‘Top Gun: Maverick’: The Pentagon Recruitment Drive
Hollywood, like the US press, has not been spared the influential hand of government. Under the mask of various projects, the defence establishment has sought […]
Articles by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Deadly Games: The Labour Casualties of Qatar’s World Cup
A sordid enterprise, nasty, crude and needless. But the World Cup 2022 will be, should anyone bother watching it, stained by one of the highest […]
Predictable Monstrosities: Priti Patel Approves Assange’s Extradition
The only shock about the UK Home Secretary’s decision regarding Julian Assange was that it did not come sooner. In April, Chief Magistrate Senior District […]
Julian Assange in Ithaka
“Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is where you’re destined for.” (P. Cavafy, trans. Edmund Keeley.) John Shipton, despite his size, glides with […]
Weapons of Faith: The Arming of American Schools
The United States remains a country of tenacious faith. The nature of that faith stretches from the digital pulpits of Silicon Valley, where cool technology […]
Fighting the First UK-Rwandan Refugee Flight
June 10 bore witness to a valiant effort on the part of refugee groups and a trade union to stop what promises to be the […]
A Spanish Court Calls: Mike Pompeo, We Want You
On June 3, Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s national court, the Audienca Nacional, issued a summons for former CIA director and US Secretary of State […]
Dear Times and Costly Cricket: Australia’s Sri Lankan Tour
For a country experiencing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence in 1948, the picture of a touring team pampered and fussed over might cause […]
Platinum Jubilees and Republican Questions
The platinum jubilee will bore and cause some to yawn. It might certainly agitate the republican spleen in the fourteen countries where Queen Elizabeth II […]
New Brooms, Old Stories: The Australian Labor Party and Julian Assange
After having a few lunches with Australia’s then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, John Shipton felt reason to be confident. Albanese had promised Assange’s father that […]
Election Gambit: Australia, Sri Lanka and Politicising Asylum
When it comes to the tawdry, hideous business of politicising the right to asylum, and the refugees who arise from it, no country does it […]
Reactionary Succession: Peter Dutton, Australia’s New Opposition Leader
The devastation wrought on Australia’s Coalition government on May 21 by the electorate had a stunning, cleansing effect. Previously inconceivable scenarios were played out in […]
George W. Bush, Freudian Confessions and Foiled Assassinations
Death, remarked Gore Vidal about Truman Capote’s passing, was a good career move. The novelist Saki also considered the good qualities of shuffling off the […]
The Economy of Tolerable Massacres: The Uvalde Shootings
Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices. Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting. […]
The Great Teal Tsunami: Arise Australia’s Independents
Rarely in Australian history has a governing party suffered such loss in the face of an opponent unable to claim complete victory. It said much […]