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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 82]
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 >>
Fictional Free Trade and Permanent Protectionism
Tuesday, 20 March 2018, 7:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fictional Free Trade and Permanent Protectionism: Donald Trump’s Economic Orthodoxy Let’s put it out there with suitable portions of provocation: free trade has never actually taken place. There is an uncomfortable, skirmish-ridden middle ground, where ... More >>
Racial Preferences: Dutton and White South African Farmers
Sunday, 18 March 2018, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Racial Preferences: Peter Dutton and White South African Farmers It has been the great misfit Australian policy since the 1990s: a refugee and immigration policy that shows itself to be scrupulously fair, calculable and clean. Nothing shall be ... More >>
Trump’s Intelligence Circus: Tillerson, Pompeo and Haspel
Saturday, 17 March 2018, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Trump’s Intelligence Circus: Tillerson, Pompeo and Haspel It takes much to make a figure like Rex Tillerson seem not merely sane but competent. The Trump administration, with its almost paranormal sense of revisionism and fantasy, has managed to make ... More >>
Amazon: Digital Assistants, Home Surveillance and Data
Wednesday, 14 March 2018, 4:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It says a lot that societies who are still part of what is rather weakly called the free world could do this. Technology, viewed as emancipating and rewarding, can actually introduce different chains and shackles, becoming repellent and self-defeating. More >>
Viral Apologies and Jeremy Corbyn
Monday, 12 March 2018, 1:35 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was public, expressive and demanded. The apology by Ben Bradley, a social media hazard but also Tory member of the UK House of Commons, is something that will put detractors of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn on notice. While accusations have been made ... More >>
Bullied Relations: Aus, East Timor and Natural Resources
Thursday, 8 March 2018, 3:08 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!” More >>
Donald Trump’s Tariff War
Tuesday, 6 March 2018, 2:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“To protect our Country, we must protect American Steel!” Donald J. Trump , Twitter, Mar 5, 2018 More >>
Snow and Snowflakes: UK response to the Beast from the East
Monday, 5 March 2018, 4:20 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the bibliophile and aphorist Samuel Johnson claimed that people of appropriate mental discipline could avoid talking about the weather, the British have found weather an irresistible topic of conversation. Storms are recalled with nostalgic exaggeration; ... More >>
Weaponising Rumour: Australia’s New Political Sensitivity
Sunday, 4 March 2018, 6:21 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Weaponising Rumour: Australia’s New Political Sensitivity The hide of Australia’s political classes has been worn. Some members, admittedly, never had one. With tiptoeing around language ravaging, and in some cases savaging discussion, pondering policy ... More >>
