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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 97]
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 >>
Nigel Farage, Bombast and the US-British Relationship
Wednesday, 30 November 2016, 4:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Never accuse the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) of being shy. In recent days, Nigel Farage has been reiterating to followers and press outlets that his party was instrumental in electing Donald Trump as US president. More >>
Australia, the US and Trumpism - Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, 29 November 2016, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Politics can be a deliciously self-defeating field. For the US-Australian alliance, one born out of desperate insecurity on the part of Canberra, a dramatic change in the White House was always going to cause a shudder. A Clinton presidency was presumed ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: The Reality of Fake News
Friday, 25 November 2016, 5:29 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Fake news as reality; the inability to navigate the waters in which it swims; a weakness in succumbing to material best treated with a huge pinch of salt. That, we are told, is the new condition of the global information environment. More >>
Climate Change in the Shadow of Denial - Binoy Kampmark
Thursday, 24 November 2016, 4:09 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While it was all but obscured in the course of the US presidential excitement, negotiators at the climate change conference in Marrakech were busy attempting to hammer out the means to implement the Paris Climate Agreement. More >>
Bodies as Propaganda: The US-Australia Refugee Agreement
Thursday, 24 November 2016, 2:59 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It all has a hurried sense to it. With the offshore detention system running into troubles, the Australian government has had to find ways to get rid of the human residents it has promised never to settle in the country. This highly dubious policy, ... More >>
Baggy Green Woes: The Crisis of Australian Cricket
Tuesday, 22 November 2016, 2:55 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Get the game back in the dressingroom and in time, like those before them, the elite of Australian cricket will be capable of a high performance in a purer sense.” Mike Coward, Fox Sports, Nov 17, 2016 More >>
Bottling the Demon of Free Trade: Trumpism and Protectionism
Tuesday, 22 November 2016, 2:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The election of Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, November 8 terrified many who consider themselves notionally progressive or traditional republicans. It also terrified free trade ideologues, and those who believe that opening borders to boundless consumer ... More >>
Trump’s Card on Illegal Immigrants - Binoy Kampmark
Friday, 18 November 2016, 3:43 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Throughout the campaign for the White House, Donald Trump sensationalised one of the great sores of US political and social life: the issue of immigrants, notably the undocumented, and what his presidency would do to them. More >>
Continued Misreadings of Donald Trump - Binoy Kampmark
Wednesday, 16 November 2016, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In an age where many pundits and pollsters ought to be put out to an ignoble pasture, predictions and astrology gazing on the US election continues. While he did have a better sense of this election than most, actually predicting the result, Michael ... More >>
Binoy Kampmark: Janet Reno- Bill Clinton’s Attorney General
Monday, 14 November 2016, 4:05 pm | Binoy Kampmark
“Outspoken, outrageous and absolutely indifferent to others’ opinions, Janet Reno was truly one of a kind.” Paul Anderson More >>
