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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 75]
Shark Attack: Fearing Monsters in the Whitsundays
Wednesday, 7 November 2018, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It begins with a gruesome account: a tourist, paddleboarding and swimming in an idyllic setting baked by sun – in this case, Cid Harbour in the Whitsundays, Queensland – attacked by a shark. He suffers a massive loss of blood; he goes into cardiac ... More >>
The Tricks of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Tuesday, 6 November 2018, 3:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The surgical dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi has sent the military establishments of several countries into a tizz. Arms manufacturers are wondering whether this is an inconvenient blip, a ruffling moral reminder about what they are dealing with. ... More >>
Closing Loopholes: Taxing the Digital Giants
Monday, 5 November 2018, 7:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The treasurers of various countries seem to be stumbling over each other in the effort, but taxing the digital behemoths has become something of an obsession, the gold standard for those wishing to add revenue to state coffers. Back in May, when Australia’s ... More >>
Losing Users: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Problems
Friday, 2 November 2018, 2:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
His detractors and enemies have been waiting some time for this, but it must have given them moments of mild cheer. Facebook, the all-gazing, accumulating system of personal profiles and information, poster child, in fact, of surveillance capitalism, ... More >>
Moving Right in Brazil: The Rise of Jair Bolsonaro
Thursday, 1 November 2018, 2:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Moving left has been a Brazilian political tendency for some time, a tendency affirmed through the 1990s and 2000s with the presidential administrations of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But this is the same country also famed for ... More >>
Angela Merkel’s Last Days
Wednesday, 31 October 2018, 1:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cultural compilations such as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough are rich with these accounts: the high priest or leader of a tribe, whose lengthy tenure is wearing thin, is set for the sacrifice, either through ritual or being overthrown by another member. ... More >>
Julian Assange, Ecuador and the Dangers of Farce
Monday, 29 October 2018, 5:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This is the next stage of the Julian Assange chronicles: from the summit of information disclosures and meddlesome revelations on classified state matters, the Australian rabblerouser now finds himself the subject of a new round of jokes and ribbing. WikiLeaks, ... More >>
The Arms Behind the Invictus Games
Sunday, 28 October 2018, 12:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The origins of the Invictus Games (“For our Wounded Warriors,” goes the slogan) lies in war. Wars that crippled and caused depression and despair. The games became a project of grand distraction and worth, a form of emotional bread for servicemen ... More >>
Blueprints for Murder and Purchasing Arms
Friday, 26 October 2018, 3:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It reads like a swaying narrative of retreat. A man’s body is subjected to a gruesome anatomical fate, his parts separated by a specially appointed saw doctor – an expert in the rapid autopsy – overseen by a distinctly large number of individuals. Surveillance ... More >>
Denials Down Under: Climate Change and Health
Thursday, 25 October 2018, 11:46 am | Binoy Kampmark
Richard Horton’s note in an October 2015 issue of The Lancet was cautiously optimistic. It described the launch of Doctors for Climate Change Action, led by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP21. ... More >>
Ditching Nuclear Treaties: Trump Withdraws from the INF
Thursday, 25 October 2018, 10:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
President Donald J. Trump has made it his signature move to repudiate the signatures of others, and the latest, promised evacuation from the old US-Soviet pact otherwise known as the intermediate range nuclear forces (INF) treaty was merely another artefact ... More >>
Wentworth Blues: Another Nail in the Scomo Coffin
Tuesday, 23 October 2018, 9:19 am | Binoy Kampmark
A sign of desperation before the firing squad is jitteriness and the desperate sense that history needs revision. You were not the one responsible for the debacles and the cockups; everybody and everything else was. You knew who was guilty, and needed ... More >>
Wentworth Blues: Another Nail in the Scomo Coffin
Monday, 22 October 2018, 6:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Wentworth Blues: Another Nail in the Scomo Coffin A sign of desperation before the firing squad is jitteriness and the desperate sense that history needs revision. You were not the one responsible for the debacles and the cockups; everybody and ... More >>
ASIO, Jakarta, and Australia’s Jerusalem Problem
Saturday, 20 October 2018, 4:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Politics can, after a time, becomes a myopic exercise of expedient measures and desperate hope. Politics, raw and crude, is at its best at points where survival matters. Conversely, it can illustrate human vices in raw fashion, low points of idiocy and the disaster ... More >>
Vanquishing the Republic: Harry and Meghan in Australia
Friday, 19 October 2018, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The establishment of a republic… means insurrectionary war, it means the desolation of a thousand households. When the question shall arise, it will be determined… by balls from cannon and from musket, by grape and shrapnel, by bayonet and by the ... More >>
Embassy Disappearances: Jamal Khashoggi
Thursday, 18 October 2018, 7:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Do this outside. You will put me into trouble.” Mohammad al-Otaibi, Saudi consul, to Saudi agents, Istanbul, October 2, 2018 More >>
DNA in Trumpland: Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Dance
Wednesday, 17 October 2018, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made a fundamental error in chasing the coattails of DNA provenance as a response to the jibes of US President Donald J. Trump. She had been derided by the president as an ordinary “Pocahontas”, and promised at ... More >>
The Tyranny of Fashion: Shredding Banksy
Tuesday, 16 October 2018, 1:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The modern art world is filled with pranks and pranksters, the clowns who have decided that play counts for art. Brattish artists foist a range of projects and conceptual themes upon art galleries who, foolishly, see emperors decked in the finest wear. ... More >>
Agents of Chaos: Trump, the Federal Reserve and Jackson
Monday, 15 October 2018, 4:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” President Andrew Jackson, Washington, July 10, 1832 More >>
Evacuating Nauru: Médecins Sans Frontières
Saturday, 13 October 2018, 5:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It is an organisation not without its problems. Conceived in the heat of idealism, and promoted as the vanguard of medical rescue and human rights advocacy, Médecins Sans Frontières has had its faults. Its co-founder Bernard Kouchner went a bit awry ... More >>
