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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 34]
Stumbling Surveillance: The End Of The COVIDSafe App
Monday, 15 August 2022, 2:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It took a few years of tolerable incompetence, caused fears about security, and was meant to be the great surveillance salvation to reassure us all. Instead, Australia’s COVIDSafe App only identified two positive cases of infection during the SARS-CoV-2 ... More >>
Europe Dries Up
Sunday, 14 August 2022, 7:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Scenes and pictures have been circulating of broken earth, lacking moisture, cracked and yearning. But these are not from traditional drought-stricken parts of the planet, where the animal carcass assumes near totemic power amidst dry riverbeds or desert ... More >>
A Looting Matter: Cambodia’s Stolen Antiquities
Thursday, 11 August 2022, 12:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cambodia has often featured in the Western imagination as a place of plunder and pilfering. Temples and artefacts of exquisite beauty have exercised the interest of adventurers and buccaneers who looted with almost kleptocratic tendency. In 1924, ... More >>
Punishing Whistleblowers At The United Nations
Tuesday, 9 August 2022, 1:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The United Nations prides itself on exposing, monitoring and noting the travails and vicissitudes to be found on this troubled planet. It also prides itself on being the premier international institution that protects, or at the very least keeps an ... More >>
Going Global With NATO
Monday, 8 August 2022, 12:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Regional alliances should, for the most part, remain regional. Areas of the globe can count on a number of such bodies and associations with varying degrees of heft: the Organization of American States; the Organisation of African Unity; and the Association ... More >>
Chegg, Cheating And Australian Universities
Sunday, 7 August 2022, 6:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
The note on Radio National’s Background Briefing on the morning of July 31 was sombre. A student, who did not divulge his real name (he is professionally pseudonymised as Ramesh), talks about services that aid him in his study. Aid is less accurate ... More >>
Nancy Pelosi, You Silly Biddy
Thursday, 4 August 2022, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s visit to Sarajevo in 1914 was an instructive lesson on how the dumb do, at some point, ask for it. Bosnia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was desired by the Kingdom of Serbia. With the Serbs also well represented ... More >>
The Fuss About Monkeypox
Thursday, 4 August 2022, 1:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The World Health Organization has been one of the easier bodies to abuse. For parochial types, populist moaners and critics of international institutions, the WHO bore the brunt of criticisms from Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro. Being a key institution ... More >>
Penal Assassination: The Gradual Effort To Kill Assange
Sunday, 31 July 2022, 5:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They really do want to kill him. Perhaps it is high time that his detractors and sceptics, proven wrong essentially from the outset, admit that the US imperium, along with its client states, is willing to see Julian Assange perish in prison. The locality ... More >>
Gilding The Cage Of Suburbia: Farewelling Neighbours
Saturday, 30 July 2022, 5:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The statistics of Australia’s longest running drama series about sickeningly idyllic suburbia will interest soap show boffins. It lasted 5,955 episodes over 37 seasons, starting in 1985. Its anaemically thin plotlines, subpar acting, and emphasis on ... More >>
Facial Recognition Technology Down Under
Friday, 29 July 2022, 2:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The language is far from reassuring. Despite being caught red handed using facial recognition technology unbeknownst to customers, a number of Australia’s large retail companies have given a meek assurance that they will “pause” their use. ... More >>
Chaff Candidates: The Race For The UK Tory Leadership
Wednesday, 27 July 2022, 3:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson set the scene in spectacular fashion. All who sought to confine him to history, perished. He was the only one who seemed to survive, and reject, one diabolical scandal after the next – till now. No leader with such ... More >>
International Accountability: Myanmar, The ICJ And The Genocide Question
Tuesday, 26 July 2022, 7:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
The indomitable spirit of Raphael Lemkin, bibliophile, assiduous documenter of humanity’s dark deeds and inexecrable conduct, is bound to be an unsettled one. This brilliant, committed and peculiarly dedicated creature took years to come up with what would, ... More >>
Scott Morrison Awaits The Apocalypse
Sunday, 24 July 2022, 5:26 am | Binoy Kampmark
The minds of defeated prime ministers are rarely pretty. In some cases, they are damnably awful places, where ruins accumulate and dust gathers in wretchedness. Such figures can become, by the admission of former Australian prime minister, Malcolm ... More >>
AUKUS, Technology And Militarising Australia
Friday, 22 July 2022, 4:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Thinktanks across Australia, tanked with cash from US sources and keen to think in furious agreement, are all showing how delighted they are with the AUKUS security pact and what potential it has for local, if subordinated industry. The United States ... More >>
Customary Barbarity: Britain’s SAS In Afghanistan
Monday, 18 July 2022, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The insistence that there is a noble way of fighting war, one less bloody and brutal, has always been the hallmark of forces self-described as civilised. Restraint characterises their behaviour; codes of laws follow in their wake, rather than genocidal impulses. ... More >>
Get Gota: Holding A War Criminal Accountable
Saturday, 16 July 2022, 6:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The fall and ignominious retreat of Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa has enlivened one distinct possibility. Having formally resigned as Sri Lankan President, a point made via email from Singapore, those wishing to see him account for war crimes may ... More >>
Vicarious Zeal: Fighting To The Last Ukrainian
Wednesday, 13 July 2022, 4:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues, the rhetoric from the imperial spear-holders in Washington and some allies is becoming increasingly fixated with one object: victory against Russia. Such words should be used sparingly, especially given their binding, ... More >>
Barely Legal: The Global Uber Enterprise
Tuesday, 12 July 2022, 12:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The lobbying of Uber should, along with those of other corporate giants, only surprise those prone to pollyannaish escapism. Its hungry, desperate behaviour takes place in plain sight, and denials merely serve to emphasise the point. It resembles, in ... More >>
Hoisted By Their Own Petard: Wimbledon’s Russian Player Ban
Sunday, 10 July 2022, 6:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was, all and all, an odd spectacle. The Ladies’ Singles victor for Wimbledon 2022 had all the credentials that would have otherwise guaranteed her barring. Being Russian-born, news outlets in Britain walked gingerly around The All England Club’s ... More >>
