Good Germans

Commenting on the sale of Greece's state-owned telecommunications company OTE to Deutsche Telekom, Christos Messinis writes in the Greek daily Ta Nea: "Do not attack the Germans. ... Who installed the first telephones in Greece and organised the first imperfect telecommunications systems? The Germans. ... Who buys our agricultural products and contributes to the fact that we have an export economy of sorts? The Germans. ... Who cultivated the classic sciences and trained modern Greece's most important philologists? The Germans. ... And finally, who ensured Greece's integration into the EU? The Germans, through Helmut Schmidt. ... It would have been nice if we could defend our interests more adeptly in the negotiations with Deutsche Telekom. ... But our bond with the Germans does not consist only of catastrophes and disasters. There are a thousand other important things."

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