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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]
Investigating the Banks: A Royal Commission in Australia
Sunday, 3 December 2017, 11:52 am | Binoy Kampmark
On Collins Street, Melbourne lies a monument that acts as a gloriously loud remark about how banks are treated in Australia. The ANZ Gothic Bank, studded with stain glass windows, and equipped with a chapel for bankers is a secular tribute to capitalism. ... More >>
Divorce Bills: The EU and the Surrender of the Brexiters
Saturday, 2 December 2017, 3:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The parties had been groping (appropriate, given the daily revelations about harassment) for some common ground. There had been discussions about having further discussions, hedging, ducking and weaving. In a dysfunctional relationship, options tend to shrink ... More >>
The Vanishing Submarine: Hope and the ARA San Juan
Tuesday, 28 November 2017, 2:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A certain type of grief and moroseness accompanies deaths at sea. Not being naturally adapted to living in water, humankind has braved the aqueous environment, seeking to conquer it and tame its residents. At sea, the great battles of mythology are ... More >>
North Korea as “State Sponsor of Terrorism”
Monday, 27 November 2017, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Are such designations ever useful? At the stroke of a pen, an entire state is designated “terrorist” or a seemingly milder sponsor of terrorism, its name finding a way onto a list of supposed unmentionables and moral inverts. Obscure groups and more ... More >>
Foreign Policy Blues: Australian Foreign Policy White Paper
Monday, 27 November 2017, 7:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Australian Foreign Policy White paper was touted as a main course for consumers of policy, a document that revealed the inner workings of those creatures working for the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs. Its temper is predictable, its prose ... More >>
The Violent Conclusion: Manus Island
Saturday, 25 November 2017, 1:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was another etching in a chronicle of extended violence. For days, resistance by refugees and asylum seekers against forced removal from the Lombrom Naval Base on Manus Island had taken very public form. Images of defiance and distress were ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: History, Law and Ratko Mladić
Thursday, 23 November 2017, 5:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While Zimbabwe was changing under various inexorable forces of power, the more sterile surrounds of The Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia offered the scene for a conviction. More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Zimbabwe, Colonialism and Violence
Wednesday, 22 November 2017, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The strongman lost some muscle this week. Robert Mugabe, a leader of the liberation movement that transformed colonially pressed Rhodesia into post-colonial Zimbabwe, had issued a letter of resignation. There had been no orgy of blood, no ordering ... More >>
A New Movement of Rights and the Right in Australia
Wednesday, 22 November 2017, 9:13 am | Binoy Kampmark
Scholars have wondered what “triggers” might be in the social furniture of a culture that might propel a people to embrace a bill of rights. Australia remains proudly, and idiosyncratically, opposed. More >>
Trump and the Nuclear Option: The Fiction of Sanity
Monday, 20 November 2017, 11:05 am | Binoy Kampmark
It had not happened in decades. On Tuesday, members of the US Congress gathered to consider the scope of presidential power in launching a nuclear strike. The state of the mind of the current president was very much at the forefront of the discussion, ... More >>
The Veiled Threat: Aust’s Campaign Against NZ Refugee Policy
Sunday, 19 November 2017, 4:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Another twist in the farce over the stained treatment of refugees on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island has surfaced. New Zealand has been insisting for some time that it is more than willing to welcome some 150 to its shores. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, ... More >>
Tale of Two teams: Australia, Italy and the World Cup
Sunday, 19 November 2017, 11:55 am | Binoy Kampmark
Australia chose a rather round about, and dangerous way, of getting to the finals of the FIFA World Cup. Qualifying by playing a South or Central American opponent has its pitfalls, the most memorable being Argentina at the Allianz Stadium in 1993. ... More >>
Trump in Asia
Thursday, 16 November 2017, 2:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was certainly a show, but getting to the meat of it was difficult. US President Donald J. Trump, on his return from an Asian tour lasting twelve days, had set out to “correct” mistakes made by those who had come before him. The fear, however, ... More >>
The Fordist Academic
Thursday, 16 November 2017, 9:09 am | Binoy Kampmark
Two figures tower over the idea, and the realisation, of industrial America. The first is Henry Ford, whose factory process dedicated to mass car production featured specifically focused machinery, a moving assembly line, and a linear process of interdependent ... More >>
Expensive Affirmation: Aust Says Yes to Same Sex Marriage
Wednesday, 15 November 2017, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The overall figure was comfortable, though hardly dashing. 62 percent of Australians (7.82 million) decided that same sex marriage was a perfectly feasible, even desirable notion, while 38 percent (4.87 million) did not. More >>
Idiot Voters and Trolling the Internet: Russia and the US
Tuesday, 14 November 2017, 5:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The program usually pokes fun, riddles and irks a fourth estate that has long given up the chase for verity. Media Watch , after years of weather beaten but reliable service, remains Australia’s only real source of genuine critical comment about ... More >>
Trans-Pacific Follies: Australia Asleep as Canada Wakes Up
Monday, 13 November 2017, 7:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was as dreary as listening to the formulaic assessments of political economy by an unreconstructed Leninist. But Sunday morning with Steve Ciobo, Australia’s trade minister, was such an occasion. More >>
War Commemoration Porn: Remembrance Day Celebrations
Monday, 13 November 2017, 2:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The officials are called one by one to lay wreathes, a ceremony of mechanical efficiency. With each laying comes the sense of wonder at how this could happen. Political figures are the first to vote in parliaments and side with the executive when it comes to ... More >>
Fixations of Propriety: The Manus Closure Scandal
Saturday, 11 November 2017, 10:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When confronted with the spectacle of the malnourished, the impoverished, the famine stricken, and the desperate, the Australian political instinct is simple: Why did these poor fools get themselves into this mix? With each wave of refugees arriving ... More >>
When Illness Matters: Massacre in Texas
Thursday, 9 November 2017, 10:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
The massacre at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs was, to put it simply, effective and spectacular. It also had the resonances of the primeval, ignoring the sanctity of the church in favour of murder within it. The alleged assailant managed ... More >>
