Subject: What's Wrong With Soccer
Re: "Diary: Matthew Yeomans on the World Cup"
From: Zathras
Date: Wed Jun 5  6:12 p.m. PT

Investing vast amounts of national pride in a soccer team is not exactly healthy; show me a group of Argentinians who care more about how their team does in the World Cup than about the wretched state their country is in, and I'll show you some people who need to lay off the sports. Soccer can be and is used as an outlet for people who don't want to face their country's collapsing economy, for Europeans who want to show their national feelings have not died, and for Africans who lack a way to deal with government officials robbing them blind. In each case it is being used to stand in for serious discussion and action in the real world. This is not a good thing. This is all the nonsense that surrounds the Olympics, concentrated in one sport and blown out of all proportion.

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Subject: What's Wrong With the CIA
Re: "Ballot Box: C.Y.A. Op"
From: Publius
Date: Thu Jun 6  8:03 a.m. PT

Why didn't the CIA have an on-target intelligence estimate in which it warned that al-Qaida and similar groups had the ability and the will to launch major attacks on the U.S. at any time? That's not the same thing as knowing that a specific attack was being planned. In a sense, it's more important. It focuses policy makers on coping with real threats before they create actual harm. It is the central task of the CIA. I'll answer my own question … : mainly because a) the CIA has the responsibility to do this without ever having been given the means to require other agencies (DOD, DOS, and FBI, in particular) to support this critical task; and b) most of the $30 billion-plus spent annually on "intelligence" goes to arguably important information-collecting schemes while the CIA's stable of analysts has dwindled, aged, and become less and less equipped, by intellect, education, and experience, for the task.

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Subject: What's Wrong at the Vatican
Re: "Press Box: Vow of Silence"
From: The Bell
Date: Fri Jun 7  2:02 p.m. PT

I wonder if the Vatican press corps [is] protecting this pope … [but] leaving the church and his successor unprotected for the onslaught that will surely follow [when they must]… modernize, address U.S. cultural issues not necessarily in sync with European ones, and hold the highest hierarchy of the church culpable when the actions of priests spill over and impact the common welfare. There comes a point when a vow of silence turns into a conspiracy of silence. I suspect the Vatican and its press corps are hovering fatally near that point.

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Subject: What's Right for Spider-Man
Re: "Culturebox: Spider-Man's Vow of Celibacy"
From: Mangar
Date: Tue Jun 4  9:58 a.m. PT