Australia-China Relations: Down Under Squabbling
These are proving testy times for Australian-Chinese relations. Last week, Chinese authorities announced that an investigation would be conducted into claims that Australia has been […]
Articles by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Waiting for the Old Bailey: Julian Assange and Britain’s Judicial Establishment
On September 7, Julian Assange will be facing another round of gruelling extradition proceedings, in the Old Bailey, part of a process that has become […]
Burying the Hatchet Act: Donald Trump’s Unconventional Convention
Conventions suggest norms, a set of accepted rules. Behaviour is agreed upon in advance. In the case of US political conventions, there is much cant […]
Free Speech Be Damned: Joshua Krook and the Australian Public Service
There was very little controversial about it. A featured blog post in the Oxford Political Review, authored in April by Joshua Krook, suggested that COVID-19 […]
Hymn for a Broken Empire: Republican National Security Officials for Biden
If fodder is needed for the argument that a Deep State is running wild and determined to depose President Donald J. Trump, this will surely […]
Permitted Unlawfulness: The New Zealand Coronavirus Lockdown
“Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.” (Lord Acton) It is a study both troublesome and perplexing. […]
Echo Chamber Politics: The “All About Trump” Democratic National Convention
It was hard to stomach. The usual suspects, the usual scripts tatty from overuse. The 2020 Democratic National Convention was a prolonged display of avoidance, […]
Underpaying Casual Staff and Forgetting Education: The Australian University Formula
Scandalous underpayment has become common fare at Australia’s universities. An inverse relationship can be identified here: the wealthier the institution, the more likely it will […]
Google’s Open Letter: Fighting Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code
Tech giants tend to cast thin veils over threats regarding government regulations. They are also particularly concerned by those more public-spirited ones, the sort supposedly […]
Foiled in the Security Council: The United States, Extending Arms Embargoes and Iran
There are no official policing authorities as such when it comes to international relations. Realists imagine a jungle of states, the preyed upon and the […]
In Denial: Australia, Human Rights and Climate Change
When the complaint was lodged in May 2019, there was a sense of the audacious about it. Eight Torres Strait Islanders had taken the trouble […]
Extreme Moderation in the Spittoon: Kamala Harris for VP
The Vice Presidency has always gotten a degree of bad press in the US political system. Its ineffectuality is sometimes lost on the occupant, though […]
Blight and Revelation: Coronavirus, Austerity and the UK
Epidemiologist Michael Marmot begins his August 10 piece in The Guardian on a sombre note. It is drawn from The Plague by Albert Camus. “The […]
Macron Lectures Lebanon: The Condescending Politics of Aid
The explosion in a Beirut portside warehouse containing over 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on August 4 has done its bit to light more fires […]
Don’t Stigmatise the Nuke! Opponents of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
It would seem a logical step, at least from an existential perspective: to ban something so utterly horrendous to life; to forbid its use in […]