Showing 111 - 120 of 288
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".
Overhauling our Newspeak vocabulary
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/03/2016
» Since we’ll be stuck with the regime for another 20 months or so (a conservative guesstimate) it’s time to update our glossary of post-coup Newspeak. From “mafia” to “public broadcaster” and “Patriotic pop culture”, almost every day we see an exciting addition to the dictionary of surreal meanings in our life under the marvellous junta.
'Superheroes' fail to rescue democracy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/03/2016
» We thought it would be Batman v Superman: Yawn of Justice. But it turned out to be a cut-rate spectacle performed on a sidewalk by inept actors. We thought it would be a bout between the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), a contest of will and superpower. But then it revealed itself to be a badly scripted soap opera executed by elderly actors who read their lines without a wink.
Giving us a bit of hope would be a real coup
Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/04/2016
» The military is riding red-hot TV ratings, proving once and for all that uniformed men are truly desirable. No, not the Thai military — sunburnt, humourless and eternally puzzled. I mean the South Korean military pretty boys, unblemished by war, unperturbed by earthquakes and other calamities — those military men in Descendants of the Sun, our Dear Leader Prayut Chan-o-cha's favourite show.
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.
'No' drama being played out in real life
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/04/2016
» In October 1988 there was a national referendum. A military dictator, under pressure from the international community after years in power, years of human rights violation, abductions and forced disappearances, held a plebiscite where citizens could go to the poll and tick "yes" or "no".
The premier and our age so full of fury
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2016
» ‘Angry people are not always wise,” Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice.
Righteous women sock it to ‘big men’
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/02/2016
» Big men beware, for the strongest political statements this week came from women. First off: Beyonce at the Super Bowl halftime gig, where the singer smuggled in Black Panther iconology and a nod to Malcom X in a traffic-stopping spectacle that showed how pop could rattle the establishment. Coming in second, with less coverage though with go-hard-or-go-home directness, was Madonna at her first concert in Bangkok on Tuesday night. “When those fascist dictators posing as righteous men come for you with their big leather boots to shut you up,” she belted out to the well-heeled crowd, “you’d better be prepared to fight for what you believe in.”
Of military, monks and an unholy mess
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/02/2016
» It was a match made in heaven, if heaven had a wrestling match. A few hundred monks from the Sangha Buddhist Alliance faced off with 150 soldiers on Monday at Phutthamonthon park, saffron vs green, tonsured vs crew-cut, as a mini brawl broke out between the two sides over the contested supreme patriarch nomination. Choice photos show a monk head-lock a soldier, jujitsu-style, while soldiers were blocking the angry brethren from entering the park. It was an unholy mess. I thought we were watching news from Myanmar, only that Myanmar seems peaceful these days.
Our state of indefinite transition
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/02/2016
» We feel like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, a man stuck in a long transit, and not just any long transit but a perpetual transit in a storm-whipped airport, our boarding pass torn to shreds and our destination — is this destiny? — marked with the sign “indefinite delay”.