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Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 1]
Diminishing Returns: Calculated Misery in Air Travel
Tuesday, 21 January 2020, 8:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
If there comes a point when people will decide not to fly, the issue may well be less to do with any moral or ethical issue with climate change than the fact that commercial flights have become atrocious. They are naked money-making concerns with ... More >>
Janus-Faced on Climate Change: Microsoft’s Carbon Vision
Saturday, 18 January 2020, 1:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“This is a bold bet – a moonshot – for Microsoft.” So claimed Brad Smith, Microsoft President, in a Thursday announcement painting a picture of a company that intends to be carbon negative by 2030. “And,” Smith continued, “it will need ... More >>
A Matter of Quality: Air Pollution, Tennis & Officialdom
Friday, 17 January 2020, 3:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They are disgruntled and have every right to be. Whatever one’s feelings about tennis, expecting athletes to perform in subpar conditions is a rank matter that should see officials taken to task. But administrators of a game are often distant ... More >>
Short of Time: Julian Assange at the Westminster Magistrates
Thursday, 16 January 2020, 9:50 am | Binoy Kampmark
Another slot of judicial history, another notch to be added to the woeful record of legal proceedings being undertaken against Julian Assange. The ailing WikiLeaks founder was coping as well as he could, showing the resourcefulness of the desperate ... More >>
Harry and Meghan Exit: The Royal Family Propaganda Machine
Wednesday, 15 January 2020, 11:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
Royal gossip is worth its weight in gold on the British media circuit. Buckingham Palace knows that, and seeks to control, as much as it can, the way that gold is distributed. Much of this was in evidence at the bungling, cringe-worthy performance ... More >>
Vague Imminence: US policy on Pre-emptive Force
Monday, 13 January 2020, 11:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
International relations is typified by its vagueness of definition and its shallowness of justification. Be it protecting citizens of a state in another, launching a pre-emptive strike to prevent what another state might do, or simply understanding the application ... More >>
Incendiary Extinctions: Australian Fires
Saturday, 11 January 2020, 10:53 am | Binoy Kampmark
Cocooned as it is from the world of science scepticism, the handling of the bush fire catastrophe unfolding in Australia is going to one of the more notable (non)achievements of the Morrison government. They were warned; they were chided; they were prodded. ... More >>
Disruptive Assassinations: Killing Qassem Soleimani
Monday, 6 January 2020, 5:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On the surface, it made not one iota of sense. The murder of a foreign military leader on his way from Baghdad airport, his diplomatic status assured by the local authorities, evidently deemed a target of irresistible richness. “General Soleimani was actively ... More >>
Indian Adventures: Policing, Facial Recognition & Privacy
Thursday, 2 January 2020, 11:59 am | Binoy Kampmark
The chances for those seeking a world of solitude are rapidly run out. A good case can be made that this has already happened. Aldous Huxley’s Savage, made famous in Brave New World , is out of options, having lost to the Mustapha Monds of the ... More >>
Hypersonic Putin and Gonzo Weaponry
Thursday, 2 January 2020, 11:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
Weapons of dazzling murderousness have always thrilled military industrial establishments. They make money; they add to the accounts; and they tickle the pride of States who manufacture them. From time to time, showy displays of restraint through arms limitation ... More >>
Australia Burns: Fireworks, Bush Fires and Denial
Wednesday, 1 January 2020, 4:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As 2020 approached, the sense that the barbarians were not only at the gates but had breached the walls of indifference had come to the fore. But these were not conventional human forms; rather, they were the agents of conflagration, driving people to the ... More >>
Scapegoats for Jamal Khashoggi
Sunday, 29 December 2019, 2:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The hit squad that went about its deadly business with varying degrees of competence in Istanbul last year is set to be thinned. Five members of the group tasked with strangling and carving up the Saudi journalist and out-of-favour Jamal Khashoggi ... More >>
Christmas Revolutions: The Fall of Ceauşescu
Friday, 27 December 2019, 10:15 am | Binoy Kampmark
Christmas might be associated with nativities, but in the context of Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, it came with a butchering. As a couple, they ruled Romania with heavy doses of megalomania (“A man like me comes along only ... More >>
Medical Opinion, Torture and Julian Assange
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 6:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On November 27 this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, delivered an address to the German Bundestag outlining his approach to understanding the mental health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. These comprised two parts, the initial ... More >>
The Politics of Trump’s Impeachment
Saturday, 21 December 2019, 10:47 am | Binoy Kampmark
Several features stand out in the impeachment quest against President Donald J. Trump. There is constitutional discourse as mythology and fetish. There is outrage that the executive office could have been used to actually investigate political opponents ... More >>
Boris Johnson’s Britain
Wednesday, 18 December 2019, 2:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Britain is looking drenched at the moment; colours blue and yellow seem to be streaking through the country. The Scottish Nationalists have re-asserted control lost to the Conservatives in 2016. In the rest of the country, seats never touched by Tory Blue ... More >>
A Mined History: The Bougainville Referendum
Saturday, 14 December 2019, 11:30 am | Binoy Kampmark
It would be an understatement to claim that Bougainville, that blighted piece of autonomous territory in Papua New Guinea, had been through a lot. Companies have preyed upon its environment with extractive hunger. Wars and civil strife have beset ... More >>
Authoritarianism, Money and US Presidential Politics
Thursday, 12 December 2019, 11:22 am | Binoy Kampmark
Political rottenness may be bottomless. Consider the following description of a political aspirant for the White House, this person being from the Democratic Party. His “liabilities as a political candidate are so glaringly obvious that it’s ... More >>
Lethal Visits: Volcano Tourism and the White Island Eruption
Tuesday, 10 December 2019, 3:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It might have come across as written by a killjoy, but geographer Amy Donovan’s observations on “volcano tourism” in Geo , published by the Royal Geographical Society in 2018, remain timely. Be wary, her study suggests, of this particular brand ... More >>
Paranoias of Interference: Russia, Reddit & the UK Election
Monday, 9 December 2019, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In some ways, it is a very British thing: fair play is expected; the reasonable person with all faculties intact, going about the business of living and voting. Little thought is given to the fact that these assumptions are as much constructions, façades ... More >>
