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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 41]
Totalitarian Cyber-Creep: Mark Zuckerberg In The Metaverse
Tuesday, 23 November 2021, 1:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Never leave matters of maturity to the Peter Panners of Silicon Valley. At their most benign, they are easily dismissed as potty and keyboard mad. At their worst, their fantasies assume the noxious, demonic forms that reduce all users of their ... More >>
Electric Car Delusions
Sunday, 21 November 2021, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fresh from attending COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was keen to impress the Australian public that he was willing to make good his word about the role technology would play in combating climate change. An important component of ... More >>
Britain’s Two Job Politicians
Thursday, 18 November 2021, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The role of the parliamentarian, historically, is one of service. The desire to hold two jobs, or more, suggests that such service is severely qualified. In the quotient of democracy and representation, the MP who is ready to tend to the affairs ... More >>
Manufactured Cruelties: Belarus, Poland And The Refugee Crisis
Tuesday, 16 November 2021, 7:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments. They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions. They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge. The latter is ... More >>
Gasbagging In Glasgow: COP26 And Phasing Down Coal
Monday, 15 November 2021, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Words can provide sharp traps, fettering language and caging definitions. They can also speak to freedom of action and permissiveness. At COP26, that permissiveness was all the more present in the haggling ahead of what would become the Glasgow Climate ... More >>
Lying In Public Life: The Scott Morrison Formula
Saturday, 13 November 2021, 5:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He has some gall. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a person who finds the truth a creature best beaten, shunned and ignored, is now moving into what looks like campaign mode. At COP26 in Glasgow, he sold the world a climate change model ... More >>
Ning-Nong Diplomacy, China And Paul Keating
Saturday, 13 November 2021, 7:03 am | Binoy Kampmark
Former Australian prime ministers tend to be less conspicuous in public life than their counterparts in other countries. Occasionally, they make an appearance at political functions and events to remind us that they are still alive, their estate still breathing, ... More >>
FW De Klerk: A Negotiator Before Defeat
Friday, 12 November 2021, 5:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Rarely is the pragmatist admired. Be it in policy or politics, such a figure induces suspicion, a concern that principles will have to be subordinated to broader goals. True dreamers and visionaries, for all their glaring faults, can take the accolades; ... More >>
Blacklisting The Merchants Of Spyware
Monday, 8 November 2021, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist. On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies ... More >>
Hypersonic Panic And Competitive Terror
Saturday, 6 November 2021, 9:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
During his eventful time in office, US President Donald Trump took much delight in reflecting about the lethal toys of his country’s military, actual or hypothetical. These included a hypersonic capability which, his military advisors had warned, was ... More >>
Cleo Smith And The Lost Child Syndrome
Thursday, 4 November 2021, 3:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In the twenty-four-hour news cycle, scraps of information become flecks of distracting gold. Information sifters go through coverage with anorak enthusiasm. Instead of good copy and measured consideration, journalists are encouraged to become manufacturers ... More >>
Lies, Lies And Nuclear Submarines
Wednesday, 3 November 2021, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It looked like something of an ambush, but a coterie of Australian journalists had their man where they wanted him. Between sessions at the G20 Summit in Rome, and French President Emmanuel Macron found himself blunter than usual. The sundering ... More >>
The CIA, Empty Assurances And Assange’s Defence
Friday, 29 October 2021, 4:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The second day of appellate proceedings by the United States against Julian Assange saw the defence make their case against the overturning of District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January ruling . Any extradition to the US, she concluded, would be ... More >>
Crystal Ball Jurisprudence: The US Appeal Against Assange Opens
Thursday, 28 October 2021, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s time to ready yourself for ghoulishly bad behaviour. Shred your bill of rights or whatever charter of liberties you have handy. Flatulent, dangerous and fatuous, the US prosecution of Julian Assange took to the UK High Court on October 27, opening ... More >>
Congress, Skulduggery And The Assange Case
Wednesday, 27 October 2021, 1:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Is the imperium showing suspicions about its intended quarry? It is hard to believe it, but the US House Intelligence Committee is on a mission of discovery. Its subject: a Yahoo News report disclosing much material that was already in the public domain ... More >>
Cancelling Cartoonists
Tuesday, 26 October 2021, 3:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On January 7, 2015, the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo found themselves facing a form of cancel culture before it became fashionable in the Twaddle sphere. It was of the most severe, lethal sort. Twelve people were butchered and ... More >>
Space Dildoing With William Shatner
Friday, 22 October 2021, 1:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Overpaid breakfast hosts on an Australian network sniggered, wondered and pondered. Why is that top throbbed Blue Origin capsule heading to space shaped that way? Is Jeff Bezos’s effort nothing more than a phallic spurt into the heavens? The implications ... More >>
Melbourne: The Longest In Lockdown
Thursday, 21 October 2021, 2:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
As a city, Melbourne previously prided itself with the air of a prim and proper heiress, one without peer in Australia: a gastronomic wonder, a sporting goddess, and a place of orderly public transport. The Economist Intelligence Unit glowed with ... More >>
Colin Powell: Establishment Warrior
Wednesday, 20 October 2021, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
History is strewn with the broken branches of twisted irony. An individual who found himself entangled in it was the late Colin Powell, who, as a military man, gave a doctrine his name only to forgo it as a diplomat. The Powell Doctrine was one of ... More >>
War Talk From The Mad Monk: Tony Abbott Goes To Taiwan
Tuesday, 19 October 2021, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
No one can stop him. He can barely stop himself. The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seems to be everywhere, fighting the poor cause. At the very least, he is everywhere with the press cameras, the niggling concerns, the irritations that ... More >>
