• OPINION

  A comedy likely to end only in horror

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/02/2018

  » The junta can read the stars and history and they must know this isn't going to end well. As frustration grows, as protests form, as their support ebbs even their idol Gen Prem Tinsulanonda flat-out said so they amp up censorship and tighten the squeeze, not with gusto but with desperation. With Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon looking increasingly like a plump Chinese deity on the verge of losing his worshippers, the regime reacts with force, gagging tactics and plain old bullying.

• OPINION

  IS a threat even if they aren't here

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/07/2016

  » Ramadan has ended, and what a bloodied Ramadan it was as the godless terror of the so-called Islamic State (IS) -- though I prefer Daesh -- spilled innocent blood and soiled the spirit of the holy month.

• OPINION

  The Faustian promise in a blaming game

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2017

  » Through a tangled web of pride, vanity, moral superiority, Nietzschean negativity, Faustian promises and pseudo-Jedi cool, the junta keeps to its playbook by blaming everyone except themselves.

• OPINION

  Regime trawl for small fry no joke at all

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2018

  » The big fish hardly ever gets caught, not here. Only the small, the trivial, the nonsensical fish, the clownfish especially. As in school, or in prison, the bullies never bully the big kid. They only confirm their sense of power when they go after the small guys, the nerds, even the girls.

• OPINION

  Vampires rule roost in this heartless land

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/11/2017

  » The mother looked for her son's heart in a foam box. "Where is it?" she asked. She's already had his body, and only when she requested was she was allowed to take back his soul.

• OPINION

  We all live in a regime submarine

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/04/2017

  » What did Donald Trump say when he was a hotshot Republican candidate in January 2016? "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."

• OPINION

  A backpack, bombs and a land of fear

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/09/2016

  » The photo just broke your heart: A little yellow backpack with a cartoon pattern, crumpled on the road in Narathiwat after a bomb. We can imagine the rest. A few minutes before, it must have been slung on the back of a five-year-old girl before a deadly blast knocked it off. She was killed along with her father, Mayeng Wohbah, at 8.25am outside a school in Tak Bai, a place that has seen too many deaths, adults and children, over many years.

• OPINION

  All aboard for a 'Thai-Thai' referendum

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/07/2016

  » The word "Thai" means "free". But when you repeat the syllable and say "Thai-Thai" (with a dismissive laugh), suddenly it means "fake" -- it means we've bent whatever rule the world has to make it suitable to our temperament, emotion and impulse. For example, when you're not sure if your principle is solid, your stance firm, your democracy authentic, or your coup justified, there's a simple way to shut down the argument: just say it's baab Thai-Thai, "in the Thai way". Then, if everything is not forgiven, at least it's understood.

• 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

  The cheers for justice we haven’t heard

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/04/2015

  » On Tuesday, the country watched Thai heartthrob Mario Maurer taking the greatest risk of his young life.

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