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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 56]
Dishonour On The Bench: Dyson Heydon And The Australian High Court
Wednesday, 24 June 2020, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is one of the oldest professions, stacked with rules, conventions and protocols. It is also tribal and hierarchical. The law, presided over its executors, the judges, do not do transparency well. It stands to reason: according to Charles Dickens, the ... More >>
Dangerous And Uncertain: Coronavirus And The Nuclear Industry
Tuesday, 23 June 2020, 4:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Accountability has always been a problem in the nuclear industry, despite praises to the contrary. Constantly keeping its muddled head above water with government handouts to remain competitive; ostensibly keeping a hand in the energy sector despite ... More >>
Secret Trials Down Under: Witness J, Witness K And Bernard Collaery
Monday, 22 June 2020, 2:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There a few more spiteful things in political life than a security establishment attempting to punish a leaker or whistleblower for having exposed an impropriety. Such a tendency has no ideological stripe or colouring: it is common to all political ... More >>
Reverse Logic: Trump Sanctions The International Criminal Court
Friday, 19 June 2020, 4:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The decision by the Trump administration to sanction members of the International Criminal Court defies logic, in so far as there is any logic to sanctions. As a policy tool, such tools are supposedly designed to target specific members of a regime that ... More >>
The Conviction Of Maria Ressa: Press Freedom In The Philippines
Thursday, 18 June 2020, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has long been said that countries in Southeast Asia take a dim view of the fourth estate. Various legal measures have been deployed against those irritable scribblers over the years: old, colonial-era security legislation; defamation suits; traditional ... More >>
Sticks, Stones And Death In Galwan Valley
Wednesday, 17 June 2020, 2:37 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Things along the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have rarely lacked interest, notably along the secretive, heavily patrolled 3,488 km Line of Actual Control. Neither China nor India have ever quite sorted out their differences on that front, plagued ... More >>
The Narrative Of The Leakers: Collateral Murder And The Assange Indictment
Tuesday, 16 June 2020, 1:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the superseding indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia against Julian Assange on May 23, 2019, there was one glaring omission. It was an achievement, it might even be said the achievement, that gave ... More >>
Trump At West Point: Un-Policing The US Imperium
Monday, 15 June 2020, 2:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Donald Trump claims to be the law-and-order president of the United States. There does not seem much sign of this as the stitching of the Republic gets undone. Protestors have been given a considerable roughing up across several states; police forces are ... More >>
Corrupt Propositions: AstraZeneca, Public Institutions And The Coronavirus Vaccine Drive
Monday, 15 June 2020, 11:55 am | Binoy Kampmark
Putting your destiny into the hands of a drug company is much like seeking reassurances from an opportunistic pimp. The returns are bound to mixed, dressed up in deceptive language. The promises, however, are always remarkable. The back-breaking pace in ... More >>
Woked In Fright: The Brief Banning Of Fawlty Towers
Sunday, 14 June 2020, 10:02 am | Binoy Kampmark
It’s all getting nasty. The urge to remove statues in hurried indignation; the lust to censor programmes now deemed offensive; the erasure of history, which, any sensible sort should know, is often a panoramic account of crimes and slaughter worth ... More >>
Battles Over Education: Australia, China And Unsafe Universities
Friday, 12 June 2020, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Entering a university should be, to some degree, unsafe. Away from the gazing eyes of parents, institutional structures for the child, the entrant faces, or at least should face, the prospect of something truly daunting: To think, to entertain discomfort, ... More >>
Open Wounds: Sweden Drops The Olof Palme Case
Thursday, 11 June 2020, 5:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s the sort of thing that ruffled the image of a composed and tranquil existence. In some countries, doing away with political leaders is a periodic affair, deemed necessary to clean the stables. But in Sweden, change is barely discernible, stability ... More >>
Altars Of Hypocrisy: George Floyd, Protest And Black Face
Wednesday, 10 June 2020, 2:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Be wary what you protest about. The modern moral constabulary are out, and they are assisted by their Silicon Valley friends in the Social Media club. Should you dare take a stand on anything, especially in a dramatic way, you will be found out ... More >>
Radical Reforms: Disbanding Police Forces In The US
Tuesday, 9 June 2020, 3:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
If you can envisage the commencement of a police force as a band of auxiliaries to keep slaves in check, capture escapees and sow much terror, it becomes that much clearer. Such men were not stewards to keep the people safe; they were there to protect ... More >>
Eternal Fixation: The Madeleine McCann Disappearance Show
Monday, 8 June 2020, 4:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The “lost child” endures as motif and theme, the stalking shadow of much literature, the background to a society’s anxiety. The child, often deemed innocent, becomes the ink blot of loss in such disappearance. In Australia, it was captured by Peter ... More >>
Skin Deep Protest: Selective Outrage, Bollywood And George Floyd
Sunday, 7 June 2020, 7:59 am | Binoy Kampmark
George Floyd’s suffocating death at the end of a policeman’s knee in Minneapolis on May 25 has become an international protest movement. What endures beyond this is still to be written, and, in a more vital sense, acted upon. Black Lives Matter ... More >>
Fatuous Grounds And Barren Thoughts: Misconduct, The University Of Queensland And Drew Pavlou
Friday, 5 June 2020, 1:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The global student populace have become so passive it is a surprise to hear any stir of protest that issues forth from a campus. Generation Z tends to seek passes and certificates rather than knowledge and the examined life. So it came as something ... More >>
None Of Your Business: China, Hong Kong And A Question Of Sovereignty
Thursday, 4 June 2020, 3:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemed to relish it before the cameras this week. The United States was enduring extensive shudders of internal instability in the wake of the George Floyd protests . Dubious proposals to deploy the military ... More >>
Avoiding The Obvious: Skim Reading, Exams And The Internet
Wednesday, 3 June 2020, 1:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is the anxiety-inducing nightmare for the studious: A dream where you find yourself in an exam hall, which might, on ordinary days, be a gym or some other facility. It is repurposed for that most cruel of blood sports: sorting out the learned from ... More >>
To The Commercial Heavens We Go! SpaceX, NASA And Space Privatisation
Wednesday, 3 June 2020, 7:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
It would be too simple to regard the latest space venture, funded by Elon Musk, as entirely a matter of vast ego and deeply-pocked adventurism. But it would be close. The successful delivery of astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken of NASA as ... More >>
