Showing 31 - 40 of 59
Big Brother’s watching me watching him
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2015
» Skip out for beer during the commercials, because the revolution will not be televised — or so goes the Gil Scott-Heron song. If only it were that simple! Because while the revolution may not be televised, coups will. Coups have. Actually, a coup only qualifies as a coup when the perpetrators appear on television, epaulets sparkling as they line up before an extremely boring backdrop to announce their masterstroke. A coup needs tanks less than it needs a TV signal. We’ve borne witness to it too many times over the past 40 years, with first analogue broadcasting, then Earth-orbiting satellites and now digital TV.
The (sur)real world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/03/2015
» Chulayarnnon Siriphol can't keep his jokes to himself. He has the boyish — some might say nerdy — looks of a milk-fed goody two-shoes mama's boy, but in his films, the 29-year-old often thrives on pranks, satire, mischief and a brand of droll, childlike humour that cuts through the slough of hypocrisy.
Don't blame Americans for bad acting
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/01/2015
» Fifty-two years after The Ugly American was released in cinemas, with Marlon Brando presiding over the US follies in Southeast Asia, some Thais are savouring the odd chance of relishing that phrase in real life.
We're in the news, and it's not all okay
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» ‘So what’s happening in your country?”
When the law goes astray, all hope is lost
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/10/2014
» In the post-coup happy hours, at times a man lost the ground beneath his feet. With the old constitution ripped and torn, the man became an entity without sanctity. He could be a ghost, a sitting duck, or on his worst days, a punching bag in a barracks full of bravery. He couldn't be protected, because the law that should've protected him had been flushed down the toilet and thus his rights — the natural rights we were all born with and once guaranteed by the constitution — suddenly went up in flames.
It's really best when you say nothing at all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/09/2014
» Dear diary, it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt, as Mark Twain said. How charming my mouth has been in the past week. If it had been Yingluck Shinawatra saying those things, I'm sure a riot would've broken out and the sound of a million whistles would've shattered your eardrums. But it's me, so it's different. It's not the action but the man. How could those pettifogging critics interpret my speech as avuncular nonsense, when in fact they're pieces of wisdom worthy of being chronicled in the national archives and inscribed onto monuments?
A passport to happiness is all you need
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/07/2014
» Like a sinner praying for salvation, I pray that the Ministry of Education will launch the "good deeds passports" project before the next full moon. Kids, parents and disciplinarians are dying to wave it around like a diploma of sanity, or an amulet against ghosts and anarchism. The Education Ministry is so educated that it has tapped into the zeitgeist: moral bookkeeping, and control of the happiness barometer (check out the military carnival at Sanam Luang), will guarantee the bright future of democratic Thailand.
Mindanao offers lessons for South
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/04/2014
» There are signs of uncertainty. No, not the red-shirt rendezvous on Utthayan Road or the summit of the Suthep Thaugsuban-led movements at Lumpini Park, both happening with egoistic drum rolling today. As usual, Bangkok politics has the kind of narcissism and surreal influence that monopolises the headlines and consigns other struggles — more real, more fatal struggles — to the attic of our attention. If the way forward is decentralisation, let’s start by at least trying to look further afield than Bangkok’s face-off and the oratory salvoes of Mr Suthep and Jatuporn Prompan.
Never forget, death is not an illusion
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/03/2014
» In our season of mass delusion, what is real? Life and death are real, but particularly death. Death by suicide or by murder, but particularly murder. Deaths of adults and of children, but particularly of children, at Ratchaprasong and in Trat, as well as in Narathiwat, where three siblings, the eldest 11, were killed on Feb 3, and which of course we’ve almost forgotten about because even in death there’s a hierarchy of public attention and allotment of air time. There was also the 14-year-old boy Kunakorn Srisuwan, shot dead by a military bullet (as the Criminal Court ruled) near Soi Mor Leng in the red-shirt riots of May 2010. That’s one death we've definitely forgotten. The only story that orphan boy ever had in his life is about his death.
Flag turns the national into factional
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/02/2014
» Red, white and blue. The tricolour Thai national flag has never been this omnipresent.