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.

Hugo Chavez Endorses #OccupyWallStreet

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Oct. 11, 2011 3:40 AM PDT

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

In a moment that Sean Hannity couldn't have scripted better himself, #OccupyWallStreet just found itself a new ally: Hugo Chavez. Venezuela's leftist leader threw his support behind the protesters during a televised palace meeting on Saturday, denouncing the "horrible repression" of the American people. #OWS has picked up praise and appearances from other controversial figures like demagogue Louis Farrakhan, professional alienator Michael Moore, and, uh... that Kanye West guy. But this is the first instance of a foreign strongman going to bat for the fledgling movement. Chavez also made sure to toss in a brief jab at President Obama's policy fumbles, Reuters reports:

"This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don't know how many are in prison now," Chavez said in comments at a political meeting in his Caracas presidential palace shown on state TV..."Poverty's growing, the misery is getting worse," he said, referring to the causes of the U.S. protests. "But that empire is still there, still a threat ... [President Barack] Obama is on his way down, for lots of reasons. He was a big fraud."

In his long, thuggish political career, Chavez has successfully cast himself as a populist, anti-imperialist crusader battling the purveyors of "savage capitalism"; so it's no huge shock that the Venezuelan president would jump at a chance to further highlight the consequences of capitalist excess. It's no shock, either, that the right-wing commentariat are giddily starting to seize the chance to tie #OWS protesters to the socialist authoritarian.

Obviously, Chavez's statement doesn't actually say anything about #Occupy Wall Street, as much as pundits on the right would like it to. Trying to discredit the entire protest movement as communist infiltration based on the comments of one Latin American head of state is almost like saying Nelson Mandela got it wrong because he palled around with Fidel Castro.

Given the fiercely anti-Wall Street nature of the protests, levelheaded progressive supporters would be foolish not to expect more unwanted endorsement from less-than-savory fellow travellers on the left. But as MoJo's Kevin Drum noted in a recent post, advocates of #OWS should learn to do what conservatives do when linked to extremists in the Tea Party: ignore, ignore, ignore:

If you go to any tea party event, you'll hear some crackpot stuff and see some people dressed up in crackpot costumes (tricorner hats etc.)...But does this scare off anyone on the right? It does not. They ignore it, or dismiss it, or try to explain it away, and then continue praising the overall movement...They know whose side they're on...[L]iberals need to take the same attitude. Are there some crackpots at the Occupy Wall Street protests who will be gleefully quoted by Fox News? Sure. Are some of the organizers anarchists or socialists or whatnot? Sure...But so what. Ignore it. Dismiss it. Explain it away...But don't let any of this scare you off.

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Coming Soon: The Great Armadillo Invasion of DC

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Oct. 7, 2011 2:13 PM PDT

If you're a DC resident, this roving armadillo is probably coming for your entire family.

Picture, if you will, the world's strangest horror movie premise: It's a crisp autumn in Washington, DC, Barack Obama is president, and the city's 600,000 unsuspecting residents are going about their daily business. Suddenly, out of nowhere, hordes of hungry, rugged armadillos from the deep South start taking over the metropolitan area, savaging private property in search of nourishment and generally wreaking havoc on the nation's capital.

The horror flick would have a strong environmentalist message to boot, because armadillo-mageddon is yet another side effect of anthropogenic climate change, which has forced the creatures to colonize northward.

And here's the scariest part: this B-movie scenario is actually about to go down in the real world. So, yeah ... brace yourselves.

DailyClimate.org reported in June that the armadillos, which have been "moving northward since [they] arrived in Texas in the 1880s and Florida in the 1920s," have taken the rising temperatures as a cue to migrate to previously uninhabited places like Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and other areas that are "totally unexpected," according to Colleen McDonough, a biology professor at Valdosta State University. Miles Grant at The Green Miles noted the story in a recent blog post, which the Washington Post then followed up on this week, noting that the armadillos are headed our way:

Biologists speculate that if the trend continues, the armadillo may soon be turning up in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, and even as far north as New Jersey. ...

[The armadillos] "can be fairly destructive to areas in their search to dig up delicious crawly treats," the Museum of Life and Science reported.

"Basically all we can do is ... sit back and measure the change as it happens," the University of Michigan's Philip Myers [said], "whether we like it or not."

The biggest threat the roving armadillos seem to pose is lawn damage (despite the mildly alarmist tone of the WaPo blog post). In fact, most people would probably get a kick out of watching packs of armadillos waddling down K Street. But there is a level of seriousness to the issue, as one-way animal migration caused by global warming presents real and persistent problems for ecosystems and local communities.

Still, sad as it it may be for Roland Emmerich, the DC armadillo invasion is probably not going to lead to an epic showdown between man and throngs of armored, placental critters.

"The Ides of March": Dark, Cynical Fun for Disillusioned Liberals

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Oct. 7, 2011 3:02 AM PDT

Ryan Gosling in the 2011 political thriller "The Ides of March"

The Ides of March

COLUMBIA PICTURES

101 minutes

George Clooney's latest directorial effort, The Ides of March, fits rather snuggly into the mood of the 2012 election season. Working off a script based on Beau Willimon's 2008 play Farragut North, Clooney & Co. serve up dirty politics, a pitiless primary, a candidate of hope and change, plenty of liberal angst, and—as an apparent throwback to the '90s—an intern-centric sex scandal.

The political thriller embeds the viewer in the war room of Democrat Mike Morris' presidential campaign during the final days before the decisive open primary in Ohio. In the heat of televised debates and media interrogation, Morris (played by Clooney, seasoned and stoic as ever) doesn't give off the faintest scent of a character problem. Morris—think an amalgam of Gavin Newsom, Barack Obama, and John F. Kennedy Jr.—openly brands himself as an atheist, an unabashed lover of green jobs, a foreign policy dove, and a tough opponent of the death penalty. But in spite of his considerable charisma and grassroots pull, he's stuck in a dead heat for the nomination, up against the safer, more traditional Sen. Pullman.

At the center of all of this is the Morris campaign's wiz-kid media consultant, Stephen Myers (a pitch-perfect Ryan Gosling), a rising star in the Democratic Party and a savvy practitioner of the backroom ballet of scuzzy politics. But sometime during the election cycle, Myers passionately bought into the governor's rhetoric, sucking down the "delicious" Kool-Aid of the Morris camp. "I don't have to play dirty anymore," Myers proudly swears. "I got Morris!"

Aaaand…cue the playing dirty. (Spoilers follow.)

Channeling the dark reality of American politics, The Ides of March goes from idealism to opprobrium faster than you can spell "Yes We Can."

As Myers finds himself at the heart of a devastating scandal, his idealistic chimera caves in on him from every angle. Eventually, the hotshot strategist has to come to terms with the sad realization that Morris might be just as much of a cold, ruthless crook as the next electable candidate. Predictably, Myers starts rapidly swapping out his starry-eyed outlook and loyalty for career moves and personal vendettas. Gosling, who scored major indie points for his work in compelling, low-budget fare like The Believer and Blue Valentine, handles his character's moral degeneration with precision and a chilling, poker-faced drive.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

The Onion Predicts the Future: Al Qaeda vs. 9/11 Truthers

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Oct. 3, 2011 6:31 AM PDT

A very blunt sticker from the 9/11 Truth movement.

The website of Inspire, a English-language propaganda magazine believed to be run by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (and spearheaded by the recently assassinated, tech-savvy cleric Anwar al-Awlaki), took a shot at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week for intimating that 9/11 was an inside job. In an interview with the AP during his visit to the UN General Assembly last month, Ahmadinejad said that "[a] few airplanes without previous coordination known to the security forces and the intelligence community in the United States cannot become missiles and target the heart of the United States," and also suggested that he, as a former civil engineer, believed it was entirely possible that the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition. (David Corn has a nice piece on the dangers of trutherism here.)

In response, an irate Al Qaeda op-ed writer took to the magazine's website to push back against the notion that the Sunni militant group wasn't the sole perpetrator of mass murder on 9/11. Abu Suhail, the article's author, begins his rebuttal with (of all things) a blunt appeal to "logic":

Why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?...For Iran, anti-Americanism is merely a game of politics. It is anti-American when its suits it and it is a collaborator with the U.S. when it suits it.

Suhail goes on to write that the Iranian regime and Shiites are envious of Al Qaeda's "success" and that they wish to "discredit Sept. 11 [with] conspiracy theories" because they only pay "lip-service to jihad against the Great Satan."

Iran's state-owned news network Press TV then fired back by regurgitating Ahmadinejad's Truther-esque statements in a piece published on Thursday, which asserted that "reports released by al-Qaeda are usually believed to be produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency." Here's an excerpt from the article that reads like it was copy-and-pasted directly from a "Loose Change" video:

There is evidence indicating that once the twin towers were hit by the planes, their foundations were blown up so that they would collapse. The archive files on 9/11 attacks also suggest that the odds are that the Pentagon was struck by missile not plane...[T]here has been no convincing evidence that a number of young Arab people could have masterminded such attacks especially since they could have not known how to fly fully automated airplanes.

The Al Qaeda/Iran back-and-forth also serves as another example of how The Onion can pretty much predict the future. Remember the eerily prescient piece on George W. Bush reviving war, jingoism, and economic recession...published in January 2001? Well, here's a video from early 2008 in which an Al Qaeda fighter debates a 9/11 conspiracy theorist:

"How would you like it if you spent, you know, two months in a moutain cave, sleeping on rocks, planning something really special, only to have someone take the credit away from you?"

Sound familiar?

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Brown Lloyd James: Lobbying for Backers of a Terrorist Group

The international PR firm that repped Libya's Moammar Qaddafi and Syria's Bashar al-Assad takes on a new controversial client: supporters of the Iranian opposition outfit Mujahideen-e-Khalq.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Oct. 3, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

MEK supporters rally in front of the US State Department on Aug. 26, 2011.

MEK supporters rally in front of the US State Department on August 26.

Over the years, the Iranian opposition group and State Department-listed terrorist organization Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) has won a bizarro patchwork of high-profile supporters. John Bolton, Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.), big-time Republican lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, Tom Ridge, Howard Dean, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel have all called on the US government to stop treating the MEK, also known as The People's Mujahideen of Iran, as a terrorist group. This obscure Paris-based outfit—labeled a cult by its critics—that has assembled such an impressive roster of backers now also has the help of Brown Lloyd James, a major international PR firm with a track record of taking on controversial clients.

Also read: Six repressive rulers who hired PR firms to help clean up their imagesIn late August, hundreds of MEK supporters descended on Washington, protesting the group's foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) listing in front of the State Department with attendees yelling slogans like "We want justice, we want peace, we want MEK off the list!" Speakers including former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and ex-Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell held forth on why they believe the group is the best hope for secular democracy and human rights in Iran. (The MEK's FTO status is currently being considered by a court-mandated review.)

The well-organized event and high-profile speakers indicated the kind of large-scale, well-funded MEK lobbying enterprise that has been suggested by various media outlets. Jila Kazerounian, one of the rally's press liaisons, was quick to quash that notion. "There is no MEK lobby, that you read about in these articles," she said. "The closest thing we have to a lobby is the money from grassroots supporters; these Iranian Americans—educated, doctors, businessmen, lawyers, young, old." Nevertheless, in the thick of the crowd was a Brown Lloyd James account executive who told me he was taking notes on the rally for his superiors in Manhattan.

In May 2011, the firm was hired by a Germany-based MEK backer named Ali Taslimi working on behalf of Camp Ashraf, a refugee camp in Iraq north of Baghdad that houses over 3,000 Iranian MEK members and supporters. For an initial fee of $40,000, Brown Lloyd James signed on to provide political consulting services and "a broad range of public relations services for the months of May and June 2011" to Camp Ashraf, which is officially listed as the client.

[Read the full article]