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Swiss War Game Envisages Invasion By Bankrupt French
An anonymous reader writes "The Telegraph reports, 'Hordes of bankrupt French invade Switzerland to get their hands on their "stolen" money — such is the imaginary scenario cooked up by the Swiss military in simulations revealed over the weekend. Carried out in August, the apparently outlandish army exercise was based on the premise of an attack by a financially stricken France split into warring regions, according to Matin Dimanche, the Lausanne-based daily. ... Operation "Duplex-Barbara" went as far as imagining a three-pronged invasion from points near Neufchâtel, Lausanne and Geneva, according to a map published in the Swiss newspaper. Behind the dastardly raid was a paramilitary organization dubbed BLD, the Dijon Free Brigade bent on grabbing back "money that Switzerland had stolen from Saônia". "For its credibility, the Swiss army must work (to ward against) threats of the 21st century," Antoine Vielliard, Hauate-Savoie councilor, told Matin Dimanche. However, Daniel Berger, captain of the Swiss armored brigade, sought to play down the specificity of the threat. "The exercise has strictly nothing to do with France, which we appreciate" he told the Swiss press. ... "French towns were cited to provide soldiers with a real scale," he said. ... Neutral Switzerland has not been invaded since the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. '"
Countries prepare war games involving invasions to or from nearby countries all the time.
True, but Switzerland takes it up a level. Permanent tank traps in farmers fields, hidden military installations all over the country, bomb shelters, and a huge military reserve with regular training.
Add a navy operation on Jersey, Guernesey and Sark to hunt down rogue bankers in neighouring tax havens for good measure, and voilà !
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Living outside a small town in Norway, this is common here too. Our bridges are also prepared for quick demolition. Same thing in Sweden.
I thought this was common all over Europe, not just Switzerland even if they are the only country commonly mentioned.
So, terrorists don't have much to do?
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In Sweden this practise is being discontinued. Premade drillholes are being filled with concrete and such. I doubt any of swedens larger infrastructure has these devices anymore.
No it wasn't. A lot of money in Swiss banks is money held by the owners illegally, we're not talking about tax avoidance here, we're talking about out and out tax evasion.
Switzerland has gotten rich by allowing criminally obtained money to be stored in it's banks and then refusing to cooperate with the authorities of nations from where it was obtained illegally.
We're talking literally billions of dollars that do not belong to the people Switzerland is letting keep it being held in Swiss banks which the Swiss banks, like pretty much all banks, then use to invest and make themselves wealthier.
Switzerland has very much gotten rich off the back of illegally obtained money. This is the problem with most tax havens and especially Switzerland - it's not just that they act as a low tax place for tax avoiders to stash billions, it's the fact that they also allow tax evaders to store money that does not belong to them.
The fact is that if Switzerland wasn't complicit in supporting criminality in just about every other nation in the world it wouldn't be even close to as wealthy as it is now, and that's what the GP was referring to - that the Swiss know full well if shit went down financially then people are going to come knocking and demand the Swiss hand back all that illegally held money and hence the reason they come up with such scenarios is because they know full well they're guilty and hold such illegally obtained funds in the first place.
In Germany, currently, not in the Middle East or Africa. Algeria for example lost somewhere between 40k and 200k people to a nasty ten year civil war and it has a population about a third that of Germany. Even at the lower estimate, that's more than an order of magnitude greater than the alleged death rate from fishbones.
And if as I suspect, the 700 choking deaths from fish bones per year is over the world's population rather than Germany's population, then you're looking at a three orders of magnitude difference.