Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 1]
Cheap Grace And Climate Change: Australia And COP26
Sunday, 17 October 2021, 6:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was not for everybody, but the shock advertising tactics of the Australian comedian Dan Ilic made an appropriate point. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a famed coal hugger, has vacillated about whether to even go to the climate conference ... More >>
Funeral Rites For COVID Zero
Friday, 15 October 2021, 2:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was such a noble public health dream, even if rather hazy to begin with. Run down SARS-CoV-2. Suppress it. Crush it. Or just “flatten the curve”, which could have meant versions of all the above. This created a climate of numerical sensitivity: ... More >>
Waking Up To Climate Change Dinosaurs
Wednesday, 13 October 2021, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Morning listening on October 13. Australia’s Radio National. Members of the Morrison government are doing their interview rounds with the host, Fran Kelly. We enter a time warp, speeding away into another dimension where planet Earth, and Australia, ... More >>
COVIDSafe: The Failure Of An App
Tuesday, 12 October 2021, 6:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The returns have not been impressive. For an app essentially anointed as a saviour for tracing purposes in the worst pandemic in a century, COVIDSafe is a lesson in exaggerated prowess and diminished performance. It was billed as necessitous and ... More >>
Sportswashing At Tyneside: Saudi Arabia Moves Into English Football
Saturday, 9 October 2021, 5:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The recent acquisition of the Newcastle United football club by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, along with financier Amanda Staveley and the billionaire Reuben brothers, was a source of much excitement for some former players. Old boy ... More >>
Blowing The Whistle At Facebook
Thursday, 7 October 2021, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The only surprise was that it did not come sooner. Big Tech whistleblowers are not exactly running out of the offices of Silicon Valley, so it was with some excitement that Facebook could produce a person willing enough to show us the laundry, with ... More >>
Trump, Twitter And The Digital Town Hall
Tuesday, 5 October 2021, 3:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The merits are hard to stomach for partisans long jaundiced by presumption and dislike, but the cheer at the deplatforming of Donald Trump by a range of social media platforms said as much about the nature of any sentiment about democracy as it did about those ... More >>
Britannia Turns Back The Boats
Saturday, 2 October 2021, 5:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Pushing people back across borders; turning asylum seekers away from shores. When such tactics were openly adopted and used with impunity by Australia’s navy and border force, it caused outrage and concern in the maritime community and pricked ... More >>
Murderous Fantasies: The US Intelligence Effort Against Assange
Thursday, 30 September 2021, 2:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If there was any reason to halt a farcical train of legal proceedings, then the case against Julian Assange would have to be the standard bearing example. Since last year, the efforts by the US government to pursue his extradition to the vicious ... More >>
Our Man In Washington: Morrison’s Tour Of Deception
Monday, 27 September 2021, 2:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was startling and even shocking. Away from the thrust and cut of domestic politics, not to mention noisy discord within his government’s ranks, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison could breathe a sign of relief. Perhaps no one would notice in Washington ... More >>
Trumpism With A Biden Face: US Haitian Policy
Friday, 24 September 2021, 1:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With that orange haired brute of a president supposedly ushered out of the White House with moralising delight, the Biden administration was all keen to turn over a new leaf. There would be more diplomacy, and still more diplomacy. There would ... More >>
Melbourne Quake: Shaken, Not Stirred
Wednesday, 22 September 2021, 3:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It began just after a news interview. Time: a quarter past nine. Morning of September 22, and yet to take a sip from the brewed Turkish coffee, its light thin surface foam inviting. The Australian city of Melbourne in its sixth lockdown, its residents ... More >>
The Right To Clean Air In Jakarta
Tuesday, 21 September 2021, 3:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It seems utterly beyond debate but acknowledging legal rights to clean hair has assumed the makings of a slow march over the years. The 1956 Clean Air Act in Britain arose from the lethal effects of London’s 1952 killer smog, which is said to have ... More >>
The Anglo Unilateralists Strike
Monday, 20 September 2021, 1:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
When President Joe Biden won the White House, he promised, with a facility of unceasing boredom, that diplomacy was back. “Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy,” he stated on February 4. “As I said in my inaugural address, we will ... More >>
Nuclear White Elephants: Australia’s New Submarine Deal
Thursday, 16 September 2021, 3:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It does not get any messier or more chaotic than this. Since 2009, when Australia’s Future Submarine Program (FSP) known as Project SEA 1000, began to take shape, strategists and policy makers have been keen to pursue the next big White Elephant of defence ... More >>
News Corp Turns Climate Change Inactivist
Wednesday, 15 September 2021, 3:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The faux Damascene converts have been doing the rounds in the Murdoch empire of late, stirring interest in matters green and attempting to shift, if ever so slightly, discussions on climate change. Known for being a stable of environmental vandals ... More >>
Bitcoin the Messiah: El Salvador Goes Crypto
Tuesday, 14 September 2021, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In a particular deli store in South Melbourne, a tongue-and-cheek message is attached to the cash register. “Bitcoin accepted there,” it proclaims brightly. Naturally, it is nothing of the sort, a teasing ruse for the punters and those casting an eye ... More >>
Messianic Failure: Pursuing The GWOT Jabberwock
Saturday, 11 September 2021, 4:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Anniversaries can provide occasions for reflection and deep consideration. Past errors and misjudgements can be considered soberly; historical distance provides perspective. Mature reflections may be permitted. But they can also serve the opposite ... More >>
Paul Wolfowitz: Deluded and At Liberty
Friday, 10 September 2021, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was all marvellous for Paul Wolfowitz to get on Australian television (why bother?) to brusquely discuss those attacks on US soil in September 2001 and criticism of the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces. After two decades, the former US deputy secretary ... More >>
Weaponised Refugees and Hybrid Attacks
Tuesday, 7 September 2021, 3:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Refugees and asylum seekers provide rich pickings for demagogues and political opportunists. The Australian approach politicises their plight by arguing that they are illegitimate depending on the way they arrive, namely, by boat. The twentieth anniversary of the ... More >>
