Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 30]
Forget The University: Gift Cards, Professionalism And The Australian Academy
Tuesday, 20 June 2023, 3:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Dear future students wishing to come to Australia and study: don’t. The gurgling, decaying system is, on a regular basis, being exposed for what it is. If it is not students being exploited, its academics being manipulated to the point of ruinous ... More >>
Dumpling Wars In Ukraine
Thursday, 15 June 2023, 6:47 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Ukrainian blonde had the smell of trouble. She had perched herself, along with her mute friend, in a restaurant across from the famed South Melbourne Market. On arriving at the modish, glorious bit of real estate known as Tipsy Village, a Polish ... More >>
Never More Relevant: Ted Kaczynski, Technology And Trauma
Wednesday, 14 June 2023, 1:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Henry A. Murray has much to answer for. Between 1959 and 1961, the Harvard psychology academic, as the leader of a team of equally unprincipled academics, was responsible for conducting an CIA-funded experiment most unethical on twenty-two undergraduates. ... More >>
Novak Djokovic: Always More Than Tennis
Monday, 12 June 2023, 2:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The victory of Novak Djokovic in the latest French Open had the usual mixed reception in Australia. While Australians pretend to like radicals, larrikins and the occasional deviant, the contrary is true. Tight buttoned, properly behaved and conformist to ... More >>
A Matter of Interest: The RBA, Inflation and Corporate Profits
Saturday, 10 June 2023, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He is one of the least empathetic of beings, a cold fish, bothered and irritated. Captured by the cradle of numbers (he is an economist); obsessed by the spreadsheet of projections that may never result, there is not much to recommend the chief of ... More >>
Convenient Villains: Kathleen Folbigg’s Miscarriage Of Justice
Thursday, 8 June 2023, 5:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They – being the howling press, the screeching vox populi, and anybody else wishing to weigh in – were very clear about it. Kathleen Folbigg was guilty as hell and deserved her special place in it. For two decades, she spent her time behind bars ... More >>
Deserving Each Other: The PGA Tour-LIV Golf Merger
Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 1:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Described as acrimonious, divisive and disruptive to golf, the LIV Golf Tournament, launched with the aid of former world number one Greg Norman and an enormous well of capital fronted by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), will now unite ... More >>
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 >>