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.

My Taxpayer-Subsidized Manicure at the Senate Salon

A trip to the underground barber shop where the world's greatest deliberative body gets its budget cuts.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 12:14 PM PDT

Tucked away in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building is a small, secretive corner of the upper chamber of Congress. No interviews with staff are permitted. Photography is not allowed inside and film crews are barred. Virtually all inquiries from journalists are shot down. As one employee furtively explains when I visit the facility, "We're not allowed to talk about anything that goes on here."

This is Senate Hair Care Services, the official barbershop and salon of the world's greatest deliberative body. To reach it, customers must navigate past the office of freshman Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a canteen, the air-conditioning division, and a cluttered message board advertising guitar lessons and martial-arts classes. The joint is lined with creaky wooden chairs and features a shoeshine station that looks like it fell out of the 1930s. The walls are decorated with photographs and head shots of current and former senators, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Glenn, and John F. Kennedy. A basic trim goes for $20. The "Royal Treatment Facial and Shave" costs $30. A perm is $75.

Lately, the barbershop has taken heat for its cost to the American taxpayer—and a renewed push to privatize has begun. "It's time," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime client of the salon, told the New York Times. "In fact, I was talking to some of my friends there the other day, and they said they recognized too that the time has come."

When I stop by on a Friday afternoon, a manicurist takes me into a corner and asks me what I'd like.

"Give me what John Kerry used to get! Or give me 'The Ted Cruz.' Or…how do you do Kelly Ayotte's nails?" She chuckles and gently reminds me that she can't discuss which famous cuticles she has or hasn't buffed and polished.

[Read the full article]

Front page image: Library of Congress
Calhoun: Fotosearch/Getty Images, Burnside: Library of Congress, Kennedy: Library of Congress, Thompson: AP Photo, Biden: Brian Synder/Reuters, Edwards: Mike Segar/Reuters, Sen. Strom Thurmond: Larry Downing/Reuters, Hutchison: US Congress, Paul: US Congress

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Drone Strikes on Hackers?

If you're the bad guy from "Skyfall" during a war, then yes, NATO commanders could very well destroy you.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Mar. 28, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

aurin/Shutterstock (drone); Malchev/Shutterstock (hacker)

If you're a hacker living in your mom's basement causing trouble for a world power, can NATO call in an air strike to put a stop to your cybermischief?

That was one question raised this month with the release of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, a NATO-commissioned handbook that could be the first step toward codifying the rules under which NATO members will wage cyberwarfare in future conflicts. The project had the input of the International Committee of the Red Cross and US Cyber Command.

The Tallinn Manual is not NATO doctrine; it is the result of a three-year project funded by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and conducted by 20 legal experts working in a private capacity. The document could very well influence future rules of engagement for NATO and governments around the world. But for now, it's a scholarly endeavor; a follow-up three-year project, which digs even deeper into questions pertaining to cyberoperations and state responses, is in the works.

The manual addresses a whole host of potential wartime issues, but the part that got the most attention starts on page 104. Here's a screenshot:

ccdcoe.org

When details of the manual were first reported in the Guardian last week, the rule was widely interpreted as NATO declaring war on hackers and civilian hacktivists. But in terms of wartime precedent, there's nothing unique about NATO's "Rule 29"; civilians who directly participate in hostilities have long been deemed legitimate battlefield targets. So of course the same principle would apply to a hacker in an armed conflict, if the hacker's actions rose to the level of violence. "If someone is causing planes to crash [in a war] using a computer, it's not really all that different if they're using a computer rather than some other tool," Julian Sanchez, a Cato Institute research fellow specializing in technology and civil liberties issues, says. "So, sure; go after Alan Cumming," referring to the actor's character Boris Grishenko, a backstabbing and chauvinist computer programmer targeted by James Bond and the CIA in Goldeneye.

[Read the full article]

The Latest Conservative Outrage Is About Duck Penis

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Mar. 26, 2013 7:19 AM PDT

The $16 muffin ain't got nothing on duck penis.

On Monday afternoon, FoxNews.com posted this poll to its opinion section:

The Yale animal behavior study, titled "Conflict, Social Behavior and Evolution," is headed by Dr. Richard Prum and Dr. Patricia Brennan. FoxNews.com

News of Duckpenisgate was broken to a shocked and outraged nation by CNSnews.com, a conservative news site run by the Media Research Center, an organization dedicated to raging against secularism and the mainstream media. From there, Fox Nation and Fox News radio host Todd Starnes picked up on the duck penis/federal waste exposé. The duck penis news easily found its way onto other conservative outlets such as Human Events and birther website WorldNetDaily.

If you think that less than $400,000 spent on a scientific study is a prime example of waste, it's worth noting that that's roughly 0.0000001 percent of what the federal budget is likely to be in 2013. Also, the study, funded by the National Science Foundation (a government agency responsible for assigning billions of dollars to research and education), is not actually a waste of tax dollars. Science writer Carl Zimmer explains:

Studying animals is also a way for us to look in the evolutionary mirror. We share a common ancestor with other animals, and the same kinds of evolutionary processes play out in both us and them. Now, you may wonder what ducks—with gigantic cork-screw-shaped penises and a gigantic cork-screw-shaped reproductive tracts—could possibly have to do with us. The manifestation of sex evolution may be different in different species. But the process is similar.

As in many other species, the evolution of ducks has been driven in part by something call[ed] sexual conflict...Other scientists first explored sexual conflict in many other species first—species including ducks. That's just how science works, no matter what culture warriors may claim.

(For related reality checks, click here, here, and here.)

There's really no reason whatsoever for any of the right wing's snarky outrage, no matter how ridiculous federally abetted duck-penis research may sound.

But hey, things could always be worse. It's not like we're all freaking out over how much it cost for the vice president to stay at a hotel in Europe, right?

Right?

UPDATE: My colleague Kate Sheppard reminds us why Republicans (particularly Todd Akin) should love duck penis.

The US Has Officially Transferred Controversial Bagram Prison to the Afghan Government

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Mar. 25, 2013 12:01 PM PDT

An aerial shot of the Parwan Detention Facility in 2009. US Army Corps of Engineers

On Monday, the US military handed over the Parwan Detention Facility (a.k.a. the Bagram military prison) to the Afghan government. It was the last prison in Afghanistan still under American control. The transfer ceremony took place at the detention facility—renamed the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan—as US Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was in charge of transferring the facility at the ceremony.

Al Jazeera English reports:

Afghanistan has taken full control of Bagram military prison from the United States, as US-led forces wind down more than a decade of war.

The handover on Monday follows an agreement reached after a week of negotiations between US and Afghan officials, which includes assurances that inmates who "pose a danger" to Afghans and international forces will continue to be detained under Afghan law...The United States last year agreed to hand over responsibility for most of the...detainees at the prison to Afghanistan and held a transfer ceremony in September.

US soldiers remained at the prison, however, and controlled the area around it.

The detention center, located near the US-run Bagram military base north of Kabul, holds over 3,000 prisoners, the vast majority of whom were already under Afghan control. About three dozen non-Afghan detainees will stay under American control. Transfer of control has been one of messier issues of contention between Kabul and Washington as most US forces prepare for an exit in 2014. Though the facility never enjoyed the same kind of name recognition as Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, it was at the center of major controversies and allegations of torture and human rights abuses. Here is some essential background on the detention center and the Bagram air base:

Your Guide To Al Pacino Screaming, From "Dog Day Afternoon" to David Mamet's New HBO Film "Phil Spector"

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Sat Mar. 23, 2013 3:59 PM PDT

Al Pacino and Helen Mirren in HBO's Phil Spector

Phil Spector
HBO Films
91 minutes

Al Pacino yells a lot in this movie. Granted, that could be said of any number of Al Pacino movies.

Phil Spector, which premieres Sunday, March 24 at 9 p.m. ET, is the second time in three years that Pacino has starred in a Barry Levinson -produced HBO movie in which he plays a highly controversial real-life figure who ends up going to jail. (The other being 2010's You Don't Know Jack, for which he won an Emmy for his portrayal of physician-assisted suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian.) This time around Pacino is the eponymous record producer, the unhinged musical genius behind the "Wall of Sound" studio production technique—a thickly layered sound heard on classics like The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and The Beatles' "The Long and Winding Road." Spector had long enjoyed a reputation for being a lunatic; his eccentricities were often eclipsed by allegations of a pattern of violence against women. Less appalling tales involve him doing things like holding The Ramones at gunpoint during a recording session in 1979.

All his wild and vicious behavior culminated in the shooting death of actress/model Lana Clarkson at his California mansion in 2003. For this, Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009, and sentenced to 19 years to life.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]