gun Violence and Schools
Saturday, 24 February 2018, 6:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It had been in the works. Instead of engaging in the traditional revulsion associated with a mass shooting, or even digesting the grief of outraged students and grieving parents, US President Donald Trump’s solution to guns violence was elementary. ... More >>
God, Politics and Billy Graham
Friday, 23 February 2018, 9:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Evangelising is an ugly thing. It assumes indisputable truths, and limits the field of inquiry. Its very assertiveness lies in unquestioning rather than probing, a sheepish acceptance of the truth. The tele-pastor and media choked evangelists, of which the ... More >>
Frontiersman of the Internet: John Perry Barlow
Wednesday, 21 February 2018, 5:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He may have been a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, but a component of John Perry Barlow’s activism and corpus will forever be associated with a concept fast losing its gloss: internet freedom. More >>
Meddling for Empire: The CIA Comes Clean
Tuesday, 20 February 2018, 4:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“We’ve been doing this kind of thing [electoral meddling] since the CIA was created in 1947.” Loch K. Johnson, New York Times , Feb 17, 2018 More >>
The Caring Profession: Peacekeeping and Sexual Abuse
Monday, 19 February 2018, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s the sort of thing to turn many an otherwise calm stomach, but the revelations that UN peace keeping staff have been involved in sexual assault has done its fair share of upsetting. Legislators in the United States, many sceptical of the body ... More >>
Making Mugs of Voters: Mueller’s Russia Indictments
Sunday, 18 February 2018, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Tagged to the Trump presidency like an insistent limpet, the investigation into Russian interference in the US elections of 2016 provides constant fodder for the unimaginative political animals in the United States. But any diet that remains unvaried is bound ... More >>
Sexual Despotism: Malcolm Turnbull’s Bonking Ban
Friday, 16 February 2018, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s all the rage at the moment, stirring the halls of power in certain countries, and satisfying some sense of puritanical virtue. Bonking is off the cards for politicians – at least in certain contexts, and some states. More >>
Assange, Judge Arbuthnot and the Arrest Warrant
Thursday, 15 February 2018, 4:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Justice is an elastic concept. Like other terms in law, it has room to expand and contract. But one weakness burdens legal strictures that supposedly have an objective reality to them: power. Power brutish, power as a spectral force, and power arbitrarily ... More >>
George Brandis, the Rule of Law and Populism
Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 4:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Nothing stimulates frankness like an imminent departure from politics. From the deceptions, dissimulations and general obtuseness offered by the political craft, a person appointed to a diplomatic position can be reassured to lie in a different way. Mendacity is ... More >>
