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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 42]
How To Chill Free Speech: Defamation Down Under
Monday, 13 December 2021, 1:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The free speech argument in Australia has always been skewed. Lacking the confidence, courage and maturity to have a bill of rights that might protect it, Australia’s body politic has stammered its way to the frailest of protections. The Australian ... More >>
Journalism, Assange And Reversal In The High Court
Saturday, 11 December 2021, 5:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
British justice is advertised by its proponents as upright, historically different to the savages upon which it sought to civilise, and apparently fair. Such outrages as the unjust convictions of the Guilford Four and Maguire Seven, both having served ... More >>
Ineffectual Boycotts: The Beijing Winter Olympics
Thursday, 9 December 2021, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Making moral statements in the blood and gristle of international relations can often come across as feeble. In doing so, the maker serves the worst of all worlds: to reveal a false sense of assurance that something was done while serving no actual ... More >>
Punishing The Unvaccinated: Europe’s COVID-19 Health Experiment
Tuesday, 7 December 2021, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Forget any notions of juicy carrots; the stick approach of savage punishment is in vogue with the Greek government in pushing vaccination rates. It is far from the only one. Across a number of countries in Europe, governments wishing to drive up ... More >>
Omicron And The Travel Ban Itch
Monday, 6 December 2021, 12:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Stick to the script: owe that duty of care to your population, so the legal experts in government tell you. Self-interest pays, if in small amounts. These rigid, formulaic assumptions have done wonders to harm and deter any spirit of cooperation regarding ... More >>
Backing Horses: Australia’s Solomon Islands Intervention
Saturday, 4 December 2021, 5:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The history of humanitarian or policing missions is a history of taking sides, disruptive partiality and the forfeiture of the very object powers claim when intervening in another country. Things become particularly absurd when the individual or government ... More >>
Where There Are Tailings, No Grass Grows: Serbians Protest Against Rio Tinto
Thursday, 2 December 2021, 12:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Another fault line has opened in the mining wars. In Serbia, resistance is gathering steam against various deals made between Belgrade and companies that risk environmental degradation and lingering spoliation. In this regard, the globe’s second largest ... More >>
Arming Against China: The US Global Posture Review
Wednesday, 1 December 2021, 10:22 am | Binoy Kampmark
Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region, and is hoping to do so with a range of expanded bases across client states, ... More >>
Project UATX: New Universities, Old Problems
Tuesday, 30 November 2021, 4:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Among the motivations behind establishing a university is a desire to leave old ones. Old in tooth, depraved, decayed, the assumption is that a new institution will return to original purposes on the pretext that these are truly radical. This, on ... More >>
Foreseeable Risk: Omicron Makes Its Viral Debut
Saturday, 27 November 2021, 5:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been written about more times than any care to remember. Pliny the Elder, that old cheek, told us that Africa always tended to bring forth something new: Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre . The suggestion was directed to hybrid animals, but ... More >>
Off To The Solomon Islands: Australia’s Civilizers Get Busy
Friday, 26 November 2021, 3:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A small riot. Unrest. Risk of collapse. All given a ballooning effect and inflated for policy makers across the ocean. Before much time elapses, Australian security forces are skirting off to restore order in their vast watery neighbourhood. It is ... More >>
The Taiwan Foreign Policy Fetish
Thursday, 25 November 2021, 12:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian foreign policy towards Taiwan, as things stand, is a distant fantasy in floating mist. There is little to connect them, but Australia’s political classes have a habit of fabricating relations with those it cares little for, nor understands, ... More >>
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 >>
