Showing 1-10 of 11 results
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A poll date and elephant in the room
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/08/2018
» We've heard distant drumbeats and dates are being thrown around. The election will -- may -- happen on Feb 24, 2019, which is the Year of the Pig, if that portends anything. The latest possible date, if things get pushed around by design or by fate, is May. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe never. Who knows? For a regime that prides itself as rule-keepers, rules and promises have been treated like toilet paper since day one.
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Mahathir's win shows voting works
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/05/2018
» This week all my friends went to vote. In Malaysia, of course.
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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).
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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.
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A tower of our glory, except the foreign bit
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/09/2016
» I happened to be there at the opening of the sparkling corn-cob skyscraper, the trophy of high-capitalism and symbol of wealth. No fireworks at the launch of the MahaNakhon Tower, that would have been tacky, but we had the beam-me-up light dance and iridescent sky painting, cued to booming music. Jose Carreras sang arias.
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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.
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Don’t they know it’s ‘our’ Songkran?
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/03/2014
» Your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the tribunal of the International Court of Universal Justice. I’ve come to this court today to represent the Cultural Watchdog and Tourism Authority of Thailand, and I henceforth present to the esteemed tribunal the grave, scandalous, hair-raising offence committed by a group of people in Singapore (I think) against the splendid and extremely wet Siamese tradition known as Songkran.
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Losing land is bad, but don't lose your head
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/11/2013
» Maps are back. Or precisely, the interpretative wildcard that accompanies maps.
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Learning from Laos
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/12/2012
» I was in Luang Prabang last weekend _ for a film festival, of all things. A giant screen was put up in the main square near the Handicraft Market, and for five nights people _ mostly local, with a fair sprinkling of tourists _ turned up in the hundreds to watch movies under the black night. Luang Prabang, with its functional archaeology of ancient, glorious buildings, has no cinemas. That's even better, we could say, for the effort to boost the appetite for moving images and the idea of movies as a collective experience.
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