Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 49]
The University Deception: Rankings And Academic Freedom
Monday, 15 March 2021, 4:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Forget the global university rankings of any list. The global university promotion exercise is filled with snake oil and perfumed refuse, an effort to corrupt the unknowing and steal from the gullible. The aim here is to convince parents, potential ... More >>
Matters Of Communication: Handelsblatting The Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine
Saturday, 13 March 2021, 5:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is fast becoming a subject of notoriety. First, will States obtain it? Second, will they use it? The first answer has generally been affirmative, given the vaccine’s ease of storage and relative cheapness. The ... More >>
Eyes On China: The Quad Takes Scattered Aim
Thursday, 11 March 2021, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has had its fits and starts, but nothing encourages such chats than threats, actual or perceived. In 2017, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono felt that it was time that a strategic dialogue between Japan, the United ... More >>
Boring Revelations And Fanciful Victimhood: The Harry-Meghan-Oprah Show
Tuesday, 9 March 2021, 4:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This is the sort of stuff barnacles clinging on the antiquated raft known as British Royalty were waiting for. One of the royal couples makes a dash for it, shirking and then shedding their subsidised duties. They get in touch with that great squeeze ... More >>
COVID-19 Vaccines, Access And The Intellectual Property Wars
Monday, 8 March 2021, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
By now, anybody speaking about vaccine equality and equity of access must surely be coming across as slightly deranged. In the field of COVID-19, traditional proprietorial instincts remain. Add to this the disparity in terms of manufacture, bureaucracy ... More >>
Brawling Over Vaccines: Export Bans And The EU’s Bungled Rollout
Sunday, 7 March 2021, 5:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The European Union has been keeping up appearances in encouraging the equitable distribution of vaccines to combat SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, COVID-19. Numerous statements speak to the need to back the COVAX scheme, to ensure equity and that ... More >>
Biden, Afghanistan And Forever Wars
Friday, 5 March 2021, 6:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
The papers are full of suggestions on what US President Joe Biden should do about his country’s seemingly perennial involvement in Afghanistan. None are particularly useful, in that they ignore the central premise that a nation state long mauled, ... More >>
Delusions Of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria
Tuesday, 2 March 2021, 3:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it. On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria. The premise for the attacks was implausible. “These strikes were authorized in response to ... More >>
Breaching Digital Rights: India’s Platform And Media Ethics Code
Monday, 1 March 2021, 5:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Having made something of a splash last month with the fuss over Australia’s News Media Bargaining code, Facebook, and the digital giants, are facing another stormy front in India. The move here has nothing to do with revenue so much as alleged bad ... More >>
Culpability And Recalibration: MBS And The Killing Of Jamal Khashoggi
Saturday, 27 February 2021, 3:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a brutal way to go, and it had the paw prints of the highest authorities. On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian insider turned outsider, was murdered by a squad of 15 men from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He was dismembered ... More >>
War Mongering For Artificial Intelligence
Friday, 26 February 2021, 12:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The ghost of Edward Teller must have been doing the rounds between members of the National Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The father of the hydrogen bomb was never one too bothered by the ethical niggles that came with inventing murderous ... More >>
Refriended In Defeat: Australia Strikes A Deal With Facebook
Wednesday, 24 February 2021, 3:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Australian Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, was unconvincing in his efforts to summon up courage. The Australian government had been left reeling in the wake of Facebook’s decision to scrap and block Australians from sharing and posting news items on hosted ... More >>
Morons, Vaccines And Tennis: Booing At The Australian Open
Monday, 22 February 2021, 1:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was a fittingly poor conclusion to a tournament that risked being cancelled, run to ground, or even rendered stillborn. The tennis world number one, Novak Djokovic, had captured his eighteenth grand slam against would be usurper Daniil Medvedev, ... More >>
Snap Decisions: Victoria’s Third Lockdown
Thursday, 18 February 2021, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Queen Victoria Market in Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, is usually a thriving affair. Like any ancient agora, people travel to meet there, purchase fresh produce, and natter. The fruit and vegetable vendors are all colour, a profusion ... More >>
Sexual Assault In Canberra
Wednesday, 17 February 2021, 2:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Who knew what? In many cases of sexual assault in politics, events take place behind bolted doors, the perpetrator and victim bound by ties of power, seediness and suppression. The victim is left with an odious and onerous task: to report the event. The risks ... More >>
The “Return” Of America: Biden’s Maiden Foreign Policy Speech
Tuesday, 16 February 2021, 2:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden. It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label. Back as well, as if the previous administration had been incapable of it, was a promise ... More >>
Lobbying For Gain: Nick Warner And Australia’s Revolving Door
Monday, 15 February 2021, 1:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Governments have an almost crippling trouble appreciating conflicts of interest. Since tentacle-heavy lobby groups decided to move into the world’s capitals to make the case for their clients, the revolving door has become the sickening feature ... More >>
Missions To Mars: Mapping, Probing And Plundering The Red Planet
Sunday, 14 February 2021, 4:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In the first month of 2020, Forbes was all excitement about fresh opportunities for plunder and conquest. Titled “2020: The Year We Will Conquer Mars”, the contribution by astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter was less interested in the physics than the conquest. ... More >>
Trouble In Vaccine Land: The Wiliness Of South Africa’s Coronavirus Variant
Friday, 12 February 2021, 12:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It began as a shudder through the scientific and public health establishments. A new variant of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 had been found, mutating in South African climes, potentially outwitting human responses to it. Vaccines such as Oxford-AstraZeneca’s ... More >>
Continuing Prosecutions: Assange And The Biden Administration
Thursday, 11 February 2021, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With changes of presidential administrations, radical departures in policy are always exaggerated. Continuity remains, for the most part, a standard feature. It is precisely that continuity being challenged by groups fearful of the continuing prosecution ... More >>