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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 98]
Zygmunt Bauman and the Rootless Condition
Friday, 13 January 2017, 1:02 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Modernity, as the late Zygmunt Bauman noted in his magisterially provocative Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) has not necessarily entailed enlightenment, the liberation from immaturity. Since the cave dweller existence, humanity has retained traditional ... More >>
Squeeze and Wiggle: Transport Chaos in London
Tuesday, 10 January 2017, 9:01 am | Binoy Kampmark
It has the air of being a well minted yet distinctly first world problem: inconvenienced commuters in one of the world’s first true megalopolises, gnashing their teeth as they are pushed and grounded together during the rush hour. All because of a strike ... More >>
Pollution, Dementia and the Modern Condition
Monday, 9 January 2017, 9:11 am | Binoy Kampmark
London. The journey from Tooting to the British Library tends to be a crowded affair at the best of times. More >>
Tony Abbott, Israel and Australian Foreign Policy
Thursday, 5 January 2017, 12:00 pm | Binoy Kampmark
He is one of Australia’s truly singular politicians, relentlessly zealous, hewn from the granite of an older fanaticism. Despise him, loathe him, but consider him for one fundamental point: he has escaped the management artists, the curbing focus ... More >>
The Trouble with Mary: The Fourth Series of Sherlock
Tuesday, 3 January 2017, 9:26 pm | Binoy Kampmark
There was much fanfare for the first episode of series 4 of the BBC’s Sherlock , which graced British television screens on New Year’s Day with its fair share of shock and delivery. It promises to be the first of three episodes, dangling the ... More >>
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 >>
