Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 29]
Anxiety As Socialism: AI Moratorium Fantasies
Thursday, 27 April 2023, 1:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Rumours and streaks of hysteria are running rife about what such artificial intelligence (AI) systems as ChatGPT are meant to do. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy recently showed himself to be ignorant with terror about the search bot created by OpenAI. ... More >>
Politicians And The Anzac Tradition: A Story Of Manipulation And Mythology
Wednesday, 26 April 2023, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the mass slaughtering of, and slaughter by, soldiers, is always a touchy subject of commemoration, a tension has existed between those who did the fighting, and those who ordered it. Comfortably secure in furnished rooms and battle props, planners ... More >>
Barry Humphries: Misunderstood Anarchist Of Culture
Monday, 24 April 2023, 1:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He was always a step ahead, his mind geared not only for the next move, but the next sequence. He also smelt it, anticipated the audience reaction, shaped the prejudice in context for consumption. He created an antipodean version of dada art. He confused, ... More >>
Libelled By The Bot: Reputation, Defamation And AI
Thursday, 20 April 2023, 12:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cometh the new platform, cometh new actions in law, the fragile litigant ever ready to dash off a writ to those with (preferably) deep pockets. And so, it transpires that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, for all the genius behind their creation, ... More >>
Penny Wong’s World View: AUKUS All The Way
Wednesday, 19 April 2023, 11:13 am | Binoy Kampmark
If anyone was expecting a new tilt, a shine of novelty, a flash of independence from Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s address to the National Press Club on April 17, they were bound to be disappointed. The anti-China hawks, talons polished, ... More >>
A Road Paved With Irritations: Macron’s Strategic Third Way
Tuesday, 18 April 2023, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to China did not quite go according to plan, though much depends on what was planned to begin with. In one sense, the French President was consistent, riding the hobbyhorse of Europe’s strategic autonomy, one hived ... More >>
The Leaking Republic: The Pentagon’s Take On Information Security
Monday, 17 April 2023, 2:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For years, US intelligence officials could hold their allies, notably the British, in contempt for leaking like sinking vessels and harbouring such espionage luminaries as the Cambridge Five. The whirligig of time has returned the favour with the latest ... More >>
EO: Three Hooves Up In High Heaven
Friday, 14 April 2023, 5:06 am | Binoy Kampmark
Films featuring animals as screen filled protagonists, often in an imperfect, callous human world, have been made before. There was Robert Bresson’s 1966 Au Hasard Balthazar , which introduced audiences to a saintly donkey subject to the terrible things human ... More >>
Universities And The AUKUS Military-Industrial Complex
Wednesday, 12 April 2023, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Here they go. Vice-chancellors, university managers, and creatures with titles unmentionable and meaningless (deputies, semi-deputies, sub-deputies), a whole cavalcade of parasitic creatures in need of neutering, keen to pursue another daft idea. Australian universities ... More >>
Calculated Misrepresentations: The US Withdrawal From Afghanistan
Tuesday, 11 April 2023, 2:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Succeeding administrations have a chronic habit of blaming their predecessors. The Biden administration has been most particular on the issue, taking every chance to attack former President Donald Trump for the ills of his tenure. But the effort to ... More >>
Executive Donkeys And War Powers Reform
Thursday, 6 April 2023, 12:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The decision to go to war should be as burdensome as possible. The more impediments to such folly, the better. Such a state of affairs does not characterise the Westminster system of government. It certainly does not apply to Australia, which is all the ... More >>
Turning Tides: The US Congress And Julian Assange
Tuesday, 4 April 2023, 1:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” I.F. Stone The US Congress and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, have what can only be regarded as a testy relationship. Its various members have advocated ... More >>
Sparing The Athletes: Revising The Russia-Belarus Sporting Ban
Monday, 3 April 2023, 1:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Collateral damage? Deserving and worthy of their punishment? The exclusion and banishment of Russian and Belarusian athletes has become the acceptable prejudice of many governments and a slew of sporting bodies. After the invasion of Ukraine in February last year, ... More >>
Calculated Exoneration: Command Responsibility And War Crimes In Afghanistan
Wednesday, 29 March 2023, 1:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being the scapegoat of tribal lore cast out with the heavy weight of sins remains a popular political motif. Supposedly noble soldiers, by way of example, are punished for not adhering to the rules of war. In breaching the codes of killing and the protocols ... More >>
AUKUS, The Australian Labor Party, And Growing Dissent
Sunday, 26 March 2023, 5:39 am | Binoy Kampmark
It was a sight to behold and took the wind out of the bellicose sails of the AUKUS cheer squad. Here, at the National Press Club in the Australian capital, was a Labor luminary, former Prime Minister of Australia and statesman, keen to weigh in with ... More >>
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup
Friday, 24 March 2023, 3:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What a coup. Nakedly amoral but utterly self-serving in its saccharine minted glory. India’s showman Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who otherwise appears to have clerkish, desk-bound qualities, had what he wanted: an accommodating, possibly clueless guest ... More >>
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries In The Pacific
Wednesday, 22 March 2023, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
For some time, Washington has been losing its spunk in the Pacific. When it comes to the Pacific Islands, a number have not fallen – at least entirely – for the rhetoric that Beijing is there to take, consume, and dominate all. Nor have such ... More >>
From Balloons To AUKUS: The War Drive Against China
Tuesday, 21 March 2023, 4:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When will this hate-filled nonsense stop? Surveillance balloons treated like evocations of Satan and his card-carrying followers; other innumerable unidentified phenomena that, nonetheless, remain attributable in origin, despite their designation; and ... More >>
Criminals At Large: The Iraq War Twenty Years On
Monday, 20 March 2023, 12:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment. It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and crimes of other leaders current and former. Russia, not being ... More >>
Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem
Sunday, 19 March 2023, 7:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to ... More >>
