Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 45]
The Conviction And Sentencing Of Witness K
Saturday, 19 June 2021, 4:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
After tormenting the man for years, it became clear that the Australian authorities were willing to, for want of a better word, compromise. The more accurate word would be compromising. Instead of banishing former spy turned bean spiller Witness K to ... More >>
Wither Encryption: What Operation Trojan Shield Reveals
Friday, 18 June 2021, 12:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
My, were they delighted. Politicians across several international jurisdictions beamed with pride that police and security forces had gotten one up on criminals spanning the globe. It all involved a sting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ... More >>
Publicity And Exploitation: Fortress Australia And The Family From Biloela
Tuesday, 15 June 2021, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian officials and paper mad types are running out of ideas as to how to be cruel towards refugees. We need to give them some credit: for years they have tried to do what most autocratic and murderous regimes do in a heartbeat: ignore international ... More >>
Vague Alternatives And G7 Summitry: The Build Back Better World Initiative
Sunday, 13 June 2021, 4:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Summits often feature grand statements and needless fripperies. In Cornwall, the leaders of the G7 countries were trying to position and promote their relevance as the vanguard of democratic good sense and values. They, the message went, remained ... More >>
Less Freedom, More Money: Tony Blair’s Vaccine Passport
Friday, 11 June 2021, 2:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Sincere Tony is again on the stump, promoting his vision of how best to return to a lovely, unruffled world of capitalist endeavour, circuit lecturing and summit meetings that no longer need to be held online. And when Blair has visions, they are bound ... More >>
ET, You Bore Me: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena And The Pentagon
Wednesday, 9 June 2021, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those of you drawing sustenance and stimulation from the traditional acronym UFO best brace yourselves. The less exciting and dull term accepted by the defence clerks – unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – is renewing its march into the extra-terrestrial ... More >>
Denmark Offshores The Right To Asylum
Monday, 7 June 2021, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This has been a fantasy of Danish governments for some time. There have been gazes of admiration towards countries like Australia, where processing refugees and asylum-seekers is a task offloaded, with cash incentives, to third countries (Papua New Guinea and ... More >>
Of Plagues And Rodents: Australia’s War Against Mice
Sunday, 6 June 2021, 4:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Not a day goes by these days without a casual remark about animal extermination in Australia. Mice have moved to the front of the queue in terms of animal species Australians would most like to liquidate. The language used has various registers: ... More >>
Suicidal Games: Tokyo’s Coronavirus Olympics
Thursday, 3 June 2021, 12:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A pandemic crisis. A state of emergency. Overwhelming public opinion bristling with alarm. Notwithstanding these factors, Tokyo is still on track to host the Olympics that was cancelled last year in response to the global pandemic. The first sports ... More >>
That Old Story: Spying On Friends
Wednesday, 2 June 2021, 1:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One has to be repeatedly reminded that the theatre of international relations knows no friends and only national interests, whatever those might be. Intelligence services, being an expression of those interests, do not necessarily discriminate in targeting ... More >>
Laying The Bear Trap: Orbán Visits No 10 Downing Street
Monday, 31 May 2021, 2:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
His comments would not have fallen on deaf ears. While metropolitan London would have been aghast at his pedigree and remarks, a Brexit-audience in the rustbelts and areas of deprivation, would have felt a twang of appreciation. For them, migration ... More >>
The Dominic Cummings Show
Friday, 28 May 2021, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The former chief strategist for Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in a stroppy mood before the UK parliamentary Health and Science committee. For seven hours , Cummings unleashed salvo after salvo against his former boss and the government coronavirus ... More >>
How It All Went Wrong: The Global Response To COVID-19
Thursday, 27 May 2021, 11:23 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response was never likely to hand down a rosy report with gobbets of praise. Organised by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last May, the panel’s gloomy assessment ... More >>
Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney And The Rule Of Law
Monday, 24 May 2021, 3:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One could not accuse US Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of having a sense of irony. For some time, she has felt her party to be the hostage of a ghoulish monster who refuses to be slayed. And she fears her party has fallen out of love for the ... More >>
Burned By The Diana Cult: The Fall Of Martin Bashir
Saturday, 22 May 2021, 4:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The interview was infamous, made his name and was bound to enrage. It also received a viewing audience of 23 million people who heard a saucy tale of adultery, plots in the palace, and stories of physical and mental illness. But the tarring and feathering ... More >>
Coronavirus Travels And Cruising With Viking
Friday, 21 May 2021, 1:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It starts off as an exercise of anticipation. First comes the softening drinks and teasing morsels which find their mark. The audience at this promotions gig is well heeled, of an age where they have money to burn, but nowhere to burn it. They have ... More >>
The Gilt Comes Off: Singapore Goes Into Lockdown
Tuesday, 18 May 2021, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A clean, technology driven dystopia. A representation of our techno future. These were the introductory descriptions to a piece by science fiction author William Gibson on Singapore for Wired in 1993. “Imagine an Asian version of Zurich operating as ... More >>
Elbowed And Hustled: Australia’s Yellow Peril Problem
Saturday, 15 May 2021, 3:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the babble about Cold War paranoia becoming a routine matter in Canberra, the treacherous ground for war with China is being bedded down and readied. The Yellow Peril image never truly dissipated from Australia’s politics. It was crucial in ... More >>
Held To Ransom: Colonial Pipeline And The Vulnerabilities Of Critical Infrastructure
Tuesday, 11 May 2021, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It should be making officials in the White House tremble. Critical infrastructure supplying 45% of the East Coast’s diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, left at the mercy of a ransomware operation executed on May 6. In the process, 100 GB of data of Colonial ... More >>
Crashing Out In Hartlepool: Labour Ills And Teflon Boris
Sunday, 9 May 2021, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
By-election results make poor predictors. The government of the day can often count on a swing against it by irritated voters keen to remind it they exist. It’s an opportunity to mete out mild punishment. But the loss of the seat in Hartlepool by ... More >>