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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 28]
Diluted Sovereignty: A Very Australian Example
Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 1:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of ... More >>
Ticketing Woes: The Patchy Record Of Myki
Sunday, 4 June 2023, 4:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What is it about government contracts that produces the worst results and poorest returns? Those clods behind such deals, notably in the poison chaliced field of public transport, seem so utterly incapable at even modest competence. In public transport, ... More >>
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking Of A Plaster Saint
Friday, 2 June 2023, 1:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was an ugly case lasting five years with a host of ugly revelations. But what could be surprising about the murderous antics of a special arm of the military, in this case, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, which was repeatedly deployed ... More >>
AUKUS, Congress And Cold Feet
Wednesday, 31 May 2023, 1:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The undertakings made by Australia regarding the AUKUS security pact promise to be monumental. Much of this is negative: increased militarisation on the home front; the co-opting of the university sector for war making industries and defence contractors; ... More >>
Meta And Privacy: The Economy Of Data Transgressions
Tuesday, 30 May 2023, 3:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Meta, to put it rather inelegantly, has a data non-compliance problem. That problem began in the original conception of Facebook, a social network conceived by that most anti-social of types, Mark Zuckerberg. (Who claims that these troubled sorts ... More >>
Henry Kissinger Turns 100
Sunday, 28 May 2023, 9:43 am | Binoy Kampmark
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.” - Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002). If a heavy resume of crimes is a guarantee of longevity, then surely Henry A. Kissinger ... More >>
Modi In Australia: Down Under Bliss For Hindutva
Saturday, 27 May 2023, 9:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
There is an interesting thread that links the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, the owner of the gargantuan conglomerate that bears his name, Gautam Adani, and Australia. There is cricket; there is mining; there is remorseless extraction; and then there ... More >>
Visits Of Justice: Stella Assange’s Plea To Australia
Wednesday, 24 May 2023, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It certainly got the tongues wagging, the keyboards pressed, and the intellectually dead aroused – at least for a time. Given how many of those in the Australian press and media stable have been, for the most part, unconcerned, and in some cases celebratory, ... More >>
Rogues Consultants: PwC, Tax Evasion And Getting Clients
Tuesday, 23 May 2023, 3:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Things are not looking up at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a global professional services firm piratically free in sharing confidential tax information gathered from government clients. Then again, the firm’s expertise is not so much to look up ... More >>
Demented Policing: Tasering The Elderly
Sunday, 21 May 2023, 5:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia is a country addictively hostile to the elderly. Despite being a continent that speaks to immemorial origins, respect for those who age is uncommon. In The Lucky Country , that seminal, repeatedly misunderstood text, written in frustrated, ... More >>
Fighting White Elephants: The Tasmanian AFL Stadium Protest
Wednesday, 17 May 2023, 2:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Every now and then, the sharpened, dedicated means of halting a monstrous white elephant before its birth can work. The wise suddenly seem in charge, conscious and aware that folly can be averted. This, however, is a rare feat indeed. In Tasmania ... More >>
The US Supreme Court Corruption Bonanza
Tuesday, 16 May 2023, 3:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When ProPublica’s investigation into links between Republican donor Harlan Crow and the US Supreme Court surfaced, there was a sense that dark waters lurked beneath the revelations. While Justice Clarence Thomas featured prominently as the recipient ... More >>
Geoffrey Hinton, AI, And Google’s Ethics Problem
Sunday, 14 May 2023, 3:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence, actual or imagined, has become feverish, much of it induced by the growing world of generative chat bots. When scrutinising the critics, attention should be paid to their motivations. What do they stand to ... More >>
Scandal In Tasmania: The Edifice Sports Complex Runs Amok
Saturday, 13 May 2023, 7:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Profligate, a betrayal of public service, a misspending of state goods, a fiscal barbarism. By any estimation, recent efforts regarding sport in the small Australian state of Tasmania, unmoored from the mainland, distant, and, in many ways, depressed, ... More >>
Aqueous Matters: Europe’s Water Crisis
Friday, 12 May 2023, 4:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Europe is joining a number of other regions on the planet in suffering a prolonged water crisis; and it is one that shows little sign of abating. To this can be added the near catastrophic conditions that exist in other parts of the globe, where ready ... More >>
King Charles III: Policing The Republican Protests
Tuesday, 9 May 2023, 1:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In Britain, pageantry has always been a palliative and plaster for the dark and dismal. Be it in times of crisis, the chance to put on an extravagant show, usually at vast expense, is not something to forego. Central to this entertainment complex ... More >>
Jerry Springer: Ringmaster Of Civilization’s End
Monday, 8 May 2023, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It involved bringing out the irregular or peculiar from society’s peripheries – at least as popularly perceived at the time. Granted a national, broadcasting stage, various persons of despair would perform, if only for a spectacular, brief ... More >>
Rerunning Biden’s Blunderland
Wednesday, 3 May 2023, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
President Joseph Biden has done what many from his own party dreaded but dare not say. Last month, via a painful video , the aged Democrat declared his candidacy for a second term in the White House, branding himself a defender of US democracy. For ... More >>
Scrapping Charles Darwin: Hindutva’s Anti-Scientific Maladies
Tuesday, 2 May 2023, 11:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
Welcome the canons of pseudoscience. Open your arms to the dribbling, sponsored charlatans. According to a growing number of India’s top officialdom, teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to children in their ninth and 10th grades ... More >>
Preparing For War: The Global Military Budget
Monday, 1 May 2023, 1:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
US$2.24 trillion is a mighty amount. It’s also a sickening figure when considering the object of this exercise. The flickering tease of war, the promise of bloodshed and an increasingly large butcher’s bill, are inevitable suggestions from such ... More >>
