THIS MODERN WORLD

From the Valley Advocate:

Meanwhile, Tomorrow’s This Modern World cartoon remains one of the few artistic endeavors that perfectly captures the cocktail of disgust, frustration, anger and bitter amusement that’s been the necessary tipple for many of us who’ve been along for the crazy ride of the Bush years. I feel much worse and much better once I’ve read it—it reinforces that reason and reality do still exist, but it also reveals that Bush conservatives have long been busy undermining reason to accomplish heaven knows what.

Now, of course, in the wake of Obama’s victory, the dyspeptic laughter This Modern World prompts has become something more in the neighborhood of a relieved guffaw, with a garlicky hint of revenge. How much sweeter, then, to peruse the pages of Tomorrows past?

More.

In the various “new frugality” articles and tv news segments I’ve seen, there’s always some mention of how Spam sales are up as a result of the declining economy. (The weird canned meat product, not the stuff in your inbox.) But as far as I can tell, the only source for this information is a press release from the company itself.

In that spirit, I would like to draw the attention of the national media to another side effect of the now-official recession: This Modern World book and merchandise sales have gone through the roof! Apparently, in these difficult times, people want to save money by staying at home and reading verbose alternative political cartoons and/or wearing t-shirts based on same.

It is a trend, and journalists would not be doing their jobs if they did not provide me with copious quantities of free publicity.

This is from a New York Times interview with Jamie Galbraith:

Do you find it odd that so few economists foresaw the current credit disaster?
Some did. The person with the most serious claim for seeing it coming is Dean Baker, the Washington economist. I saw it coming in general terms.

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis?
Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?
It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal, writing about Robert Rubin:

Under fire for his role in the near-collapse of Citigroup Inc., Robert Rubin said its problems were due to the buckling financial system, not its own mistakes, and that his role was peripheral to the bank’s main operations even though he was one of its highest-paid officials.

“Nobody was prepared for this,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview. He cited former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as another example of someone whose reputation has been unfairly damaged by the crisis.

Noam Chomsky:

[T]he commissars, the secular priesthood, the state ideologists…I think it is an extremely corrupt group. I think this is also the group that is the most subject to effective indoctrination, tends to have the least understanding of what is happening in the world, in fact, tends to have a sort of institutionalized stupidity.

Mark Twain:

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

George Orwell:

Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time.

Judge Patricia Wald, former chief judge for the D.C. Court of Appeals and jurist on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, writing in the new report “Guantánamo and Its Aftermath” (pdf):

There are bound to be casualties when any nation veers from its domestic and international obligations to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law. Those casualties are etched on the minds and bodies of many of the 62 former detainees interviewed for this report, many of whom suffered infinite variations on physical and mental abuse, including intimidation, stress positions, enforced nudity, sexual humiliation, and interference with religious practices. Indeed, I was struck by the similarity between the abuse they suffered and the abuse we found inflicted upon Bosnian Muslim prisoners in Serbian camps when I sat as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a U.N. court fully supported by the United States. The officials and guards in charge of those prison camps and the civilian leaders who sanctioned their establishment were prosecuted—often by former U.S. government and military lawyers serving with the tribunal—for war crimes, crimes against humanity and, in extreme cases, genocide.

From an AP story, June 30, 2001:

The dramatic decision to deliver Milosevic to the tribunal in defiance of an order by the Yugoslav Constitututional Court staying any extradition threatened to plunge the Balkan country into a political crisis.

Milosevic’s successor, Vojislav Kostunica, denounced the handover as ”illegal and unconstitutional.” Others accused Serb Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who spearheaded the decision, of ”treason” and knuckling under U.S. pressure….

President Bush praised Yugoslavia for handing over Milosevic, saying the move showed the Balkan nation wants to turn away from ”its tragic past and toward a brighter future.”

U.S. officials said the administration planned to make a pledge in the range of about $100 million for a Yugoslav assistance package, to be discussed Friday in Brussels at a conference of international aid donors.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the handover as ”a thoroughly good thing.”

The full statement by Bush, available on the White House website:

I applaud today’s transfer of indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. This very important step by the leaders in Belgrade ensures that Milosevic can finally be tried for his war crimes and crimes against humanity. During various visits by Yugoslav authorities to Washington, they pledged that Yugoslavia was committed to cooperating with the Tribunal. Milosevic’s transfer is a strong sign of that commitment. We are confident that the government of Yugoslavia will continue down the path of cooperation with the Tribunal.

The transfer of Milosevic to the Hague is an unequivocal message to those persons who brought such tragedy and brutality to the Balkans that they will be held accountable for their crimes. Milosevic’s transfer further signals the commitment of the new leadership in Belgrade to turn Yugoslavia away from its tragic past and toward a brighter future as a full member of the community of European democracies.

The United States stands ready to assist the people of Yugoslavia as they continue to take the difficult steps to advance its democratic and economic reform.

(Suggested by Glenn Greenwald’s reference here: “[T]here were early statement from the Bush White House in 2001 about how critical it was to prosecute these Yugoslav leaders for war crimes…”)

This is from Scott Horton’s new article in Harper’s on creating some kind of accountability for the torture conducted by the Bush administration (subscription required):

[I]n a 2006 radio interview, Dick Cheney said simply that the use of waterboarding to obtain intelligence was a “no-brainer.”

Cheney at the time declined to refer to this practice as torture, preferring instead to describe it as “robust interrogation,” and that reluctance has been echoed in the press. I myself was twice warned by PBS producers, in advance of appearances on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, that I could use the word “torture” in the abstract but that I was to refrain from applying it to the administration’s policies. And after an interview with CNN in which I spoke of the administration’s torture policy, I was told by the producer, “That’s okay for CNN International, but we can’t use it on the domestic feed.”

As always, the question remains: why is the major US media so incredibly left-wing?