Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
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Slander and impunity: The World Central Kitchen killings in Gaza
In September 2025, nine countries launched the Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel. Australia explained its important if dark inspiration in pursuing it: the slaying of Zomi Francken, along with six of her colleagues from the World Central Kitchen charity on April 1, 2024 by Israeli forces in Gaza. …
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Purgatorial ethics: Sudan, the UAE and Australia’s arms trade
Reprehensible as it is, the arms trade is an exercise of purgatorial ethics pursued by all states keen on having a market for the merchants of death: from the perspective of countries and those who represent them, it’s a matter of cold business and hot transactions. The principles (how the…
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Deprived at sea: The tribulations of the USS Abraham Lincoln
The conflict with Iran continues to deliver its mean shocks to an increasingly doddering US imperium. Depleted munitions, depleted stocks of goodwill and, it would seem, a disruption in resupplying warships operating in the Middle East, have become dents in a struggling war machine. This month, the aircraft carrier USS…
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Exonerating murder: The IDF and the World Central Kitchen killings
Being a resident in Gaza has proved lethal not merely for civilians eking out a wretched existence. Mortality rates among journalists, medical staff, and aid workers have been egregiously high since Israel’s military opened its account after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. (In truth, Israel’s account regarding striking,…
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Colluding with violence: Aiding Israeli settlers in the West Bank
The latest incidents of Israeli settler violence in the villages of Qusra and Kour, located in the northern occupied West Bank, have again caught international attention, reaching the halls of the United Nations with a gravity that, sadly, is unlikely to have much effect. Towards the end of July, the…
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Solemn anniversaries: The UN Refugee Convention turns 75
That grand old thing is getting on a bit. Still significant and still functioning wearily, the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 has suffered abuse, subversion and neglect from state parties. At times, it is only honoured in the breach. At other times, it is not honoured at all. After…
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Stillborn peace plans: Israel, Hamas and the question of disarmament
Another trumpeted achievement, another heralded occasion of momentous significance. Or it may be nothing of the sort. US President Donald J. Trump is again on the stage pulling on the strings of history. This time, attention has shifted to whether Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip will…
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Football lucre: The revolt against Infantino’s funding plans
It is a stew of inedible quality. But eat it we are expected to do. Consider the stomach-churning ingredients. FIFA, an opaque organisation of mafia qualities that governs world football. Add to the mix crawling-to-power President Gianni Infantino, a preposterous darling of authoritarian favour. Mix in his cringeworthy, very public…
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Enrichment antics: Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal
The Israelis had their jaws dropping and dragging on the grounds. The Saudis were cock-a-hoop. The Trump administration remains, as it always does, streaky and fickle. The agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia for the creation of a civilian nuclear program was originally contingent on one vital fact: that…
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Modish blockades: The Houthis, Trump and expanding the war
The naval blockade has become conveniently modish, particularly when it comes to narrow straits of water where heavy international traffic and cargo pass through. The Iranians were the first to realise an eventuality long suspected: that the Strait of Hormuz might be feasibly shut for lengthy periods of time with…
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Fee fantasies and false openings: Trump’s Hormuz delusions continue
With the Iran-US ceasefire all but retired to the infirmary of international politics, Washington has conducted air strikes on Iran for a third straight night. On early July 14, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported explosions in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas and six explosions on Kish Island,…
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Rivalries and anxieties: Reviving the Hejaz railway
History is not so much past as vigorously present, often a scab to be irritated in fitful anger, or a romantic affectation to be cherished. When it comes to controlling trade and establishing new routes, this is particularly apt. The Hejaz Railway project, seemingly long past, is now being dusted…
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Deferring a Crisis: The Iran-US Ceasefire Cracks
Ceasefires in the Middle East seem especially susceptible to revision, alteration and contradiction. Missiles still get fired; airstrikes initiated. Destruction to infrastructure, and death, follows. Yet despite the misunderstandings, the sniping and the harrying, these odd understandings are often described by those funny political coves as “holding”. In the case…
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World Cup Trump cards: Infantino, FIFA and the meddlesome US President
Yet again, FIFA, and its chief, Gianni Infantino, have distinguished the game of football by showing what it is all about. Not glorious athletes representing code and country across the globe. Not the sense of wellbeing that comes with exercise. No: it’s all about corrupt manoeuvrings, opaque decisions, and scandalous…
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White flag judgments: Palestine Action, protest and the UK courts
The justice system of the United Kingdom, represented by stout cathedral structures and solemn rituals, tends to resemble a casino rather than a priestly haven of solemn judgment. It’s the justice of the punt, the throw of the dice, not the fairness of judicial deliberation, that prevails. That, at least,…
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Ironic fates: Bolton, Trump and mishandling classified documents
Former US national security advisor John Bolton and the President Donald J. Trump share traits neither probably knew they had. The latter, for one, is far more war mongering than he let on to American voters, evidenced by his recently failed, disastrous foray into attacking Iran. Bolton, on the other…
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Back to bad beginnings: The Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding
Let us, if only briefly, give thanks for the peacemakers, whatever their poor qualifications and whatever folly drove them to war in the first place. On June 15, the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council revealed that, based on the agreement reached with the United States, “the war and…
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The FIFA World Cup: Caught on the visa snag
The FIFA Men’s World Cup of 2026 was always going to offer visitors and spectators something different. Shared between three countries – Mexico, Canada and the United States – the latter of the three was set to be the designated font of mischief and disruptive mayhem. Add to this the…
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Repetitive folly: Israel’s futile war in Lebanon deepens
Call it a repeating script, a rusty template, or simply a creaky model to emulate time and again. The structural and homicidal destruction of Gaza undertaken by Israeli forces is now finding full expression in southern Lebanon, a cause of concern even for those in Washington. The war’s increasing savagery…
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Beyond the Yellow Line: Israel seizes more of Gaza
While eyes remain peeled on Israel’s increasingly violent and expanding campaign in Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving ever more predatory with the Gaza Strip. With aggrandizing impunity, more territory is being acquired for familiar reasons: Hamas is on the run and needs to be crushed…
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Acceptable till it wasn’t: Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Global Sumud Flotilla
It has been a sorry though predictable exercise. When he lived up (or down) to expectations of atrocious conduct befitting the proud bigot that he is, Israel’s Minister for National Security had to be seen as aberrant, the man who strayed, if only slightly. The conduct in question involved Itamar…
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Epic interruptus: The Iranian snare and American defeat
On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran. The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the…
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Epic nonsense: Trump shelves Project Freedom
The waxwork figures of the Pentagon recently glowed with excitement with the announcement that the US military would be finally called upon to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. With the ceasefire between Teheran and Washington barely holding, President Donald Trump, as far as his attention span would allow, gingerly put…
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Ideas of expulsion: Trump, NATO and Spain
Intellectual giants are in painfully short supply in the Trump administration, but if there was anyone who might lay claim to cerebral weight of any sort, Elbridge Colby might be one of them. Self-styled as a China hawk, the US Under Secretary of War for Policy must privately be bemused…