Showing 1-10 of 63 results
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For a ghost of a chance, use your talisman
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/10/2016
» On Wednesday Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha talked for 135 minutes at the Bangkok Post Forum, more than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Monday combined. And this isn't even an election campaign. A good soldier, he's unfazed by the presence of enemies and microphone. From the podium, arms outstretched, the PM touched on a lot of topics: Thai education, the economy, Section 44, Thailand as a "developed" country, the 20-year prophecy, etc. But what struck me like a hammer was when the general mentioned ghosts.
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Sucking the wind out of the elections
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/05/2018
» The verb of the week is "to dood".
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Prayut can't control lens of history
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/04/2018
» He came to drain the swamp, but the swamp has reclaimed him. He came to purge politicians, but politicians have found him. He came to rewrite history, and we wonder how history will remember him.
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Thai idols fall in line with orthodoxy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/09/2018
» Poor coup-makers, no one wants to see them on TV. At 6pm sharp when the theme song begins, there's a rush of hands to the remote control. Not that you can escape them. The true mark of dictatorship is audiovisual dictatorship: They beam their images on every TV and radio channel, monopolising your sensory reception, like a sci-fi movie, or like a spoiled child demanding your full attention. At 6pm every day for the past four years, the hands clutching the remote have reached for the only possible button. Off.
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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.
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'Pre-truth' far scarier than 'post-truth'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/11/2016
» 'Post-truth" -- that's Oxford Dictionaries' word of 2016. Trump-inspired and aided by Facebook algorithms, it clicks. What happens isn't as important as what you think happens, and if you think something is true, then what is true is simply what you think. But truth be told, post-truth still suggests an involvement of truth, how truth is there and yet is blithely bypassed by emotion and prejudice, and thus there's a more dangerous term that fits better in some places: "pre-truth".
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Singing along in poll wait purgatory
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/01/2017
» Splendid 2017 begins with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha gifting us the year's first new song. Saphan, "bridge", his sappy ballad is called.
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Armed to the teeth, with no battle to fight
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2017
» When everyone else is dead, the arms dealers will sip champagne and cuddle Playboy bunnies. Why? "Because everyone else will be busy killing each other," said Yuri Orlov, the arms dealer in Lord of War as portrayed by Nicolas Cage. When his client orders him a shipment of machine guns used in Rambo, Mr Orlov, an award-winning salesperson, asks, "Rambo part 1, 2 or 3?"
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The politics and poetry of private jokes
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/05/2016
» Let's compare scores. In Thailand, a python had a wrestling match with a penis. In Myanmar, a dissenting poet was punished for a poem allegedly written on his penis. In the Philippines, the newly-elected president, aged 71, announced last month that he didn't want to "hang" his penis, and that "when I take Viagra, it stands up".
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Breaking into song on the big vote day
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/08/2016
» Tomorrow is the day. Are you ready? Really, are you ready?Keep calm, get dressed, put on your Sunday smile, and head out to … No, not the referendum booth, or maybe later. First you really must go to the Scala Theatre in Siam Square, where for the first time in Thailand in decades, The Sound of Music will play on the big cinema screen with its historic overflowing of saccharine -- and with one of the strangest anti-dictatorship sentiments ever shown on film.
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