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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 94]
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 >>
Anzac as Apologia and Religion
Tuesday, 25 April 2017, 1:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Soaked to the core, Melbournians gathered around the War Memorial in thousands, gazing at the flickering, all-resistant eternal flame in an annual tribute to Australia’s fallen. Each year, the secular religion of Anzac (the Australian and New Zealand ... More >>
Trump, the DOJ and Julian Assange - Binoy Kampmark
Friday, 21 April 2017, 3:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There had been some doubts from initial enthusiasts about WikiLeaks once information from leaks released on its site started puncturing holes in an already worn Democratic campaign in 2016. More >>
Cults of Old Age: The Passing of Emma Morano
Thursday, 20 April 2017, 11:14 am | Binoy Kampmark
The novelist Anthony Powell spoke of old age as penalisation for a crime one had not committed. Obviously, not being biblically inclined in that sense, the antics of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were discounted. More >>
Donald Trump, North Korea and Nuclear Brinkmanship
Tuesday, 18 April 2017, 11:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
Warring toddlers, fanatical children, one-eyed adolescents who confuse noise with constructive contribution - this is the state of the world, with the recent, and ongoing spat chapter of Washington and Pyongyang. More >>
The Mother of All Bombs Goes to Afghanistan - Binoy Kampmark
Monday, 17 April 2017, 9:42 am | Binoy Kampmark
These are the times where magnitude and size matters. Bombs in number with much heft and presence are being sought to root out those non-state jihadists of the Prophet, destructively maiming and killing all before them in the name of the next heavily ... More >>
Pompeo, Power and WikiLeaks - Binoy Kampmark
Monday, 17 April 2017, 9:32 am | Binoy Kampmark
“Vested interests deflect from the facts that WikiLeaks publishes by demonizing its brave staff and me.” Julian Assange, The Washington Post , Apr 11, 2017. More >>
Dreaming of Coal: Turnbull Goes to India
Sunday, 16 April 2017, 5:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This was not a trip of orient driven romance, but one of dull, bottom line economics. Less curry than cabbage; more brown nosing than elevation. Australia's increasingly wooden Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, did not exude colour or charisma as he was ... More >>
