Trans-Pacific Follies: Australia Asleep as Canada Wakes Up
It was as dreary as listening to the formulaic assessments of political economy by an unreconstructed Leninist. But Sunday morning with Steve Ciobo, Australia’s trade […]
Articles by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The Tragic Declaration: Colonial Legacies, Balfour and Israel
So much after the fact; so much in terms of opportunism gone to seed and destruction. But planned historical calamities tend to be rare. There […]
Fixations of Propriety: The Manus Closure Scandal
When confronted with the spectacle of the malnourished, the impoverished, the famine stricken, and the desperate, the Australian political instinct is simple: Why did these […]
The Deepening Crisis on Manus
What a weekend it has been. The Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea may well have closed, but the protests, and those resident […]
An Acceptable Obscenity: Adani Cultivates Queensland
Townsville. The cicadas are studding the night with their sound, and occasionally, the curlews manifest with calls that string out a melody of mournful death. […]
Madness on Horseback: The Charge at Beersheba
“The tradition of man and horse is part of us. It is part of Australia.” (Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, Oct 31, 2017). Exaggerated truths […]
Chaos on Manus Island
There are standoffs, threats and continuing tensions over the imminent closure of the Manus Island Detention Centre. (The politically palatable term here is “processing centre”). […]
Strafing Parliament: Australia’s High Court Citizenship Ruling
And they fell like ninepins. Weeks of predictions, optimistic readings, and hopeful signs were dashed as the members of the highest court of Australia laid […]
Environmental Protest: Bob Brown wins in Australia
Environment activists and watchers will be detaching themselves briefly from their various points of resistance to observe the implications of a High Court decision in […]
When Conspiracies Meet: Donald Trump and the JFK Files
It seems the perfect recipe, a union of minds and fates. A case, long disputed, deliberated over, conspired over, meets a modern US president who […]
A Matter of Fifty Degrees: Climate Change in Australia
A country baked to the core, its citizens roasted, an electricity grid battered to its limits. Capital cities trapping scorching heat, toasting its citizens and […]
The Trans-Tasman Spat Show: New Zealand-Australian Tensions
It was an awkward moment for Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop. News had arrived that a New Zealand government had been formed after a lengthy […]
Australia’s Citizenship Bill Fails
This is a government that takes pride in its hard headedness and faux populism. Knowing it would have to brave a sceptical, even baffled Senate, […]
Climate Change Insurgent: Tony Abbott’s Crusade
He is the inimitable, true political ugliness, the bad boy with a mistimed punch. While not quite professorial in his lunacy (that honour will have […]
Big Batteries: Elon Musk and Powering South Australia
At the end of last month, Tesla boss Elon Musk held a party in South Australia’s mid-north. It seemed premature, but Musk was typically confident. […]