Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Binoy Kampmark
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Binoy Kampmark - Latest News [Page 66]
Tradition, Marketing and Blacked Cognac
Monday, 2 September 2019, 2:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The moment the liquid hits the mark, lips on the balloon rim, the hand having swirled the mellow colouring to life, the throat anticipates. It is tenderising, the gentle burn finding its way down to the belly. Most cultures have their tribute of firewater, ... More >>
Unhinged before the Fall: Boris Johnson, Parliament and Brex
Friday, 30 August 2019, 3:16 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Brexit no deal prospect is engendering an element of lunacy fast seeping into every pore of the British political establishment. As with all steeped in such thinking, some of it made sense. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been inspired by a mild dictatorial ... More >>
Polishing Turds: Lord Bell’s Public Relations Revolution
Wednesday, 28 August 2019, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Morality is a job for priests. Not P.R. men.” Tim Bell, New York Times , Feb 4, 2018 More >>
Justifications for Inequality: The Neuroses of Kochland
Tuesday, 27 August 2019, 3:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
One of the brothers Koch, David, has shuffled off this mortal coil, and the pious few looking at his passing may well think he is making it tough for camels passing through needles. As part of the Brothers Koch, he presided over a corporate empire ... More >>
The Stupidity of Smart Devices and Smart Cities
Monday, 26 August 2019, 2:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Insentience cannot have intelligence, but the modern public relations revolution would have you think otherwise. Smart phones, smart bombs, and, it follows, Smart Cities (capitalising such terms implies false authority), do not exist in that sense, ... More >>
Donald Trump, Greenland and Colonial Real Estate
Friday, 23 August 2019, 2:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Haven’t the critics worked it out yet? US President Donald Trump chugs to the coal of nonsense that may come in the wrapping of some sense. Initial mad-cat comments, when cobbled together, might reveal some pattern in time. More >>
Fast Bowling, Concussions and Jofra Archer
Wednesday, 21 August 2019, 2:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
We should all be cheering on some level. So much in this age of cricket favours the pampered bat over the stifled ball. The game of duration has suffered: five-day test matches are struggling before diminishing attention spans and ever shorter forms ... More >>
Yellowhammer, Brexit and no-deal chaos
Monday, 19 August 2019, 3:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Britain’s Boris Johnson is driving his country to the cliff face, along the way mouthing and spouting all manner of populist reassurances. Still fresh in the job, he declared that UK preparations for a no-deal Brexit on October 31, when Britain ... More >>
Condescension and Climate Change
Sunday, 18 August 2019, 6:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was predictably ugly: in tone, in regret, and, in some ways, disgust. Australia emerged from the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting isolated, the true spoiler of the party which saw 17 states facing the obstinacy of one. It had taken place ... More >>
God, Guns and Video Games
Saturday, 17 August 2019, 3:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The din struck by videos of the gaming variety; its forced causal link (always alleged, never proved) to altering conduct, continues its relentless march across the discussion forums in the United States and beyond. The almost casual butcheries – actual, ... More >>
Justin Trudeau and the Ethics of Interference
Friday, 16 August 2019, 8:35 am | Binoy Kampmark
Ethics can be a slippery matter and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken, rather decidedly, the option of adding more grease. His understanding over the ethics, for instance, of interfering in the decision-making process involving ... More >>
Denying Climate Change and Boosting China’s Threat
Wednesday, 14 August 2019, 3:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia has always nursed a contradictory, repressive relationship with its Pacific neighbours. Being a satrap of great powers, it has performed the role of gate keeper and monitor of regional instability, a condescending, often paternalistic agent. ... More >>
CPAC Down Under
Tuesday, 13 August 2019, 2:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
CPAC, otherwise known as the Conservative Political Action Conference, had arrived in Sydney. The real entertainment bill was to be supplied by such figures as Brexiter supremo Nigel Farage and former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News London, Raheem ... More >>
Conspiracy, Death and Jeffrey Epstein
Monday, 12 August 2019, 12:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Within minutes of news about his death in a Manhattan jail cell Saturday morning, theories spread with pestilential vigour. Was Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Accepting the premise without qualification, the next question followed: Who did it? MSNBC ... More >>
Mobility and Maginot Lines: China Hysteria Down Under
Friday, 9 August 2019, 2:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The blinkered security establishment is standard fare in politics. From Washington to Manila, we hear of terrors and concerns which tend to more spectral than not. Legitimate concerns such as catastrophic environmental failure, or a nuclear accident, ... More >>
Caught in the Strait
Wednesday, 7 August 2019, 4:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is clear that the United Kingdom could not have thought this through. Was it a touch of the Suez jitters, the haunting syndrome of 1956 leaving a false impression that the Old Empire still had it? To taunt a power already under the watchful and ... More >>
Cheering a New Arms Race: The End of the INF
Monday, 5 August 2019, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
US President Donald Trump is a master of the withdrawal method. That said, it is often forgotten that the United States remains that most fickle of creatures, joining, or abandoning international regimes that might be seen to jar with the national interest. ... More >>
The European Union, Libya and Irregular Migration
Friday, 2 August 2019, 4:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a venom in international refugee policy that refuses to go away: officials charged with their tasks, passing on their labours to those who might see the UN Refugee Convention as empty wording, rather than strict injunction carved upon stone. ... More >>
Publishing Stolen Material: WikiLeaks, the DNC, Free Speech
Wednesday, 31 July 2019, 3:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It may well be a finding of some implication should Julian Assange find his way into the beastly glory that is the US justice system. In its efforts to rope in President Donald Trump’s election campaign, Wikileaks, Assange and the Russian Federation ... More >>
Talisman Sabre and the US Military Build Up
Tuesday, 30 July 2019, 4:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Deemed the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations strategy, the military method is a US Marine special, still spanking new, featuring “the amphibious landing of troops on islands for seizure and capture as part of a forward projection of sea ... More >>
