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 Right's Obama Martial Law #Fail

No, President Obama is not coming to steal your house and take all the food out of your fridge.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Mar. 30, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

President Obama wants to conquer your farmland, plunder its resources, feast upon the contents of your refrigerator, and then draft you into slave labor for his aggressive war on Iran.

Such is the narrative that has emerged out of the right's latest phony freak-out about Obama's wielding of executive power. On March 16, the White House quietly released the details of an executive order titled "National Defense Resources Preparedness." The order authorizes the federal government to identify "requirements for the full spectrum of emergencies, including essential military and civilian demand," and to "control the general distribution of any material (including applicable services) in this civilian market."

It's your standard government readiness policy—nothing particularly exciting or groundbreaking. In fact, almost identical executive orders have been issued by administrations since the early days of the Cold War, including those of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dwight Eisenhower.

And some conservatives—who have previously accused Obama of wanting to confiscate their guns, ammo, Bibles, and even Cheerios and fishing rods—have taken this as one more assault upon individual liberty from a radical president. Because the order identifies essential items that should be stockpiled in extreme scenarios—from livestock and water to construction materials and pharmaceutical products—some on the right have sounded the alarm.

Late last Sunday, the Washington Times blasted out an email titled "Obama authorizes himself to declare martial law." The column's author, Jeffrey Kuhner (who has a habit of referring to the president as a neo-pagan Lenin), writes that the order represents "a sweeping power grab that should worry every American" that "one would expect to find in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela or Vladimir Putin's Russia." Kuhner posits that Obama is gearing up for a devastating transatlantic war with Iran, in which Tehran-sponsored Hezbollah cells would retaliate by bombing American cities.

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Go See "Wrath of the Titans"—Drunk

This movie scores a solid 3 out of 4 stars. If you're sozzled out of your skull.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Mar. 30, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Titaning.

Wrath of the Titans
Warner Bros. Pictures
99 minutes

Wrath of the Titans is a heaving headache of a movie. It's uninspired, tragically un-hip, and only a modest improvement over its limp snooze-fest of a prequel.

It ransacks Greek mythology, spoiling canonized sagas with 3-D hellfire, frantic deity-punching, and acute pointlessness. The enviable cast—featuring Danny Huston, Ralph Fiennes, Toby Kebbell, and Bill Nighy—sleepwalks through their lines and gestures, when they're not being upstaged by cudgelling CGI. The smash-and-flash, orchestrated by director Jonathan Liebesman, is a sad Xerox of Troy and that movie your college roommates couldn't stop quoting loudly. The script, written by three established screenwriters, is a labyrinth of suck. There is nothing in this movie that is even a sliver as cool as its rock n' roll trailer.

And after the film finally dodders to a close, you will walk away from it thinking one thing: Thank goodness I didn't watch that sober.

If you watch it dry, Wrath of the Titans nets 1 star...maybe 1.5 stars. But the movie scores a respectable 3 out of 4 if you see it blitzed out of your mind, in a chemically altered condition during which Cross of Iron and Soul Plane feel about equal in quality.

So I honestly recommend that you check it out; you just have to get drunk first—irreparably drunk. I'm talking, "I can't tell the difference between any of the Baldwin brothers anymore" drunk. Like, sloshed to the point where if you were, say, a film critic, the only note you'd be able to scribble out during the whole screening is this:

Due to these add-ons of bourbon, rice wine, rakia, Natty Light, and a CamelBak full of rum punch, this might end up being the most expensive movie ticket you'll ever buy. But in the end, it's pretty much worth it.

[Read the full article]

Iran War Watch: Azerbaijan Airbases and the Israeli Military

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Mar. 29, 2012 10:33 AM PDT

Are the United States and Iran on a collision course over the Middle Eastern country's controversial nuclear program? We'll be posting the latest news on Iran-war fever—the intel, the media frenzy, the rhetoric.

Senior US intelligence officials say that the Israeli military has recently gained access to airbases in the Republic of Azerbaijan, an independent Turkic state on Iran's northern border.

Foreign Policy's Mark Perry, who broke the story, explains what it means for the Israeli-Iranian standoff:

[A]ccording to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance—the security cooperation between the two countries—is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran...[F]our senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners...must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf—but one that could include the Caucasus.

[...]

It is precisely what is not known about the relationship that keeps U.S. military planners up at night. One former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as "just too chancy, politically." However, he didn't rule out Israel's use of Azeri airfields to mount what he calls "follow-on or recovery operations." He then added: "Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It's extremely dangerous."

In case you're curious, here's what an airbase in Azerbaijan looks like:

The Azerbaijani government flat-out denied the FP report on Thursday. Teymur Abdullayev, a spokesman for the country's defense ministry, called the allegations "absurd and groundless," and another senior official in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, vowed that "there will be no actions against Iran...from the territory of Azerbaijan."

Despite Baku's denials, this story will undoubtedly damage the already fraught relationship between Azerbaijan and its neighbor to the south. The Iranian government openly disapproves of Azerbaijan's friendly relations with Israel—the two countries' partnership includes over a billion dollars worth of arms shipments to Azerbaijan from the Jewish state—and Iranian authorities have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan of colluding with Israeli spies and assassins. Police in Azerbaijan this month arrested 22 terror suspects who were supposedly receiving marching orders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Meanwhile, Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz doesn't buy the speculation of an Israeli airstrike being launched out of an Azeri airbase:

[A] cursory glance at a map hardly bears it out. A range of American military experts claim that Azeri airfields would be invaluable for Israel as it would solve some of the fuel/range issues of a 2000+ km strike, they fail to address the problem of where the Israeli warplanes can fly to once they have refueled in Azerbaijan. There is no friendly route to fly back to Israel, except over Iranian or Turkish territory, hardly appealing alternatives once an attack has already been carried out and both countries will be on highest alert...Other uses proposed in the FP feature, using Azeri fields just in the case of emergency landings or using them to base search-and-rescue helicopters or reconnaissance drones, makes more sense.

Iran War Watch: The Wheat Import Strategy

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Mar. 27, 2012 10:59 AM PDT

Just in case, the government in Tehran is pursuing a number of avenues to prep for possible military confrontation with Israel and the United States: Airbone war games. Puffed-up rhetoric. Possibly raising some hell in the Strait of Hormuz.

Also, they're hoarding wheat—lots of wheat. Here's why this matters, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

Iran is ramping up imports of wheat, including rare purchases from the U.S., in a sign Tehran is building a strategic stockpile of grain in anticipation of harsher sanctions or even military conflict...Such a maneuver could bolster the Islamic regime at a time when the West is increasing pressure over Iran's disputed nuclear program, including curbing purchases of Iran's oil and freezing its government banks out of international networks.

Current U.S. sanctions allow companies to sell food to Iran. Access to wheat is crucial for the country, enabling it to prevent spikes in the cost of bread, a key staple among its 78 million citizens. Such spikes have in the past led to social unrest in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Iranians have also purchased wheat shipments from Brazil, Australia, Russia, Germany, and others over the past few months, and is in negotiations for what might be a three-million-ton buy from India, with imports on track to rise even more. The US Department of Agriculture estimates Iran will import 2 million metric tons of wheat through June 2012, which constitutes a tenfold jump from a February estimate, and enough to cover roughly 13 percent of Iran's annual consumption, according to data compiled by the USDA.

"With any number of unknowns out there—a potential attack on its nuclear facilities, the possibility that a different administration takes office in the United States—the regime is prudently laying aside [food] stocks in the event things go very wrong," said J. Peter Pham, a director with the Atlantic Council told Reuters.

But even in times that weren't marked by such bellicose rhetoric, the Iranian regime has been known to indulge in ramping up American imports. During the Bush years, US exports to Iran grew more than tenfold, including over $158 million worth in cigarettes. Other hot items include fur, perfume, military apparel, bras, and bull semen.

Hunger Games Film a Child-Slaughtering Time Waster

The much-hyped adaptation is a fatally dull exercise in contemporary dystopia.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Mar. 23, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

elizabeth banks jennifer lawrence the hunger games

Like I said, it's North Korea, but with white people.

The Hunger Games
Lionsgate
142 minutes

You know the feeling you get when you wrap a waist belt around your femoral artery and tauten it until you start to experience fatigue, discomfort, and extreme frustration? Such is the sensation derived from viewing the lavishly praised and mega-hyped adaptation of The Hunger Games.

The film—a big-budget production based on Suzanne Collins' young-adult bestseller—has already been touted as a lot of flattering things: An accessible, pop-culture-primed indictment of communal bloodlust and the totalitarian mentality. A feminist kill-fest. The next Twilight.

In one way or another, The Hunger Games does indeed hit all the above. But once you peel back the blockbuster ballyhoo, what you're left with is a surprisingly flat first installment in the inevitable series—one that neither cuts deep with its emotions, nor exhilarates with its carnage.

Some basics for those unfamiliar with the trilogy: The film follows the street-wise heroine Katniss Everdeen (played by gifted newcomer Jennifer Lawrence), who resides in District 12 of Panem, a dystopian realm comprising the cash-flush Capitol and an archipelago of impoverished, starving provinces. Government "peacekeepers" roam these "districts" to enforce President Snow's iron-fisted rule and cut out the tongues of dissidents who attempt to flee. The plebeians are forced to eat squirrel meat and stale bread. Meanwhile, everyone in the metropolis indulges in the finest wines and dresses like they're starring in Madonna's Super Bowl half-time show.

And as punishment for an armed rebellion against the plutocratic regime, the districts are required to annually fork over one girl and one boy, aged 12-18, to compete in a nationally televised contest that's sort of like Survivor: All-Stars meets the New Mexico State Penitentiary riot. The children are then shipped off to the Capitol, trained, groomed, and set loose in the unforgiving wilderness to hack each other to death until there's only one survivor.

So Panem is North Korea, but with white people and better reality TV.

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