• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  Losing faith in the laws of the land

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/06/2016

  » Lawlessness is the new law. What's that term they're now using? "The new normal" -- right, say it even when there's nothing new and everything abnormal. But it's something more primitive that's making a screaming comeback.

• OPINION

  'Superheroes' fail to rescue democracy

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/03/2016

  » We thought it would be Batman v Superman: Yawn of Justice. But it turned out to be a cut-rate spectacle performed on a sidewalk by inept actors. We thought it would be a bout between the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), a contest of will and superpower. But then it revealed itself to be a badly scripted soap opera executed by elderly actors who read their lines without a wink.

• OPINION

  Swatting away visions of refugee hell

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/09/2015

  » This week the drowned Syrian boy rattles the conscience of Europe — and hopefully the oil-rich Arab nations — while in Bangkok, the Uighur fiasco keeps sending repercussions. In Europe, fierce debates ring across parliaments from the UK to Hungary as to whether countries should take in more refugees to cushion this humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, true to form, the Thai police awarded themselves with cash even though the suspects haven’t been tried and while every suggestion that the Erawan blast was connected with our foul deportation of 109 Uighurs in July is adamantly deflected, as if with fly swatters.

• OPINION

  Open up to spur cultural revolution

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/06/2014

  » Alarmed by the sight of zombies stampeding to get free tickets to see the film Legend of King Naresuan 5, former Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat, of the Democrat stripe, lamented aloud about the need for a “cultural revolution”.

• OPINION

  We can teach China a few cyber cop tricks

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/08/2013

  » Send me gifts of Line stickers. Brown, Cony, Mickey, Monsters University, Kerokerokeroppi, whatever - faster, before the tech-savvy Thai police spoil the party and shut the chat down.

• OPINION

  'Nua Mek 2' stirs up a storm (of hypocrisy)

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/01/2013

  » I disapprove, you know, of what you say but, like, I will defend to the death, baby, your right to say it, like totally, okie dokie?

• OPINION

  Life imitates farce as Chuvit steals the show

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/07/2012

  » No one, not even Tom Cruise, exploits the media as shrewdly as Chuvit Kamolvisit. Moustache twitching, his neck veins throbbing as he went on TV to relate the stormy episode when he exposed a gambling den on Phetchaburi Road, which entailed callow pushing-and-shoving as photographers snapped and cameramen videoed it all. He led the reporters into the soi and phoned the police. When they were late in arriving, he grumbled, then sat down on a folded chair (how did that materialise?) sipping iced coffee as onlookers, journalists, children and toughs formed a circle around him.

• OPINION

  Lady in waiting has a passion, unsurpassed

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/06/2012

  » All light is on The Lady. The hazy glare of our damp summer, then the incessant flashlights of journalists who've made the Myanmar MP the most photographed woman - our own photogenic PM being out-snapped - of the past week. Aung San Suu Kyi's first trip abroad in 24 years carries the weight of historic gravity, besides the simple fact that the 66-year-old is a walking epitome of how to age gracefully. Also thanks to her presence, the otherwise routine World Economic Forum has acquired a special lustre, a magnetic draw.

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