Showing 11 - 20 of 59
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?"
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.
For a ghost of a chance, use your talisman
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/10/2016
» On Wednesday Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha talked for 135 minutes at the Bangkok Post Forum, more than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Monday combined. And this isn't even an election campaign. A good soldier, he's unfazed by the presence of enemies and microphone. From the podium, arms outstretched, the PM touched on a lot of topics: Thai education, the economy, Section 44, Thailand as a "developed" country, the 20-year prophecy, etc. But what struck me like a hammer was when the general mentioned ghosts.
Breaking into song on the big vote day
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/08/2016
» Tomorrow is the day. Are you ready? Really, are you ready?Keep calm, get dressed, put on your Sunday smile, and head out to … No, not the referendum booth, or maybe later. First you really must go to the Scala Theatre in Siam Square, where for the first time in Thailand in decades, The Sound of Music will play on the big cinema screen with its historic overflowing of saccharine -- and with one of the strangest anti-dictatorship sentiments ever shown on film.
Fed up to our eyeballs of the aqua-calypse
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2016
» When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.
Clowning around is no joke anymore
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/04/2016
» When humour is outlawed, what's left? When humorists, satirists and clowns are not safe from dictatorial fury, who is? Mockers jailed, jokers scolded, caricaturists threatened, sometimes by words, sometimes by pre-dawn commando raids, without warrants, as if they were hunting armed terrorists. That's how 10 people were carried off by uniformed officers on Wednesday, a few of them guilty of running a satirical Facebook page spoofing the PM. Yesterday, the military court denied them bail.
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.
Huffing and puffing puts us in a spin
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/01/2016
» For your weekend reading, you have two gripping options: The draft of the new constitution, or the government’s proudly presented “Photobook Infographics: Government for the People”, a 104-page hodgepodge of self-congratulatory news clippings. Either way, we brace ourselves for whatever comes, for our fate is not really ours to contend.
The hateful eight gang up on one activist
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2016
» If your heart hasn’t been too hardened, you must have seen that the arrest of the student activist on Wednesday night was a foul act unjustified by law.
Tabloid saga and our gang mentality
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2016
» The tabloid saga of the week is a slap-fest involving 30 people, mostly women, its flurry of glorious hair-pulling captured in a video clip. The cause is a triangulated romance between a young man and his two women, one of them a TV celebrity. Love hurts, as we teach our children, or it’s not love. But let’s pause and consider: what can a catfight, the first sensational, useless headline of 2016, tell us about the state of our national politics of the past decade? That we’re in a gang war, apparently.