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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 85]
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 >>
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 >>
