The comments from individuals seem in general much more angry and personal than those posted on blogs and websites.  Here is a sampling of the latter…

http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2012/02/while-greece-burns-middle-class.html

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/02/16/greece-collapsing/

http://www.neatorama.com/tag/greece/

http://www.daily49er.com/opinion/americans-should-be-more-knowledgeable-on-world-affairs-1.2701375#.T0F0XpgUqAs

http://snohomishobserver.com/2012/02/14/the-minotaur-screwing-the-greeks/

http://www.soxfirst.com/30394498/is_greece_facing_the_biggest_collapse_in_history.php

http://www.athenswire.com/the-decline-and-fall-of-greece/

And how it’s playing in Twitter…

http://topsy.com/www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/the-way-greeks-live-now.html

Go to my piece in The New Republic.

Everyone wants to jump onto the Occupy Wall Street wagon.  Today’s New York Times:

The Vatican called on Monday for an overhaul of the world’s financial systems, and again proposed establishment of a supranational authority to oversee the global economy, calling it necessary to bring more democratic and ethical principles to a marketplace run amok.

Maybe a little tiny wee bit of perspective is in order? Last year the Vatican Bank had almost $30 million in assets frozen by Italian authorities for suspected money laundering. In July, the head of a Catholic research hospital in Milan that has close ties to the Vatican committed suicide amid a scandal over its finances: it declared itself 1.5 billion euros in the red, with records of investments in mango plantations and staff use of personal aircraft. Investigative journalist Jason Berry has a new book out, Render Unto Rome, in which he says the Vatican has routinely taken the roughly $80 million in annual collections from Third World parishes that worshippers believe will go to help the poor and applied it to its own operating expenses. Berry says only 11% of the funds are accounted for.  Berry also notes that in its annual financial statement the Vatican values St. Peter’s Basilica at 1 euro.

And oh yes, also in today’s New York Times is the story of a Vatican investigation being launched into sex abuse at an abbey in London whose former headmaster, Father David Pearce (aka “the devil in the dog collar”) went to prison for sexually abusing young boys over a 35 year career. To date, the Vatican has paid out $2 billion in settlements to U.S. sex abuse victims as well as for treating priests. The funds used to make amends for what amounts to a global ring of child rape located within the Church’s internal structure (oops) come from the sale of churches and schools. But the sale of churches and schools is justified because fewer people want to belong to an organization that fosters and harbors child rapists.  That actually makes some sense, financially and otherwise.

Wait–that sounds familiar.  Isn’t that what the Occupy Wall Street people are worked up about?

Amsterdam.  AS an American who has been living here for several years, I am struck, every time I go home, by the way American cities remain manacled to the car. While Europe is dealing with congestion and greenhouse gas buildup by turning urban centers into pedestrian zones and finding innovative ways to combine driving with public transportation, many American cities are carving out more parking spaces. It’s all the more bewildering because America’s collapsing infrastructure would seem to cry out for new solutions.

Go to the story.

The report will surely become a useful source of information on the topic. But even before its official release, it deserves to be viewed with extreme skepticism. It was conducted by researchers at the highly respected John Jay College of Criminal Justice, but its financial backing came from Catholic organizations–mostly from the U.S. Conference of Bishops–and some of its methodologies should cause eyebrows everywhere to shoot up.

One remarkable finding is that less than 5% of priests who sexually abused children are pedophiles. What possible explanation could there be for such an oxymoronic conclusion? It turns out that the designers of the study chose age ten as the cutoff for “prepubescent.” In other words, if a priest has raped a few dozen 11, 12, and 13 year olds, he is not a pedophile, according to the report.

The major finding of the report is that sexual abuse of children by priests occurred mostly during the 1960s and 1970s, as a result of the newly permissive culture. The fact that this has been the Vatican’s line for years makes this finding worthy of serious scrutiny. The Catholic Church hierarchy’s history of manipulating data on this issue would fill a library, and it has been steadfast in deflecting blame away from itself.

Already victims’ groups are coming out attacking the report, and restating what many people feel is the true underlying problem: the structure of the Catholic Church. Countless news stories, victims’ accounts and investigations have shown the same thing: the Church is built to protect itself at all costs. A case in point is Ireland, which has been bludgeoned by priest-sex-abuse stories in the past two years. Just a week ago the watchdog group that was set up to monitor the Church in Ireland, the National Board for Safeguarding Children, revealed that the Church authorities underreported the number of sex abuse claims they received in the past year by a factor of five. Where the Irish church had claimed only 53 new allegations were brought against clergy, the NBSC says there were in fact 272.

And to ice this particular cake, this same report revealed a possibly even more startling fact: that the NBSC itself, which was brought into being by the Irish bishops but which is supposed to be independent (as befits a watchdog) is in fact required to get approval from Church authorities before revealing its findings. The head of the NBSC, Ian Elliott, said obstruction from Irish Church authorities was so severe he considered quitting. As Andrew Madden, who was abused by a priest as a child and is an unofficial spokesmen for Irish victims, told the Irish Times, it is “totally unacceptable that the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church cannot move any child protection concerns or findings into the public domain without the consent of Catholic Bishops.” The clergy sex abuse crisis in Ireland was magnified precisely by the failure of Irish bishops to properly deal with cases that came to their attention. That those same bishops would set up a dummy “independent” watchdog and then impede it from reporting its findings gets at the heart of the Church’s problem. And it is another resonant example of why the new U.S. report, which will make headlines everywhere, should be painstakingly picked apart.

Russell,… sorry to invade your space with unsolicited mail, but I have just been reading your NY Times article. You described well the battle for church control of the national mindset, a battle that continues and perhaps confers advantage on the church through the sense of guilt that has arisen in the wake of the tiger, as though we are being punished for our sins of excess. I had written the below poem (published by Wyvern in 2009) to try to make sense of it for myself. best regards and keep up the work of a good man. Eugene Magowan

The Poor and the Needy

(a jesuit reflects)

It was always there to be found.

In the emptiness of a church, stained light – like laughter mocking the grey stone faces.

Maddening.

The spell broken then by a cough or a foot on a board or the scream of an old back bending.

There was always a vow of poverty, always the suffering, always a world without ending.

We could be sure of these things, sure of the pain they would bring.

And the happiness promised thereafter.

We saw them, saw the need of them.

We offered them light like laughter.

Fool’s gold, it was comfort, cold, but better than none at all.

We needed the poor to be poor.

But now, enlightened, they become debased, impure.

And the need of us has become like gold itself,

More precious in the hand than we ever wanted to hold.

(More here)

across the border in germany that winter

their “learn to laugh” lessons were free.

here in our dutch village our canals froze

and we were waking up dead too.

outside the windows

a slew of orphans ran, hurling

bodies down to hardness like ice

was the thing

to slide anyone away

from whatever they may begin the day

knowing they are.

some of us fought by linking arms

around big fire.

it was fueled with the oriental books

that had massaged us

too long with how the world

wasn’t even real;

we sang, go ahead big dogs,

attack the gate, we will sweater

you and prop you on our sleds and

point your open doggie faces toward

heaven where the gilded

rooster lives atop the church spire,

our one chicken spinning in the wind.

dear dog: when that cock crows

again will betrayal finally return

to our village?

our people who were

never real, how deeply in our laps

we want them to sink again—

how sweetly their hands will feel

as they beg us to forget them.

Little Walter Returns From the Dead to Deliver a Mournful, Seaside Lecture at Blues Harmonica Camp

jesus donkey riding girly-style

through his adoring crowd of killers.

two beats later curled

up like a cosmonaut, slobbering

hungry for the new way out.

that, my friends, we called glissando.

refinanced double-wides balanced atop

saturn boosters are a fair reminder that thoughtful

arrangements of the plastic chairs inside

the home is crucial in reflecting

any new world view.

james cotton’s tongue blocks, howlin’ wolf’s fingers

in the dark; used to be you could hear

the long-haired women scissor-kicking

under the atlantic if you were quiet

enough,

but that’s probably gone too.

when my baby brother died I said so-long world

and went to live under a tree.

un-talent yourselves.

mourn the satellite you have seen

orbit and burn and fall.

one last thing about this pier behind me—

it will often be crowded with unborn daughters

with their unborn fishing rods

and all of our mothers, singing.

borrowed ladders will plead for rest

against the side of any neighborhood.

they lament loss; they say through the gloaming

and school zone: groove the cub scout badge

into the dark sleeve;

cast your hand across the

infinite, wide road.