Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 112]
Freedom to Control: The FCC, the Internet and Net Neutrality
Monday, 2 March 2015, 10:07 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler was bullish after the 3-2 vote of his commission reclassifying broadband as common carriers. Companies such as Verizon had made their mark in previous litigation, arguing that the FCC ... More >>
Fantasies of the Fleet: The Emotion of Submarines
Sunday, 1 March 2015, 8:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Submarines are the spaceships of the ocean.” [1]Idiosyncratic as ever, the remark from Australia’s independent Senator John Madigan on the ABC program Q & A, who had seemingly come down from a distant historical shelf, says the needed thing when ... More >>
Abbott’s Response to Sydney’s Hostage Crisis
Thursday, 26 February 2015, 11:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
The inquiry into Sydney’s Lindt Café hostage crisis (not, as has become popular to deem it, a siege) has come out with some police state fanfare. Terminal governments tend to scrounge for poor solutions, and much of this is to be found in the joint ... More >>
Stealing the Keys: The SIM Card Hacking Case
Tuesday, 24 February 2015, 10:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is hard to muster enthusiasm for events that have become so frequent in their pummelling effect, they are as expected as the sun’s clockwork appearance in the morning. It would, however, be dangerous to yawn at the latest Edward Snowden treat, ... More >>
The Case for Removing the Fantasist-in-Chief
Monday, 23 February 2015, 10:29 am | Binoy Kampmark
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is full of predictable surprises. Stomping and punching his way into the history books, his government finds itself teetering before the electoral precipice. More >>
The Folly of Data Retention: A Fool’s Paradise in Australia
Sunday, 22 February 2015, 9:53 am | Binoy Kampmark
There should be nothing polite about it, whatever the curious start of the article in Gizmodo (Feb 3) suggests. The “future of privacy on the internet in Australia” is simply but one in a series of skirmishes being waged by a mishmash of authoritarian ... More >>
The NPT, Israel and Nuclear Exceptionalism
Tuesday, 17 February 2015, 9:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Wither the bomb – as a legal problem. Ever since its inception as a weapon of war, atomic, and subsequently nuclear weaponry, have become the totemic reminders that sovereignty lie in their acquisition. Not having them poses insecurity; acquiring ... More >>
Bibi’s Dance with Congress: Israel & the Botched Invitation
Sunday, 15 February 2015, 8:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It looks like a measure of hollow desperation – Israel, left out in the cold in terms of isolating Iran, and finding itself looking like the mad hermit wondering if its days are numbered in the self-constructed asylum of life. Prime Minister Benjamin ... More >>
The Death Penalty: Australia, Indonesia and the Rule of Law
Friday, 13 February 2015, 9:23 am | Binoy Kampmark
The death penalty may be a monstrous use of a state’s power against the human subject, but the campaign against its use by states who have abolished it can prove inconsistent. While Australia sermonises against the evils of putting a person to death, it stalls ... More >>
The Hostage Profit Motive : Cashing in on Mortal Danger
Wednesday, 11 February 2015, 1:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Profiting from a hostage crisis is not unheard of. In times of mortal crisis, there is always money to be made, be it the victims themselves, those around them. The ridesharing app Uber succumbed to that sweet temptation of using algorithmic calculations ... More >>
Sharing the Spoils: The Illegality of UK-US Bulk Collection
Wednesday, 11 February 2015, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a relationship seemingly beyond question – the sharing of intercepted data between the United Kingdom and the United States has been a norm etched in stone. Not that such bodies as the otherwise clandestine Investigatory Powers Tribunal would ... More >>
Permanent Dysfunctionalism: Australia’s Leadership Disease
Monday, 9 February 2015, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Removing a first-term incumbent leader should have been taboo after the turmoil that followed Labor’s decision to make such a move against Kevin Rudd. - Peter van Onselen, The Australian More >>
Peoples’ Tribunals and the Canadian Mining Sector
Tuesday, 3 February 2015, 1:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In time when legal and regulatory institutions find themselves short when confronting the corporate fiends, it has fallen upon civil society to come up with a solution – of sorts. The Peoples’ Tribunal is one such example, an experiment born in ... More >>
In the Shadow of Zheng He: China’s One Belt, One Road Policy
Friday, 30 January 2015, 2:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Chinese flag hangs in fraternal union with Serbia as one crosses the Zemun-Borča bridge, completed last month, and now named Pupinov most. It was yet another infrastructure gem in what is becoming typical of Beijing’s global investment push, a policy typified ... More >>
The Rumblings of the Left: Podemos, Syriza and Greece
Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:23 am | Binoy Kampmark
The left – and by this, the genuine, progressive, unmanagerial left – is getting noisy. The Greek elections are upon us, with the similar challenges being played out from 2012. There are fears of Grexit – a heavy breathing departure from the ... More >>
Barrett Brown Jailed : The Sentencing of American Journalism
Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:09 am | Binoy Kampmark
“The US government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex." - Barrett Brown. More >>
Recruiting for Fox/US Army: American Sniper & Atrocity Porn
Sunday, 25 January 2015, 6:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If ever the direction of a film and the shape of a particular narrative of US history, as written by, say, the fiction set on Fox News, could come together, then American Sniper is it. Not that you will have director Clint Eastwood, screenwriter Jason ... More >>
Exonerating The CIA: Establishment Investigates Itself
Tuesday, 20 January 2015, 9:25 am | Binoy Kampmark
Exonerating spooks for improper conduct is a regular feature of the establishment. After all, you don’t convict your own, turning your nose at activities pursued under the grand, catch-all term of national security. From the start, the CIA review, ... More >>
Misreading the Label: The “War” Against Radical Islam
Wednesday, 14 January 2015, 3:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Labels count. While the old wisdom that judging books by their covers is a business fraught by error, covers do sway buyers. In the business of finding labels for political consumption, the grabbing slogan is fundamental. More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Crusades against Vaccination
Monday, 5 January 2015, 9:56 am | Binoy Kampmark
It would be a cardinal sin to presume that all science, cold and hard as it can be, is the stuff of fluffy paradigms, knowledge constellations that are pure speculation and subject of postmodern dismissal. It is all fine and good to question gravity ... More >>