© Wojtek Radwanski / AFPFILE PHOTO.
NATO's peddling of a "Russian threat" is reaching telethon levels of relentlessness - worse than a house alarm salesman in TV advertisements talking up the scary burglar.Poland's top general, Wieslaw Kukula, said recently that "Russia is preparing for a conflict with NATO, aware that the alliance is a defensive structure." For French President Emmanuel Macron, playing "defense" apparently involves sending a bunch of players deep into the other guy's end-zone to score. Macron has been overtly talking about sending troops to fight Russia while giving the impression that he's personally training to take on Russian President Vladimir Putin by posing for black and white glamour shots complete with boxing gloves and flexed biceps that may or may not have been the result of having Monsieur Photoshoppe as his personal trainer. Estonia's foreign intelligence chief conveniently describes Russia's strategy as "long-term confrontation."
The European Union's internal markets commissioner, Thierry Breton, has said "we need to change the paradigm and move into war economy mode." Andre Berghegger, head of the association of German city councils, is talking about reviving the bomb shelter business. "During the Cold War, Germany had more than 2,000 public shelters. Only 600 of these still exist, providing protection for around 500,000 people. There is an urgent need to put decommissioned bunkers back into operation. And we need to build new, modern shelters. In urban centers, underground car parks and subway shafts can certainly be used," the official
said.
Sure, why not? If the military industrial complex is going to try convincing taxpayers to let the government take all their money to make weapons, then why shouldn't the bomb shelter business also get in on the action? Not a bad time to resurrect the bunker industry, actually. With energy costs and interest rates becoming a problem for Europeans, maybe everyone can just save some money and move into government-funded bunkers and hang out while waiting for Putin to show up.
Comment: Increasing stockpiles of weapons and manpower under the cover of strategic defense is intended to allow the Western forces to build themselves up in a way that conceals the true intention from Western populations. But with leaders like Macron giving the game away, the charade isn't very effective.