Sunday, February 2, 2020

Beatrix von Storch, January 30, 2020, EU-Israel Relations


Beatrix von Storch
EU-Israel Relations
German Bundestag, January 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/143, pp. 17909-17910

[Beatrix von Storch is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Berlin. She is a lawyer and here introduces an AfD motion (Drucksache 19/16855) to “Improve Relations between the EU and Israel.” Heiko Maas (SPD) is the German Foreign Minister.]

Right honorable Frau President. Dear colleagues.

After 13 years, Germany again takes the chair of the EU Council. We demand of the Federal government in the first of our two motions today: Use this chairmanship to improve the relations between the EU and Israel. That is urgently necessary.

A November poll by the MITVIM Institute, together with your Friedrich Ebert Foundation, indicated that only 27 percent of Israelis see the EU as a friend of Israel, but 45 percent as an enemy. The overwhelming majority in this poll expressed more trust in Trump’s America or Putin’s Russia than in the EU. That gives us something to think about.

The biased, pro-Islamist and anti-Israeli attitude of the EU Commission and the EU Parliament weighs heavily on the relations with Israel. That is especially clear in three points: The EU refuses to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, the EU supports the anti-semitic BDS movement and the EU discriminates against Israel in that they now label wares as being from Jewish settlements; it could also be said that they stigmatize.

The Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung in November wrote of Heiko Maas’s speeches on anti-semitism, if I may cite: “He uses phrases who has nothing concrete to say.”

            Marianne Schneider (SPD): The AfD has a lot of experience in that!

The Federal government affirms Germany’s historic responsibility. But when it comes to the concrete, you kneel before the Islam lobby, as in the Kuwait Airways case, the subject of the second of our motions today.The anti-discrimination offices take aim at any Handwerkmeister who incorrectly describes positions according to gender. Yet an Arab aviation company can discriminate against Israeli citizens at a German airport and refuse to carry? Consider just for once if Lufthansa did that with Turks, Syrians or Iraqis.

            Vice-president Petra Pau: Frau von Storch –

No, thank you very much – How great would be the uproar? But with the Israelis: Complete and total silence. That is unacceptable and therefore: Approve today this motion from us. Put a stop to this intolerable practice!

Demands that the EU halt attacks on Israel will be ignored, blocked and, in the worst case, sabotaged.

First: Hezbollah. In the EU committee yesterday, my colleague Sigbert Droese asked the Foreign Minister: Will the Federal government during its Council presidency work to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and indeed as a whole? The answer was: That will not fly. What good is a EU which not even once is ready to classify as such a terrorist organization? What good is a EU which intentionally makes itself an area of return for terrorists? We do not want that.

Second: BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]. We demand that the Bundestag resolution “Resolute Opposition to BDS” be implemented. The EU foreign policy representative has expressly declared that membership in the BDS anti-semitic movement does not lead to an exclusion from EU funds. That is incompatible with this Bundestag’s resolution. German tax money may not flow into the BDS movement, not even indirectly via the EU budget.

Third: The labeling duty. Central president Schuster yesterday yet again emphasized that to the Interior committee. The labeling duty for wares from the Jewish settlements is a discriminatory double standard. It pertains only to Israel and not to the rest of the world where there are also conflicts.

Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Which however was not deliberated on before the EuGH [European Court of Justice].

The Jerusalem Post headline on that: While Jihadis Attack Israel, EU Engages in Israel-bashing.




[Translated by Todd Martin]


Monday, January 27, 2020

Gottfried Curio, January 16, 2020, Immigration Costs


Gottfried Curio
Immigration Costs
German Bundestag, January 16, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/140, pp. 17468-17470

[Gottfried Curio is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Berlin. He is a physicist and musician and is the AfD’s Bundestag spokesman for immigration and integration policy. He here presents an AfD motion (Drucksache 16488) calling on the government to publish a general accounting of the costs of immigration in Germany. Hartz-IV is a large-scale unemployment compensation program.]

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

A prerequisite for democracy is the complete information of the citizen. The AfD demands the entire cost of the migration policy be comprehensively laid out. Many costs are not at the federal but at the state and local levels and are apportioned to several budgets. What is lacking is a yearly detailing of the open-borders policy’s costs as a transparent, big picture for the taxpayer. If, with the two-figure billion expenditures, the government whistles “From no one will something be taken away on account of the refugees,” then the citizen suspects that precisely that has not occurred. Each euro can be expended only once. Since, who can sponsor the entire, no-nations-orgy? The extorted taxpayer! To whom this government must finally submit a detailed balance sheet.

The welcome party costs, namely: Accommodation  and care, sickness accounts and later pensions, German courses and translators, unsuccessful deportation efforts, only a few, inconceivably expensive deportations, security personnel, police deployments, hundreds of thousands of denial procedures and then the administration of this total chaos. Billions are flung at all of this and so these billions are lacking in other areas. The German public officials union sounds the alarm. The public administration is at an end, kaputt, at system collapse! From building permits right through to the courts – absurd waiting times, no personnel, no equipment! Criminal suspects must be released. The infrastructure crumbles, day-care is lacking, instruction is omitted.  

Those who are productive shall be extorted by the state and will receive nothing in return. Hans Werner Sinn states that the migration policy has already hitherto cost the taxpayer 1,000 billion euros, as does Professor Raffelhüschen.  The Institute for the German Economy and the Institute for Economic Research arrive at a good 50 billion euros per year. The Federal Ministries of the Interior, Education, Families, Environment and Finance must together come up with such a sum. The Market Economy Foundation makes clear that Germany plainly does not profit. “An uncontrolled immigration brings the country not fiscal return but long-term costs”, said Foundation chairman Eilfort. The mass of the the immigrants, ladies and gentlemen, will ultimately receive basic, old age insurance, financed by taxes. That is the reality of an immigration not regulated and taxed, but commanded and tax-financed, ladies and gentlemen.

A functioning social state would before all reduce the poverty of its citizens and lower the burden on the taxpayer. The anti-native ideologies of this government have, however, entirely other priorities: Giant money flows for an absurd energy transformation, the complete care of hundreds of thousands of economic immigrants, the subsidization of other EU states and, soon, all of Africa. We demand the prioritization of the welfare of our citizens instead of what is unjustifiable and, instead of a long-term welcome party for illegality, again the way of right and reason.

37 percent of the Hartz-IV payments go to foreigners who make up only 13 percent of the population. Since 2007, the Hartz-IV payments to foreigners have doubled to 13 billion euros yearly. The Hartz-IV quotient of foreigners is, at 60 percent, seven times higher than that of the entire population.This government compels migration of people by the millions who, without having worked or paid taxes, shall receive the same social benefits as those who must finance those benefits. In that regard, a Princeton University study indicates, on the basis of Danish numbers, that a decrease of social benefits leads to a lower immigration, just as an increase to a higher. So then: Immediately end the forced suction.

What  an absurd situation: The horrendous costs of  unaccompanied minors, of whom over 40 percent are actually adults. In Aachen, daily care for an asylum applicant, 13 euros – a Hartz-IV recipient receives 5 euros. The monthly card in Hamburg for migrants is scarcely 30 euros, for normal seniors over 60 euros. That is nothing other than a policy against one’s own citizens.

In addition to all that are, ja, the required expenditures for 180,000 new day care places, 2,400 additional elementary schools, 15,000 new police positions, 2,000 new magistrates for the wave of asylum applicants and the pensions. BAMF [Federal Office for Migration and Refugees] president Sommer warns: “Many of the refugees are  today in jobs which nevertheless are mostly in the low-wage sector.” Many migrants would later subside into old age poverty. Oh, look! Since it is, ja, good to know that the Bundesbank is pleading that the pension entrance age be further raised to 69 years. Ever more of our pensioners, who have worked a lifetime, therefore subside to a Hartz-IV level in the basic security [Grundsicherung].  All this because this government sets false priorities. Unlimited money for migrants, yet the German employee, having paid in for decades, no longer receives anything decent. That is simply a rip-off. The citizens will no longer permit that.

Health insurance: Already after 15 months, the migrants receive full benefits. The government makes the payments yet that covers one half the costs. Thus, despite a record income in 2019, is produced a deficit of billions. According to one prognosis commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation, in 20 years the minus threatens to be almost 50 billion euros. The citizen, we all, must then pay the bill. Truly open-minded. That is theft with notification.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Spin! [Meinungsmache]

And almost 8 billion for control of the causes of refugees – money completely flung away. The living standard of Africa will never correspond with that of Europe. Even a hammock here earns more than work there. From the money transference there can yet more can pay for the migration trip here. Zero usefulness, gigantic damage.

Cities and communities are stuck with the costs. For Hamburg and Saxony, the federal subsidy covers only a quarter of the real costs. The localities’ old debts debate shall be glossed over by the total overload of migration costs. And all that, completely without necessity, will be imposed on the citizens. Even the instrument of self-entry shows that, ja, it is not competent. That is a robbery of 50 billion euros per year. Migration researchers tell us that a hundred times more migrants could be cared for near the native region rather than in Europe. The whole humanitarian embroidery is simply nonsense.

We demand: Finally compare the immigrants’ aids and benefits to the expenditures.  We need the particulars of the long-term costs in consideration of the extent of providing for the migrants, of the multiplication of all costs by family stragglers and followers. Yet the state bears the costs. For the challenge, it will take cash in hand. Only it is stupid for the citizen that this hand that there takes the money was previously in his pocket, ladies and gentlemen.

This policy of flooding Germany with migrants, of destroying the social state by over-extension, of driving the state of law to collapse, is one of dangerous, political extremism. The voter must manage. We are out of money. From police and legal training to pensions and health care. Yet the self-deluded, true believers are shattering this state, and thus permit the verification of their friendly faces.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): This state has a surplus!

We need finally a coherent presentation, and not a preemptive theft from the citizens so as to declare a pseudo-surplus. Nein, I must say to you: If, as at the bakery, each roll requires an order, then no program of billions shall be glossed over. It is time that the federal government took up the order duty! [Bonpflicht]

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Disgusting!



[Translated by Todd Martin]












Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Rüdiger Lucassen, January 15, 2020, Bundeswehr Mission in Iraq


Rüdiger Lucassen
Bundeswehr Mission in Iraq
German Bundestag, January 15, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/139, p. 17382

[Rüdiger Lucassen is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member and the AfD chairman in the western German state of Nordrhein-Westphalen, Germany’s most populous state. He is a businessman and retired Bundeswehr officer.]

Herr President. Honorable colleagues.

The Federal government’s Iraq mandate was from the beginning a false construction. In the text of the mandate, the Federal government decorates itself with the military defeat of Isis – a success achieved by regional combatants and the U.S. Air Force. The federal government therein paints the future of  the multi-national state of Iraq in the brightest of colors, as if it were a housing project of the AWO [worker welfare organization]. Yet it is not. Iraq is a state construct without a functioning government, in which a dozen militias scuffle and regional powers conduct a proxy war; a construct in which Iraqi citizenship counts for nothing while adherence to religious affiliation and clan is everything. A mandate that describes the situation on the ground so dishonestly cannot function.

The federal government therein refers for the umpteenth time to the request of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament that the Bundeswehr be allowed to train local security forces. It is the central and only justification to which the Federal government refers for its mandate, since a UN mandate or at least a common NATO mission fails to materialize. This justification was renounced by the Iraqi parliament. Therefore, the Federal government must immediately end our soldiers’ mission in Iraq.

In committee, the government and the CDU/CSU delegation have already indicated what they think of the Iraqi parliament. The decision they refer to as a “recommendation.” Further, it is not the parliament that is competent but the Iraqi emergency government. And generally, according to the taste of the CDU/CSU, there were too few members at the vote – a situation that here in the Bundestag does not trouble most of you.

Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): Look for once at the constitution of the country of Iraq and do not tell tales! Here is the translation!

Ladies and gentlemen, the parliamentary participation law permits the German Bundestag to withdraw from the government the Bundeswehr’s mandate for a foreign mission. In this case, it is not only a right but a duty: The duty to dispatch our soldiers only on legally based missions.

Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): It has always been thus. You have even said so yourself. You are contradicting yourself!

Already three months ago, my delegation voted unanimously against the Iraq mission, as did the Greens and the Linke; and the FDP voted as one against it and ten members of the SDP.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): On completely different grounds, Herr Lucassen!

            Daniela De Ridder (SPD): But not on the same grounds!

The situation in Iraq since then has worsened dramatically. Iran last week fired intermediate-range missiles at military support points of the coalition. Intercept systems are not at hand. Local terrorist units can perpetrate attacks at any time on foreign troop contingents. Yet our soldiers on the ground are not equipped for that.

Now is the time for our parliament to make use of its control function. If budget appropriations are the sovereign right of the parliament, then the sovereign duty is the control of the government concerning the foreign missions of our soldiers. We must not forget namely one thing: It is the young men and women in uniform who must run to the bunkers because they must protect themselves from the Iranian rockets. It is the young men and women who must bear the risk of being attacked by internal perpetrators or militia. And this parliament must then answer the question: Was it worth it? That is far more than a yellow ribbon on the lapel. I therefore demand that you do your duty as members, bring our soldiers back home –

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): You certainly must not do that! We surely know that!

– and withdraw the mandate from the government.

Thanks.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): You do not define what our duty is! Nothing!



[Translated by Todd Martin]