Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 45]
The Taliban take Kabul
Monday, 16 August 2021, 2:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It unfolded as a story of fleeing. The Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, taking flight to Tajikistan, giving little clue of his intentions to colleagues. The fleeing of the infamous Abdul Rashid Dostum, a warlord assured to to fight another day. The ... More >>
A Taste Of Panic: The Taliban Continues Its Advance
Sunday, 15 August 2021, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The historical vectors are moving with conviction and purpose; the weak and lacking in conviction are in retreat and the gun is doing the talking. The government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, the security services and the Afghan National Army, ... More >>
Targeting The Medical Evidence: The US Challenge On Assange’s Health
Thursday, 12 August 2021, 2:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The desperate attempt by the US imperium to nab Julian Assange was elevated to another level on August 11 in a preliminary hearing before the UK High Court. The central component to this gruesome affair was the continuing libel of the expert witness ... More >>
Call In The Khaki: The Australian Defence Force And COVID-19
Tuesday, 10 August 2021, 3:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Towards the latter part of July, Australia’s unimaginative Prime Minister Scott Morrison received a request from the police commissioner from the state of New South Wales. It was a query on whether personnel from the Australian Defence Forces might ... More >>
Cultivated Delusions At The Tokyo Olympics
Monday, 9 August 2021, 12:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia’s Channel 7 team was all about ignoring history as its selected commentators went into describing, poorly, the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. The trio was poorly equipped culturally, geographically and totally (the Japanese component ... More >>
Silicon Valley, New Zealand And Pandemic Exceptionalism
Sunday, 8 August 2021, 3:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There are some crises that never touch the well-heeled. Money, like flab, insulates them from bruising. The generally applied laws of a state can be treated as meaningless jottings; the citizenry ignored with class contempt. But few can blame the world’s ... More >>
Sanitising Censorship: The Twitter-AP-Reuters News Partnership
Thursday, 5 August 2021, 1:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This week, Twitter was keen to share the news about its new arrangement with The Associated Press and Reuters “to expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information” on its platform. The company reiterates its commitment that people ... More >>
Fighting Malta’s Rule Of The Jungle: The Daphne Caruana Galizia Inquiry
Wednesday, 4 August 2021, 2:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Public Inquiry into the murder of the resourceful journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia handed down its findings on July 29. Firm aim was taken at the Maltese State, which had “to shoulder responsibility for the assassination because it created ... More >>
Rio Tinto In Serbia: The Jadar Lithium Project
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 3:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The company has been looking forward to this for some time. For an outfit found wanting in dealing with inhabitants of a land whose culture it eviscerated in a matter of hours in May last year, Rio Tinto could think grandly about another future. The ... More >>
Global Britain Slashes International Aid
Saturday, 31 July 2021, 2:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Decisions on aid are eroding trust and eroding relationships between the UK and developing countries.” Abby Baldoumas, Financial Times , July 15, 2021 Politics is not merely the art of the possible but the pursuit of concerted hypocrisy. When ... More >>
Papers Instead Of Human Lives: The Sentencing Of Daniel Hale
Wednesday, 28 July 2021, 7:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In May 2019, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that famous bastion of anti-whistleblowing fervour, unsealed an indictment charging former intelligence analyst Daniel Everett Hale with five counts of providing classified information ... More >>
Afghanistan, Failure And Second Thoughts
Tuesday, 27 July 2021, 3:15 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is a country other powers simply cannot leave alone. Even after abandoning its Kabul post in ignominy, tail tucked between their legs, Australia is now wondering if it should return – in some form. The Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs ... More >>
Greenwashing The Tokyo Olympic Games
Saturday, 24 July 2021, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The gap between rhetoric and reality is a persistent one when looking at the sustainability of commitments of Olympic Games hosts”. Martin Müller, European Urban and Regional Studies , 2015 The organisers of the Olympics have always been ... More >>
Tokyo’s Pandemic Games Open
Friday, 23 July 2021, 4:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The auguries are not good for the Tokyo Olympic Games. Resignations have filled the ledger, including Japanese composer Keigo Oyamada, organising committee president Yoshiro Mori and the creative director Hiroshi Sasaki. Then there is the lamentable ... More >>
Pegasus Rides Again: The NSO Group, Spyware And Human Rights
Wednesday, 21 July 2021, 4:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They keep insisting they don’t do it. But companies such as the Israeli NSO Group are global vendors for regimes, whatever stripe or colour, for surveillance tools to spy on those they deem of interest. The 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden that ... More >>
Infectious Follies: Britain’s Freedom Day
Tuesday, 20 July 2021, 1:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He can scant resist a slogan, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence on describing Britain’s exit from lockdown as Freedom Day came with its usual kitschy quality. All would be splendid as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the “move ... More >>
How CDN Providers Break The Internet
Monday, 19 July 2021, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“After years of IT experts telling us that we ‘can’t break the internet’ by pressing the wrong button, it turns out we can do it by updating our settings.” Phil Coughlin, The Guardian , Jun 11, 2021 On June 8, an internet blackout was precipitated ... More >>
Branson Goes To Space
Friday, 16 July 2021, 2:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Profligate, vain and utterly pleased with himself, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson could boast about his latest adventure of megalomania. Unlike others of the stinking rich set, he is incapable of keeping quiet. He pretends to be the people’s ... More >>
When Football Did Not Come Home
Thursday, 15 July 2021, 1:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They were in with a shot. The English team, deliriously floating on chants of Football’s Coming Home , had made it to their first major tournament final since 1966. The UEFA European Football Championship would be decided at Wembley against ... More >>
Australia’s Hermit Nation Strategy Unravels
Tuesday, 13 July 2021, 2:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia, like other island states, has had spells of isolationist fancy and hermit dispositions. Protected by geography, distant and vast, the country’s first bit of legislation in 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act. This nasty little statute ... More >>
