Showing 1 - 10 of 12
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).
Our blood runs cold in a burning sun
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/11/2015
» In Truman Capote’s true-crime book, In Cold Blood, a rural town in Kansas was rattled by brutal murders. Four people killed in their own home, late at night, three shot point-blank in the face, the other had his throat slit, then shot in the head. It was a robbery turned massacre. The morning after committing the crime, the book reports, one of the two killers, Dick Hickock, went back to his house and had toast for breakfast with his family, laughing, unperturbed, as if nothing so inhuman had happened just hours before.
Smoke gets in your eyes, and it's fine
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/10/2015
» Some countries in Southeast Asia have been covered in haze. For over a month, people in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have found their visibility reduced by the thin veil of smog, the grey mist of infinitesimal particles that blankets their skies and streets. The cause is the illegal burning to clear farmland for palm oil plantations; the effect is a health hazard, an environmental threat and a political dent, especially for Joko Widodo.
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.
Learning to love shooting from the hip
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/08/2015
» Maybe some Thais dig PM Prayut Chan-o-cha the same way some Americans dig Donald Trump.
When the O2 is impure, breathe CO2
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2015
» Congratulations. Peace prevails. Silence is golden. Reform is at full throttle. Reconciliation will glue the cracked golden axe into one shiny piece. Politicians can grow mushrooms. Generals can play golf. Elections are overrated. Democracy is a dream. Only the road map is real. Love is in the air. Citizens can stop worrying and learn how to love the bomb. Everything will be all right. Why worry? Why complain? Why think?
In fighting IS, don't mimic its evil ways
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2015
» It was a sad week, a week of satanic beheadings, then the barbarous immolation, executed and filmed by that godless bunch as if in mockery of Hollywood war movies. A week of moral anger and global blood lust, from Amman to Tokyo by way of Iraq. A week of sadness that quickly morphed into something like vengeance, as war cries sounded over the medieval fortresses of Jordan and Egypt and echoed to the South China Sea.
Memories are the first victim of 'happiness'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2014
» October is here. Along with the monsoon and beclouded mood, the month has always been marked by the political remembrance whose toxic vapour still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth even of those who didn't live through it.
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.
China boards the laureate gravy train
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/10/2012
» So fans didn't get to dance on the street. The two moons of Haruki Murakami were eclipsed when he didn't win the Nobel Prize in literature, as the Japanese man seemed the only writer on the speculated shortlist capable of inspiring global adulation from admirers, including in Thailand, had Stockholm given him the call on Thursday.