Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Will gentrification respect city's people?
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/06/2023
» We've lived for over a century in the shadow of grandeur: near the Customs House, known to Thais as rongpasi. "We" means my maternal family and the community of Haroon Mosque. Each day before sunrise, the muezzin's sing-song call rings through the neighbourhood, carried on the river wind towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the French Embassy and Assumption Cathedral.
Religious fervour serves no god well
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018
» Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.
Exactly who is funnier, us or The Donald?
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/11/2016
» Licking lips with schadenfreude, our pro-military camp now have a real case to gloat at the bigshot USA. The Donald Duck has won! The diabolical evangelist who panders to the poor and the "uneducated", the gluttonous billionaire who thinks he can run a country like a tycoon running a company, the mad CEO/prophet who promises glory but who'll bring the country to ruin.
Taking down Sorrayuth no graft panacea
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/03/2016
» Bring me the head of Sorrayuth. Bring me the severed head of the anchorman/briber, newscaster/corrupter, interviewer/public villain No.1. The hero became the anti-hero, and Sorrayuth Suthassanachinda had his head served on a silver platter after the collective wrath of graft-haters smoked him out of his chair. Corruption must be combatted, cheaters must be called out and shamed. Yes, we beat him, we beat corruption! And our weapons in this war are something equally disturbing, such as hatred, polemics and swift, satisfying anger.
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.
Our ‘saviours’ say shut up, put up, pay up
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/04/2015
» Death and taxes are the only two sure things in life, so the joke goes. I had a nice time at the tax office last week, three days before the deadline. It wasn’t a “fun time”, which is impossible, but nice enough in my dealings with a courteous tax lady who performed her arithmetic gifts with a pencil and calculator, smiling and helpful in her office full of paper and weary-looking taxpayers — some of them street vendors and odd-jobbers, I gathered. There’s something Kafka-esque about a visit to the Revenue Office: The mild dread (of what?), the anxious wait and, above all, the wild guess about the bureaucratic labyrinth that delivers our payment into the invisible state coffers.
Asian elephant in Hollywood's cruel parlour
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/09/2013
» Even a tiny speck of Hollywood dust must have weighed like a tonne of gold to movie stars on this side of the Pacific. It must have felt like a validation - no, it is a validation, a passport to a new planet, the one phone call that vindicates all the hard work and years of toiling.
4 wheels good, protection from the law better!
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/06/2013
» Italian super luxury car maker Rambikini proudly announces the launch of an exclusive limited edition of three models especially for Thai politicians, first-born sons of obscenely wealthy businessmen and luxury-loving monks. This last group has emerged as the company's untapped demographic (we bang our foreheads for not having thought of them sooner) whose sacred aura and talismanic power will surely lend our supercars with an unprecedented mixture of spirituality and materialism.
Book sex row goes wacky
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2012
» A narrow escape or just stupid miscommunication? For now let's hope we don't welcome plaudits of Bangkok World Book Capital 2013 with the banning of books.