Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Pita and the 'Myth of Sisyphus'
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2023
» 'The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight."
Piyabutr plays House role by the book
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2019
» How thick does a book need to be to stop a bullet? Perhaps, I imagine, Piyabutr Saengkanokkul is asking himself that same question.
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.
Knives are out in death penalty row
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/06/2018
» To execute or not to execute, the question weighed on Thai society in the past week with the force of righteous anger. It is a tough question, one that lays bare the complex intersection of morality, law, religion, belief, value, and even the position of the country on the spectrum along which the international norm is moving.
Look ahead after a grand farewell
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/10/2017
» The yarn of history has spun its fine threads. History is the majestic pageantry that took place on Thursday, the likes of which we'll never see again. It is the centuries-old chariots dripping with gold, the festooned processions and severe steps of solemn marchers, the sorrowful magnificence of the royal crematorium. History is the elegiac trumpet salute to the beloved King, the fabulous cosmology of heaven recreated on Earth, the stunning synchronicity of the masked dance performers, and finally, history is the invisible fire and the grey smoke in the night sky, signalling that everything must return to ashes.
Blind love of nation is the blindest of all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/11/2015
» Feel the force of Thai jingoism. Feel it online and at the US embassy, as they march forward like sandmen with sticks to battle the evil Darth Vader. How dare the meddling imperialist. How rude, how hypocritical!, shout the vanguards, waving bamboo spears. This is because on Thursday the new US ambassador Glyn T Davies said something that rattled the patriots — something sensible — about how people who peacefully voice their opinion shouldn’t be put in jail, referring to the excessive punishment of the lese majeste law. As expected, just hours later the nationalists banged their kettledrums.
In the land where time stands still
Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/06/2015
» The past, as they say, is not even past. Just look around, scan the headlines, or smell the Cretaceous swamps that haven’t been pumped for ages. It feels strange watching the view outside the train window become a blur of movement, only to realise, with horror or apathy, that it’s not us who’re moving and leaving a trail of hazy landscape behind. It’s the outside world that’s speeding ahead while we’re stuck on the interminable platform.
Turning pop culture into propaganda
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/06/2015
» So the prime minister has watched Game of Thrones. The PM, speaking about the series in his interview with Al Jazeera, didn’t actually adopt Tyrion Lannister’s eloquence, though his enthusiasm for the kind of primeval justice practised in Westeros is clear. Also, he recently said that he liked Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a respectable film about a respectable politician who moved his nation forward through strategy, wit and poise. He also knew that his weekly address on TV upset the masses who were addicted to the spectacle of foul-mouthed E-Yam in the soap Sud Kaen San Rak. I’m very happy to know that we have a leader who’s well-versed in the language of popular culture, apart from his initiative of "12 Values" short films (that no one saw).
Hear youthful outrage amid a silent sit-in
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/05/2015
» They were not martyrs, heroes, or Jesuses nailed at the crosses as the crows picked out their eyes. They were just students who wanted to express their disagreement, which was the least anybody could do in a world where disagreement has not yet been outlawed (really?) and at a time when everybody else has been lulled into fake silence. The scene outside Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on May 22 was ugly, not as ugly as Tiananmen Square in 1989, or Gwangju in 1980, or Thammasat in 1976, but ugly enough to let us glimpse the flames beneath the volcano.
Fighting hate step by step is all we can do
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/01/2015
» I’ve lost sleep over the Charlie Hebdo killings. Anger, confusion, frustration and even pain descended on my pillow like the flapping wings of an evil bat, and I reach back into my own experience to try to make sense of the bleak future ahead of us.