Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
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Harris was Trumped by the price of eggs and milk
It takes some skill to make Donald Trump look good, but two leading Democrats have succeeded in doing so: Hillary Clinton did it in 2016 and Kamala Harris has repeated the exercise in 2024. The conceit of both of their presidential campaigns, and attacking a staggeringly grotesque moral character...
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South Africa’s memorial to the ICJ: More evidence on Israel’s genocide
The timing, as with so much in the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, was most appropriate. The Israeli Knesset had signalled its intent on crippling and banishing the sole agency of humanitarian worth for Palestinian welfare by passing laws criminalising its operations by 92 to 10 on October...
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Crippling UNRWA: The Knesset’s Collective Punishment of Palestinians
The man has a cheek. Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks of the Palestinians), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keeping busy on further depriving access and assistance to...
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Political labelling: The EU’s legal stance on goods from Israel’s illegal settlements
Never let it be said that the European Union (EU), whose officials self-advertise as staunch defenders of international law, is unwilling to bend the rules. Take, for instance, the recent revelations in The Intercept about legal advice sent to EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell on 22 July on...
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Widening the War: The US Sends Troops to Israel
The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring security, will merely serve to make it more vulnerable and unstable than ever. In that mix and mess will...
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Nuclear fever: Warmongering on Iran
The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or, at least, as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess in war. Such prowess promises much: redrawing boundaries; overthrowing governments; destroying the capabilities of adversaries and enemies. Nothing in...
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Israel’s war on the United Nations
The UN is an easy body to dislike. At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, a body with no backbone. It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred was stemmed briefly. Built on the ruins of the Second World War,...
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Licence to muzzle dissent: Taking offence at flag wavers for Hezbollah
It was done for the Viet Cong in numerous countries during the US involvement in Vietnam. It was done for the African National Congress (ANC) during the apartheid era. It was done for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Across the United States, Europe and Australasia, all three organisations, demonised...
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The UK’s suspension of a few arms export licences to Israel is craven tokenism
The UK government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to victory in the July General Election, leaving the British Labour Party with a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper...
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Beware the derogators as the Geneva Conventions turn 75
The four Geneva Conventions were adopted on 12 August, 1949, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to China, stated at an anniversary event at the Swiss Embassy...
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Apologists for rape: The Sde Teiman protests
In 2007, writer Tal Nitsan isolated instances where Israeli male combatants systematically used sexual violence against Palestinian women in the war of 1948. In essentially marking off such conduct from more contemporary practices, she relied on media accounts, archival sources, the reports of human rights organisations and the testimony...
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The Distasteful Nonsense of Olympism
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta – concluded a treaty permitting the safe passage of all athletes and spectators from...
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Tactical paranoia: Peter Dutton’s Palestinian problem
The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company. And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades. The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable with: terrifying...
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Bloody eschatology: Israel and the next big war
The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood-filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the Christian evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That...
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Tim Walz for US Veep: Barely noticed and barely noticeable
While the Kamala Harris coronation for Democratic presidential nomination continues along its safely shielded path, her sacred status among party members growing with each day, the decision to select Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her Vice President (“Veep”) running mate had all the hallmarks of unbearable caution. Caution...
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The political pretence of the US Democrats and the Palestinians
The fact that a Democrat US president currently occupies the White House has done little to ruffle the bloody and gore-filled equation in the Middle East, notably regarding the fate of the Palestinians. The ongoing ruthless Israeli offensive against the unfortunates in Gaza is certainly a worry for some...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...