Showing 21 - 30 of 46
Righteous women sock it to ‘big men’
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/02/2016
» Big men beware, for the strongest political statements this week came from women. First off: Beyonce at the Super Bowl halftime gig, where the singer smuggled in Black Panther iconology and a nod to Malcom X in a traffic-stopping spectacle that showed how pop could rattle the establishment. Coming in second, with less coverage though with go-hard-or-go-home directness, was Madonna at her first concert in Bangkok on Tuesday night. “When those fascist dictators posing as righteous men come for you with their big leather boots to shut you up,” she belted out to the well-heeled crowd, “you’d better be prepared to fight for what you believe in.”
The premier and our age so full of fury
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2016
» ‘Angry people are not always wise,” Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice.
Even 'khon dee' can need a stiff drink
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/01/2016
» Building a booze-free, smoke-free, sin-free society is a utopian dream of moralistic teetotalers, and we should sincerely admire ThaiHealth Promotion Foundation for trying. To pursue that dream, the embattled ThaiHealth goes to all lengths: flirting with conflicts of interest, questionable funding practices, and assuming a pose of moral superiority demonising drinkers, smokers and sometimes suggesting a brutal connection between the working class and alcohol binges.
Where history begins anew
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2016
» When does history begin? We are at the start of 2016, when it's still not too late to say Happy New Year, and our perception of time and space has hit a refresh button. The year, new and old, is a necessary illusion that gives us a sense of order in this disorderly universe. What has happened has become "history", but history is not always in the past, not always dictated by the BC, AD, the Buddhist BE or the Islamic AH.
Proustian questions for our leaders
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2015
» What is your idea of perfect happiness? When 99.5% of respondents in a government-sponsored poll think that the government is the best thing that ever happened for this country. Or maybe in the all of the universe, because such figures are even higher than God's rating.
Violence in South doesn't discriminate
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/11/2015
» To give you an update on Buddhist nationalism, Phra Apichart Punnajanto has “temporarily” closed his Facebook page, after the Sangha Council sent him a warning letter in the aftermath of the monk’s call for a crusade against the Muslim South.
Film fete case shows glacial pace of reform
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/08/2015
» It’s about time. The case has been cold but not closed, and justice delayed is more consoling than justice abandoned. After eight years, the Office of the Attorney General finally charged Juthamas Siriwan, ex-governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), for allegedly taking 60 million baht in kickbacks from an American firm in exchange for a contract to run the ill-fated Bangkok International Film Festival between 2003 and 2007. She has 15 days to show her face at the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, or face an arrest warrant.
Crippling US economy is a pipe dream
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/08/2015
» Besides sleeping pills, we need a daily dose of fantasy to make life tolerable. A fantasy that we could bankrupt the US by boycotting American products after the cocky imperialist has branded us a hotbed of human trafficking (Starbucks and McDonald’s for starters, but excluding Facebook because that would be masochistic).
The 4-billion-mile voyage to open minds
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/07/2015
» We’re not going anywhere near Pluto, not any time soon. Not until we set our educational compass towards the future, towards the outside world and not the navel-gazing self. That’s as unlikely as life on the ice volcanoes at the edge of the solar system.
Past actions lead to sense of numbness
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2015
» The date is June 18, 2026, and this is a diary from the future. Thailand in 2026 feels like 2015 in many ways, except it’s worse, despite the half-finished high-speed rail to Chiang Mai — the budget bloated from three trillion baht to five trillion baht in 2020 — and the half-finished Pak Bara deep-sea port — the budget didn’t bloat, but the government shifted its priority to buying nuclear submarines.