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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 96]
Carrie Fisher: Hollywood In-Breeding & the Velocity of Being
Thursday, 29 December 2016, 12:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was always going to be a good deal of thick drama around Carrie Fisher, by her own confession, a product of Hollywood in-breeding. Her parents, Debbie Reynolds and the crooner Eddie Fisher, provided ample material for the gossip columns in a ... More >>
Cities of Death: History, Pollution and China’s Smog
Wednesday, 28 December 2016, 2:32 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Cities are the monsters of civilization, the accrual of various factors of organisation that stress development and advancement. The latter two terms are often impossible to gauge except by comparison with other cities or States. We are left with the consequences ... More >>
Invalidating the Snoopers’ Charter - Binoy Kampmark
Wednesday, 28 December 2016, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Deemed by the Home Office an exemplar of legislation balancing security and freedoms, the UK Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA), otherwise known as the Snoopers’ Charter, did not impress the EU Court of Justice. The case had been brought ... More >>
Drama in UN Security Council: Israel’s Illegal Settlements
Wednesday, 28 December 2016, 11:38 am | Binoy Kampmark
Christians following the Gregorian calendar are getting busy to celebrate Christmas, but the business of diplomacy continued in the United Nations. In the Security Council, anticipation about a particular resolution was greater than usual. More >>
Steve Biko at 70 - Binoy Kampmark
Friday, 23 December 2016, 3:31 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Commemorating birthdays in the aftermath of a person’s death tends to be a false exercise. At best, it reminds us about an era that will have, almost certainly, vanished. This goes for whatever that era entailed – brutality, or peace; tranquillity or ... More >>
The Berlin Truck Attack and the Refugee Question
Thursday, 22 December 2016, 4:22 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The hard-nosed neo-cons were certainly showing little interest in linking arguments, examining evidence, or even considering elementary logic in the aftermath of the Berlin truck attack near the Gedächtniskirche. With the bodies fresh in the morgue, ... More >>
The Hack of all Hacks: Yahoo and Information Security
Tuesday, 20 December 2016, 4:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It took place in August 2013. It was a hack of unprecedented scale, impetuous, audacious, and, if we are to believe Yahoo, undetected at the time. The result of that effort across 1 billion accounts was a profitable use of material to spammers and cyber ... More >>
From White to Black: The Colours of Brexit - Binoy Kampmark
Monday, 19 December 2016, 10:27 am | Binoy Kampmark
While the shattering Brexit vote of June had a deservedly chilling impact in Brussels and other European capitals, the grey suits have been busy pushing various lines on the consequences Britain faces for leaving the European Union. The technocrats ... More >>
The CIA, Presidential Elections, and the Russian Connection
Monday, 19 December 2016, 10:18 am | Binoy Kampmark
Intent and causation are important features in the course of history. The former envisages motive and hope, irrespective of outcome; the latter envisages consequence. Often, these get muddled in the jumbled process of reasoning. An intervention in ... More >>
Trump, Waste and the Military Industrial Complex
Thursday, 15 December 2016, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
That particular fighter never had good press. Even before Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strategic Fighter attracted the ire of Donald Trump via his usual, belching medium, Twitter, the project was flailing in a swamp to the value of $400 billion. More >>
Passing of a Sharp Tongue: The Glorious Hatchet of AA Gill
Thursday, 15 December 2016, 4:03 pm | Binoy Kampmark
AA Gill held sway with hatchet and prose in several areas where sensibilities can often be wounded: that of television, the restaurant and fashion scenes, and travel. In time, he became the critic of choice for the Sunday Times , assuming the voice ... More >>
Monitoring the Miners: Rio Tinto, Drones and Surveillance
Wednesday, 14 December 2016, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In of itself, technological development is benign. But behind every use is a human agent, and behind that agent is a motive, an inspiration, an agenda. Monitoring one’s employees has become the great mainstay of what companies claim is a productive exercise. ... More >>
Between Slogan & Achievement: International Human Rights Day
Wednesday, 14 December 2016, 2:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Having such occasions as International Human Rights Day always affords a mixed occasion. There is a sense by the promoters that the job is far from being done. But the worst tend to be those who nod at the concept while blithely ignoring it altogether. At ... More >>
The Momentum of Populism: The Fall of Italy’s Demolition Man
Tuesday, 13 December 2016, 4:28 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Demagogic in parts, simply irreverent in others, the populist wave that seized the White House last month continues to inflict its casualties across the Atlantic. The Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, known as Il Rottamatore or Demolition Man, had ... More >>
Fossil Fuel Corruption: The Problem with Adani
Tuesday, 13 December 2016, 4:23 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The relationship between the mining sector and the Australian government has been traditionally that of complicity and acceptance. Touch this sector at your peril. Changes in prime ministers, rumbles in cabinet, and the overall show have suggested ... More >>
Total Surveillance: Snooping in the United Kingdom
Monday, 12 December 2016, 4:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The UK-based Liberty Campaign expressed it most glumly. “The Government’s new Snoopers’ Charter (also known as the Investigatory Powers Bill) will allow the bulk collection of all our personal information. Who we talk to; what we say; where ... More >>
Troubled Waters: Trump, Taiwan and Beijing - Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 6 December 2016, 2:46 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was much tittering in the US-China fraternity over the casual, yet infuriating engagement US President elect Donald Trump had with Taiwan’s President, Tsai Ing-wen. A reading of the reactions suggested meltdown, a terrifying, imminent apocalypse. ... More >>
Exploiting Down Syndrome - By Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 6 December 2016, 1:06 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In February this year, Cosmopolitan reported on the efforts of nine former models to sue their former agencies for damages in a range of instances, among them wage theft, breach of contract and minimum wage violations. The case interested New York ... More >>
Democracy, Refugees & Australia’s Parliament -Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 6 December 2016, 12:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There is no greater single human rights dilemma facing the Australian parliament at the moment: refugees, declining, mouldering, decaying in detention centres in carceral conditions, being shifted, carted, moved from one base to another, from ... More >>
Plucking the Foreign Goose: Australia’s Tax on Backpackers
Monday, 5 December 2016, 4:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The morning news on the ABC network featured blondes, and more blondes, riding a derelict van along a non-descript street in sunny Australia. It did not matter who they were, or even where they were. They were simply “backpackers”, the sort ... More >>
