Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Stop the tall tales about election dates
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2018
» There's no way round it and there's no time for subtlety: The past four years have been a sham, a false dream stage-managed by false prophets.
In our special situation, hail the metaphors
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/07/2017
» We can still speak, preferably in English, or even better in metaphors. The dilemma is painful: We speak in coded words and we risk being irrelevant, obscure, snobbish; but if we say it too directly, we risk something else, such as a summons, a slap on the wrist, or a mark on the forehead as the Biblical executioners arrive at the gates of Jerusalem. For those to whom Thailand remains home, both paths are strewn with barbed wire.
We can't give up hope on bail for 'Pai'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/02/2017
» Let us keep writing about Pai Dao Din until he gets bail. Let us be patient but also passionate. Let us be cool-headed but also resolute. Let us be respectful of the court but also firm in our questioning. Let us be law-abiding citizens but also simple humans with beating hearts. Let us write even though only five people might read it.
'Pre-truth' far scarier than 'post-truth'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/11/2016
» 'Post-truth" -- that's Oxford Dictionaries' word of 2016. Trump-inspired and aided by Facebook algorithms, it clicks. What happens isn't as important as what you think happens, and if you think something is true, then what is true is simply what you think. But truth be told, post-truth still suggests an involvement of truth, how truth is there and yet is blithely bypassed by emotion and prejudice, and thus there's a more dangerous term that fits better in some places: "pre-truth".
Army 'image' trumps the people's truth
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/07/2016
» Her uncle was beaten to death in an army camp and now she has been sued for revealing what happened. On Monday, Naritsarawan Kaewnopparat was arrested and charged for defamation and disseminating "false information" -- meaning the details of her uncle's harrowing death at the combat boots of his drill sergeants, who caned and kicked him from evening until past midnight back in 2011 at a Narathiwat barracks. Ms Naritsarawan, who has been fighting for a semblance of justice for six years, denied the charges and was released on bail.
Superheroes of doctored democracy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/04/2015
» This is the week when the draft constitution is being debated and the “citizen-centric” charter proposed by legal superheroes — Iron Menace, Thor-toise, Captain anti-America, etc — are scrutinised. The people will be at the centre of the new era, so they promise. The citizens, or at least “good citizens”, will be empowered to stand up against suit-and-tie crooks while judicial rat poison and ethical vanguards will ensure that Thais are cleansed of evil politics.
Cannes report: 'A Touch of Sin' an early favourite
Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» Good year? Bad year? Average year? The question is common, extraneous, and yet on everyone’s lips after three days into the 66th Cannes Film Festival.
Novel ideas to feed a hungry dissenter
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/06/2014
» If nothing else, please permit metaphors. Please allow room for symbols, gestures, analogies, allusions, literature, metonymy, for one-, two-, three-, four and five-fingered salutes, because they’re defiant yet desperate, hopeful yet powerless. They ruffle, but they can’t and won’t change anything, not in the short run at least.