keywords: Binoy Kampmark

  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard's grotesque people smuggler sledge

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 04 November 2011
    20 Comments

    So-called people smugglers are often penniless teenagers who are simply a link in the chain for those who are seeking legitimate asylum. The Government's new retrospective law will punish such individuals for an act that was legal at the time it was committed.

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  • MEDIA

    Bolt beyond the pale

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 September 2011
    36 Comments

    The Federal Court found that fair-skinned Aboriginal people were likely to have been 'offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated' by Bolt's articles. Bolt lamented the passing of free speech in Australia. But free speech cuts both ways, and no freedom is absolute.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Palestine takes a stab at statehood

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 September 2011
    8 Comments

    It has been said that giving certain countries independence was like giving a razor to a child. As Palestine makes its bid for full membership of the UN, it may do well to remember that any successful strategy should focus not on statehood but on rights.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Lucking out in Libya

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 August 2011
    2 Comments

    Obama and NATO have been lucky that this campaign has worked thus far. To participate in a brutal civil war is always a dangerous game of chance. So far, the rebels have limited their bouts of revenge to arson and looting. A blood bath has not ensued, at least not yet.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Behind Berlin's and Israel's walls

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 22 August 2011
    8 Comments

    Walls are not merely concrete manifestations but cultural and psychological ones. One East Berlin native recalled his mother 'cried for hours when the Wall fell'. Israel, in constructing a wall around Jerusalem, faced a host of issues as complex as those that faced East Germany.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Cate Blanchett and carbon tax plunder

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 May 2011
    25 Comments

    Actors specialise in image making, an imitation of life rather than life itself. While the carbon tax being spruiked by Cate Blanchett and other celebrities is ostensibly designed to target polluters, in truth the Gillard Government is simply finding another avenue for raising revenue.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral challenge of accepting an apology

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 May 2011
    6 Comments

    Often the reconciliation debate is framed around matters of the perpetrator's reaction, rather than that of the victim, who holds a superior moral currency. Could it be ever feasible for Australia's Indigenous community to countenance unconditional forgiveness?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humiliating Gbagbo

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 14 April 2011

    Journalistic accounts of the defeat of Ivory Coast's Laurent Koudou Gbagbo seem to contain an unhealthy note of gloating. The Ghana Business News shows a more modest creature who posted his impressions on Twitter even as the crisis was unfolding. 

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  • MEDIA

    Polanski's art not greater than his crime

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 July 2010
    6 Comments

    The decision by a Swiss judge not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the US has again triggered the debate about how artists are treated by the law. The case has been running simultaneously to that of Russian musician. The parallels are striking.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    True memories of Bloody Sunday

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 17 June 2010
    5 Comments

    Lord Saville's report this week into a seminal moment of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland included the admission that the killing of 14 demonstrators by the British Army was 'unjustified and unjustifiable'. True reconciliation can only ever take place with a true recounting of memory.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freedom Flotilla and Israeli 'pirates'

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 02 June 2010
    31 Comments

    Turkey has condemned the attacks on a flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza as piracy. Branding activists as terrorists and denying the human situation in Gaza will not help an Israeli cause that is proving increasingly alienating.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How to apologise for genocide

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 06 April 2010
    3 Comments

    From Rudd's 'sorry' to the Stolen Generations, to last year's US Senate resolution apologising for slavery, the political apology has assumed freight and relevance. An apology issued in the Serbian Parliament last week is exceptional for its attempt to allow the perpetrator into the moral circle.

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