Showing 101 - 110 of 288
Vote displays regime's new take on reality
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/07/2016
» Gabriel Garcia Marquez said it best: "When you reach absolute power, there is no contact with reality.""A powerful person, a dictator, is surrounded by interests and people whose final aim is to isolate him from reality."
All aboard for a 'Thai-Thai' referendum
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/07/2016
» The word "Thai" means "free". But when you repeat the syllable and say "Thai-Thai" (with a dismissive laugh), suddenly it means "fake" -- it means we've bent whatever rule the world has to make it suitable to our temperament, emotion and impulse. For example, when you're not sure if your principle is solid, your stance firm, your democracy authentic, or your coup justified, there's a simple way to shut down the argument: just say it's baab Thai-Thai, "in the Thai way". Then, if everything is not forgiven, at least it's understood.
Losing faith in the laws of the land
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/06/2016
» Lawlessness is the new law. What's that term they're now using? "The new normal" -- right, say it even when there's nothing new and everything abnormal. But it's something more primitive that's making a screaming comeback.
Fed up to our eyeballs of the aqua-calypse
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2016
» When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.
Openness is not a pretext for exclusivity
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/07/2016
» A few years ago in my neighbourhood there was a Kurdish migrant. Not Iranian, not Iraqi, not Turkish, he would tell you, but Kurdish, the stateless ethnic group wedged between unsympathetic nations. His name was Abbas.
Clowning around is no joke anymore
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/04/2016
» When humour is outlawed, what's left? When humorists, satirists and clowns are not safe from dictatorial fury, who is? Mockers jailed, jokers scolded, caricaturists threatened, sometimes by words, sometimes by pre-dawn commando raids, without warrants, as if they were hunting armed terrorists. That's how 10 people were carried off by uniformed officers on Wednesday, a few of them guilty of running a satirical Facebook page spoofing the PM. Yesterday, the military court denied them bail.
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?
Charter tune plays like a broken record
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/06/2016
» One song is championed, the other outlawed. One song hides its prejudices in the subconscious, the other clear in its messages. Both songs are about the referendum. That is, in case we still have the referendum, because it's almost safer now to bet on Albania winning Euro 2016 than on our slippery Aug 7 poll taking place.
Punishment that doesn't fit the crime
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/05/2016
» There's crime and there's punishment. In Dostoevsky's novel, crime is punishment. In Thailand, halted at the crossroads of history, the relationship between the two is confusing, sometimes absurd, and mostly impenetrable.
Sandcastles in sky and 'our' Leicester win
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/05/2016
» So unsure of ourselves, we grab a straw and think it is a rope. So unconfident of our place in the world, we find an excuse to vaunt it as national pride. Sandcastles? Maybe, and while everyone enjoys building sandcastles, only children think they're real and want to live out their lives in one.