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.

What Taliban Ringtones Tell Us About The Afghan War

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Dec. 30, 2011 5:06 AM PST

"Taliban ringtones."

Right off the bat it sounds like a laughable rumor, perhaps on par with urban legends involving Hello Kitty cocaine. Sadly, the reality of Taliban cellphone jingles isn't a joke at all to the people of Afghanistan—and can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Afghan shopkeeper Nasratullah Niazai has developed a brisk new business over the past year. For about $2 a pop, he uploads into customers' cellphones a collection of Taliban songs and ringtones...[T]he songs and ringtones romanticizing the insurgents' jihad against the infidel invaders serve as potentially lifesaving travel insurance for Kabulis who brave increasingly perilous countryside roads.

Sentries at improvised Taliban checkpoints, some only an hour's drive away from central Kabul, routinely check travelers' cellphones. As a result, government officials, police, soldiers, security guards, university students, translators for Western companies, construction workers and scores of others go to extraordinary lengths to scrub their phones of any evidence of links to the coalition and the Afghan government—and to masquerade as Taliban sympathizers.

The WSJ report cites the expanding industry of Taliban songs, chants, and ringtones—a Taliban spokesman claims that insurgents manage dozens of singers "each of whom produces on average of one 12-song album every month" to help "ensure that people don't turn to ungodly secular music." Much of the lyrical content focuses on lessons in Islamism and "bravery, manliness and protecting the country from the invaders," and many of the top-selling tunes are sung by kids with "beautiful and attractive voices."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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The Worst (and Best) War-on-Xmas News of 2011

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Dec. 22, 2011 3:30 AM PST

It's been a frustrating, gruelingly partisan, and very weird year in America. Pizza slinger extraordinaire Herman Cain actually rose to the top of the 2012 Republican presidential crop. The Obama administration felt compelled to assure us that war with alien life forms is not imminent. People freaked out over bestiality in the military. And let's not forget that Rocky is now being turned into a damn musical.

Surely, this holiday season is set to offer some semblance of calm and harmony, right? A few moments free from the year's deluge of political cheap shots and cultural mayhem?

Not on your life.

Here's a round-up of the 2011 Christmas season's strangest (and most painfully delightful) news stories, including the Michigan-Wisconsin mitten war and Santa Claus' machine-gun-fest for kids.

1. Conservatives Wage War on Obama's War on Christmas Trees

The narrative went something like this: Economic times are tough. Americans deserve a break during the holidays. Americans also deserve affordable prices on their Christmas trees. But the Obama administration is trying to slap on a new tax—on Christmas trees! Huh. Obama must really hate Christians, then. And Jesus. And America, too. Typical Kenyan Muslim. Aghghghahagh!!!

Cue Heritage Foundation blogger—and former legal counsel to Dick Cheney—David Addington, who posted in early November:

Just because the Obama Administration has the legal power to impose its Christmas Tree Tax doesn't mean it should do so.

The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do?"

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

Bankers, Billionaires Try to Form Movement Against OWS

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Dec. 21, 2011 10:47 AM PST

"I got your job creation right here."

Whaddaya know? It seems the rich now want to eat the folks who want to eat the rich. Wrap your head around this Bloomberg report:

Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors' conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.

"Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and because you're rich you're bad, I don't understand it," the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. "Sometimes there's a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole."

Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

If successful businesspeople don't go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, "they deserve what they're going to get," said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at "shaping the national agenda…"

Several irate members of the Job Creators Alliance were interviewed for this piece and discussed how upset they are about Dodd-Frank, OWS agitators, and populist rhetoric coming from the left. "Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let's call it an attack on the very productive," John A. Allison IV, a director of BB&T Corp. (BBT) and a professor at Wake Forest University's business school, told Bloomberg. "This attack is destructive."

The fact that hedge fund managers and politically active gazillionaires are trying to organize a forceful push-back against Occupy Wall Street isn't all that surprising; what is somewhat surprising is how little Max Abelson, the author of the Bloomberg story, bothers to hide his disdain for his interview subjects. Virtually every dickish quote from a corporate counter-protester is undermined by the clause or sentence immediately following it. Read how the piece doubles as a crash course in unintentional lulz:

"If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit," said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.

Ken Langone, 76, [a] Home Depot co-founder and chairman of the NYU Langone Medical Center, said he isn't embarrassed by his success.

"I am a fat cat, I'm not ashamed," he said last week in a telephone interview from a dressing room in his Upper East Side home. "If you mean by fat cat that I've succeeded, yeah, then I'm a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat."

It gets worse.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

GOP Congressman Bashes Payroll Tax Cut Extension, (Mis)Quotes "Schoolhouse Rock"

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Dec. 21, 2011 6:11 AM PST

The true face of bipartisanship.

Behold: the unnerving fusion of Congress' payroll tax-cut debacle and '70s children's cartoons.

On Tuesday, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) contended that "[e]very single business group says a two-month extension [of the tax cut] is totally unworkable, and will do more harm than good." Hensarling's comments came after the GOP House leadership had decided on Monday night to vote to appoint conferees instead of actually voting on the Senate compromise.

"Since the dawn of the republic, these are how differences are settled between the House and Senate," Hensarling condescendingly insisted on the House floor. "If you don't remember your civics 101, maybe if you have small children like I do, you can go back and watch the Schoolhouse Rock! video. It's very clear."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Weirdest Thing About the North Korea Succession

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Dec. 19, 2011 6:02 AM PST

Same as the old bosses.

With the death of Kim Jong Il, questions regarding succession and the North Korean power structure are front and center. It's been nearly three years since Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il's third son, was nominated to succeed his father. On Monday, North Korea's state media referred to Kim Jong Un as the "Great Successor," and called on the people to "faithfully revere" the 20-something, Swiss-educated heir apparent who would guide them in changing "sadness to strength and courage [to] overcome [the day's] difficulties."

Kim Jong Un is the late dictator's youngest son. For a terse primer on why Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son, is not a shoo-in to become the next Supreme Leader, read the last lines of the AP obituary that ran Sunday night:

His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 38, is believed to have fallen out of favor with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001 saying he wanted to visit Disney's Tokyo resort. His two other sons by another woman, Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Un, are in their 20s. Their mother reportedly died several years ago.

Until this incident at what is now Narita International Airport, the older sibling had been expected to take the reins following Kim Jong Il's death. In the years since the 2001 micro-scandal, Kim Jong Nam has openly admitted that he is "not interested in the politics" of his country, and has immersed himself in a cushy lifestyle with two wives, a mistress, and a few kids stashed away in mainland China. It's funny to think that this despot-kin-turned-full-time-playboy (those are fairly typical of oppressive regimes) blew his chances at the big title because he wanted to lounge around a Disney tourist trap in Japan. (The faux pas seems even sillier when you factor in just how sensitive North Koreans are about anything involving the Japanese, seeing as how they haven't even started to get over the whole 35-years-of-brutal-occupation thing.)

So you can sort of thank the combined efforts of Mickey Mouse and 20th-century Japanese imperialism for ensuring the rise to power of Kim Jong Un. And thus a grad-student-aged, binge-drinking, 200-pound Kobe Bryant fan who reportedly has issues with hypertension and diabetes will likely become the next ruler of a nuclear-armed state that has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world today.

The more you learn about North Korea's totalitarian ruling family, the more they come off like a sick cross between The Godfather, Arrested Development, and certain scenes in Zoolander.