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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 71]
A Fancy Hypocrisy: China, Australia and Coal Mania
Sunday, 10 March 2019, 12:41 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fear them for their technology; fear them for their ideology and their authoritarianism. But embrace interference and involvement in the economy if it involves coal. This is the fancy hypocrisy of Australian politics, one driven to lunacy and inconsistency ... More >>
The Cardinal Can Do No Wrong: George Pell’s Defenders
Thursday, 7 March 2019, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The powerful have always had defenders. Power seeps into the system, corrupts, controls and, ultimately, assumes an authority that does wonders to destroy an appraisal of fairness. To be there is to assume that matters are natural, a habit. As David Hume ... More >>
Militarised Conservation: Paramilitary Rangers and the WWF
Wednesday, 6 March 2019, 2:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Think charity, think vulnerability and its endless well of opportunistic exploitation. Over the years, international charity organisations have been found with employees keen to take advantage of their station. That advantage has been sexual, financial ... More >>
British Labour’s Fractious Jaunt
Tuesday, 5 March 2019, 10:02 am | Binoy Kampmark
They could not hold on. A small – and in the scheme of things negligible group – split from the British Labour mothership last month in an effort to salvage some self-described form of credibility. In truth, they were the original sceptics of ... More >>
Glorious Bitchery: Yorgos Lanthimos and The Favourite
Sunday, 3 March 2019, 3:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Yorgos Lanthimos likes his subjects deranged and troubled. He likes seeing queens in the slap, servants in the lurch, and women in mud. But that is just one side. The Favourite is a film of exotic, exorbitant bitchery, filmed with aesthetic relish. ... More >>
Walkout in Hanoi: The Second Trump-Kim Summit
Friday, 1 March 2019, 2:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Sometimes you have to walk and this was one of those times.” That was US President Donald Trump’s remark about something he has been doing a lot of lately: walking away from agreements or understandings in the hope of reaching the ultimate deal. ... More >>
The Chagos Islands Case, WikiLeaks and Justice
Thursday, 28 February 2019, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Let this be a lesson to its detractors, doubters and stuff shirts of the secrecy establishment: the documents sourced from WikiLeaks can have tangible, having significant value for ideas and causes. They can advance matters of the curious; they can confirm ... More >>
Shifting Centre of Gravity: Julian Assange Receives Passport
Tuesday, 26 February 2019, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Shifting the Centre of Gravity: Julian Assange Receives His Passport More >>
Turning Screws: China’s Australian Coal Ban
Sunday, 24 February 2019, 10:22 am | Binoy Kampmark
Overly reliant economies are dangerously fragile things. As it takes two parties, often more, to play the game, the absence of interest, or its withdrawal by one, can spell doom. The Australian economy has been talked up – by Australian economists ... More >>
The Most Selfish of Virtues: Alan Bennett’s Lady in the Van
Thursday, 21 February 2019, 2:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It does seem specific. A middle class concern centred on a man and an elderly woman, a sort of surrogate, irritating mother type of indulgent wisdom and uncertain past, seemingly irritating yet, on some level, fulfilling. Alan Bennett writes prose that ... More >>
Size Matters: The Demise of the A380
Tuesday, 19 February 2019, 2:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The aircraft business has always been a dear affair. More than other forms of transport, it remains susceptible to oscillating costs (materials, fuel), ever at the mercy of the uncontrollable. The Airbus A380 was meant to be a giant’s contribution to ... More >>
Death by Video: Morrison Combats Refugees By Film
Tuesday, 19 February 2019, 9:25 am | Binoy Kampmark
Caught in the backwater of the world’s existence, Australia struggles for relevance in various ways. It might show itself a leader in creating a sovereign fund (too late for that now); it might demonstrate, in various ways, a singular approach to ... More >>
Refugees as Business: The Paladin Group Contract
Sunday, 17 February 2019, 11:09 am | Binoy Kampmark
Despair breeds profits; disturbances supply opportunity. The genius and venal nature of human nature will always see a possible buck from an impossibly cruel situation. Globally, a study should be done about how many billions goes into the supply of ... More >>
The Morrison Government’s Refugee Problem
Friday, 15 February 2019, 12:50 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The passage of amendments to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) by the Australian House of Representatives and the Senate this week was less a case of celebration than necessitous deliverance. The mental wellbeing of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, or ... More >>
Means of Control: Russia’s Attempt to Hive Off the Internet
Thursday, 14 February 2019, 10:02 am | Binoy Kampmark
Such measures were always going to come on the heels, and heavily so, of the utopians. Where there is Internet Utopia, Dystopia follows with dedicated cynicism. Where there are untrammelled means of searching, there will be efforts to erect signposts, usually ... More >>
Football, Refugee Rights and Hakeem al-Araibi
Tuesday, 12 February 2019, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Al-Araibi’s case has become a crucial test of world football’s commitment to human rights.” So observed the director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University, Sarah Joseph, in a piece last month. “Is this commitment ... More >>
Unity and Exceptionalism: Trump’s State of Union Flurries
Monday, 11 February 2019, 2:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Trump is hated by everyone,” comes one unnamed former official in an account to Vanity Fair , one supposedly sourced after the President’s State of the Union Address. Another claimed that all was wretched in the White House: “It’s total ... More >>
Sharp Manias: Knife Crime in London
Wednesday, 6 February 2019, 11:20 am | Binoy Kampmark
A bleak London assailed by daily news about Brexit negotiation, prospects of food shortages and higher prices in the event of a no-deal with the European Union, provides the perfect apocalyptic backdrop for headlines. The city is ailing; the residents ... More >>
The Monitoring Game: China’s Artificial Intelligence Push
Sunday, 3 February 2019, 5:30 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It’s all keen and mean on the artificial intelligence (AI) front in China, which is now vying with the United States as the top dog in the field. US companies can still boast the big cheese operators, but China is making strides in other areas. ... More >>
Censorship Tendencies in Social Media
Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 9:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
It is all a rather sorry tale. Molly Russell, another teenager gorged on social media content, sharing and darkly revelling, took her own life in 2017 supposedly after viewing what the BBC described as “disturbing content about suicide on social media.” ... More >>
