• OPINION

  Religious fervour serves no god well

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018

  » Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.

• OPINION

  'Bad Genius' exception to Thai film rule

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/10/2017

  » She cheats because she wants money, and because she believes the system has cheated her first. No politics please! The exciting Thai pop-culture news of the week was the box-office triumph of the Thai film Chalard Games Goeng (Bad Genius in English), an exam-cheating thriller packed with heart-racing set pieces in which bright students orchestrate an elaborate international cheating ring, outsmarting the system on the expense of their moral equanimity. When you're 17, perhaps that's a small price to pay.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  Superficiality takes aim at Scala

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/06/2016

  » There is a mix of rage, gloom and longing as, once again, the fate of the Scala theatre in Siam Square is questioned. To wreck is easy, to save is hard. The jackhammer screeches louder than nostalgia. Will the Scala, that quaint majesty stuck in a prime retail area, that solemn granddaddy in the flashy, messy, heavily commercialised quarter, be next to fall?

• OPINION

  Play censor ball well, Mr Zuckerberg

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/05/2017

  » Dear Mr Zuckerberg,

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  Hanuman help us from a 'happy' ogre

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/09/2016

  » The crusader has returned to the gate, ready to crush the infidels. I thought the new buzzword was "Thailand 4.0", whatever that means, and yet this week we're still arguing if a portrayal of a mythical ogre in a music video is blasphemy, a transgression against the high culture of Siam, the culture that stares down from a pedestal, that exists like a taxidermied animal on the altar of an abandoned temple.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  In fighting IS, don't mimic its evil ways

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2015

  » It was a sad week, a week of satanic beheadings, then the barbarous immolation, executed and filmed by that godless bunch as if in mockery of Hollywood war movies. A week of moral anger and global blood lust, from Amman to Tokyo by way of Iraq. A week of sadness that quickly morphed into something like vengeance, as war cries sounded over the medieval fortresses of Jordan and Egypt and echoed to the South China Sea.   

• OPINION

  A glossary of 2014 Newspeak

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/11/2014

  » Constitution (noun/slang): A piece of paper torn to shreds every few years by gun-toting soldiers who perform such deeds on national TV. Usually, a new piece of paper is written shortly afterwards, invariably by a clique of handpicked Samaritans, legislative superheroes, heartbroken mavericks and all-purpose sycophants.

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