Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
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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 candidate…
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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 umbrella…
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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 thing…
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‘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 be…
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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…
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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 title…
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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 office…
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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…
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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 the…
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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 reasons,…
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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 Department…
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Victory for the disposables: The sentencing of the Hindujas
In his seminal work on modern slavery, Kevin Bales does away with certain, antiquated concepts. In its insidious, older form, one focused on the concept of natal alienation, slaves were chattels and assets, owned outright. Each slave system was distinct and protean, if marked by certain universal features. The universal…
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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 the…
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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. In…
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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 politicians…
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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 of…
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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 conservative…
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Modi’s comeuppance: The waning of Hindutva
Lock them up. The whole bally lot: the pollsters, the pundits, the parasitic hacks clinging to the life raft of politics in the hope of earning their crust. Yet again, the election results from a country have confounded the chatterers and psephologists. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meant to…
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The return of Nigel Farage is a Tory Party nightmare
Few have exerted as much influence on the tone and outcome of elections in the UK over the past thirty years as Nigel Farage. Fewer still have done so while never actually winning an election campaign. In seven attempts at standing for a seat in the UK House of Commons…
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Inexplicable investments: Elbit Systems and Australia’s Future Fund
Australia’s sovereign wealth fund stands somewhat modestly at A$272.3 billion. It has crawled into some trouble of late. Investors, especially those who are tinged with a sense of morality, are keeping an eye on where the fund’s money goes. Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in…
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Ming vase politics: UK Labour and purging the Corbynistas
By any reckoning, this was the move of a fool. A fool, it should be said, motivated by spite larded with caution. Evidently playing safe and adopting what has been called a “Ming Vase strategy” — hold it with scrupulous care and, above all else, avoid danger — the British…
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The stuffing of crime: Israel’s Rafah strike
It was much like witnessing a boy killing flies, with a slight afterthought of apology. The spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, did little to acquit himself, or the cause, as to why more Palestinian civilians had been indulgently killed in yet another Israeli airstrike.…
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Australia’s anti-ICC lobby
Throwing caution to the wind, grasping the nettle and every little smidgen of opportunity, Australia’s opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was thrilled to make a point in the gurgling tumult of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel’s leaders, he surmised, had been hard done by the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s meddlesome ways. It…
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The rages of equivalence: the ICC Prosecutor, Israel and Hamas
The legal world was all abuzz. The diplomatic channels of various countries raged and fizzed. The rumour was that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his cabinet colleagues, were bracing themselves for a stinging intervention from the International Criminal Court, a body to which they give no credence or…