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.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @swin24

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.

Gingrich's French Revolution Theory

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Sat Nov. 19, 2011 5:25 PM PST

Newt Gingrich.

The Thanksgiving Family Forum on Saturday wasn't really a debate per se; it was more of a "Jesus is even better than Ronald Reagan" powwow hosted by noted pollster Frank Luntz.

For instance, Herman Cain said that people of faith "have been too passive" and that "we haven't fought back" enough for the right to "express [our] faith in any setting." He also inserted an applause line that took a swipe at the "political correctness police" who have allegedly kneecaped religious liberty in the country. That basically set the tone for the rest of the Republican candidate get-together (sans Mormons Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney).

Family values paragon Newt Gingrich followed-up with his patented critique of effete, soulless secularism, putting his background as a historian to good use:

"None of the Founding Fathers would have said education without character is useful; they would have said it was in fact dangerous," Gingrich said. He went on to assert that "what we have now [in American society] is an outgrowth of the French Revolution," which the former House Speaker defines as the wholesale "rejection of the larger world in favor of secularism." This is the same anti-faith decadence that pollutes the US court system, Hollywood, public education, and so on, Gingrich insisted.

Gingrich's effort to breathe new life into the so-called culture wars has been ongoing for quite some time now. His professed fear of America devolving into a "secular atheist country" was his go-to rhetoric since the beginning of the Obama era, and the book title To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine doesn't leave much to the imagination regarding where he stands on "values."

It's still worth noting that the latest supposed front-runner in the GOP 2012 field continues to claim that school teachers, activist judges, and George Clooney are all dragging American society right back into the dark ages of the Reign of Terror.

Perhaps all the comparisons to Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia were finally wearing a tad thin.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

Henry Kissinger Vents About "Self-Serving" Jewish "Bastards"

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Nov. 18, 2011 11:55 AM PST

Henry Kissinger.

Basically, here's Henry Kissinger doing his best Larry David.

The AP reports, based on recently released State Department documents from late 1972:

The White House...sought to assure the American Jews that Nixon was very concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews, had taken up the issue with Soviet leaders directly...A White House official, Leonard Garment, saying he was flooded with letters and phone calls with Jewish appeals, asked Kissinger for help and guidance...According to transcripts released by the State Department, Kissinger...said to Garment: "Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?" Kissinger is Jewish.

Garment, also Jewish, replied: "None in the world."

At this point, Kissinger was quoted as saying "What the hell do they think they are accomplishing?...You can't even tell bastards anything in confidence because they'll leak it." But Kissinger said he would take up the issue with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and also meet again with Jewish leaders. "They ought to remember what this administration has done," he said.

Let's take a second to review the historical context: Following Israel's decisive victory in the Six-Day War, there was a massive uptick in the emigration of Soviet Jewry from the USSR to the Jewish homeland. The desire to resettle was also fueled by the fact that anti-Semitism—in media, the education system, the work force, and so on—was, at the time, pervasive in the Soviet Union. Due to the USSR's mangled, biased emigration process, many Jewish leaders, including then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, sought the influence of the Nixon White House to secure safe travel for thousands of Russian and Eastern Bloc Jews.

There you have it: the bastard-ly, self-serving (and apparently loose-lipped) impulse of the Jew to escape mass persecution and cultural eradication.

Given some of Kissinger's other Nixon-era remarks about Jews, these latest revelations aren't particularly shocking. In December 2010, the New York Times reported that in the freshest batch of audio tapes released by the Nixon Library—which also include the former president making "disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary"—then-National Security Advisor Kissinger was recorded saying the following, after Golda Meir's visit to the White House in March 1973:

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

So really, the latest Kissinger news is just more of the grotesque, unsettling same.

Obama Worth Less Than $51,000 in "Croc Attack Insurance"

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Nov. 16, 2011 11:00 AM PST

Cold-blooded. Reptilian. Assassin?

If Barack Obama were attacked by a man-eating crocodile during this week's visit to Australia, you'd think that his life would be worth significantly more than $51,000, right?

Right?

Well, AFP reports:

Obama will be the fifth president to visit...Australia, and his flying two-day visit will take in the staid capital Canberra as well as the Northern Territory town of Darwin, in the heart of "Crocodile Dundee" country.

Local firm TIO has snapped up the opportunity to insure the high-profile visitor, issuing a [sic] him with a Crocodile Attack Insurance policy which will pay out Aus$50,000 (US$50,870) if the president is fatally attacked by a reptile. ...

The company, which has been providing crocodile cover for more than 20 years, hopes to present a framed copy of the policy -- which features a menacing photo of the deadly predator -- to Obama in Darwin on Thursday.

Just to be perfectly clear, if the Secret Service can't prevent this from happening to the President of the United States...

...at least the First Family will be $50,870 in the black.

Thankfully, the chances of anyone (leader of the free world, or not) getting terminally wrecked by a croc in Australia are fairly slim, with an average of two reported fatalities each year. And if this BBC headline from summer 2010 is any indication—"Australian drunk survives attempt to ride crocodile"—Obama will have to do a little more than just show up to get assassinated by an Aussie crocodile.

Please Stop Using Justin Bieber in Your War Against Internet Censorship

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Nov. 15, 2011 4:00 AM PST

"Bieber not happy with Senator Amy!"

When he's not allegedly coming on to women decades his senior or using Twitter as a weapon, tween-pop icon Justin Bieber rages against the machine of congressional Internet censorship. During a radio interview in late October, Bieber forcefully opposed the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, or S. 978, a bill that would make unauthorized online streaming of copyrighted material a felony punishable by up to five years in the slammer.

The legislation, which could theoretically apply to people who remix or cover pop songs on their YouTube channel, is currently backed by the Obama administration and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)—whom Bieber singled out as someone who "needs to be locked up—put away in cuffs" for supporting S. 978.

"People need to have the freedom," Bieber said. "People need to be able to sing songs. I just think that's ridiculous... I check YouTube all the time and watch people singing my songs. I think it's awesome." (Here's an audio clip of the interview.)

Minus the call to have an extraordinarily popular lawmaker imprisoned for having an opinion, Bieber makes a decent point: The Commercial Felony Streaming Act is, at its core, terrible politics. Its vague phrasing—supposedly intended to target websites that rake in huge profits by illegally streaming copyrighted content—could potentially leave the door wide open for prosecuting this Korean kid for copyright infringement. Taken to its logical extreme, you'd have a new law that, in a digital era of viral videos and overnight crazes, is excessive (given laws already on the books) and completely unenforceable.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Arizona Cactus-Cat Crisis and the Media Frenzy

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Nov. 14, 2011 7:45 AM PST

"Cross me, and I'll mess you up."

Behold, the greatest use of AP column space that has ever been:

SAGUARO LAKE, Ariz. (AP) — A lot of cats get stuck in trees, but an Arizona kitty was perched atop a giant saguaro cactus for at least three days before finally coming down on its own.

Residents living in a desert area northeast of Phoenix noticed the black cat with white patches at the very top of the 30- to 40-foot cactus.

At times, the feline would stand up and survey the area, possibly trying to figure out how to get down — or how it got up there.

Helicopter video from ABC15.com...shows the cat eventually climbing down the cactus Friday. It started making its way down head-first before turning around and scooting backward. It finally took a big leap and landed on its feet before wandering into the desert.

The story was picked up by folks at the Washington Post, the UK's Daily Mail, the Chicago Tribune, UPI, Indiana's the News-Sentinel, Salon.com, and the Huffington Post, all of whom likely thought that the cat made for more compelling weekend news than yet another Republican debate.

Here is the ABC affiliate's helicopter footage (take a minute to absorb that: helicopter footage...) of the gripping climax of the great 72-Hour Saguaro Lake Cactus-Cat Crisis of November 2011: