Asawin Suebsaeng

Interactive Writing Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is the interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

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A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

"The Avengers": A Cripplingly Powerful Nerdgasm

You might have some trouble walking and need a cigarette once the end credits roll.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 4, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Marvel's The Avengers
Walt Disney Pictures
142 minutes

Dear comic book fans,

Take the frothy, industrial-strength nerdgasm you experienced the first time you watched Iron Man. Or the volcanic nerd-max you achieved on opening night of Thor. Or the patriotic nerd-OOOOOO-MG you embarrassingly sang out when you saw Captain America: The First Avenger in theaters.

Now double it.

That's what you get with Marvel's The Avengers, a rousing shot of popcorn flash, smooth wit, and accessible comic-book reverence.

For the past few summers, Marvel Studios has been pumping out adaptation after adaptation of the venerated Marvel Worldwide canon. The Avengers is the Traveling Wilburys of Marvel's superhero sagas—an ambitious, loud epic in which you get to see the all-stars, from Hawkeye to Black Widow, band together to defend the planet from high-powered space fascists.

The action kicks off when angry Norse god Loki (played by British actor Tom Hiddleston) teleports his way to North America in his quest to impose totalitarian rule on all humankind—"I am burdened with glorious purpose," he pronounces menacingly. It's hard to take this wannabe galaxy dictator seriously at first, mainly because he talks like Masterpiece Theatre and looks like a 30 Seconds to Mars music video. But he starts mass-murdering people with his vast arsenal of space powers, so the guy kind of demands attention. Thus enter the Avengers, a ragtag team assembled by S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (snake-punching virtuoso Samuel L. Jackson), to counter the onslaught. Here's a refresher on the crew:

Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.): The Randian badboy industrialist who takes a cavalier approach to flying around in a hot-red suit of armor, and neutralizing Islamists.
Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo): He uncontrollably turns green and causes billions of dollars worth in property damage. (Yes, Mark Ruffalo had to wear a leotard for his role.)
Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson): Master interrogator and kung-fu ass-kicker. She used to work for the Russians, now plays for team America. She somehow manages to wear high-heels even in the roughest instances of Avenger-ing.
Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner): Supposedly the world's greatest archer. Much like Black Widow, he has his fair share of covert ops/CIA malfeasance related skeletons in his closet.
Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans): A war hero who was injected with a performance-enhancing serum. He drop-kicked Nazis professionally back in the early '40s.
Thor, a.k.a. Thor (Chris Hemsworth): A benevolent Norse thunder-god. He wields a scary magic hammer. Also, he's the brother of space-Hitler Loki. This makes things awkward.

[Read the full article]

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Hitler, Obama Both Fond of Slogans

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue May. 1, 2012 2:37 PM PDT

"Forward!"

Hitler does not have a patent on adverbs.

It all started right after Team Obama debuted their new campaign's slogan: "Forward"—the long-awaited sequel to 2008's "Hope and Change." And in those seven letters, members of the conservative commentariat detected a whiff of totalitarianism.

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress editor Alex Seitz-Wald threw together a primer on the bizarre, petty, and not entirely unexpected freak-out. For example, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard criticized the president for having signed off on a word so closely linked to Chairman Mao's mass-murder-tastic Great Leap Forward. ("[P]erhaps President Obama might rethink this slightly creepy slogan," Kristol pondered earnestly.) Breitbart.com's Joel Pollak (this guy) wrote about how the seven-letter slogan is further proof that Obama's political heritage belongs to a long line of Communist tyrants. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit took Forwardgate as his cue to yet again draw the Obama-Hitler connection.

There you have it: The 44th President of the United States and his campaign staff like to use words. Communists and fascists throughout history were also known to have used words.

It's the same kind of bulletproof logic you'd get from Dave Chappelle's "Conspiracy Brother" in Undercover Brother.

Here are some other conclusions that follow the same line of reasoning that begot the Forward backlash. You can apply the formula to anyone, really.

Obama:

The White House/FlickrYou know who else liked dogs, don't you?

German Federal ArchiveSupermodels:

You know who else really loved horsies?

Biggie:

WikimediaYou know who else knew where Brooklyn at?

I think we're done here.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 1, 2012

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue May. 1, 2012 8:27 AM PDT

Sgt. 1st Class Raja Richardson, platoon sergeant with Company C, 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, Task Force 2-28, 172nd Infantry Brigade, leads a patrol across a ridgeline outside of Forward Operating Base Tillman. Photo by the US Army.

4 Things to Know About CISPA

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Apr. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

On Thursday, the House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR 3523) by a 248-168 vote. The bill, commonly known by its acronym, CISPA, aims to make it easier for government agencies and private industry to share information about cyber threats. But all that information-sharing worries privacy advocates and civil libertarians, who say the bill lacks safeguards against abuse. Supporters like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who introduced the bill last November, insist that it is a necessary step in cracking down on illegal hacking and foreign spying, and would not be used to target things like file-sharing sites and free speech on the internet.

Now that the bill has passed the House, the focus shifts to the Senate, which is crafting an alternate version of the bill that could be voted on as early as May. Here are four things to know about CISPA.

1. Those for, those against. The usual suspects on both sides—rights organizations, consumer groups, big business, telecommunications—came out to endorse or condemn the bill. Here are some big names that have issued ringing endorsements of CISPA:

…and some key players that have denounced the bill:

2. The vague language. As with charges leveled at other recent controversial pieces of legislation, much of the debate over CISPA is about what the language in the bill actually means. CISPA would allow and encourage companies and government agencies to share internet users' information with each other without court orders or subpoenas so long as the company or agency can cite a "cybersecurity purpose." Proponents say that this will allow companies facing online attacks to report intrusions to the government and get help promptly without having to worry about unnecessary red tape. Critics, however, say there is a substantial potential for abuse in the vagueness of the phrase "cybersecurity purpose." "Right now, companies can only look at your communications in very specific, very narrow situations," Trevor Timm, a blogger and activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Daily Beast on Monday. "The government, if they want to read them, needs some sort of warrant and probable cause. This allows companies to read your communication as long as they can claim a cybersecurity purpose."

It's widely known that many major companies—including Facebook and Time Warner, for instance—already share plenty of user information with federal authorities in the interest of monitoring for national security threats or cyber crime. The concern here is that the bill would allow authorities to disregard the standard practice of subpoenas and court orders in such scenarios. "Essentially, this bill would preempt…other laws related to privacy," Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Mother Jones.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

"Safe": The Dumbest Critique of Extrajudicial Killing Ever Made

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Apr. 27, 2012 2:40 AM PDT

"If you skirt due process, I will come for you."

Safe
Lionsgate
95 minutes

Trying to decipher the myriad plot twists of Safe is a lot like attempting to eat your own head: You won't be able to do it, and passersby will point and laugh if you try. The new movie is the latest entry into the Jason-Statham-attacking-everything-that-moves subgenre. But unlike most of the other brainless fare to which the actor has lent his considerable thew, this film seems hell-bent on pummeling the audience with confusion.

The premise of Safe is, on its surface, straight and clean: Statham stars as Luke Wright, an ex-NYPD superstar who, on a whim, rescues a precocious 12-year-old Chinese girl he's never met before. Since the child is being chased by Russian mobsters, Triad gangsters, and crooked cops through the mean streets of Brooklyn, Wright's act of spontaneous altruism commences a citywide mad-dash of headshots and roundhouse kicks. The stage appears set for a by-the-numbers, harmless thriller in which we get to sit back and watch Jason Statham kick the shit out of nameless, unsympathetic henchmen.

If only writer-director Boaz Yakin had been content to stick with the formula. Instead, the film devolves into a needlessly complicated and bizarrely recounted story that ties together organized crime, New York politics, the War on Terror, human trafficking, and covert extrajudicial hit-jobs into one long stretch of garbled dialogue. By the time the credits roll, it's exceedingly difficult to remember who blackmailed whom, which criminals were in bed with which government officials, and who exacted revenge upon whom. What it all boils down to is that greedy CIA agents control everything in New York City, from the elite police squads to the mayor's mansion.

Out of his bungled script, Boaz Yakin did manage to set one new standard: He created the shallowest, sloppiest, most incoherent critique of American power that has ever emerged from Statham-based cinema. The final product looks something like what you'd get if you merged The Trials of Henry Kissinger with Tony Scott's Domino.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]