Eureka Street

Author: Binoy Kampmark

INTERNATIONAL

The UK decision to extradite Assange
- Binoy Kampmark
- 19 July 2022
3 Comments
The only shock about the UK Home Secretary’s decision regarding the extradition of Julian Assange was that it did not come sooner. In April, Chief Magistrate Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring expressed the solemn view that he was ‘duty-bound’ to send the case to Priti Patel to decide on whether to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 grafted from the US Espionage Act of 1917, and one based on computer intrusion.
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INTERNATIONAL

Second Amendment logic: The arming of school teachers
- Binoy Kampmark
- 20 June 2022
11 Comments
In the context of mass school shootings in the United States, the latest of which took place at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a crude form of deterrence has made an appearance. To be safer, you do not remove guns, but spread them through a policy of mutually assured terror. Any gun toting individual entering the school grounds will think twice before encountering the hail of bullets from a protective teacher. Gun control, accordingly, becomes anathema.
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AUSTRALIA

Back to Bilo: The Murugappan family and Australian refugee policy
- Binoy Kampmark
- 09 June 2022
9 Comments
In Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, notably those arriving by boat, compassion and fairness have rarely threatened a policy deemed cruel, costly and ineffective. The fate of the Muragappan family has been a continuous, scandalising flashpoint about the nature of Australia’s border protection policies.
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AUSTRALIA

Independent triumphs: The changing of Australian politics
- Binoy Kampmark
- 24 May 2022
11 Comments
The centre of the political system did not so much hold as desert. The vote was a furious, determined and tenacious shout from the estranged centre, a shivering of the timbers. The calibre of individuals elected — many from professions, many with public service outside the traditional party hierarchy of patronage and promotion, and most, women — has not been previously seen in this country’s politics.
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INTERNATIONAL

An Australian Pacific tale: Climate security, sovereignty and neglect
- Binoy Kampmark
- 10 May 2022
8 Comments
On May 3, the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare, vented his fury in parliament at ‘the continual demonstration of lack of trust by the concerned parties, and tacit warning of military intervention in Solomon Islands if their national interest is undermined in Solomon Islands.’ The targets of the speech — Australia and the United States — were clear enough.
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AUSTRALIA

Election 2022: The value of independents
- Binoy Kampmark
- 21 April 2022
7 Comments
Few sights are more desperate than old political parties on the run. In this Australian federal election, the challenge from independents and smaller parties has sparked a nervous reaction, much of it negative and most of it misplaced.
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AUSTRALIA

Climate change and duty of care
- Binoy Kampmark
- 07 April 2022
10 Comments
The children have been busy. On matters of environmental justice, Australia has witnessed much legal activity from youthful citizens who, despite in some cases not being old enough to vote, have stirred politics. In 2021, five lodged complaints with the United Nations over the failure of the Australian government to cut, in a meaningful way, greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
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AUSTRALIA

When ‘Good Refugees’ are admitted
- Binoy Kampmark
- 21 March 2022
12 Comments
While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.
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AUSTRALIA

Shane Warne’s limelight
- Binoy Kampmark
- 07 March 2022
8 Comments
It was once said of T. E. Lawrence that he had a tendency to back into the limelight. With the late Shane Warne, arguably the finest slow bowler cricket has ever produced, it edged towards him. His debut appearance against India in the 1991-2 home series in Australia was not auspicious. Paunchy, exuding a vernacular Australian coarseness, and initially wayward, he received an object lesson from India’s Ravi Shastri and the youthful Sachin Tendulkar at the Sydney Cricket Ground. But there were already those incipient signs: the slovenly look, the ear piercings, the peroxide hair.
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AUSTRALIA

The normality of Olympic brutality
- Binoy Kampmark
- 28 February 2022
7 Comments
For anybody surprised about those ‘marquee tent’ moments, as an ABC journalist crudely termed them, the Olympics is as much about torment as it is about achievement. The torment is very much reserved for the athlete, the achievement reserved for officialdom and media and spectator consumption.
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AUSTRALIA

The trouble with God powers: The Novak Djokovic case
- Binoy Kampmark
- 08 February 2022
12 Comments
It should be troubling for anyone, religious, secular or agnostic, to be told that a human being wields anything approximating to ‘God like’ powers. That very suggestion implies a power unreviewable, unaccountable and at odds with the earthly rule of law.
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MEDIA

Best of 2021: Facebook unfriends Australia
- Binoy Kampmark
- 11 January 2022
1 Comment
Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.
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Author: Binoy Kampmark