Mariana Harder-Kühnel, June 18, 2020, Contergan Foundation

Mariana Harder-Kühnel

Contergan Foundation

German Bundestag, June 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/166, pp. 20796-20797

[Mariana Harder-Kühnel is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Hessen. She is a lawyer and here responds to a government proposal concerning the foundation set up to support those harmed by the Contergan drug.]

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The Contergan scandal was one of the largest pharmaceutical scandals in the history of the Federal Republic. Contergan was sold by the millions to pregnant women. In newborns, it lead to an accumulation of severe malformations in limbs and organs. Countless stillbirths trace back to Contergan. Here, a crime against humanity was committed.

Some 2,600 of those harmed by Contergan presently still live in Germany. It is a matter of people who deserve our particular respect and our particular care. We rejoice that each one of them exists. Despite the hurdles encountered every day by those harmed by Contergan, frequently they are happy people, people who make other people happy, and each one of them is an argument for life and an argument against the mass manslaughter being driven forward in ever more blatant ways by the apologists of abortion.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): You are making a false debate!

Many political groups wish to legalize pregnancy termination up to the ninth month, which is nothing other than child murder.

            Alexander Ulrich (Linke): Wrong topic!

Many demand lifting the ban on advertising for pregnancy termination, while at the same time, ostensibly for health reasons, they get excited over tobacco and alcohol ads,

            Ingrid Pahlman (Greens): Contergan foundation law!

as if smoking a cigarette was worse than an aborted child.

And naturally these milieus also want to further loosen the abortion law which, before all, brings into play the handicapped children as an issue.

            Sören Pellman (Linke): It was your delegation that has made precisely 

            that the topic!

This crowd thereby unwittingly admits that, for them, the handicapped are only second-class people. We reject this culture of death. It is simply wrong and ought to be abhorred.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): You haven’t the faintest idea!

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): The topic, please!

Four things are characteristic of every socialist human experiment: The destruction of private property, the destruction of tradition, the destruction of religion and the destruction of the family.

            Anke Domscheit-Berg (Linke): Gender mainstreaming!

The destruction of all of this necessarily ends in poverty, loss of orientation, loss of value and ultimately in death. 100,000 aborted children per year indicate how far creeping socialism has already progressed in this country.

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): The orders of business! The topic, please!

It is desired to build a new world in which the old world is done away with. The culture of a people is discerned in how it deals with death, in how it deals with its unborn children and in how it deals with its handicapped people.  

Michaela Noll (CDU/CSU): In your speech is discerned how you deal with Contergan children! That is a lack of respect!

It is our duty to treat everyone well.

For understandable reasons, it is seldom that we praise the work of the Federal government. We however approve the draft law here introduced because it is right on the facts.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): Yes, and what are the facts in your view?

It is good if the Federal means already granted are flowing to the medically competent centers. These centers make possible an improved counseling and treatment of people harmed by Contergan. And it is right that in the draft law the foreseen, justified claims of these people are no longer disallowed. Since they have a life full of hurdles. Let’s not put any more in the way.

Many thanks.

            Alexander Ulrich (Linke): Wrong topic!

[Translated by Todd Martin]

           

  

           

Jens Maier, June 19, 2020, Antifa Ban

Jens Maier

Antifa Ban

German Bundestag, June 19, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/167, pp. 20897-20898

[Jens Maier is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Saxony. He is a lawyer and here introduces an AfD motion (Drucksache 20074) to ban the Antifa organization. Siegbert Droese is also an AfD Bundestag member from Saxony.]

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

            What that is for the times, where

            Talk of trees is near to crime

            Because one silence much sin enfolds!

            [Was sind das für Zeiten, wo

            Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist

            Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschliesst!]

            Harald Weinberg (Linke): Brecht is turning over in the grave!

Bertolt Brecht, yes.

Yes, much is said here. Yet over actual sins, like the Antifa terror, there is still much that is silenced here in the Bundestag and in society. And when it cannot be silenced, when it must be spoken because there is nothing else to do, because of what again is happening, then these buildings attacked by the Antifa as an example will be trivialized, downplayed, denied and re-interpreted, all with the object in view of doing one thing; namely, to do nothing. In regards to you, Frau Renner, that does not surprise me. You are there. You actually belong to the Anitfa.

            Martina Renner (Linke): Ja!

Yet in regards to you in the Union, that still amazes me. That is cowardice, cowardice in the face of the enemy.

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): Just wait for my colleagues’ speeches!

One can be thankful that President Trump in the USA has taken the initiative and set a good example. He has declared war on the Antifa. He is determined to act effectively and restore order, for example in Seattle, where it is threatened.

            Ute Vogt (SPD): Follow after America!

I would hope for such determination from a German government.

Antifa – what is that? There yields a diffuse picture of differing, formerly loosely associated groups, with propensities to violence of various intensity. Besides harmlessly operating, ideologically contaminated spin doctors or youth plagued by the woes of the world, there exists in the Antifa family milieu tightly organized gangs of brawlers who conduct minutely planned attacks and manage to be abundantly financed indirectly by public money; that is especially scandalous.

They do not do that in secret, but quite openly. A glance at the internet suffices. I refer here for example to the site antifa-berlin.info. Here were gathered the specific acts employed in ways glorifying violence. Who reported what, who took care of that? – Yes, Frau Lazar, you laugh yourself half to death – Where is the police, why did nothing happen? The answer is quite simple: Because in this society leftist violence has been made acceptable, because the political-media class has created a climate of acceptance concerning leftist violence and because leftist violence does not occur in the picture constructed by the media, where only right-wing extremism can be dangerous.

            Mechthild Rawert (SPD): It is dangerous!

I will not now speak of all the attacks on AfD offices or the insidious attack on Frank Magnitz.

            Marion Wendt (CDU/CSU): My office was attacked by rightists!

On Monday of this week, the Antifa was known to have been underway in Leipzig and attacked the café of Siegbert Droese’s sister who certainly has nothing to do in any way with political things. What that is, is family liability [Sippenhaft], and das ist nicht in Ordnung. It is however to be noted that the spirit which is called up can also touch one’s own people. So, in a curious way, Helge Lindh, SPD – you here – was the target of harm in April of this year, as was his office in Wuppertal.   

Besides self-empowerment by acts of violence small or – as at the G-20 summit in Hamburg – large, the Antifa is steadily concerned with creating lawless areas for itself – areas like Connewitz in Leipzig, Rote Flora in Hamburg, Rigauer Strasse in Berlin, areas in which they have control and from which the state of law is practically blocked off. There, one does what one wants. Especially in such no-go areas, one evades all obligations and places oneself – like Reichsburger – outside of society.

For these people, it is not about political aims. For these people, if is about riot, amusement in destruction and submergence in a lawless space. It will be somehow justified with crazy, extreme leftist twaddle. That must stop. Before all things, the legal order of this country must finally be enforced against these types. The Antifa must be banned.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Albrecht Glaser, June 19, 2020, Corona Cyclical Package

Albrecht Glaser

Corona Cyclical Package

German Bundestag, June 19, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/167, pp. 20876-20877

[Albrecht Glaser is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Hessen. He is a member of the Bundestag finance committee and here responds to a government tax proposal concerning the Corona crisis.]

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Following an initial tax law on May 28, by which the food tax in the restaurant trade was fixed for one year at a moderated assessment, we today have here a second law which, as we have heard, shall give a large tax incentive for “Cyclical and Crisis Management”, as it is called.

Although that notice makes clear that tax reduction is the silver bullet for securing liquidity and regenerating profitability, there are few measures for that in the law, and almost all have not a relief but only a delay of payments effect. No abolition of the solidarity surtax, no reduction of tax on profits and, be it only for a time limited to the recovery of the economy, a merely minimal correction in the business tax. The loss carry-back, which was already called for in an AfD motion in April, to be revised to two years; a diminishing depreciation allowance [AfA] during this and next year for non-fixed assets; and a temporary extension of the term of re-investment in the area of §6b EStG [income tax law] – these are the narrow concessions to business. These measures diminish not at all the income of the state; they merely defer it to later years.

The Big Wumms will be a sales tax reduction of 2 or 3 percent, based on a moderated rate of assessment, which is guaranteed only for the second half of 2020. It shall ostensibly relieve the consumers by around 20 billion euros, and almost surely burden business with billions in adaptation costs. Whether these short-term moderations of the sales tax are to be passed on to the consumers, which is questionable, they help not at all the businessmen, since in the short-term we have not a demand by a supply problem. And the “Kindergeld”, allotted already to those of middle income on account of the child allowance, is more a populist measure.

The tax alterations altogether lead to a loss of income of 37 billion euros for the Federal government. On account of foreseeable transfers from the Federal government to the states, communities, social security recipients and investments, which are to be regulated by a supplementary law, the Federal budget for 2020 will be financed by a net indebtedness of 286 billion euros. Together with the new indebtedness of the states and communities of a sum of 120 billion euros and the 200 billion euros borrowed by the Federal government for the capital measures of the KfW, the national debt will increase to 2.66 trillion euros and thereby again grow to a share of over 80 percent of the gross domestic product. That is the situation which we had during the 2009 financial crisis. Return to Go!

Against this background, the Federal government conducts a continental rescue with a touch of world rescue. For that, 750 billion euros in loans will be taken up, although this is forbidden by Article 311 of the AEUV. 500 billion euros of these loans will be bestowed on European countries which are particularly deep in debt and 250 billion euros will be similarly given away. It may be pondered whether the EZB, which also finances other international organizations, in any case receives these first-time issues of the EU into its own portfolio. It thereby finances itself. The consequent burden for Germany, combined with the increased assessment for financing this operation, is not yet foreseeable; just as little as the liability risks. That, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, must indeed be the “Great Transformation” which is constantly being spoken of.

Hearty thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]