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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 31]
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 >>
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 >>
