Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Pokemon goes on run from state capture
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/08/2016
» No, they will not ban Pokemon Go, though it's not hard to tell how tempting that idea must be in the post-referendum landscape where peace, order and national security have been constitutionally enshrined.
The late, late show
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/06/2016
» Normally prime time for television is 8-11pm or thereabouts, the period when the family gathers to watch news and series while having dinner. So it will come as a surprise to many that for Muslim audiences during this month of Ramadan, prime time for television is closer to a graveyard shift -- 3-4.30am, deep in the night while most people are asleep -- as families wake up for the pre-dawn meal before a full day of fasting.
Snowden under siege
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/03/2015
» The Oscar-winning Citizenfour has opened in Bangkok. An opportune cinema experience here in our land of 99.9% democracy where the contentious Cyber Security Bills are being revised, the so-called Edward Snowden documentary seethes with unsettling power. Its civic outrage is strong, but the cool-headed storytelling gives it gravity. The immediacy of the issue at its heart is also the debate of the early 21st century. And if the film lets us know from the start that it's taking the side of the whistle-blower, all the better.
‘Citizenfour’ rings eerily close to home
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/02/2015
» Come Oscar night tomorrow, Edward Snowden, still holed up in Moscow, won’t be joining the glitterati in Los Angeles though the film in which he is appears likely to snatch a golden doll. Unless there’s a major upset, Citizenfour should win Best Documentary, and the spectre of massive national surveillance, indiscriminate spying and the thorny scuffle to find balance between national security and the sanctity of human rights will, hopefully, steal some of the vacuous limelight that characterises the Oscars.
Fear of social change a step back
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/08/2014
» Those who live permanently in the past can't see the inevitability of the present. Those who worship the stegosaurus would do something so comical, so anachronistic as banning a computer game that most people have never heard of, prompting nearly everyone to hear about it and wanting to play it — just for kicks, just for a slap to the face, just to prove that techno-terrorism will leave the dinosaurs behind. In the world of bandwidth, in a time when information always slips through the iron fist like water or like pus, in short, in the downloadable, Wiki-leakable 21st century — banning data is the practice of ants trapped in prehistoric amber.
Free speech tied in lese majeste knot
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/04/2014
» It’s great news that The Guardian and the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize. As citizens of the world, we congratulate the papers, or actually that 21st century Deep Throat Edward Snowden, for exposing the US National Security Agency’s creepy tentacles of unlawful surveillance. It’s great that Mr Snowden gambled it all and it’s great that journalism can still rock, or at least embarrass, an almighty government accustomed to impunity.
When one-eyed censorship rules the airwaves
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/08/2013
» Thai television continues to inspire sadness and nausea, to the point that sometimes we envy Cyclops and Captain Hook, with all their one-eyed oblivion.
Paranoia, politics mute Thai cinema
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/07/2013
» When there is not a ghost film making headlines by raking in a whopping billion baht at the box-office, movie news in this country is often about censorship, which stalks certain filmmakers like a serial killer. This week we have two such news items, both under-reported, and both concerning the larger issue of media freedom. Let's take a look.