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Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 116]
The Disease of Detention: Julian Assange’s Thousand Days
Monday, 2 September 2013, 11:16 am | Binoy Kampmark
Police states quaffing the blood of victims have an excuse: they wish to oppress in order to justify the status quo, keeping the fires burning, their subjects scared. They deceive because they know that truth is another country. States that possess ... More >>
Imposing Inevitability: Unilaterally Striking Syria
Monday, 2 September 2013, 10:14 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is happening, again. The grotesque similarities are haunting. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States, along with its faithful, evangelically led air craft carrier in the form of Britain, decided to treat the United Nations as a body ... More >>
Tilting Towards Syria: The Dangers of Intervention
Monday, 26 August 2013, 2:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The recent escalation of tensions in Syria with the alleged use of chemical weapons against the civilian population is a cause of concern for the international community. These attacks allegedly took place in the east and south-west of Damascus on Wednesday, ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Virtue of Bradley Manning
Friday, 23 August 2013, 5:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Wikileaks chief editor Julian Assange, and leader of the WikiLeaks Party, deemed it a “tactical victory” though still revolting to western concepts of justice. The 35 year sentence of Bradley Manning immediately brings to mind a sense of disproportion, ... More >>
Manning, Apology and an Onerous Fidelity
Tuesday, 20 August 2013, 5:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Promises, and more promises. First, of a punishment that would be over a century. Then, a reduction to a punishment less than a century. And then, sixty years incarceration with a hefty fine of $100 thousand., though this may well be trimmed to 25 years. More >>
Grunwald, Assange & Assassination: Loving the Drone Disease
Monday, 19 August 2013, 5:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“I can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange” - Michael Grunwald, Twitter, Aug 17, 2013. He regrets having tweeted it on Saturday. According to TIME Magazine, Michael Grunwald’s endorsement of assassinating WikiLeaks’ ... More >>
Whistleblowing: Snowden, Manning and Manifest Surveillance
Friday, 16 August 2013, 5:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a pity that an Attorney General with the surname of Dreyfus has decided that history, notably one of injustice, is something for other people. The Dreyfus Affair, France’s divisive scandal involving Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ alleged communication ... More >>
Consular Non-Assistance: The Demon of Australian Policy
Wednesday, 14 August 2013, 12:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is about time that the Australian Parliament consider having a viable foreign affairs department or abolish it altogether. Affairs might as well be relocated to Washington, D.C. The libertarians would have a point were they to assert that claim. ... More >>
The WikiLeaks Party, the Australian Election and Beyond
Monday, 12 August 2013, 3:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Surprised at the disgust of politics in Australia and elsewhere? This would itself be a surprise. Disliking Australian politics has not only been a pass time for decades in the country; it has become something of a nervous tic. More >>
A Parliament of Leakers: WikiLeaks and the New Vision
Friday, 9 August 2013, 11:34 am | Binoy Kampmark
It sounds like a plumbing deficiency with a moral purpose: one leaks at times because one just has to. The condition is biological, innate. The suggestion in the case of politics is that a party that specialises about this will be formidable, and, ... More >>
Finding Justifications: The NSA and Global Terror Alerts
Tuesday, 6 August 2013, 11:06 am | Binoy Kampmark
Let us not get too worked up. Let us not even feel too conspiratorial. But is it coincidence that, after a series of exposures of such programs as PRISM, that a “global terror alert” has been announced? More >>
Refugee Imperialism: Kevin Rudd and Dumping on the Pacific
Monday, 5 August 2013, 11:25 am | Binoy Kampmark
The pro-refugee groups are milling about along Swanston Street, Melbourne, the arterial route of the city centre in what apparently qualifies as Australia’s “cultural” capital. The actions of protest took place over the weekend to respond to the first ... More >>
Convicting Manning:Implications for WikiLeaks/Whistleblowers
Monday, 5 August 2013, 10:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
The state has not disappointed. The U.S. military legal system has done badly, and it is scant comfort that it might have done something even worse. It was hard to expect that Army Colonel Denise Lind could do anything else. More >>
Snowden Escapes: Russian Asylum and the issue with XKeyscore
Saturday, 3 August 2013, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Not so fast, but very furious – U.S. officials have been checked by the latest move on the part of the Russian government to grant Edward Snowden a year’s asylum. This is not so much cat and mouse as better feline against tricked feline, a combination ... More >>
Awaiting Judgment: The Manning Trial Rests
Monday, 29 July 2013, 3:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The farce is done, and one might say that the farce has ended – at least for now. An interregnum of unclear and sinister stupidity has descended in Fort Meade, Maryland. Certainly, Rabelais would express considerable disgust at the folly that has been ... More >>
Making the Bastards Honest: Launching the WikiLeaks Party
Friday, 26 July 2013, 5:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The opening crackled and sparkled in the old reading room of the Fitzroy Library in Melbourne, with Julian Assange beaming in via Skype at a time he has become use to – 3 in the morning. In a space where work and insomnia are firm friends, grabbing ... More >>
Catching WikiLeaks: Australian Diplomats & the Manning Trial
Wednesday, 24 July 2013, 5:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the Australian election stuttering towards its hideous climax (we hope with a hideousness moderated by the effects of smaller parties), it is worth noting what has been happening in terms of perceptions of the Manning trial. More >>
Death by Lunch: Food Poisoning in Bihar
Friday, 19 July 2013, 8:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This was not a Jamie Oliver lunch special, or a school meal specifically designed for nutritional enhancement. The battle to feed the learning young, and to do so properly, remains a global struggle. But those aged four to twelve who ingested the ... More >>
Riled Over Zimmerman: Self-Defence in Florida
Wednesday, 17 July 2013, 1:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
An intelligent, self-interested observer of this case, who happens to live in Florida, would not be wrong to do as George Zimmerman did – buy a gun, master the finer points of Florida self-defence law, and then wait. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic ... More >>
Empire of Paper: Frustrating Snowden’s Asylum Bid
Thursday, 11 July 2013, 12:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In its struggle against whistleblowers, the United States has exerted a variegated form of power, one that focuses on documents and an anaemic reading of the law. The international relations canon searches desperately for what that might be. More >>
