Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 1]
Imperial Fruit: Bananas, Costs And Climate Change
Friday, 29 March 2024, 6:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is good reason then to take a rather withering view of the banana trade. It has become the feature fruit of monstrous monopolies, a brutal currency of exchange. More >>
Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council On Gaza Passes
Thursday, 28 March 2024, 7:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power in the international system. More >>
Purgatorial Torments: Assange And The UK High Court
Wednesday, 27 March 2024, 2:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to it, notably when it comes to dealing with political charges? The record is not good, and the ongoing sadistic carnival that is the prosecution (and persecution) of Julian Assange continues ... More >>
The AUKUS Cash Cow: Robbing The Australian Taxpayer
Tuesday, 26 March 2024, 11:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
Two British ministers, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, paid a recent visit to Australia recently as part of the AUKMIN (Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations) talks. It showed, yet again, that Australia’s ... More >>
Julian Assange And The Plea Nibble
Saturday, 23 March 2024, 8:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The current process is one of gradual judicial & penal assassination, conducted through prolonged proceedings that continue to assail the publisher’s health even as he is confined to Belmarsh Prison More >>
Censors Celebrated: Misinformation And Disinformation Down Under
Friday, 22 March 2024, 6:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
The proposed bill on assessing, parcelling and dictating information (mis-, dis-, mal-) is a nasty little experiment in censoring communication and discussion. More >>
Complicity In Gaza: Holding US Foreign Policy Legally Accountable
Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged acts of genocide taking place in Gaza, was taken. It all stems from a ... More >>
Predictable Outcomes: Australia, The National Security Committee, And Invading Iraq
Tuesday, 19 March 2024, 6:31 am | Binoy Kampmark
The latest documents from the NSC are more sleet than snow. They do confirm that the parliamentary system, more than ever, should be involved in reining in the wild impulses of war makers. More >>
Siding With Spotify: The European Commission Fines Apple
Sunday, 17 March 2024, 8:38 am | Binoy Kampmark
It will come as little surprise that colossal Apple has been favouring its own music streaming service in snuffing and stuffing competitors. The company, it has been alleged, has prevented app developers from informing users of less expensive methods ... More >>
Prejudicial Bans: Congress Tosses Over TikTok
Thursday, 14 March 2024, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
How delicious is political hypocrisy. Abundant and rich, it manifests in the corridors of power with regularity. Of late, there is much of it in the US Congress, evident over debates on whether the platform TikTok should be banned in the United States. ... More >>
Matters Of Revenue: Meta Abandons Australia’s Media Stable
Tuesday, 12 March 2024, 12:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck. The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of Big Tech into line on how revenue would be shared with media outlets ... More >>
The Campaign to Free Assange: Reflections on Night Falls
Sunday, 10 March 2024, 6:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the grey cells. Till artificial intelligence banishes such ... More >>
Aiding Those We Kill: US Humanitarianism In Gaza
Thursday, 7 March 2024, 12:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it. Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000 are “one step from famine”), with parachuted packages veering off course, ... More >>
A Wishful Gamble: Rugby League In Las Vegas
Wednesday, 6 March 2024, 2:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The history of such experiments is not promising. Why would those in the US like the game of rugby league, when an established code of superficial similarity already exists? Fundamental differences, for one thing, abound. The US NFL Superbowl tries ... More >>
Wary Of Sinophobia: Anwar Ibrahim At The ASEAN Summit
Tuesday, 5 March 2024, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It can take much bruising, much ridicule, and much castigation to eventually reach the plateau of wisdom. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who took office in November 2022, is one such character. Like a hero anointed by the gods for grand ... More >>
Mistakes, Misfiring And Trident: Britain’s Flawed Nuclear Deterrence
Monday, 4 March 2024, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear weapons are considered the strategic silverware of nation states. Occasionally, they are given a cleaning and polishing. From time to time, they go missing, fail to work, and suffer misplacement. Of late, the UK Royal Navy has not been doing so ... More >>
Conscious And Unconscionable: The Starving Of Gaza
Friday, 1 March 2024, 1:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian ... More >>
Trussonomics At CPAC
Wednesday, 28 February 2024, 1:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The silly will make print and leave bursts of digital traces; the idiots will make history, if only in small print. One such figure is the shortest serving UK Prime Minister in living memory, the woeful, joke-packed figure of Liz Truss who lasted ... More >>
Old Problems With The New: Reforming The UN Security Council
Tuesday, 27 February 2024, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The end of the Second World War was a calamitous catalyst, laying the bricks and mortar for institutions that were always going to look weary, almost comically so, after some decades. The United Nations was meant to be the umbrella international ... More >>
A Copper’s Skewed Logic: Politicising Palestinian Visas
Monday, 26 February 2024, 5:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman ... More >>