Showing 1 - 10 of 35
All aboard for a scary trip down South
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/04/2016
» The news reads: Hard-line critics of the regime will be sent to take intensive "training courses" in the Deep South. The National Council of Peace and (dis)Order (NCPO) has confirmed the courses in the camps, which will be longer and more rigorous than the regular attitude adjustment series.
First they came for those who 'twerk'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/06/2017
» The police this week visited several cultural spaces, to appreciate the art and to mete out censorship. Next they'll give out art prizes -- to those who toe the line and serve the official ideology -- like the propagandistic communist states did in the last century.
Sucking the wind out of the elections
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/05/2018
» The verb of the week is "to dood".
Paper-thin alibi for kids' day gun play
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2018
» The irony must have been lost on him and on everyone around him. This Children's Day -- the day of machine guns, tanks and rocket launchers -- Thai kids will also get to take pictures with our cardboard prime minister, 10 standees in fact, in various poses and costumes deployed around Government House as special attractions.
Toon and Pai, the tale of our two Jesuses
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/12/2017
» Let's say, modestly, that Toon Bodyslam is Jesus Christ.
Learning to speak govt's language
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/08/2017
» The Newspeak is the Oldspeak. The New Testament is the Old Commandments. When they say the clock strikes 13, it means the clock strikes 13. The writing isn't in the law but on the wall.
Serving up cruelty, a taste of 'Thainess'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/08/2016
» The debate on the meaning of "Thainess" always fills me with patriotism and stomach ache. After last week's bombings, the army chief warned us to look out for people who wore hats, glasses and carried backpacks, because "Thais don't do that". The general meant well -- that we should watch out for suspicious agents of terror -- but the way he framed it was a crass, militaristic way of monopolising the definition of something that is shifting, malleable, even undefinable.
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".
Chaiyaphum owed more than lost data
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/08/2018
» In the age of video clips, one video clip is absent. At a time when we're inundated by cat clips, dog clips, accident clips, slap clips, brawl clips, grope clips, chase clips, murder clips -- when we even have clips recorded from the depths of a dark cave where light hardly reaches -- it's amazing that one crucial clip, shot in broad daylight, is missing, lost or made to be lost forever, along with transparency and maybe justice.
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.