Faking it and Fakery: Najib and Censorship
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 […]
Articles by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Precarious Communications: Julian Assange, Internet Access and Ecuador
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. […]
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 […]
Death and Impunity: Iraq Fifteen Years After
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 […]
Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Surveillance Capitalism
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 […]
The Ease of Accusation: The Skripal Affair
The policy of responding to assassinations on British soil is a near non-existent one. Her Majesty’s Government is certainly in the habit of huffing, and […]
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 […]
Art and Exploitation: Ai Weiwei, Dissidence and the Refugee Crisis
The status of dissident offers a certain moral latitude in behaviour, and, in various cases, misbehaviour. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is one such figure. […]
Bullied Relations: Australia, East Timor and Natural Resources
“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 […]
Dumping Wilson Security: The NGV, Art and Refugee Detention
Art and politics mix, often poorly. Artists are sometimes the hoodwinked emissaries of the latter, sponsored, enlisted and marshalled by the state and corporate entities. […]
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 […]
Paying Tribute: Malcolm Turnbull in the US
Vassals rarely question. If they do, criticism is limited and usually restrained behind closed doors. The Australian Prime Minister’s visit to Washington during February was […]
Prostituting Charity: The Oxfam Debate
Oxfam has outdone itself. In the murky, squalid business where charity seems to chase, then embed itself in disaster zones like a dedicated virus, Oxfam […]
Arming Educators: Trump, Gun Violence and Schools
It had been in the works. Instead of engaging in the traditional revulsion associated with a mass shooting, or even digesting the grief of outraged […]
God, Politics and Billy Graham
Evangelising is an ugly thing. It assumes indisputable truths, and limits the field of inquiry. Its very assertiveness lies in unquestioning rather than probing, a […]