Roland Hartwig, September 26. 2019, Syria and Iraq

Roland Hartwig

Syria and Iraq

German Bundestag, September 26. 2019,

Plenarprotokoll 19/115, p. 14704

[Roland Hartwig is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Nordrhein-Westphalen. He is a lawyer and here responds to the government’s proposal to extend the German military mission in Iraq and Syria.]

Iraq and Syria were for a long time stable states. They provided their citizens with a relative standard of security, education, health care and job opportunities. This changed in Iraq in 2003 when a so-called coalition of the willing under the leadership of the USA attacked that country. Most international law experts however are agreed that this attack was a war of aggression in violation of international law. In 2003, Frau Merkel chimed in as leader of the opposition to the war song of the U.S. government, thereby positioning herself against the German Federal government in the Iraq war. Franz Münterfering at that time spoke of a “defamation of one’s own country” and a “red herring against the U.S. administration.

Since then Iraq has sunk into chaos. Over a million people have been killed. Many of the central treasures of one of the world’s oldest Kultur nations were destroyed; an irretrievable loss to all mankind.

Syria then took in over one million Iraqis. This was a decisive element in the destabilization of the country in the year 2011. During the violation of Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, an entire series of states supported various armed groups in Syria which fought against one another and against the Syrian government. Hundreds of thousands of people thus were killed. Meanwhile, the Syrian government regained control over a large part of its territory and announced a general amnesty.

If you really want to be in a position of improving the lives of people, as you assert in your motion, then you must work constructively in common with the Syrian government, Russia and other parties, so that the people who have fled the country can return home and re-build an existence. Instead, in this motion, you request a blessing for your plan for German aircraft, without permission of the Syrian government, to enter Syrian air space and there reconnoiter targets of military action. Here, you are moving, in the best case, in a legal gray area, though you are probably acting counter to international law.

            Markus Grubel (CDU-CSU): Have you said that yet to the Russians?

Disregard of the law, a globalist agenda and the destruction of people’s homelands run like red threads through Frau Merkel’s years as chancellor, abroad as well as here in Germany.

            Henning Otte (CDU-CSU): An impossible speech.

German foreign policy has in recent years increasingly led our country into isolation. To that, allow us to put an end, and we today may yet begin.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Jörg Meuthen, October 9, 2019, Brexit

Jörg Meuthen

Brexit

EU Parliament, October 9, 2019,

P9 CRE-PROV(2019) 10-9 (1-071-0000)

[Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland 

and he leads the AfD’s delegation in the European Parliament where the AfD

belongs to the Identity and Democracy party.]

Frau President. Herr Commission President Jüncker. Herr Barnier.

Allow me to enlighten another aspect. I am horrified over what has been reported of the telephone call between Frau Merkel and British Prime Minister Johnson. I begin with the best of it: Merkel has indeed said that Germany could without a problem leave the EU. That was always an option, although not a good one. Yet in the view of the chancellor there were to be sure other rules for the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom, she said, could leave when it left Northern Ireland in the customs union with the EU – forever.

Frau Merkel evidently wishes, in case of a Brexit, to partition Great Britain. What arrogance of power! Thus a United Kingdom shall become a separated Kingdom. I find that inconceivable coming from Frau Merkel who herself was raised in a divided country. How could she have presumed? Or as the British say: “How dare you!” She must know what that means. Basically, Frau Merkel has said that a deal was impossible without violating Great Britain’s sovereignty. When she concerns herself with the future border between Ireland and Northern Ireland she necessarily casts a glance at the border between Norway and Sweden. That is always a possibility. Under these provisions, further negotiations as well as a further extension conforming with Article 50 can be cheerfully dispensed with.

For once finally be honest here in this house and admit that the EU institutions are relentlessly doing everything to prevent and render impossible an orderly exit by the United Kingdom. And you always do the same, politically smart thing – namely, shove the blame [den Schwarzen Peter zuzuschieben] onto the United Kingdom. Great Britain shall now draw the dividing line, and will not agree to the EU conditions for an orderly Brexit. The Earth will continue to turn, the economic damage will be less than forecast. In political terms, it will be for the British a liberation.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Peter Boehringer, September 10, 2019, General Finance Debate

Peter Boehringer

General Finance Debate

German Bundestag, September 10, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/110, pp. 13534-13536

[Peter Boehringer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the southern German state of Bavaria and is currently chairman of the Bundestag budget committee. He here responds to the coalition government’s 2020 budget proposal.]

Herr President. Honorable colleagues.

We have heard it: “We can do it – Part 2”.

The government has presented and today presents no serious budget planning. We are yet again far away from a complete and realistic outline of the charges. The Finance Minister will in the next twelve months despair of over-due paper, yet reckon up the appearance of budget solidity. Besides in that regard, the present flow of tax revenue is the accomplishment of the citizen and business, not the government.

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU-CSU): Absurd! It was always so! 

            What an insight!

Yet the cash accounts in 2020 will look otherwise. Just like the coalition, many of the firms are meanwhile moaning. We are experiencing the last summer days of tax revenue before the business cycle winter. The childish policies against key German industries will for purely ideological reasons inflict disaster upon the labor market and budget, even while the CO₂ fees initially irrigate the accounts with yet more money. The income side of the budget is positively distorted by the historically unprecedented long-term cyclical program of the [European] Central Bank. By this autumn, the European Central Bank [EZB] will have again injected 200 billion euros of funny money [Luftgeld] into the system. With this voodoo economics, the central banks are actually destroying all markets.

With zero interest credit, everything can be financed – at the cost of the citizen, since this exceptional situation expropriates saver and pensioner as even so the renter by the housing price bubble. The state saves each year more than 100 billion euros, the citizens losing this amount. Without this absolutely special effect, the budget would never be balanced.

Correctly reckoned, this rate savings ought to lead directly to tax reduction. Instead, it is the flip side of the negative interest rates that put a hit on the people’s old-age protection. The zero percent money policy is a declaration of war on the citizen.

In fact, it is thereby that the wealth tax [Vermögensteuer], so warmly beloved by the SPD, is already again introduced. Yet what does the Finance Ministry do? Not even the most obsolete of taxes, the Soli, is to be abolished. By 2020, the Soli will already have no more legal basis. The AfD, the scientific service, the Federal Budget Authority, see it thusly. The Finance Ministry knows exactly that, yet nothing official is permitted. Even the former leader of the Finance Ministry tax office protests against the continued collection of the Soli, even so the taxpayers’ union. There is already a budget liability of 20 billion euros; for the entire planning period even 54 billion euros. Herr Minister, is this disregard of the legal opinion of all these institutions serious? You are putting future generations at risk of a disaster of billions.

Furthermore, it is a continuing obfuscation to speak of the – quote – 90 percent no longer paying when when more than 50 percent of the Soli revenue is retained. You actually abolish only half of the Soli, the remainder is a rhetorical trick, nothing other. And even this 90 percent not paying is a false assertion. Since the Soli payment out of the proceeds of the mulcted savers is retained, it is in reality more than 10 percent of the taxpayers who will continue to pay the Soli.

Then the climate theme. The Bundestag would be today, ja, the place to discuss the legendary climate budget. Yet the government now lays before us a budget plan in which the media rumored, giant CO₂ portion is itself simply absent today from the first reading. That is a parliamentary impertinence. And in so far as a portion of it is already in the budget, we refer to a 100 million euro payment to the EU for certifications presuming to make planned-economy allocations of CO₂, it is a completely ideological rip-off of the citizen.

Themes of major risk. Quite a number are no longer found in the budget. Again lacking, despite multiple demands, Herr Minister, the billions to back up the euro rescue risks. The budget is already out of balance on that account alone. Further we see the big bank rescue risks, in part indirectly those of the EZB, yet thereby again also German risks. It threatens to break the earlier promises of 2012: Never again bank rescue with tax money!

The compensation payments for the purely ideologically motivated coal shut-down were initially - initially! – budgeted at 60 percent less than promised. They were then under the pressure of the election campaign again increased, but unfortunately not completely included in the finance plan. For 2020, it is only 500 million euros. Definitely not budgeted are the likely successful damage claims of the power plant employees. Very clean and efficient basic power power plants will be forced off the grid for purely ideological reasons. In terms of energy, environmental technology and economics, that is a grotesque proceeding.

The legal consequences are clear: There will be billions in suits over special write-offs and foregone business profits. The BMF [Federal Finance Ministry] knows this risk from the nuclear power verdict of 2016. Yet it is not included. After you, the deluge. Is that serious?

The risk of Germany’s EU payments: They are, beginning in 2021, in the future calculated at 1 percent, although the government without necessity has now already made much higher pledges to the EU. We thus also thereby figure a deficit.

The risk of Brexit’s additional costs: Measured by the so far not signed Brexit treaty, Britain has yet to pay 45 billion euros to the EU. At the moment, there is nothing to be seen of it. During the present financial planning period, a no deal Brexit will thus be for Germany some 12 billion euros, partly beginning in 2020. And this is not provided for in the budget.

The risk of increased defense expenditures. A completely obscure situation prevails here. The troops want much, NATO even more. The positions of the Defense Minister and the Finance Minister however vary. There is no clarity. The investments are, despite what they have plainly said, at less than 10 percent once again much too low. There is no real growth in 2020. That simply does not agree. For broadband construction and the Digital Pact there is absolutely nothing and the investment quota even decreases. Those are the facts, Herr Minister, despite what you have plainly said.

No one speaks of the steadily increasing risk of an electrical black-out, nor does it appear in the budget. Yet it increases permanently due to the energy transformation [Wende]. The costs of migration for the social budget are also not be underestimated. The cost basis increases. The compensation to states and localities will have to be raised. That is an additional major risk in the planning. Today, each indeed wants in some way to receive migrants, but no one wants to pay the bill. That is self-righteous [gutmenschliche] hypocrisy. The localities’ readiness to receive will be bought with tax money. Good deeds at the cost of foreign people however have no moral worth.

The risk of an unconditional basic pension. It is in no way planned for in the budget. An unadulterated flop.

Then there is a special risk. There is a media report according to which 20 billion euros could flow to Iraq so that Isis murderers there will not be too harshly condemned. The government does not indeed  confirm this planning, yet the report’s underlying paper clarifies nothing. 20 billion euros: That would be more than the combined budgets for families, seniors, women and children, and development assistance – just for a couple of Isis fighters in Iraq. I demand from the government an explicit clarification of the origin of this report.

The coalition must finally trouble itself to use German money for the German citizen. Truly middle-class [bürgerliche] parties would do that. For all that, the tax money comes from these same citizens and it is still too much. The Finance Minister in the fat years can use up the illegitimately collected asylum reserve funds yet even these 30 billion euros will be gone by 2021.

I come to conclusion. After us, the deluge, as well as the devastating mega-crises. That is the apparent plan of this so serious federal government.

Hearty thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]