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 68]
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 >>
Permissible Deviance: Facebook’s FTC Fine
Monday, 29 July 2019, 2:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was something of a shrug moment. One of the world’s largest digital platforms had been fined $5 billion for privacy violations by the Federal Trade Commission, claiming it had violated its 2012 order. The FTC order also requires the company ... More >>
Contractual Disputes: Replacing Monster Chefs on MasterChef
Saturday, 27 July 2019, 2:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The show is pompous, condescending and shallow. It was designed to mock the lowly non-cook, the ignorant, and, from high culinary summitry, grace the winner after munching, gratis, what was promoted. The winner would then be nurtured, cared for ... More >>
Mack Horton’s Anti-Drug Stance
Thursday, 25 July 2019, 2:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The first rush of enthusiasm on looking at this is clear: a high-achieving swimmer on the circuit - the Australian Mack Horton – decides to take a stance. More >>
Boris Johnson Becomes British PM
Wednesday, 24 July 2019, 3:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The BBC World Service took its listeners to the English cathedral town of Ely, set in picturesque Cambridgeshire, during the course of a hot July 23 in an effort to take the pulse of the country. Well, at least that particular, erratic pulse. It ... More >>
WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Decoding the Commentariat
Tuesday, 23 July 2019, 10:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
The Fourth Estate, that historical unelected grouping of society’s scrutineers, has become something of a rabble, and, as a confederacy of strewn dunces and the ongoing compromised, is ripe for analysis. An essential premise in the work of WikiLeaks ... More >>
Lunar Narratives
Sunday, 21 July 2019, 7:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Anniversaries are occasions to distort records. The intoxicated recounting of the past faces a record in need of correction. Couples long married hide their differences before guests. Creases are covered; the make-up is applied generously. Defects become ... More >>
Manus, Nauru and an Australian Detention Legacy
Friday, 19 July 2019, 2:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It could be called a gulag mentality, though it finds form in different ways. In the defunct Soviet Union, it was definitive of life: millions incarcerated, garrisons of forced labour, instruments of the proletarian paradise fouled. Gulag literature ... More >>
