Forgive Greece

Modern Athens is ugly.

Cabdrivers go round in circles, running up the fare on the unsuspecting, and no tip is large enough to make them forego the disdain they feel for their passengers.

The post-war buildings all look the same and seem to have been made of cement that's never dried.

However, the debt owed Greece for its glorious past is so great that its current debt might be forgiven, so that the country, such as it is, might have a future.

Inasmuch as Europe has embraced the 'socialism' so deplored in certain circles in the USA (winkwink, as if socialism is a disease not unlike AIDS or swine flu and has not already been embraced by the USA as a necessary consequence of a bursting-at-the-seams population), why not make Greece a protectorate of those parts of the world that likes to call themselves "free", those which are, after all, the direct descendents of earlier Greek achievement.

Will all those in charge of countries that claim to be free please come forward and forgive the Greek debt. Now.