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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 51]
Google Meets The Sherman Act
Thursday, 29 October 2020, 4:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Ambition is the subtlest Beast of the Intellectual and Moral Field,” wrote John Adams to his son, John Quincy Adams, in January, 1794. “It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.” Father Adams was thinking of Thomas ... More >>
Cultivated Lunacy, Nuclear Deterrence And Banning The Nuke
Tuesday, 27 October 2020, 2:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Is international relations a field for cautious minds, marked by permanent setbacks, or terrain where the bold are encouraged to seize the day? In terms of dealing with the existential and even unimaginable horror that is nuclear war, the bold have certainly ... More >>
Impunity And Carefree Violence: Australia’s Special Forces In Afghanistan
Monday, 26 October 2020, 5:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In 2016, Australian Major General Jeff Sengelman approached the then chief of the Australian army Lieutenant General Angus Campbell with a nagging worry . The concern lay in allegations that Australian special forces had committed various war crimes ... More >>
Poor Timing: Cartier Meets Australia Post
Saturday, 24 October 2020, 3:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Watch brands do not tend to circulate as discussion topics in the Australian federal parliament. Time watching is a more functional affair. But Australia Post’s Chief Executive Christine Holgate gave politicians their chance to shine on October 21 ... More >>
Trusted Demonologies: US Electoral Interference, The Proud Boys And Iran
Friday, 23 October 2020, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Iran, Russia and electoral interference. It is all part of the delicious mess that any observer of US politics has come to expect. Were the US body politic capable of being examined on the clinician’s couch, historical fears, psychic disturbances, ... More >>
Tarnished Crown: Finding The Thorns Of A Gambling Empire
Thursday, 22 October 2020, 1:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Crown Resorts Annual General Meeting last year, held inside the company’s now flagging flagship Melbourne casino, was an ill-tempered matter. Members of the board were in no mood to please shareholders, many of whom have occupied the barricades ... More >>
Follow The Money: Banking, Criminality And The FinCEN Files
Tuesday, 20 October 2020, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was all a fitting reminder of Bertolt Brecht’s remark that bank robbery lies in the province of amateurs. The real professionals of plunder establish banks. Last month, the labours of Buzzfeed and the International Consortium of Investigative ... More >>
Sloppy Methodology: Social Media, Censorship And New York Post’s Hunter Biden Story
Monday, 19 October 2020, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was highly probable. Given the howls of concern that social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook nurse and nurture a bias (every choice on content entails one), a gift was made to critics to show just that. Last Wednesday, Twitter prevented ... More >>
Britannic Impunity: The UK Overseas Operations Bill
Sunday, 18 October 2020, 2:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was praised by Michael Clarke, former Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute, as “clear and entire laudable” – at least up to a point. The UK Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill would “give [British] ... More >>
Dropped Prosecutions: The Afghan Files, Public Interest Journalism And Dan Oakes
Friday, 16 October 2020, 1:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were “secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC”. ... More >>
Boris Johnson At Sea: Coronavirus Confusion In The UK
Tuesday, 13 October 2020, 2:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The tide has been turning against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Oafishly, he has managed to convert that tide into a deluge of dissatisfaction assisted by the gravitational pull of singular incompetence. Much of this is due to such errors of ... More >>
Back On The Stairway To Heaven: Led Zeppelin Wins Over Spirit
Sunday, 11 October 2020, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In March, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal upheld an original jury finding that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven did not infringe copyright in Spirit’s 1968 song Taurus . Michael Skidmore, who had filed the suit in 2014 as trustee of the ... More >>
Omnibus Collisions: Coronavirus Policing And Overreach In Victoria
Friday, 9 October 2020, 6:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In her September 17 speech to parliament, the Attorney General of the Australian state of Victoria, Jill Hennessy, explained various provisions of the COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill . Of most interest was the proposal ... More >>
Matters Of International Justice: Challenging Trump’s ICC Sanctions
Thursday, 8 October 2020, 4:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
On September 2, US sanctions – the sort normally reserved for fully fledged terrorists and decorated drug traffickers – were imposed on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda and her colleague Phakiso Mochochoko, head of Jurisdiction, ... More >>
Infectious Conspiracies: Donald Trump, Coronavirus And Reality
Tuesday, 6 October 2020, 6:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One measure of success in politics is the degree enemies imitate you, even if done insincerely and without flattery. Insincere imitation has become the preserve of a whole panoply of Donald Trump’s critics stretching from the money, corporate ... More >>
Lunar Lunacy: Competition, Conflict And Mining The Moon
Monday, 5 October 2020, 2:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The discussion about mining the Moon resembles that of previous conquests: the division of territory; the grabbing of resources; language of theft and plunder. All of this is given the gloss of manifest destiny and human experiment. Such language is also ... More >>
Assange 18th Day At The Old Bailey: Abuse Of Power, Breaching Attorney-Client Privilege, Adjournment
Friday, 2 October 2020, 4:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
October 1, 2020. Central Criminal Court, London. The Old Bailey has been the venue for a trial that should never have taken place. But during the course of these extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder accused by the US Department ... More >>
Assange’s 17th Day At The Old Bailey: Embassy Espionage, Contemplated Poisoning, Proposed Kidnapping
Friday, 2 October 2020, 5:21 am | Binoy Kampmark
September 30. Central Criminal Court, London. Today will be remembered as a grand expose. It was a direct, pointed accusation at the intentions of the US imperium which long for the scalp of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For WikiLeaks, ... More >>
Special Administrative Measures, Unreliable Assurances And Espionage
Wednesday, 30 September 2020, 3:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange’s defence team spent the day going over, reemphasising and sharpening the focus on what awaited their client should he, with the blessing of Her Majesty’s Government, make his way to the United States. Not only will he confront 17 charges ... More >>
Assange’s Fifteenth Day At The Old Bailey: Solitary Confinement And Parlous Health Care
Wednesday, 30 September 2020, 5:56 am | Binoy Kampmark
September 28. Central Criminal Court, London. Throughout the sham process formally known as the Julian Assange extradition trial, prosecutors representing the United States have been adamant: the carceral conditions awaiting him in freedom’s land ... More >>
