Showing 21 - 30 of 147
Backpedalling in a parallel Thai universe
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/11/2017
» Thailand will eradicate poverty by next year.
Saint Toon carrying the cross for all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/11/2017
» Saint Toon carries the cross for the entire nation as he runs from the deep South to the high North.
Look ahead after a grand farewell
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/10/2017
» The yarn of history has spun its fine threads. History is the majestic pageantry that took place on Thursday, the likes of which we'll never see again. It is the centuries-old chariots dripping with gold, the festooned processions and severe steps of solemn marchers, the sorrowful magnificence of the royal crematorium. History is the elegiac trumpet salute to the beloved King, the fabulous cosmology of heaven recreated on Earth, the stunning synchronicity of the masked dance performers, and finally, history is the invisible fire and the grey smoke in the night sky, signalling that everything must return to ashes.
'Bad Genius' exception to Thai film rule
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/10/2017
» She cheats because she wants money, and because she believes the system has cheated her first. No politics please! The exciting Thai pop-culture news of the week was the box-office triumph of the Thai film Chalard Games Goeng (Bad Genius in English), an exam-cheating thriller packed with heart-racing set pieces in which bright students orchestrate an elaborate international cheating ring, outsmarting the system on the expense of their moral equanimity. When you're 17, perhaps that's a small price to pay.
PM trumped by president's sales pitch
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/10/2017
» A match made in heaven, or in Purgatory, or at least in the White House. Two men known for belligerent rhetoric and rambling speech sat side by side, one elected, one a pretender, both famous for throwing tantrums, their respective wives kept out of the frame (of course). It was a press conference at the White House between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on the occasion of the latter's trip of a lifetime.
It's always sunset in our land of exiles
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2017
» Either to Dubai or London, Yingluck Shinawatra has gone West and will likely live the rest of her life in exile. Either in an Emirati villa overlooking the Persian Gulf or a London penthouse by the Thames, she may be contemplating the difference between exile and banishment, or between exile and a holiday, but in the end it doesn't matter: She has fled, and her flight means the old power of Thailand has seen off the element regarded as threat. The ghost has been exorcised, the devil purged -- not once but twice, since there are two Shinawatras -- and now the military will charge ahead on their black horses as they gather us up and gallop us off into sunset (not sunrise).
Yingluck gets earful as the play goes on
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/08/2017
» The suspense, then the anticlimax. The adrenaline, then the warrant.
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.
Armed to the teeth, with no battle to fight
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2017
» When everyone else is dead, the arms dealers will sip champagne and cuddle Playboy bunnies. Why? "Because everyone else will be busy killing each other," said Yuri Orlov, the arms dealer in Lord of War as portrayed by Nicolas Cage. When his client orders him a shipment of machine guns used in Rambo, Mr Orlov, an award-winning salesperson, asks, "Rambo part 1, 2 or 3?"
Poetic licence in how to run the country
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/07/2017
» There was once a general in<br> Thailand<br> Who thought the country<br> needed a helping hand<br> How he was so frank<br> And rolling out tanks<br> He banged the table and took power<br> over Thailand