Kristin Brinker, January 27, 2022, Berlin – Part IV

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 229-230.

Let us come to the present, most serious imposition with which the Senate burdens the Berliners – these are the erratic and arbitrary compulsory preventive measures in the Corona crisis. A small example: In the Berlin restaurant trade for the past two weeks, the 2G plus rule applies to guests. The non-vaccinated are no longer allowed to go into a restaurant unless they work there, since for co-workers 3G continues to apply. The result is absurd: A non-vaccinated waiter may in fact continue to serve the vaccinated guests, yet he himself may not after ceasing work eat in the restaurant, since he could infect other people. What is this nonsense? And your Corona policy in terms of education policy is a catastrophe. At the beginning of the week, the presence obligation was set aside, without consultation with the experts committee. The Reinickdorf public doctor Larscheid called that, verbatim, a terrible stupidity, since the effect upon the pandemic events is almost the same as nil, yet children from uneducated families will continue to be dependent.

There are several additional examples of the inconsistencies of the present Corona policy, like the lack of clarity resulting from shortening the cured status from six to three months. In Berlin, no one actually knows exactly to what, when, to whom that applies: When is one cured for six  months, when for three? Oddly, this does not apply to the Bundestag. Or the false promises of the effectiveness of the vaccine. Or the not to be overlooked chaos with the testing obligation and quarantine rules. Or the present unhappy debate over the vaccination obligation. Or, and this is quite dramatic, the extreme increase in children’s psychiatric illnesses up to and including suicide. The consequences of your policy are horrifying. Finally stop dividing society and asserting the opposite! There must be an end to this chaos. We require a clear line, a perspective of openness for a return to normality. Colleague Saleh is not present in the hall,

            Torsten Schneider (SPD): She did not stay!

however: Stop defaming as Nazis people who, on account of your Corona preventive measures policy, today go into the street and continue to be worried, for whatever reason, about their bodily inviolability. That does not go. It does not work thus, and precisely that is the point where you do not comply with what is in the government program, wherein you want to promote society’s cohesion. You do exactly the opposite.

The government program is ultimately a medley of little measures which contributes nothing much to the further development of Berlin. You do not lay hold of the real problems. What becomes of the ICC, of the former Tempelhof airport buildings? Instead of finally developing a usage perspective, there is no idea, no plan for that but a gigantic reconstruction backlog in the sum of billions. How shall the airport disaster continue? Scarcely opened, the BER already again is in need of reconstruction and requires 2.4 billion euros to survive. To which building projects do you want to give priority? Where is the overall supervision of the reconstruction backlog in all public buildings in Berlin? Where is your list of priorities? What are you doing exactly for the citizens of this city so that they do not meet with a months-long wait for an appointment with civic officials? When will building permits be issued in an acceptable period of time, when will the building regulations be straightened out, collated, as well as the procurement regulations? What are your solutions for these existential problems?

Berlin is a wonderful city

            Anne Helm (Linke): Ach, yet now!

with a great history. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Friedrich the Great, Hardenberg, Bismarck, of geniuses like Hegel, Virchow, Einstein or Planck. Legendary businesses like Siemens, Borsig or Rathenau have founded world concerns in Berlin. Furtwängler, Karajan, Abbado have lead the Berlin Philharmonic. Long before Hollywood, Fritz Lang created the first dream factory in the Weißensee film studios. We are not allowed to squander this great heritage.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kristin Brinker, January 27, 2022, Berlin - Part III

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 228-229.

The sixth imposition is the shameless rip-off of automobile drivers in this city.

            Carsten Schatz (Linke): Harmless!

Frau Giffey writes: “The goal of the State government is a climate neutral Berlin.” – Here, automobile drivers are naturally disturbing and are only of interest as a possible source of money. Frau Giffey therefore wants to significantly raise the parking fees. Resident parking fees shall be multiplied by a factor of twelve, from a hitherto 20 euros to 240 euros. In the mid-term, only electric autos will still be allowed to drive within the S-Bahn ring. The Senate wants to ban combustion engines. For Frau Giffey and her colleagues, that is clearly no problem; they will be chauffeured. Yet what are the many Berlin families, seniors and tradesmen who are not able to procure a new automobile then to do? For these people, this driving ban and increase of expenses is catastrophic.

Such measures create an inner city which only the rich are still able to afford, thanks to left-left-green policy. It becomes yet more absurd. Frau Giffey writes: “The Senate is striving for the connection of the BER by means of the bicycle transport network.” – Ladies and gentlemen, that is just looney. Who rides a bicycle to the airport? Thus are the Senate’s priorities.

The new airport does not function. The transport connection for automobile drivers, taxis and with the ÖPNV [public transportation] is sub-optimal, to say nothing of a subway connection. Here, the SPD is still pondering how it actually stands in this regard. But the bicycle is then good for reaching the BER.  That is, with permission, provincial.

For this Senate, the bicycle anyhow appears to be the transport means of the future. Therefore the Friedrichstraße shall continue to remain closed to automobile traffic, against the resistance of store owners who need to bear considerable losses. 150 business managers a few days ago publicly requested to finally lift the traffic closure. Yet our Green Environment Senator remains cold. She even wants to extend the closure to the Gendarmenmarkt.

By means of your anti-auto policy, you drive the business in Friedrichstraße to ruin, and not only there. Retail trade is dying and you promote the business of billionaires like Jeff Bezos of Amazon. And that is no social policy. Our position is clear: Driving an automobile in Berlin ought to be no privilege of the rich.

The seventh imposition in the government program is the one-sided remembrance policy of this Senate. Frau Giffey declares, verbatim:

The coalition will continue to remember…the colonial past, national socialism and a divided Berlin.

The remembrance of the colonial past is important and right. And especially today, on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, it becomes clear how important and necessary are thoughts of the many victims of the darkest time here in Germany.

            Anne Helm (Linke): Without blushing – unbelievable!

It is ever again inconceivable to me what men have done to other men and can do. Nevertheless: The leftist Senate obviously does not want to remember divided Berlin. Here, I need ask you, Frau Giffey: – You have rightly said, you were still a child as you grew up in the DDR. I am a few years older and experienced it as a youth, as a young woman. – Who then divided Berlin? I say to you: It was the colleagues of the Linke. These people, with whom you sit at table,

            Anne Helm (Linke): Ja, personally!

drew a wall through this city so that people in the east of the city could no longer escape. Those who nevertheless attempted that were imprisoned, confined and shot. Thus it appears.

I therefore propose to you: We should not only remember divided Berlin. We should remember the SED dictatorship. The Stasi terror needs to continue to be cleared up, and indeed without regard for individual parties or persons.

You however do not want to clear up this dark chapter because you do not want to alienate your leftist coalition partners. Instead, the Berliners should now be ashamed of episodes in Geramn colonial history. This will not correct the historical reality. We want a remembrance culture which is not one-sidedly aligned.

            Lars Düsterhöft (SPD): “Vogelschiss”, wa?

With permission of the President, I cite a well-known personality:

            Silke Gebel (Greens): You mean Björn Höcke?

…German history consists not only of a record of crimes. That is the error of a self-important person [Wichtigtuer].

Those are the words of the former SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. I have always been amazed by the self-consciousness [Selbstbewusstsein] of Helmut Schmidt.

Torsten Schneider (SPD): That worked once with Willi Brandt. This time, not, Frau colleague!

We need to also place in the foreground the positive sides of our history so that people can better identify themselves with this city and this country.

 

[to be continued; trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Kristin Brinker, January 27, 2022, Berlin - Part II

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 226-227.

Here I ask you, Frau Giffey, in all frankness: What is it now with the referendum? Should large real estate concerns be expropriated or not? I know what you also said here today; you cannot answer because the coalition is not united and must now establish a working circle, a so-called experts committee, which shall examine how an expropriation

            Sebastian Schlüsselberg (Linke): Socialization [Vergesellschaftung]!

of real estate owners is compatible with the Basic Law. For builders and investors, this is a fatal signal. Who then still wants to build housing in Berlin when it is not clear whether an expropriation threatens?

            Tobias Schulze (Linke): Everyone wants to build here!

That not only sometimes affects the large concerns but also the small housing provider. And they meantime have developed fears due to this fatal policy which has governed in the past five years.

We therefore demand of the Senate to immediately examine the constitutionality and the feasibility of the the referendum.

            Anne Helm (Linke): We are doing it!

The voters need to be informed of the results, not following three experts committees, but most quickly. There is to be allowed no year-long suspension since the consequences for the housing market would be fatal.

Yet we also need to ask ourselves why the situation in the Berlin housing market is so strained. Why is there so little housing in Berlin? Quite simply: The rents rise because there is more demand, yet no more supply. There was too little housing built, yet there were hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants hauled into the country. And even if you are not happy to hear it: This uncontrolled, great mass migration

            Jian Omar (Greens): Shame on you!

is naturally also one of the origins of the housing emergency in Berlin. This needs to be seen realistically and for once acknowledged. This Senate also knows that.

            Silke Gebel (Greens): Do not spread such things!

Frau Giffey also knows that. Yet the Berliners are not your priority. The Senate prefers to procure a dwelling for all migrants, even the illegal. You even write it in your government declaration. It is there, vebatim: The WBS housing authorization will be made possible for all those living in Berlin without housing, independent of reception status.

            Ronald Glaser (AfD): Inconceivable!

That is, ja, prima.

            Gunnar Lindemann (AfD): That is, ja, super!

We however do not have so much social housing. We have here in this city over 1 million authorized for WBS. Where then shall they all find shelter? How much housing do you then want to build? It simply does not function.

            Gunnar Lindemann (AfD): Unsozial!

That is your left, unsozial politics. While families, pensioners, students or single parents find no housing in Berlin, illegal immigrants receive access to publicly promoted housing space. That really is unsozial.

That is not enough. Social Senator Kipping wants to shelter refugees in hotels.

            Senator Kipping: Nein, rubbish!

It is in the newspaper.

            Carsten Schatz (Linke): It is in the newspaper. Well, then!

You yourself have said it: Hotels, hostels, dwellings – all.

            Ronald Glaser (AfD): It already was all!

You have also brought a proposal into the main committee with a quasi blank full powers which you wanted for rental objectives. Yet the taxpayer must pay for it. Berlin families can only dream of so much public solicitude.

            Anne Helm (Linke): This is just unbelievable!

That is no fair policy, with permission.

If we want to relieve the Berlin housing market, we need to build and we must before all consistently deport criminal and illegal migrants. You want to hear nothing of this.

            Harald Latsch (AfD): Deportation makes dwelling space!

Let us come to the fourth imposition, which was the theme here today, the catastrophic state of the Berlin education system.

            Antje Kapek (Greens): Och!

Our students routinely show up the worst in a national performance comparison. It is no wonder, since performance plays no role in the education policy of this Senate.

            Roman-Francesco Rogat (FDP): That is noted!

Instead, we find in the government declaration the usual leftist phrases: Diversity, inclusion, variety and so forth. The result is catastrophic. A third of those in the Berlin Grundschulen can scarcely read and write. Those leaving school lacking in basic numeracy are scarcely to be trained. Every tenth student leaves school without a graduation. What do you do, what does the Senate do?

            Jeannette Auricht (AfD): Gender!

Ja, it genders. It deceives the parents of school-age children, and really so. Berlin parents have trouble finding a good school for their children. An important criterion for this decision is the portion of German-speaking students in a school. That is logical. If in a class, half of the students speak little or no German, a reasonable instruction according to the teaching plan is scarcely possible. A lack of fluency in German in Berlin schools is a problem.

Many parents have acknowledged this problem. In the past school year, something like a third of parents decided against the area school [Einzugsschule] and the Senate knows of the problem. Yet instead of solving it, it is concealed. The portion of students who speak no German at home shall in the future no longer be counted. There is no information. Why? The parents thereby no longer have the opportunity to completely inform themselves on the future school of their children. The result is that he who is able to do so will preferably send his child to a private school. Parents who can finance no private school lose out. That is today’s leftist education policy. Also here, fairness appears otherwise.

We therefore demand full transparency in regards school performance data. The teaching plans need to ensure the students training and study ability according to individual capabilities. We need to strengthen the Gymnasien and the promotion of the highly gifted. School should again become a place of learning and achievement, not an experimental field for leftist ideologies.

Let us come to the fifth imposition, the absolute trivialization of extreme leftist violence in our city. According to criminal statistics, leftist violence in Berlin has lately increased significantly. In one year, 2019, it almost doubled and violence against police, firemen, sanitation workers ever more increases. On that, Frau Giffey lets slip not a word, no a single one, and no word for the arson attacks on autos. Believe it or not, extremists and criminals have in the year 2021 torched over 700 autos in Berlin.

The Senate wants to fight rightist extremism. That is correct. We also want that. Yet we ought not to be blind in the left eye. 

All forms of political and religious extremism are dangerous and must correspondingly be combated. Violence is never allowed to become a means of political  argument, no matter from whom it proceeds.

An additional blindspot in the Senate’s Interior policy is the theme of clan criminality. Colleague Wegner has already addressed it. In the past year, Berlin State prosecutor Knipsel has written a book on it. He writes, verbatim: “In Berlin, criminal clans control entire city sectors.” 15 to 20 criminal clans with many hundreds of members are responsible for a quarter of the cases of organized crime. It is about drugs and human trafficking, murder and manslaughter, extortion, forced prostitution, social fraud. What is terrifying is, on account of the over-burdening of the Berlin courts, many urgent suspects, major dealers, even murderers and rapists, need to be released on account of, for example, infringement of the time period by investigators. To the Senate, this theme is not worth a syllable. That is a scandal. Why do you not openly name it? Organized criminality is clan criminality. Yet you close your eyes to it.

 

[to be continued; trans: tem]