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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 88]
Energy Chaos in Australia: Closing the Liddell Power Station
Tuesday, 12 September 2017, 1:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Australia is having an energy crisis. A country with such abundant resources is incapable it seems, of handling matters of reliable supply, either in terms of affordability, or in terms of delivery. The situation has been further muddied by the inability ... More >>
Visions of Europe: Macron in Athens
Tuesday, 12 September 2017, 9:33 am | Binoy Kampmark
The myth can have a greater effect than an untruth, and those who are in the business of manufacturing and building them never go out of business. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has, for months, busily promoted a new myth: that of being European ... More >>
Shooting at Hurricane Irma: The Seriousness of Humour
Monday, 11 September 2017, 3:49 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has all the ingredients of screwball stand up comedy, the necessary corrective to end-of-the-world scenarios. “And there she was, Irma, blowing herself through the room… And I shot her.” But humour is in scant supply for authorities who ... More >>
Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prizes, & The Rohingyas
Monday, 11 September 2017, 9:32 am | Binoy Kampmark
Scratch the skin of a saint, claimed George Orwell, and you are bound to find a sinner with an extensive resume. Such resumes are evaluated in these modern times by accolades, awards, and summits. The Noble Peace Prize tends to be crowning affirmation that ... More >>
Taking Aim: WikiLeaks, Congress, & Hostile Agencies
Thursday, 7 September 2017, 10:10 am | Binoy Kampmark
Various scribbles have started to pepper the conversation started by the adventurous Mike Pompeo after he branded WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence agency before the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (This would have generated a wry smile of ... More >>
Beggars for War: The US, North Korea, and Bankruptcy
Wednesday, 6 September 2017, 9:58 am | Binoy Kampmark
The statement before members of the United Nations Security Council was both brash and high strung. The US ambassador had clearly decided that firm words were needed to understand the continuing military advances of North Korea. To do so, Nikki Haley, ... More >>
Lacking Transparency: Israeli Drones and Australian Defence
Tuesday, 5 September 2017, 1:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Give us the chance to compete, to see our capabilities, to compare, to see the benefit we can bring with our [drone] system.” Shaul Shahar, Israel Aerospace Industries Vice-President, March 2, 2017 More >>
Unnerving the Donald: North Korea’s Sixth Nuclear Test
Monday, 4 September 2017, 1:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
We are now into reckless territory with the latest North Korean nuclear test – in all probability a genuine hydrogen weapon – sending the ever reckless US President Donald Trump into a true state of belligerent adolescence. More >>
The Flawed Institution: Australian Marriage ...
Monday, 4 September 2017, 10:12 am | Binoy Kampmark
It’s a pretty curious thing to see: marriage being defended at all. Like slavery, and not necessarily inconsistent with it, marriage is an institution. It embraces codes. It imparts obligations, duties, and rights. And it creeps up on you. More >>
The Korean Powder Keg
Friday, 1 September 2017, 2:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was famously dubbed the European power keg, a term deemed appropriate by such strategists as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Such figures feared the imminent release of violence in the Balkans, the sort that just might unravel the grand European ... More >>
The Myth of the Liveable City
Thursday, 31 August 2017, 2:17 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In 2016, the Melbourne-based Herald Sun claimed with some consternation that Melbourne was “set to lose its status as the world’s most liveable city.” That particular, somewhat meaningless status is granted by that great myth maker, the Economist Intelligence ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Resting Sea Shepherd
Tuesday, 29 August 2017, 5:11 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What a colourful run this outfit has had. Branded in 2013 by Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as pirates, the Sea Shepherd crew will be hanging up their hooks while rethinking their whale protection strategy. ... More >>
Disaster in the Sea Lanes: Bruising the US Navy
Monday, 28 August 2017, 1:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“That gives us great cause for concern that there’s something out there that we’re not getting at.” Admiral John Richardson, New York Times , Aug 21, 2017 More >>
Loving the Bollard: Turnbull’s Anti-Terror Tool Kit
Monday, 28 August 2017, 9:40 am | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a week of bollards. And defence barriers. And hedges and vegetation. No, not the radio garden hour, or the herbaceous borders special featured on prime time television, delivered by a bearded man with a facial forest so vast it could ... More >>
The Departure of the Ideologues in the White House
Monday, 28 August 2017, 9:35 am | Binoy Kampmark
Troubling times, indeed, if we are noting the ecstasy of Wall Street traders at the departure of a White House official. What troubles the financiers and banksters would surely delight Main Street. But this was not any ordinary cheer, nor ordinary celebration. ... More >>
Lying about Citizenship: Australian Politicians
Saturday, 26 August 2017, 8:07 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It was nothing short of fabulous. Before the public, the political lie is deemed an imperative, instinctively cultured to repel anything that might appear, let alone resemble, truth. Never, whatever you do in political garb, reveal the game, convey ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Rise of the Killer Robot
Thursday, 24 August 2017, 4:19 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“As companies building the technologies in artificial intelligence and robotics that may be repurposed to develop autonomous weapons, we feel especially responsible in raising this alarm.” Open Letter to the UN on Autonomous technology, August ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Trump and Afghanistan
Wednesday, 23 August 2017, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The story continues with dispiriting relentlessness. The remark by Samuel Beckett in The Unnamable comes to mind: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” With the sense of incapacity about going on, yet doing so with a drone’s dedicated commitment, ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Statues in Defeat
Tuesday, 22 August 2017, 4:27 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Statues of historical weight tend to represent heroism – of sorts. It might be of the doomed variety, and often is. Rebellious causes assume the visage of a stony form, to gaze soullessly across promenades or parks, often ignored by many who have ... More >>
Target Finding for the Empire: The NSA and Pine Gap
Monday, 21 August 2017, 7:53 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“The tasking we get at Pine Gap is look for this particular signal coming out of this particular location. If you find it, report it, and if you find anything else of interest, report that as well.” David Rosenberg, former NSA Team leader, weapon’s ... More >>
