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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 83]
Fearing Peace: Olympic Diplomacy in Action
Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Mike Pence was a man with a mission. At stages through the opening parts of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, he looked like a man on a mission. With diplomatic gestures flowering all around with weedy vigour in Pyeonchang, he was intent on fighting ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Barnaby Joyce, Sex and Finance
Monday, 12 February 2018, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The insatiable appetite of Anglophone cultures for the prurient is of a different order to others. But it is an appetite tinged by horror, squeamishness and concern. Added to that such traditional markers, not to mention such markers as marriage, ... More >>
Lauri Love, Hacking and Extradition
Sunday, 11 February 2018, 5:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Horse-trading determines who goes to jail and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.” US Supreme Court Justice Kennedy (2012) More >>
Keeping an Eye on Australia: Admiral Harris Goes to Canberra
Saturday, 10 February 2018, 5:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Imperial arrangements require decent overseer of subjects. In the Pax Americana, which is, in fact, rather violent, Australia is indispensable in the Pacific theatre. It offers land, facilities, and the means to eye future enemies and keep allies in ... More >>
Selective History and Poland’s Holocaust law
Friday, 9 February 2018, 12:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Holocaust history has never been far away from political manipulation. The deaths of millions tends to supply various causes: for those who survive, radicalisation can be imminent. For those who participated in the killings, justification and denial ... More >>
Outing the US Empire: Trump’s Military Parade
Thursday, 8 February 2018, 1:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
You only had to see him goggle eyed and enthusiastic beside France’s President Emmanuel Macron last Bastille Day. The tricolours were fluttering, the jets booming above in the manner usual for a lapsed empire, and the President of the United States ... More >>
Rumblings in the Tory Palace
Tuesday, 6 February 2018, 9:36 am | Binoy Kampmark
As the Sunday news vine began getting heavy, that sole topic of all-consuming, toxic interest – Brexit – threatened to claim the casualty of the British Prime Minister herself, Theresa May. Interest centred on a possible troika that had busied itself ... More >>
Bungling Crown Privilege: Aust’s Cabinet Security Breach
Sunday, 4 February 2018, 10:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
Journalists would have seen it as a scoop, and insisted that no laws had been broken. Politicians might have considered it a calamity. Whatever one terms Australia (parliamentary democracy; constitutional monarchy) secrecy remains the state’s watchword. When ... More >>
British Trains, Cambridge and Nostalgia
Friday, 2 February 2018, 10:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
This is a different Cambridge. The gowns are gone, banished to a museum of what Britain was. The traffic and pollution have moved in, angry, irritable, uncompromising. Hopping off the train from Kings Cross, London doesn’t prepare you for the scene, one facing ... More >>
National Socialist Furniture: Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA vision
Thursday, 1 February 2018, 3:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It seemed to be an act of counter-intuitive genius, one framed in a manner that could have been deemed both insulting and flattering. You, dear customer, would be the one expected, not only to fork out for a product; you would also be expected to assemble ... More >>
Vulnerability and Prowess: Mike Pompeo Meets the BBC
Wednesday, 31 January 2018, 12:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In this age of reality television (or televised unreality), the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was not going to miss out. Unlike other chief spies who operate in habitual darkness and moving shadows, Mike Pompeo was very keen to get his voice ... More >>
Assassination in Kosovo: The Killing of Oliver Ivanović
Monday, 29 January 2018, 11:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
“I won’t even start with the old rule that when there’s a contract killing, it’s usually the killer who first offers their condolences.” Nenad Čanak, Radio Free Europe, Jan 22, 2018 More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Djokovic, Tennis and Player’s Unions
Thursday, 25 January 2018, 5:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Novak Djokovic, on returning to competitive tennis at the Australian Open, caused something of a stir that a revolt in the game was brewing. Was it about ball boys or girls, or his smooth unblemished victory against the unfortunate Donald Young? ... More >>
One Year of Trump: The Defenders of Fictional Democracy
Wednesday, 24 January 2018, 10:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
It seemed so much busier, much more manic and crowded than the one year that had passed. Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump continues to excite the same headlines and explosions that began even before he made it to the White House. More >>
Kurdish Frictions: Turkey’s Campaign in Afrin
Tuesday, 23 January 2018, 9:50 am | Binoy Kampmark
It’s a cruel saga, and one that promises no immediate end. Turkey, considered one of the more potent of powers within the NATO alliance, has manoeuvred itself into a play that Washington will find hard to avoid. For Ankara, one thing must not happen ... More >>
Olympic Diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula
Saturday, 20 January 2018, 12:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The more overtures, sudden but entirely appropriate, being made by North Korea to their South Korean counterparts, the more concern seems to emanate from quarters in Washington and Tokyo. A recurring streak in these engagements is the fear that ... More >>
War on Plastic: Attenborough, Britain and Environment
Friday, 19 January 2018, 1:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few documentaries have had quite this impact, so much so that it has ushered in the unfortunate combination of war and plastic, two terms that sit uneasily together, if at all. Tears were recorded; anxiety levels were propelled as Sir David Attenborough ... More >>
The Carillion Collapse: Corporate Sickness in May’s Britain
Wednesday, 17 January 2018, 11:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
Britain is ill, and even as the opportunists and populists scramble before the hardened negotiators of the European Union over imminent exit, revising optimistic forecasts and notions of sovereign greatness has begun. Within Theresa May’s decaying state ... More >>
Macron in China
Tuesday, 16 January 2018, 10:39 am | Binoy Kampmark
Since coming to power, Macron has given the impression of forging ahead with new agendas and ideas crafted from a novel perspective. This has been far from the case. True, the man’s novelty has shone through in doing what seemed to be the undoable: ... More >>
Fuming in the White House: The Bannon-Trump Implosion
Friday, 12 January 2018, 12:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Michael Wolff is laughing, if not gloating, all his way to the bank. Money bags are singing; bank accounts are being filled. Doubts about the free publicity his work on the Trump White House would receive would have abated with the tweeting complex ... More >>
