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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 92]
Julian Assange, Sweden, and Continuing Battles
Monday, 22 May 2017, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It had been, from the start, a cruel wait and see game. Lacking logic and consistency, the Swedish effort to extradite Julian Assange from the United Kingdom, not for formal charges but the pretext of questioning him over sexual assault and rape, collapsed ... More >>
The Release of Chelsea Manning - Binoy Kampmark
Thursday, 18 May 2017, 3:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was one of the brighter acts in a darkening turmoil in the last parts of the Obama presidency, but the decision to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence added a zest of enlightenment. Manning had already found herself on the slippery slope to doom, ... More >>
Trump Slip Ups in the Oval Office - Binoy Kampmark
Thursday, 18 May 2017, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has the air of a hunting party, and the quarry, on this occasion, was a lumbering US President with a loose tongue. The individual aiming the rifle in this case was The Washington Post , assisted by the murmurings and breathless whispers of various ... More >>
Fantasies of Worth: Macron’s French Mission - Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 16 May 2017, 3:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The outcome of the French presidential elections did not suggest a France on the verge of rapid, vigorous renewal. It suggested the opposite, a state in atrophy, the Fifth Republic in terminal decline before unleashed historical forces. More >>
The World For Ransome: The Effects of Wannacry
Monday, 15 May 2017, 2:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What a stealthy bugger of a problem. Malware deftly delivered, locking the system by encrypting files and making them otherwise impossible to access unless a fee is paid. A form of data hijacking that can only be admired for its ease of execution, ... More >>
Hyper-Normalising Lavrov - Binoy Kampmark
Monday, 15 May 2017, 11:45 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Kremlin would have been thrilled with the happy snaps, but these were, in the end, purely that. History is an assemblage of misguided images and false assumptions. The pictures of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 remain rank, but brilliant for ... More >>
Jeremy Corbyn’s Electoral Vision: Labour’s Leaked Manifesto
Friday, 12 May 2017, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is unfortunate that policies otherwise deemed middle of the road and social democratic tend to be seen in Britain as offspring of a lunatic mother long held in indefinite detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. But such is the nature of the current electioneering ... More >>
Blasphemy as Weapon: Undermining Ahok - Binoy Kampmark
Thursday, 11 May 2017, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One need not be a zealot in the human rights field to find the latest turn in Indonesian politics disconcerting. Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, was always a nicely packaged target, confident and assertive, very much the beaming ... More >>
Chopping James Comey - Binoy Kampmark
Wednesday, 10 May 2017, 4:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any sense that Donald Trump had found some accord with James Comey of the FBI gathered from his investigative zeal regarding Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server should always have been doubted. More >>
The Macron Denial - Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 9 May 2017, 4:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The cheer was always going to be qualified. The bubbles would be less effervescent, more a case of relieved sighing rather than frothy exultation. After another electoral hack, and another round of threats, the French election was being played out in an ... More >>
Olympian Politics: The Australian Olympic Committee
Saturday, 6 May 2017, 9:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a scrappy affair, and it resulted in a predictable result: the re-election of veteran administrator John Coates as president of the Australian Olympic Committee by 58 votes to 35. Such a process was all in all dull but for the notable lid it ... More >>
Greater Albania and the Balkan Problem - Binoy Kampmark
Friday, 5 May 2017, 3:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour. Each nation has, and in some instances continues, to nurse dreams of enlargement, ... More >>
Hillary Clinton’s Lament - Binoy Kampmark
Friday, 5 May 2017, 2:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Predictability in these tumultuous times will get you removed from office, or render you unelectable. Such a tendency has more than just a faint stain of the establishment, however accurate this might be in fact. More >>
Empty Values: The Australian Concept of Citizenship
Thursday, 4 May 2017, 4:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a lowering conversation, and one that Australia’s politicians have been engaging in with various degrees of discomfort. The Australian prime minister, for one, doesn’t seem to know where to place his feet on this one, showing considerable ... More >>
The Trade Dreams of Boris Johnson - Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 2 May 2017, 4:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few characters in history have seen so much spoken about him for one seemingly so irrelevant. Out of obscure follies and foolhardy decisions, he rose from being a questionable journalist for The Times , sacked, no less, for falsifying the news, ... More >>
Days of Illusion: Donald Trump’s First 100 - Binoy Kampmark
Monday, 1 May 2017, 1:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The human capacity, notably in cultures where measurements are valued, places much stock in numbering deeds. In the case of the US presidency, power is supposedly meant to translate into something within the first hundred days, a ring fight between the ... More >>
North Korea’s Military Gambit
Saturday, 29 April 2017, 9:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“All options for responding to future provocation must remain on the table. Diplomatic and financial levers of power will be backed up by a willingness to counteract North Korean aggression if necessary.” Rex Tillerson, Apr 28, 2017 More >>
Turkey’s Kurdish Agenda - Binoy Kampmark
Thursday, 27 April 2017, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any doubts that Turkey’s involvement in the conflict against Islamic State is purely symbolic were dispelled by a latest round of air strikes against Kurdish positions in northeast Syria and Iraq’s Sinjar region, killing at least 20 fighters. (The ... More >>
Short Choices: The French Presidential Elections
Wednesday, 26 April 2017, 2:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The establishment got another burning in the French elections on Sunday, revealing again that there is no level of voter disgust that will not find some voice in the current range of elections. The terror for pollsters and the establishment now is ... More >>
Fleeing the Ratpac: James Packer, Gambling and Hollywood
Wednesday, 26 April 2017, 11:00 am | Binoy Kampmark
To tabloid filled US audiences, Australia’s billionaire and casino mogul, James Packer, has tended to be associated more with having a hand on Maria Carey’s voluptuousness than decent deals and sound business prowess. More >>
