Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
-
The UK’s suspension of a few arms export licences to Israel is craven tokenism
The UK government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to victory in the July General Election, leaving the British Labour Party with a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper...
-
Beware the derogators as the Geneva Conventions turn 75
The four Geneva Conventions were adopted on 12 August, 1949, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to China, stated at an anniversary event at the Swiss Embassy...
-
Apologists for rape: The Sde Teiman protests
In 2007, writer Tal Nitsan isolated instances where Israeli male combatants systematically used sexual violence against Palestinian women in the war of 1948. In essentially marking off such conduct from more contemporary practices, she relied on media accounts, archival sources, the reports of human rights organisations and the testimony...
-
The Distasteful Nonsense of Olympism
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta – concluded a treaty permitting the safe passage of all athletes and spectators from...
-
Tactical paranoia: Peter Dutton’s Palestinian problem
The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company. And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades. The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable with: terrifying...
-
Bloody eschatology: Israel and the next big war
The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood-filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the Christian evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That...
-
Tim Walz for US Veep: Barely noticed and barely noticeable
While the Kamala Harris coronation for Democratic presidential nomination continues along its safely shielded path, her sacred status among party members growing with each day, the decision to select Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her Vice President (“Veep”) running mate had all the hallmarks of unbearable caution. Caution...
-
The political pretence of the US Democrats and the Palestinians
The fact that a Democrat US president currently occupies the White House has done little to ruffle the bloody and gore-filled equation in the Middle East, notably regarding the fate of the Palestinians. The ongoing ruthless Israeli offensive against the unfortunates in Gaza is certainly a worry for some...
-
Kamala Harris and the papier-mâché coronation
How aristocratic it all sounds, if only in a playground, papier-mâché sort of way. The language of the landed gentry, the “crowning”, the “coronation” — words repurposed for republican politics — is much in evidence with Kamala Harris, who is all but guaranteed the formal nomination as US presidential...
-
NATO: 75 and still threatening
Bring out the bonbons, the bubbles and the praise-filled memoranda for that old alliance. At the three-quarter century mark of its existence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is showing itself to be a greater nuisance than ever: gossiping, meddling and dreaming of greater acts of mischief under the...
-
The convulsed republic: The shooting of Donald Trump
As a nation, the United States, as if we did not already know, is convulsed. Paranoid and divided, giddy with conspiracy and deranged by fear of totalitarian seizure, hyper partisan and hostile to debate and any loose definition of facts (this condition afflicts the entire political spectrum), the only...
-
‘We love you Joe, but…’: Hollywood’s advice to President Biden
There is something to be said about ignoring actors. They assume roles, quite literally, camouflage themselves in scripts where personalities are created and behave accordingly. Given that they are paid liars, their political promptings should be treated with caution. It is no accident that much the same thing can...
-
Terminating partnerships: The UK ends the Rwanda scheme
The dishonour board is long. Advisers from Australia, account chasing electoral strategists, former Australian cabinet ministers happy to draw earnings in British pounds. British Conservative politicians keen to mimic their cruel advice, notably on such acid topics as immigration and the fear of porous borders. Ghastly terminology used in Australian...
-
Trendy appointments: Australia’s special anti-Semitism envoy
Was there any need for this? Australia’s government, harried by the Conservative opposition for going soft on pro-Palestinian protests and the war in Gaza, while allegedly wobbling on supporting Israel, has decided to bring a touch of bureaucracy to the show. Australia now has its first anti-Semitism envoy, a...
-
Massacre at the ballot: The punishing of the Tories
Few would have staked their political fortune, let alone any other sort of reward, on a return of the British Conservatives on July 4. The polls often lie, but none suggested that outcome. The only question was the extent British voters would lacerate the Tories who have been in...
-
The US Supreme Court outs the Imperial Presidency
The US Supreme Court has much to answer for. In the genius of republican government, it operates as overseer and balancer of the executive and legislature. Of late, though, the court’s judges have seemingly confused that role. In contrast to its other Anglophone counterparts, the highest tribunal in the US...
-
Assange’s return to Australia has prompted resentment from prominent hacks
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is now back in the country of his birth, having endured conditions of captivity ranging from cramped digs in the Embassy of Ecuador in London to the UK capital’s maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh Prison. His return to Australia after striking a plea deal with...
-
Assange’s release: Exposing the craven media
The WikiLeaks project was always going to put various noses out of joint in the journalistic profession. Soaked and blighted by sloth, easily bought, perennially envious, a good number of the Fourth Estate have always preferred to remain uncritical of power and sympathetic to its brutal exercise. For those...
-
The release of Julian Assange: Plea deals and dark legacies
One of the longest sagas of political persecution has ended. If you believe in final chapters, that is. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US...
-
Quibbling about killing: Netanyahu’s spat with Washington
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unhappy. Not so much with the Palestinians, whom he sees as terroristic, dispensable and a threat to Israeli security. Nor with the Iranians, who he swears will never acquire a nuclear weapon capacity on his watch. His recent discontent has been directed against...
-
Fractious arenas: Netanyahu dissolves his war cabinet
You could almost sense the smacking of lips, and the rubbing of hands in glee. The departure of Benny Gantz from the Israeli war cabinet, which had served as a check against the conventional security cabinet, presented a perfect opportunity for those who felt his presence to be stifling....
-
Ukraine, continued aid and the prevailing logic of slaughter
War always commands its own appeal. It has its own frazzled laurels, the calling of its own worn poets tenured in propaganda. In battle, the poets keep writing, and keep glorifying. The chattering diplomats are kept in the cooler, biding their time. The soldiers die, as do civilians. The...
-
Diamonds and coal dust: Slaughter at Nuseirat
The ashes had barely settled on the Rafah tent camp incinerated by an Israeli air strike before the next, gorged massacre presented itself for posterity’s gloomy archive. It was intended as a golden operation and had been months in the making. The rescue of four Israeli hostages, the killing...
-
The EU elections have seen the right on the march
The EU elections from 6-9 June have presented a chaotically merry picture, certainly for those on the right of politics. Not that the right in question is reliably homogeneous in any sense, nor hoping for a single theme of triumph. A closer look at the gains made by the...
