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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]
In Denial: Australia, Human Rights And Climate Change
Saturday, 15 August 2020, 3:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the complaint was lodged in May 2019, there was a sense of the audacious about it. Eight Torres Strait Islanders had taken the trouble to petition the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee, citing climate change and Australian violations as their ... More >>
Extreme Moderation In The Spittoon: Kamala Harris For VP
Friday, 14 August 2020, 2:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Vice Presidency has always gotten a degree of bad press in the US political system. Its ineffectuality is sometimes lost on the occupant, though not on John N. Garner, who considered it “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” (R. G. Tugwell ... More >>
Blight And Revelation: Coronavirus, Austerity And The UK
Thursday, 13 August 2020, 5:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Epidemiologist Michael Marmot begins his August 10 piece in The Guardian on a sombre note. It is drawn from The Plague by Albert Camus. “The pestilence is at once blight and revelation; it brings the hidden truth of a corrupt world to the surface.” ... More >>
Macron Lectures Lebanon: The Condescending Politics Of Aid
Wednesday, 12 August 2020, 3:58 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The explosion in a Beirut portside warehouse containing over 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on August 4 has done its bit to light more fires under Lebanon’s ruling powers. With the blast still bloodily fresh and traumatic – the destruction of ... More >>
Don’t Stigmatise The Nuke! Opponents Of The Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
Tuesday, 11 August 2020, 2:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It would seem a logical step, at least from an existential perspective: to ban something so utterly horrendous to life; to forbid its use in any circumstances, whatever rationale employed to justify its use. But the nuclear weapon has its admirers. There are those ... More >>
Selective Maritime Rules: The United States, Diego Garcia And International Law
Monday, 10 August 2020, 6:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
There are few more righteous sights than the paunchy US Secretary of State savaging the People’s Republic of China with his next volley on Chinese territorial aspirations. In July, Mike Pompeo released a statement putting any uncertain minds at ease on ... More >>
Foiled At Toronto: The Tiger Squad’s Canadian Outing
Sunday, 9 August 2020, 5:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
Silencing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul was a feat of primeval brutality that sent a shudder through even the most hardened officials. The House of Saud, and in particular certain members of it, had gotten a taste for blood. Soon after ... More >>
Death From The Sky: Hiroshima And Normalised Atrocities
Friday, 7 August 2020, 4:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When US President Harry S. Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by another on Nagasaki a few days later, he was not acting as an agent untethered from history. In the wheels of his wearied mind lay the battered ... More >>
Big Tech Antics: The Data Robber Barons Appear Before Congress
Thursday, 6 August 2020, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Silicon Valley continues to sprawl in influence, and its modern robber barons bestride the globe with a confidence verging on contempt. The technology giants that mark that region of California are praised as “virtuosos of ingenuity,” to use Steve ... More >>
Mealy-Mouthed Universities: Academic Freedom And The Pavlou Problem Down Under
Wednesday, 5 August 2020, 2:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
A sorry state of affairs has descended upon Australian academic institutions like a suffocating cloak. Vice-Chancellors and their overly remunerated toadies are getting human relations departments to scribble their apologias for sins against thought. ... More >>
State Of Pandemic Disaster: Melbourne Moves To Stage Four
Tuesday, 4 August 2020, 3:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being in control of a sinking ship is not enviable. Regulations previously passed have a museum feel to them, distinctly obsolete. Directions, once dictated with confidence, lack timbre. Coronavirus is serving as that most wily and cheeky of agents, with ... More >>
Crossing The Creepy Line: Google, Deception And The ACCC
Monday, 3 August 2020, 3:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Belief in Google’s promises is much like believing in virgin births. For a company so proud of its pursuit of a transparent information environment, it has remained committedly opaque about informing customers on the way it gathers user data. Statements ... More >>
Staying On Message: Australia, The US And The AUSMIN Talks
Monday, 3 August 2020, 3:57 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Satrap Chronicles of the US imperium will have, near the top of their various ingratiating themes, such Australian politicians as Senators Linda Reynolds and Marise Payne. They resemble Siamese consuls, hard to tell apart (robust build, similar of ... More >>
Pulling Out Of Germany: Trump Adjusts The Military Furniture
Saturday, 1 August 2020, 3:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One noisy theme in the Donald Trump Disruption Show in an otherwise chaotic assemblage of messages has remained fairly constant: winding back US troop commitments. The US has fought its complement of wars, bloodied and bloodying. Time to up stakes and ... More >>
Coronavirus Criminality: Bolsonaro And The International Criminal Court
Thursday, 30 July 2020, 12:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This could be the stuff of fiction. But then again, many legal principles began, at some point or rather, in the sludge of speculation before hardening into legal briefs and prosecutorial documents. Holding heads of state to account for crimes ... More >>
Julian Assange’s Political Indictment: Old Wine In Older Bottles
Wednesday, 29 July 2020, 2:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The book of hours on Julian Assange is now being written. But the scribes are far from original. Repeated rituals of administrative hearings that have no common purpose other than to string things out before the axe are being enacted. Of late, the man ... More >>
Mephistopheles Of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, 1MDB And The Malaysian Settlement
Monday, 27 July 2020, 3:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Malaysia’s politicians were crowing. “We are confident that we are securing more money from Goldman Sachs compared to previous attempts, which were far below expectations,” <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/24/goldman-sachs-and-malaysia-reach-a-settlement-agreement-over-1mdb-scandal-sources-say.html" ... More >>
Revisions On China: Abandoning The Nixon Legacy
Saturday, 25 July 2020, 6:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is little doubt about it. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is the puffed-up hawk of the Trump administration, talons at the ready, beak protruding. While the president coos at the prospect of seeing, or admiring, the next strongman of international ... More >>
Climate Change Litigation: The Australian Government Gets Sued
Friday, 24 July 2020, 1:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“It’s time the government told the public about the impact climate change will have on our future and the economy.” Katta O’Donnell, The Guardian , Jul 24, 2020 While coronavirus ravages life, dominates policy and clouds debate, that other ... More >>
Russia, Bountiful Hoaxes And The New York Times
Thursday, 23 July 2020, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a delicious irony in the Russia Bounty scandal. The Russians, funding the very entity that was financed, at least in a previous incarnation, by the Central Intelligence Agency, to supposedly kill the warriors of a country that had funded ... More >>
