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Showing 11-20 of 81 results

  • News & article

    PM's plan to end gridlock is pie in sky

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2018

    » In three months, the angels will return to the clogged thoroughfares of Lost-Angel-ist. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, one who's never shy of making the impossible still impossible, has set his sights on, gasp, fixing Bangkok traffic, which is like untangling the Mobius strip or finding the end of Ariadne's thread. The soundbite-ready part of the PM's order is that he wants to see "tangible results in three months", which promptly sent related authorities scurrying in all directions to make it real.

  • News & article

    Beware the tears of a crocodile

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/06/2018

    » 'The tears were obviously theatrics. They're political tears. Stop crying and stop trying to fool the people. Stop using the same trick over and over for your political gains."

  • News & article

    Beauties and the beasts of coup regime

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/04/2018

    » It's just too rich to pass up, too weird and symbolic to ignore. The summit of the week between members of the girl group BNK48 and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was the moment when politics met pop-culture, when new met old, when cuties met coupmaker, when teens met tank, when beauty met … whatever.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    New political bloods meet baptism of fire

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/03/2018

    » The right is thrown into panic, like a sick man visited by an apparition of death. Sealed in a cage of obliviousness, they fear the galloping sound of apocalyptic horsemen. Or in their mind, the barbarians at the gate, rattling the rusty chain of power.

  • News & article

    Familiar faces or rogues gallery?

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2018

    » The entire wall is covered with faces -- a zoo of faces, if you will, each of them caged by a square frame. Naturally, upon entering Artist+Run Gallery visitors engage in a guess-who game: these are familiar faces of politicians, celebrities, athletes, monks and coupmakers, and yet some of them aren't instantly identifiable. Is that the government spokesman? From which coup? Who's that pretty face? Is that reddish thing Thaksin Shinawatra? That's easy -- it's Aung San Suu Kyi.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    'Mad clown' a mascot for failed govt PR

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/12/2017

    » In a rough week for the military government, the best response they could come up with was unveiling a nightmarish mascot right out of a horror movie. In a week that called for deft public relations manoeuvring, the government spokesman riled the Muslim South with disgraceful doublespeak. In a week that required a calm port in a storm, the prime minister's infamous blustering blew the top off every lid of decency.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    It's always sunset in our land of exiles

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2017

    » Either to Dubai or London, Yingluck Shinawatra has gone West and will likely live the rest of her life in exile. Either in an Emirati villa overlooking the Persian Gulf or a London penthouse by the Thames, she may be contemplating the difference between exile and banishment, or between exile and a holiday, but in the end it doesn't matter: She has fled, and her flight means the old power of Thailand has seen off the element regarded as threat. The ghost has been exorcised, the devil purged -- not once but twice, since there are two Shinawatras -- and now the military will charge ahead on their black horses as they gather us up and gallop us off into sunset (not sunrise).

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