A real bunch of uneducated left wing blather. The pollies continue to pay off the voters with bigger and more lavish give away programs with each succeeding government upping the ante until they run out of other peoples money. Then the whole house of cards falls in on itself.

In Greece as in many European nations there is no strong work ethic because the government for so long has said they will take care of everybody. They have created jobs for the boys and jobs for the unions and give aways for mothers, special allowances for seniors so that almost everyone gets something from the government. Sooner or later it has to be paid for.

We are lucky her in Aus because we have the miners to soak for that last little bit of cash - but how long will that last? The miners don't like a 57% tax very much and will pick up their tools and go to Canada or Brazil or who knows where and where will that leave us?

ozideas, what is the alternative model to international credit that underpins most nations? North Korea? Myanma? Antarctica? How do you propose we change the current system? By popular vote within sovereign nations? By force? I am all for ideas but nothing I read in this thread suggests any clear or considered thought as to realistic alternatives. That's why people tend to ignore JP and his views.

This is an important article which draws attention to the widespread negative consequences of extreme US capitalism of which the Goldman Sachs' involvement in Greece is a prime example. We do not read nearly enough radical criticism of the global crisis in our mainstream newspapers. Indeed Australia is generally poorly served by mainstream media in this respect. Thus when Pilger comes on board with a genuinely critical assessment of the causes and remedies of the GFC some readers resort to defensive or negative responses.
The fact is that it is ridiculous and arrogant of US credit agencies to downgrade Greece to "junk" after giving triple A ratings to agencies that e.g. allowed a large number of local councils in Australia to borrow $millions from or through Lehman Brothers.
The bail out of the banks in the UK by Gordon Brown while continuing to pay excessive bonuses to Bank executives is ludicrous. Policy responses by conservative MPs in several countries forcing citizens on low incomes to carry much the burden of economic and financial blunders by elites need to be exposed as further manifestations of greed. This is exactly what Pilger is doing. Good on him. The Greece citizens on low and modest incomes are furious about the (previous) Karamanlis Government. So they should be. A healthy response in my view. Great article.

Klaas Woldring

What can I say, democracy is messy. A treatise devoid of sensible alternatives will simply gather dust - why add to the background noise?

Dear David G...

you said:

//John Pilger is, or should be, an icon. He certainly inspires me to speak out against all that is rotten and corrupt in this world.//

Great stuff mate....(except about Pilger being an icon)

Join me in speaking out against the corruption of the Green Movement leaders (Maurice Strong)

Join me in naming Bob Carr as a man out to "make megabucks" from the Laws he hopes to get in place "Cap and Trade" due to his position as CEO of a carbon trading company in Sydney.

Join me in condemning the push for 'Global Governance' by CAPITALISTs like Strong, Soros, Gore, Obama and others.

Did you know that Obama's 'advisor' on Politics and Faith is a marxist? "REV" Jim Wallace

A self-described activist preacher, Jim Wallis was born into an evangelical family in Detroit, Michigan in June 1948. In the 1960s his religious views drove him to join the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. His participation in peace protests nearly resulted in his expulsion from the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, a conservative Christian seminary where he was then enrolled. While at Trinity, Wallis founded an anti-capitalism magazine called the Post-American which identified wealth redistribution and government-managed economies as the keys to achieving “social justice.”

Oh....my.....GOD!

In parallel with his magazine’s stridently antiwar position during the Seventies, Wallis championed the cause of communism. Forgiving its brutal standard-bearers in Vietnam and Cambodia the most abominable of atrocities

YIKES! this bloke/moron has Obama's ear!

This diatribe from Pilger totally fails to address the main point. If Greek governments of the past 40 years wished to establish the welfare state there that is now under threat, that was their prerogative; however what that required was collecting enough tax revenue to fund the cost of the welfare. This they totally failed to do, and moreover, they sought to conceal from foreign investors the magnitude of the debts they had run up. As has been said many times, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

It needs to be remembered that there are two things that a government simply cannot do:

1. print foreign exchange

2. force a foreigner to lend it money.

If a government decides to embark on the dangerous path of borrowing from foreigners, these facts must be remembered at all times, otherwise the time will come when the foreigners will refuse to advance any more money and the country will have to default on its debts.

When a country has as bad a history of default as Greece, this just compounds the problem.

This issue has nothing to do with rich and poor, it is all about a government managing its finances.

Other governments have faced up to their responsibilities, with Latvia cutting expenditure by 40% to balance the books. Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy are all in the same boat as Greece; it will be interesting to see whether the euro and/or the EU can survive.