• OPINION

  Graft nosedive comes as no surprise at all

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/01/2017

  » 'We're disappointed," said Sansern Poljeak of the National Anti-Corruption Commission. Sir, we're more disappointed, as citizens who pay tax without fail, to the government to help the NACC battle corruption.

• 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

  Spoken crime tells the tale of two singers

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/03/2018

  » In a rare ruling, on Thursday the Criminal Court acquitted firebrand and former-singer Tom Dundee in a lese majeste case. He actually pleaded guilty, but in a legal paradox that is as baffling as it is mitigating, the court said it could not rule against the defendant despite his guilty plea since the prosecution failed to provide substantial evidence.

• OPINION

  Last night at the Scala -- or is it?

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/02/2018

  » We have the latest update on the Scala Theatre: Its closing date is now set for May 31.

• OPINION

  Show must go on to save Scala cinema

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2018

  » Urban conservationists, architects, archivists, cinema-goers, and all-round romantics have united for one cause: Save Scala.

• 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

  The great Lee Kuan Yew we never knew

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/03/2015

  » The page has turned, and everyone wishes to read about Lee Kuan Yew. But the great mind isn’t that easy to decipher, so we pick and choose and believe that we know the recipe for success that the late Singaporean ruler — brilliant, dogged, direct, merciless — practised in his nation-building cauldron to such a spectacular outcome.

• OPINION

  Cannes Report: The Coens and Dutch gallows humour

  Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015

  » The hottest ticket in Cannes over the weekend is, surprisingly, a pre-Bob Dylan tale of a struggling folk singer steeped in his own hilarious myth: "Inside Llewyn Davis" is the new film by Joel and Ethan Coen starring Oscar Isaac as the title character, with the supporting act by Carey Mulligan (redeeming herself quite nicely from the nonsense of "The Great Gatsby", which opened Cannes last Wednesday) and Justin Timberlake, among others.

• OPINION

  Free speech tied in lese majeste knot

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/04/2014

  » It’s great news that The Guardian and the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize. As citizens of the world, we congratulate the papers, or actually that 21st century Deep Throat Edward Snowden, for exposing the US National Security Agency’s creepy tentacles of unlawful surveillance. It’s great that Mr Snowden gambled it all and it’s great that journalism can still rock, or at least embarrass, an almighty government accustomed to impunity.

• OPINION

  Eerie parallels between two Octobers

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/10/2013

  » Justice or impunity, amnesty or licence to kill, reconciliation or oblivion, the numb comfort of forgetting or the sour, endless curse of remembering. Take your pick, for the parliamentary push for the "blanket" amnesty bill that could cleanse the legal sins of everyone from the military to snipers to protesters to ex-PMs - Thaksin Shinawatra and Abhisit Vejjajiva - has raised the political temperature and confirmed the social cracks we still have to brave.

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