Feature photo: Barge on the Neckar | © Shutterstock
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Deepening of the Rhine versus expansion of the Oder
German bigotry currently knows no bounds. After the Swiss and Austrians had to realize that international treaties with Germany were not worth the money they were printed on and that the now completed tunnel projects (both projects of the century, both in Switzerland and in Austria) did not have to find adequate rail connections on the German side now the Poles are realizing that Germany only partially adheres to state treaties.
In the course of the planned increased shifting of freight traffic to the rivers of Europe, not only the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal was dug, but also the Oder was planned as a future larger transport route, which incidentally has very great economic importance for Poland.
Germany is now taking the current environmental catastrophe on the Oder as an opportunity to distance itself from the planned Oder expansion. At the same time, however, we can read today in the Heilbronner Voice (30.08.2022/30/XNUMX: XNUMX) that the deepening of the Rhine should come earlier. Volker Wessing called the expansion of the shipping lane one of the “most important transport projects” in Germany. We are also not very squeamish about the usual deepening of the Elbe or an expansion of the Neckar locks. But now that the "German" Oder is at stake, where we have to protect our nature and thus "German cultural assets" in particular, our politicians are declaring environmental protection to be a top priority.
Has it ever dawned on us that we really like to use double standards! The Amazon is lamented and we cut down every tree that brings more than 50 euros in profit. Elephants, lions and tigers must be protected worldwide, but we only know of problem bears and killer wolves in our country.
air defense
As early as the late 1960s, NATO had managed to complete the development of a functioning integrated NATO air defense system: it was an existing command system of sensors and command posts from northern Norway to the southern flank in south-eastern Europe. Air defense forces with a wide variety of weapon systems, which were operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year in, year out, were subordinate to these command posts. Multinationality was the measure of all things even then, and so Americans, Belgians, Danes, English Germans, Canadians and Dutch, among others, stood shoulder to shoulder to ensure the integrity of NATO airspace.
That is why air defense has been a NATO matter for decades all over Europe, which is not surprising when you talk about ICBMs and supersonic weapons and every jet pilot has to be extremely careful not to find himself in a completely different country within a few minutes.
Already with the Orwellian peace dividend, Germany shied away from responsibility and continued to scale back its NATO obligations — today one can assume that the reason was either ideological in nature, since one continues to believe in the victory of real socialism, or that those responsible were quite simply bought by the Putin system.
There is now no question that NATO air defenses are urgently needed, because Russian wars of aggression will not stop short of NATO territory — Putin's Fifth Column has already dismantled our democracies and weakened NATO too much.
And so it is remarkable how the German chancellor, against his better judgment, fantasizes yesterday in his keynote speech about the development of a European air defense system. So it is probably still Germany's reason of state to continue to damage NATO and to prepare Europe as a whole as a gift for dictator Putin. Whether this happens for ideological reasons or simply because the people concerned were bought by Putin and his financiers is irrelevant.
