Showing 1 - 8 of 8
Voices of hate louder than the majority
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/11/2015
» After Paris, it has been a week of heartbreak. Not again, the godless killings, the barbarians at the gate! It has also been a week of blanket accusations, of Islam-bashing, and of frantic apologies from 1.5 billion peaceful people who’re told that what they’ve believed all their lives is making them inherently evil, only they don’t know it yet (the accusers know it).
Sorry seems to be history’s hardest word
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/10/2015
» It doesn’t take much to say sorry, and yet sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ask world leaders, or just Dear Leaders everywhere. It takes a lot, politically, legally and morally, to admit mistakes, misjudgments, errors, arrogance, cruelty and guilt, especially when the consequences of such errors are the loss of so many human lives.
'The Act' shows us hate is the ugliest crime
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/10/2013
» What was it like to kill? Dispatching people violently by the hundreds - neighbours, strangers, acquaintances, friends - one by one, by beating or strangling, by knife or by gun, with threats and smiles, all with the tacit consent of the army? How do they feel, after all these years?
Osama, where art thou!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/02/2013
» Poor Maya. The waking life of the pretty CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty is spent obsessing over one thing and nothing else: hunting down that bearded piece of work dubbed by military-speak as "UBL". Usama Bin Laden is Maya's Holy Grail, her lifetime achievement, her addiction, her soulmate. If Maya were an actress, the terrorist would be her Oscar. And given that we all know what happened 20 months ago in that house in Pakistan _ the UBL assassination is re-enacted here with the thrilling, goggle-eyed, sometimes first-person video-game aesthetics _ history and headlines have already put on the spoiler alert for the world audience: Maya wins, big time. She's got her metaphorical Oscar, and fittingly, she's shocked and awed and even breaks down after the trophy (the corpse) has been brought to her.
Stone brings out the Savages
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/09/2012
» Oliver Stone's Savages is cheerfully cynical, ingloriously basked in the Malibu sunshine and fired up by threesome sex, super-bred cannabis and bong-water bravado. It's lurid, sexy, funny, chaotic, cluttered, and if the grisly violence turns you off then Blake Lively _ playing a very dumb blonde _ and her two beaus (plus John Travolta, pudgy and hilariously nervous) will also chip in laugh-out-loud moments, all the while with the director winking off-scene.
The Sound of Silence
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2012
» Prince Gautama silently weeps, and the violin sighs. Gently, like a tiptoeing deer, the koto's murmuring melody comes in beneath the rhythmic carpet of the tabla drums.
Temple fair in the clouds
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2012
» Prayers in Paragon Hall. New iPad apps on meditation centres. A haunted house in which earthly desires stalk you like inexorable ghosts. A "dharma boy band" of singers interpreting their tunes through the spiritual looking glass. Then monks as film programmers picking movies that discuss virtues and vices in diverse voices. In short, Buddhism in a new setting: Buddhism in a mall.
Madness, badness, sadness
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/04/2012
» Horror was replayed, because all exorcism is a form of inevitable horror. First, one of the prosecutors of the Norwegian court read out the names and details of each of the 77 victims killed by Anders Behring Breivik on July 22, 2011. "She was at the water's edge... Shot dead." "He was in the Big Hall of the cafe. Shot dead." "He fled and fell off a cliff near the island's west point... Died of fall injuries and/or drowning." Then again, and again, and again: "She/He was near the water pump. Shot dead." The frigid, literal, unwavering police prose of the report gives you the feeling that you are walking into a graveyard. Or a morgue. You look away but the screams continue. Then comes the horror of Breivik's claim that he is sane. Of his vow that he "would do it again". Of him announcing that the victims were not "innocent". Of him insisting that he acted out of "goodness" to prevent Islam from becoming a major threat to European civilisation. Of his malevolent bombast that what he did in downtown Oslo and a youth camp on Utoya Island last year was "the most sophisticated and spectacular attack committed in Europe since World War II".