Eideard

Will they continue to send the weekly checks?
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Catholic Ireland’s stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See’s prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive – and useless, unproductive.

The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church’s handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy…

“This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history,” said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity…

Over time, this will be seen as only the first of many departing a seat at the foot of the papal throne.

Dublin’s foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because “it yields no economic return” and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.

The source said the Vatican was “extremely irritated” by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values…

Promoting human values? Only if your values are stuck into the 14th Century, your concern for your flock is cemented in 19th Century politics.

The Kansas National Guard announced Friday the closing of 18 of its 56 armories, including facilities in Atchison, Garden City, Salina and Winfield.

Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state’s adjutant general, said the closings were a result of the state’s tight fiscal situation and careful deliberation. The closings will be completed in most cases by the end of February.

“The tough decisions we are making today means jobs are saved,” General Bunting said. “We stayed as long as we could. This is a sign of the times…”

General Bunting said he and his staff members notified each community where armories are closing to break the news.

“We clearly understand that this is your community and your armory and you are clearly disappointed,” General Bunting said…

“We don’t like to close armories,” General Bunting said. “We like to be in as many countries counties as we can.”

Har!

We always imagined how this might end: GeoCities would finally take down all of the animated “under construction” signs, and we’d hear one last Midi file to the tune of horns playing taps.

Instead, GeoCities will probably go down with a whimper today.

Time is up for Yahoo’s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock its doors and take millions of pages offline.

GeoCities allowed anyone to build a custom Web page for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents. It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet.

At the turn of the century, GeoCities was nearly ubiquitous. Fathers created websites about their families; kids created sites about Pokemon; teenage girls created sites about the Backstreet Boys. Practically every facet of culture was documented and thanks to search engines, easily accessible.

All of those documents are about to disappear…

The decision to shut down GeoCities rather than keep it around for historical reference and, say, slap ads all over it is curious. Especially when you consider that the network is still among the top 200 most-trafficked sites on the Internet, according to metrics tracker Alexa.

But, then, measured, well-thought-out business decisions is not what you think of when someone says – Yahoo!

Nebahat Albayrak
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Dutch Justice Ministry plans to shut down eight prisons and cancel new prison building programs to deal with what it calls a capacity surplus, according to Dutch Justice State Secretary Nebahat Albayrak.

The move will lead to the scrapping of 1,200 jobs and is expected to save 164 million euros.

“Currently, there is detention capacity of some 14,000 cell places, while according to the estimates there is a need for about 12,000 cells. This overcapacity is expected to continue for some years,” Albayrak said in a policy document on national prison system sent to the Dutch parliament Tuesday.

The cell surplus is caused by falling crime rate, Albayrak said.

Here we are – studying a nation perpetually castigated by Law and Order nutballs for being too soft on drug users, too free and easy on sex, having too many unions and too much personal freedom in the face of a large immigrant population and the danger of terrorism – ending up with empty beds in the prison system.

What’s wrong with this picture of freedom, tolerance – absent Christian morality? Apparently, damned little.

Thanks, McCullough, a co-conspirator at DU

Not living in Cleveland, I usually wouldn’t feel called upon to note a “local” issue. I think this is a sign of the times – and worth covering for that reason.

Parish priests throughout the eight-county diocese read “special delivery” letters from Bishop Richard Lennon during Saturday evening Masses, announcing whether their churches would close or remain open.

The diocese declined to publicly release the entire list until today, when parishes without Saturday Masses will learn their fates.

The entire list…outlines a plan for 52 fewer parishes by next year. Twenty-nine of the diocese’s 224 parishes will close, while 41 will merge, creating 18 new parishes. Affected churches must close by July 1, 2010…

The downsizing, said to be the first in the history of the 162-year-old diocese, is due to a shortage of priests, changing demographics and wanting collection baskets, the bishop has said.

“We’re just too big for the number of people that we have,” Lennon said in a recent interview, noting that the number of practicing Catholics in the diocese dwindled from 1 million 50 years ago to less than 800,000 today…

The diocese has said it hopes to sell the closed churches, though some, it noted, will be torn down. Sacred artifacts such as chalices, tabernacles, statues and stained-glass windows will be removed from the closed churches and offered to other churches in the diocese, the diocese has said. Artifacts that can’t be reused will be stored until sold.

No gloating. Even though I consider organized religion – and philosophical idealism for the erudite – to be a social form serving only a leftover gene or two about as useful as the appendix, each step in the inevitable diminishing superstructure will be difficult for those folks unaccustomed to change, unwilling to learn and grow into a changing society.

Daylife/AFP/Getty Images

Kyrgyzstan’s government said Friday that financial concerns and the killing of a citizen are among the reasons the country will close a U.S. base that has been a key operations point for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced Tuesday that “all due procedures” were being initiated to close the base. He made the announcement at a news conference in Moscow after reports of a multimillion-dollar aid package from Russia.

Aibek Sultangaziev, spokesman for Prime Minister Igor Chudinov, said Friday that his government feels that the U.S. base has accomplished its mission of helping Afghans install their new government. He added that his country is upset that the case involving a U.S. serviceman who shot and killed a Kyrgyzstan citizen has not been resolved.

Sultangaziev said the government also believes that the United States is not paying as much as it should for the base and has concerns about ecological problems resulting from the base…

General Peraeus said the prime minister had asked him about the killing at the base, “and I noted that the investigation into that case has been reopened and that I would brief him when the findings and actions are complete.”

The incident took place in December 2006. The U.S. airman was transferred out of Kyrgyzstan, and the dead man’s family was offered compensation.

I’ve been following the twists and turns of this all week long. At first, it was obvious that Pentagon types didn’t take this seriously at all. I guess they figured the Kyrgyzstan government was just trying to hold them up for a few dollars more.

Ugly Americans can be liberals as well as conservative, Democrats as well as Republicans.