Showing 121 - 130 of 288
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”.
Taking down Sorrayuth no graft panacea
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/03/2016
» Bring me the head of Sorrayuth. Bring me the severed head of the anchorman/briber, newscaster/corrupter, interviewer/public villain No.1. The hero became the anti-hero, and Sorrayuth Suthassanachinda had his head served on a silver platter after the collective wrath of graft-haters smoked him out of his chair. Corruption must be combatted, cheaters must be called out and shamed. Yes, we beat him, we beat corruption! And our weapons in this war are something equally disturbing, such as hatred, polemics and swift, satisfying anger.
Even 'khon dee' can need a stiff drink
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/01/2016
» Building a booze-free, smoke-free, sin-free society is a utopian dream of moralistic teetotalers, and we should sincerely admire ThaiHealth Promotion Foundation for trying. To pursue that dream, the embattled ThaiHealth goes to all lengths: flirting with conflicts of interest, questionable funding practices, and assuming a pose of moral superiority demonising drinkers, smokers and sometimes suggesting a brutal connection between the working class and alcohol binges.
The hateful eight gang up on one activist
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2016
» If your heart hasn’t been too hardened, you must have seen that the arrest of the student activist on Wednesday night was a foul act unjustified by law.
Thai film at Cannes a sign of our times
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» Writing from Cannes Film Festival, I’m intoxicated by the perfume from bare-shouldered fashion and by the transient bliss of art. What is cinema? At Cannes, the world’s most prestigious cine-circus, the definition is what you imagine it to be: here on the red carpet and in the screening rooms, cinema is art, commerce, money, glamour, fashion, politics, passion, activism, frivolity, national pride. Maybe something more. Take your pick.
Awaken to the dark side in our Star Wars
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/12/2015
» No Star Wars spoiler ahead.The evil Empire has morphed into the First Order, equally evil and prone to intergalactic massacres. The rebels have become the Resistance, which sounds better. Darth Vader has found his ideological protégé in a black-masked, breathy-voiced acolyte. The Stormtroopers turn out to be space Janisseries, plucked from their homes and trained to be guards and marauders. The politics of Star Wars is sketchy, childlike and classical: the light against the dark, the oppressed against the dictator, blue against red, democracy against fascism. The Force, dormant or awakened, is the supreme power that holds the galaxy together. The ultimate battle is to stop the dark side from monopolising that force and reigning in space through violence and terror.
Proustian questions for our leaders
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2015
» What is your idea of perfect happiness? When 99.5% of respondents in a government-sponsored poll think that the government is the best thing that ever happened for this country. Or maybe in the all of the universe, because such figures are even higher than God's rating.
Where history begins anew
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2016
» When does history begin? We are at the start of 2016, when it's still not too late to say Happy New Year, and our perception of time and space has hit a refresh button. The year, new and old, is a necessary illusion that gives us a sense of order in this disorderly universe. What has happened has become "history", but history is not always in the past, not always dictated by the BC, AD, the Buddhist BE or the Islamic AH.
Tabloid saga and our gang mentality
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2016
» The tabloid saga of the week is a slap-fest involving 30 people, mostly women, its flurry of glorious hair-pulling captured in a video clip. The cause is a triangulated romance between a young man and his two women, one of them a TV celebrity. Love hurts, as we teach our children, or it’s not love. But let’s pause and consider: what can a catfight, the first sensational, useless headline of 2016, tell us about the state of our national politics of the past decade? That we’re in a gang war, apparently.