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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 81]
Macron’s Syria Game
Tuesday, 17 April 2018, 3:54 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is a certain bullishness in French circles these days, even if there was an initial attempt, with the Macron government, to calm matters down. The need to assert Gallic might in the face of brutality has again surfaced; and has a familiar ring ... More >>
Blind Assault: Trump Strikes Syria
Saturday, 14 April 2018, 4:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Feeling that some display of force was needed, US president Donald Trump issued orders on Friday to demonstrate some form of muscle, albeit exercised some thousands of miles away. “A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch ... More >>
Admiring Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg goes before Congress
Thursday, 12 April 2018, 1:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
This is a dance of confused ends and mistrustful glances, mixed with occasional moments of misplaced adoration. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has never been an empathetic sort and his testifying before the US Congress has done nothing to dispel that assessment. ... More >>
Pacific Moves: China, Vanuatu and Australia
Thursday, 12 April 2018, 1:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Washington’s vigilant deputy, doing rounds on the beat in the Pacific, has been irate of late. The central issue here is the continuing poking around of China in an area that would have been colloquially termed in the past “Australia’s neighbourhood”. More >>
Trump’s Corporate Cursing: The Case of Amazon and Jeff Bezos
Tuesday, 10 April 2018, 2:39 pm | Binoy Kampmark
When the President of the United States forgets that he is no longer running the set of The Apprentice, with its faux callousness and elevated brutality, he can prove devastating to certain stocks. Even in the land of the plutocrat and the capitalist, ... More >>
Indulgent Violence: The Legacy of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Saturday, 7 April 2018, 3:42 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was nothing of the Siddhartha about her. Modest and sombre middle ways are not the stuff of revolutionary ardour. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s mark on history was always going to render the violent normal, the blood stain a perceived, even ... More >>
YouTube, Censorship and Nasim Aghdam
Friday, 6 April 2018, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“People like me are not good for big business, like for animal business, medicine business and for many other businesses. That’s why they are discriminating and censoring us.” Nasim Najafi Aghdam discussing YouTube More >>
Justified Slaughters: The Kangaroo Industry Debate
Thursday, 5 April 2018, 1:34 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Mass killings, massacres and general culling; butchering made normal, sanctified by State practice, and the scientific establishment. This is the killing of Australia’s national symbol, reviled and idealised in various measures, but generally considered, ... More >>
Atmospheric Burnings: The Re-entry of China’s Tiangong-1
Tuesday, 3 April 2018, 6:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The precipitous demise of China’s prototype space station, Tiangong-1, was the sort of event that took earthbound discussions to more heavenly matters. Human beings, as is their wont, tend to follow the rules of colonisation with a certain automatism. ... More >>
Scandi Noir, Kim Wall and Murder
Sunday, 1 April 2018, 1:57 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Scandi Noir, Kim Wall and Murder Finland, a country noted for deep felt suicides executed during long dark winter months, has become the happiest nation on earth. This statistical superstition, contrived to feed a social-media diet free of substance ... More >>
Faking it and Fakery: Najib and Censorship
Saturday, 31 March 2018, 6:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fake news has not merely become a business but a designation. It is a way of silencing dissent, and questioning accounts. For the authoritarian, this is not merely a delight, but a necessity. News accounts are deemed the stuff and dreams of the inventive, ... More >>
Julian Assange, Internet Access and Ecuador
Thursday, 29 March 2018, 4:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Being a netizen, to use that popular term of sociological derivation, can be a difficult business. It presumes digital engagement, often of the sharper sort. To become a fully-fledged member of such citizenry, however, presumes access, a degree of Internet ... More >>
Diplomatic Madness: The Expulsion of Russian Diplomats
Wednesday, 28 March 2018, 4:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
How gloriously brave it seemed, some 23 nations coming together like a zombie collective to initiate a fairly ineffectual action in of itself: the expulsion of Russian diplomats or, as they preferred to term it, intelligence operatives. More >>
Kim Dotcom and the Human Rights Review Tribunal
Wednesday, 28 March 2018, 10:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
“It’s really quite incredible how, at nearly every turn the New Zealand government has managed to mess up the legal case against Kim Dotcom.” More >>
Pre-emptive Triggers: John Bolton Joins Trump
Monday, 26 March 2018, 7:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has given those in a permanent state of jitters greater reason to jump off the cliff to a certain fate, but John Bolton’s elevation to President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle is predictable and, patterns of employment permitting, brief. It is ... More >>
The Temptations of Ball Tampering
Sunday, 25 March 2018, 4:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The Temptations of Ball Tampering: Steve Smith’s Australian Team in South Africa There was an audacity about it, carried out with amateurish callowness. As it turned out Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft, besieged and vulnerable, had been egged ... More >>
Inglorious Snitching: Lamo, Manning and Patriotism
Sunday, 25 March 2018, 4:44 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The hacking community, like poets, tend to be irritable tribesmen and women. Their modus operandi functions on the stab, the enthusiastic penetration of insecure computer systems and mockery. Their role is as much to instruct as it is to disrupt. More >>
Death and Impunity: Iraq Fifteen Years After
Saturday, 24 March 2018, 12:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It might have made a bit more than a whimper had the US political scene not found itself in yet another paroxysm of the drama known as the Trump White House. Fifteen years before, governments aligning with the dogs of war decided, in defiance of millions ... More >>
Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Surveillance Capitalism
Thursday, 22 March 2018, 5:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Whether it creeps into politics, marketing, or simple profiling, the nature of surveillance as totality has been affirmed by certain events this decade. The Edward Snowden disclosures of 2013 demonstrated the complicity and collusion between Silicon Valley and the ... More >>
John Brennan’s Trump Problem
Wednesday, 21 March 2018, 5:01 pm | Binoy Kampmark
John Brennan’s Trump Problem It started out as a fermented, weekend rage. “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin ... More >>
