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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 69]
Donald Trump, the Democrat Squad and Failed Impeachment
Thursday, 18 July 2019, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Twitter has become policy. It is platform, direction and determination. It has served one particular person well, a hazy mechanism to fog up the lenses of law makers. When President Donald Trump needs an air-wave filling distraction, a bilious splurge ... More >>
UC Global, CNN and Russian Couriers
Wednesday, 17 July 2019, 3:04 pm | Binoy Kampmark
History’s scope for the absurd and tragic is infinite. Like Sisyphus engaged in permanent labours pushing a boulder up a slope, the effort of making sense of such scope is likewise, absurdly infinite. To see images of an exhausted and world-weary ... More >>
Corporate Gangster: Adani’s Pursuit of Scientists
Tuesday, 16 July 2019, 3:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Adani conglomerate should be best described as a bloated gangster, promising the earth even as it mines it. Like other corporate thugs of such disposition, it will do things within, and if necessary outside, the regulatory framework it encounters. ... More >>
The UN’s Free Speech Problem
Monday, 15 July 2019, 2:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Anyone willing to consult the international law book on the subject of free speech will find it heavy with protections for free speech. The UN Declaration of Human Rights features , in its preamble, the ideal that “human beings shall enjoy freedom ... More >>
The Resigning Ambassador: Sir Kim Darroch on Donald Trump
Saturday, 13 July 2019, 3:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Rarely do ambassadors resign after an intense self-assessment of worth. Diplomatic immunity does not merely extend to protecting the official from the reach of local laws; it encourages a degree of freedom in engaging as a country’s representative. ... More >>
Donald Trump’s Diplomatic Copy Book
Friday, 12 July 2019, 7:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cue the shots, take the snaps: US President Donald Trump was back entertaining his fetish with firm handshakes proclaiming the making of history in the last round of discussions with Kim Jong-un. The press were, despite periodic attacks of bafflement, ... More >>
Out of Kilter: National Security and Press Freedoms
Wednesday, 10 July 2019, 2:12 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken as the tendency. The political culture of Australia ... More >>
Dressed for the Fourth of July: The US Imperium Comes Out
Sunday, 7 July 2019, 4:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The United States of Amnesia has occasionally found expression amongst those despairing at the state of historical consciousness in Freedom’s Land. Gore Vidal remains something of its high priest, his writings a pertinent scolding about what went wrong ... More >>
Going Nuclear in the Antipodes
Thursday, 4 July 2019, 3:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The antipodes has had a fraught relationship with the nuclear option. At the distant ends of the earth, New Zealand took a stand against the death complex, assuming the forefront of restricting the deployment of nuclear assets in its proximity. This ... More >>
Facebook, Funny Money and Libra
Tuesday, 2 July 2019, 3:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In this squalid era of compromised data and hollowed privacy, it would be fitting that the company largely responsible for such mishaps would steer another technological innovation. Distractions are needed, and while Mark Zuckerberg cannot launch missiles, ... More >>
G20 Gyrations: Donald, Ivanka and Hollow Diplomacy
Tuesday, 2 July 2019, 8:21 am | Binoy Kampmark
Traditional diplomacy is being given a makeover - at least where it is not being abolished altogether and being replaced by a replica of The Apprentice . US President Donald Trump’s seizure of the art has been violent and molesting. Had Roman emperors ... More >>
Raging Against the Algorithm
Saturday, 29 June 2019, 6:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The founder of Netscape said software is going to eat the world.” Tristan Harris, Centre for Humane Technology , June 25, 2019 More >>
Tweets of Praise: Donald Trump, Australia and Refugees
Friday, 28 June 2019, 1:33 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals. Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced ... More >>
Childish Diplomacy: Donald Trump’s New Play Against Iran
Thursday, 27 June 2019, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
Diplomacy has been seen historically as a practitioner’s art, nurtured in schools of learning, tested and tried in the boardrooms of mild mannered summitry. Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck practiced it with varying degrees of ruthlessness ... More >>
The Pinkerton Effect: The US Marines in Darwin
Tuesday, 25 June 2019, 5:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Subordinates rarely have a good time of dictating matters to their superiors. In the webbed power relations that pass as realpolitik, Australia is the well behaved child in the front of the room, yearning to be caned and spoilt in equal measure. ... More >>
Violent Voyeurism: Surveillance, Spyware and Human Rights
Monday, 24 June 2019, 3:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Surveillance is merely a variant of violent voyeurism, the human behind the camera or visual apparatus observing behaviour in a setting, often private. Its premise is privacy’s violation; its working assumption is privacy’s irrelevance; officially ... More >>
Bill Clinton in Kosovo
Saturday, 22 June 2019, 4:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“War in the name of morality provides as many reasons for historical shudders as war in the name of self-interest, for at least the latter may be easier to call off when self-interest calls for compromise.” More >>
A Slow Death: The Ills of the Casual Academic
Thursday, 20 June 2019, 2:13 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any sentient being should be offended. Eventually, the casualisation of the academic workforce was bound to find lazy enthusiasts who neither teach, nor understand the value of a tenured position dedicated to that musty, soon-to-be-forgotten vocation ... More >>
Nigel Farage’s Grand Tour of Sabotage
Wednesday, 19 June 2019, 4:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He is all about being the romantic saboteur. He is destructive, hates the business of a steady vocation, and the idea of being desk bound. Little details trouble him; an indignant bigger picture is enthralling. Bomb throwers tend to be of such ilk, ... More >>
Hong Kong, China and the Extradition Bill
Tuesday, 18 June 2019, 2:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a history of turns and the occasional betrayal, but Hong Kong’s experiment with democracy, incubated within the Special Administrative Region, was always going to be contingent on some level. Its colonial past is a poke, a reminder of British ... More >>
