René Springer, September 17, 2020, Labor

German Bundestag, September 17, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/176, pp. 22081-22082.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

We are now debating over sustainability in the world of labor and I would have a couple of sustainability questions for those already long sitting here.   

How sustainable actually is it that we maintain one of the largest low-wage sectors in Europe, even though we know that a lower wage leads to poverty in old age? We today have 10 million employees who work full-time yet earn so little that they in the end can build up no pension entitlement above the basic security?  Work 45 long years, full-time, poverty in old age – I do not believe that was your message to the voters. Yet poverty in old age also means that we load enormous burdens onto future generations.

Coming generations: The keyword brings me to education policy and to family policy. The future belongs to those who understand, develop and master the new technologies. What is the prerequisite for that? The students must be fit in the natural sciences, competent in math, physics, biology, chemistry. How sustainable actually is an education policy when our German Grundschul students in international comparison, meanwhile falling far back in the natural sciences, lie behind Kazakhstan? How sustainable is a policy which apparently indicates that we are no longer equal to the technological change of the future because our students will not be up to it if we thusly continue? Besides that, it is no comfort that we are scarcely better than the Serbs. We will not accept that.

…Germany expends 200 billion euros per year on 150 family policy services, somewhere lost in a thicket, 150 services which the government itself cannot enumerate. The result of these services is: 68 percent of single parents are threatened with poverty. Each child who will be born into a family increases the risk of poverty. We have countless children drawing Hartz-IV. Children have become a luxury and, under your accounting, we are stumbling into a demographic catastrophe.

Tomorrow we will lack the skilled labor, tomorrow we will lack those who fund the pensions. Ja, for that there is a new magic term called “skilled labor immigration”. Yet I ask myself: How sustainable actually is a skilled labor immigration in which, for 100 foreigners who arrive at a reasonable job, 50 foreigners immigrate into the Hartz-IV system? How sustainable is such an immigration policy? How sustainable is an immigration policy in which ultimately 40 percent of all Hartz-IV recipients are foreigners? Who, please, in the long-term will finance that?

            Peter Weiss (CDU/CSU – Emmendingen): Is there actually a topic other than                                             “foreigners”?

            Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): No, there is no other topic!

We now have, as a condition of your Corona measures, an enormous increase in unemployment. 637,000 Corona unemployed, more will follow. All of you know that. We even have an increase in unemployment in the occupations with shortages, even in old age care, the number one occupation with shortages. Has anyone for once had the idea to suspend the skilled labor immigration law or allow the western Balkans regulation to expire, so that at a time in which our people are going unemployed, no additional skilled labor will be recruited in foreign countries? No, this idea comes to no one. You are looking at a future – and we unfortunately with you – in which foreign skilled labor, in a time of increasing unemployment, is competing in a labor market, although it is willing to accept up to 1,500 euros per month less in pay.  

            Peter Weiss (CDU/CSU – Emmendingen): Have you even once spoken with the                                         management?

That is namely the pay gap we meanwhile have between Germans and foreigners: 1,000 to 1,500 euros monthly.

I come to conclusion. “Social sustainability” means the prohibition of present undertakings which could not be desired by future generations. In the past 30 years, you have shown that with you, that is not the situation.

          Vice-president Claudia Roth: Herr colleague, you are clearly over.                                                                               Would you please come to an end?

I come to an end. – Yesterday, delegation chairman Ralph Brinkhaus clearly said: There should now be a sustainability check for laws. Attention should be paid to what that means for future generations. Hitherto, what have you actually done?

I am grateful for the attention. ‘Til then.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Dirk Spaniel, September 16, 2020, Mobility

 German Bundestag, September 16, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/175, pp. 22000-22001.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In as good as every sitting of the transportation committee, sociologists will all-knowingly assert that the combustion engine will be replaced by electro-mobility. And when you reiterate that each evening before going to sleep, yourself apparently in the meantime believing it: That is a fiction, consisting of three parts which I will now clarify for you.

First fiction: You assert that electro-mobility can be implemented in the short-term. For the implementation of your plan for CO₂ reduction, you require by 2030 about 10 million electric vehicles in Germany. These autos must first be purchased by customers in Germany and for that are required a distribution system, transformer houses and lines. How slowly we in Germany can lay cable, each can estimate by how badly that works in the fiber optic structure. If almost no one in this country buys these autos because the operation is an imposition, how shall the number of vehicles in stock be increased? Should the manufacturers give away their autos? What do you wish to do?

Second fiction: You say: Electro-mobility contributes to CO₂ reduction. The national power mix is clearly weighted toward coal-generated power. The CO₂ output per kilowatt hour will next year further increase with the shut down of the nuclear power plants. Today the CO₂ emissions of an electric vehicle in the contemporary power mix is somewhat comparable to that of a modern diesel. According to the numbers, with electro-mobility you decrease CO₂ emissions in the transportation sector, yet you thereby generate CO₂ emissions in the energy sector. That is an affront to every scientist. It is inconceivable that you get away with that in public.

Your third fiction is that with electro-mobility workplaces in Germany will be secured. That is, with permission, one of your most impudent false statements. 95 percent of the workplaces at an auto concern depend on the combustion engine. The workplaces which are going to be lost with the end of the combustion engine will be gone for good. Period. Ja, we of the AfD see the maintenance of workplaces alone as an essential point of why we fight for the combustion engine.

Synthetic- as well as bio-fuels, as formulated in our motion [Drucksache 19/22428, 22446], are the only solution for the maintenance of the combustion engine in light of this EU legislation. He who subsequently rejects it has nothing to say when the abolition of workplaces in the automobile industry continues. We therefore request your support for our motion. I will be glad if you support the synthetic fuels. You can then later vote for this motion.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

Peter Felser, September 11, 2020, Artificial Intelligence

German Bundestag, September 11, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/174, pp. 21897-21898.

Many thanks, Herr President. – Dear colleagues. Dear guests.

What actually is in this White Book KI [Künstliche Intelligenz] of the EU? Artificial Intelligence shall promote the values of the EU, shall implement freedom and human rights around the world. Artificial Intelligence shall advance the Green Deal, impel climate protection, enhance Germany’s competitivity. Artificial Intelligence shall conjure up a citizen-friendly administration, maximize all economic and social well-being and naturally prevent discrimination.

Ladies and gentlemen, with this, you are world champions in the abstractions of naïve, feel-good prose. You thereby wish only to veil an inherent ineffectiveness and lack of deliberation in regards these important topics. For KI, the greatest hindrance – as we have certainly heard here – is the people’s lack of trust. We hear ever again exactly that in the inquiry committee “Artificial Intelligence”. Ja, dear colleagues of the Federal government, then for once speak clearly with the citizens. Stop with the unspeakable buzz. Tell people, clearly and substantively, where lie the advantages of an installation of KI systems and where lie the disadvantages of an installation of KI systems. With such an open discussion, you would build trust in this country.

You want a “world-wide pioneering role for the EU in KI systems” – world-wide. Europe, by fundamental research into the practical application of “globally successful business models” shall assume a “leadership position” – leadership position. Hopefully, nobody in China or the U.S.A. is reading this White Book. What then do you wish to do for this leadership position? Provide skilled personnel and, before all, you wish to regulate. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not thereby overhaul the deficit.

Europe has no hardware production worthy of the name. Except for one German firm, we have no significant software manufacturer; you know that. We in Germany and Europe also have no platforms. Non-European players dominate in all three areas. Yet here lie the principal problems which we must address. You can have as many skilled personnel, standards and rules as you wish: If you have no data platforms, build no mainframe computer, do not program the software and do not yourself manage the networks, then your standards are a waste. That sadly I must say, dear colleagues.

An example of an utterly naïve digital prestige project – backed by you in the motion – : Gaia-X. Gaia-X as a European cloud infrastructure shall be an alternative to the offerings of the great market masters in the U.S.A. and China – sounds good for once. But why in all the world should small and mid-sized firms store their data in the Gaia infrastructure? What is the unique feature? You say: European standards as a unique feature. Yet the big American and Chinese firms are already here. They offer European data storage on their cloud servers. They have long since recognized the demand for European standards. As a a businessman in the IT area, I decide according to performance, speed, availability, security and price, as to which cloud servers I ultimately hand over my data. I am sure that many firms in Germany will act  exactly the same. And even you, dear colleagues of the Greens, host your national site on Google.

The problem lies elsewhere. Gaia-X stands for digital sovereignty, you say. Yet even that is false. We have no digital sovereignty. From where comes the hardware for these servers and routers which you wish to construct? From where comes the network technology? In each case, not from Europe; keyword: “Huawei”.

For months already, I have in this place spoken of Europe’s scandalous dependence in the areas of data storage, hardware and software. We must solve that before we push any other projects.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

Jörg Meuthen, September 16, 2020, State of the European Union

European Parliament, Brussels, September 16, 2020, P9 CRE-PRO (2020) 09-16 (3-103-0000)

Frau Commission President, Herr Parliament President, esteemed colleagues.

Frau von der Leyen, you have here delivered a most pathetic speech on the State of the Union. Ascribing this title to your speech was unquestionably done with consideration. It is nevertheless ultimately only an additional, shameless labeling swindle by the Commission. The loan is clear: It is a transference of the speeches on the State of the Union like those we know of by the President of the United States, or of the speeches on the state of the nation occasionally undertaken by European heads of state or governments.

Only, the thing has a decisive catch, which was supposed to be concealed by this wording: The United States of America is a state, Germany, France and Italy are states. The European Union is however not a state and you, Frau von der Leyen, are no head of state, even if you gladly would be one. You can still flourish ever so many long speeches over the State of the Union. 

And I assure you, we will bitterly oppose your desires, already far too advanced, of constructing for the EU its own affairs of state along with its own right to loot the citizen by means of guaranteeing taxation and also lately indebtedness competences. The EU – please note – is not a state and we will do all within our powers to see that it never becomes one.

If you, in the usual hypocrisy of this house and of the Commission, therefore accuse us of being opponents of Europe or even of being enemies of Europe, then I on the contrary recall to you: We are not the real enemies of Europe, no, you are! Since the ideals upon which our wonderful and various continent historically and culturally stands are the ideals of freedom and democracy. You trample underfoot both of these with your super-state fantasies with its corresponding power over the citizen.

You are presently using the Corona crisis, which in fact actually is a crisis but which is in no way an unprecedented catastrophe as you wish us to believe, for the purpose of amassing ever more competences at the level of the EU where they can in no way be justified. For you, Covid-19 actually is of the greatest convenience. You speak of an unprecedented crisis. You find therein the welcome opportunity for an ever further communitarization.

You speak of a Recovery Fund, as if we find ourselves at the end of disastrous war with cities laid waste and millions of people to be mourned, as was the case in 1945. That is offensive. It is a knowing, purposeful exaggeration of this crisis which we actually have as a result of Covid-19 and also of the fully over-done lockdown of business life. Your so-called counter-measures, Frau Commission President, will not by the means of indebtedness and taxation orgies help us out of the crisis. On the contrary, it will intensify the crisis because it leads us down a completely false, essentially socialistic path. It is no accident that here in this house it is the greens and the communists who applaud the loudest.

So I ask: How blind to history can one actually be? The lessons of the terrifying 20^th Century to a great extent and for hundreds of millions of people– you still have not grasped. You are on a fateful, false way. The price will be an enormous one, not for you personally, but for the citizens whose interests you here pretend to represent.

 

[trans: tem]

Bernd Baumann, September 18, 2020, Moria

 German Bundestag, September 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/177, pp. 22293-22294.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In Greece, migrants set fire to their tents and reception camps, churches were laid waste. The goal of the arsonists was a permanent admission to Europe, preferably in Germany.

The Linke and the Greens support this goal today here in the Bundestag. All shall come: Then you could remain – And the Federal government wishes to take in thousands; that is the signal. That is a catastrophic signal. All shall come. So set fire to your camps, then you could remain, might even continue on to Germany. – The smuggler mafia rubs its hands, since its business is enlivened by the Federal government; all of you here support the international traffickers, extortionists and fraudsters. That must be clearly stated. The Greek government protested against that in the summer of 2019.

The example of Hungary is still visible to all: Initially, only a few thousand camping at the Budapest train station. For them, Merkel opened the borders. The pictures released a gigantic suction – to the last corner of the Orient and Africa. Suddenly, millions of people are set in motion. In endless lines of humanity, they break through all borders. Is that no lesson to you? Have you learned nothing from the history?

You make of Germany a settlement territory for any who wish to come, a kind of public buffet at which any can serve himself. We will not allow that. We will preserve Germany and its culture as the only spot on Earth – Listen up! – where we Germans can feel at home.

Contrary to your assertion, your policy is anything but humanitarian. You are cynical because you send false signals. Innumerable people throughout the world will be uprooted. They sell their land, their cattle, give thousands of dollars to the north African smuggler mafia and allow themselves to shipped to Europe in leaking boats.

For all of you here, it is certainly not about the people. For you, it’s about the pictures, ultimately about a populist self-presentation; that is the situation, ladies and gentlemen. Berlin’s Interior Senator of the SPD, Green chief Göring-Eckardt,

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): Delegation chairman!

Armin Laschet, who already sees himself as Merkel’s heir: You all fly with a big media crowd to Greece to pose with little children. A couple of disconcerted words for the camera and then back on the comfy planes.

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): Where exactly were you falsely                                                diverted?

And all the leading media send these pictures into every living room; many of the public media are right at the front of that. You heat up the mood yet further. What an ultimately cheap dramatization! What an inhuman, public spectacle!

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): What an agitation!

            Karamba Diaby (SPD): What a character!

In the end, you distort our once rational, well functioning state into a left-green, feelings and mood democracy: Sentimental, defenseless, irrational and incapable of solving all the urgent problems, just as we again see here today, ladies and gentlemen. Therefore, almost every country in Europe rejects Germany’s refugee policy. They reject it! Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic abhor it; the Austrians and Danes turn away; the Italians, Spanish, French and Dutch admit no more migrants. Germany is isolated!

On the Greek island, not only a couple of tents are burning. The European idea is also being burnt,

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): As if you understood what Europe is!

the solidarity, the stability and the close cohesion of the nations of Europe. And for that, you with your policy are to answer!  

So why does Germany stand so alone?

            Filiz Polat (Greens): How much speaking time does he still have?

How is it your neighbors do not wish, at any price, to follow your ostensibly good policy, your good example?

            Vice-president Claudia Roth (Greens): Herr Baumann, come to an end, please.

Because they have no heart? No! Because they have more brains, ladies and gentlemen!

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): All of which you must read! Not once can he                                                        speak freely!

 

 

[trans: tem]

           

 

 

Rainer Kraft, September 18, 2020, Nord Stream 2

German Bundestag, September 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/177, pp. 22317-22318. 

These two motions under debate deal with either the continuation or the discontinuance of the Nord Stream 2 project, a gas pipeline which shall yearly bring 55 billion normative cubic meters of natural gas via the Baltic Sea to Germany and the EU. The predecessor project has been completely utilized since 2018.

This energy will be urgently required in Germany. With the planned withdrawal from nuclear and coal energy, power plant capacity in Germany will by 2022 be reduced by some 8 terawatt hours which last year had been delivered to industrial sites in Germany – predictable, reliable, of good value; so to say, sustainable. This electricity will be lacking.

Business associations and the Federal Ministry for the Economy agree that gas power plants must in the future fill this deficit. That this, as opposed to electricity generated by nuclear power, increases CO₂ emissions is apparently a consequence desired by you. In a land of little green elves, it is of course believed that by a building-up of so-called renewables the deficit can be closed. That however is, with permission, complete humbug.

The missing 80 terawatt hours correspond to about half the amount of electricity which wind and solar altogether have generated in the past year. The creation of this wind and solar capacity has cost 20 years and hundreds of billions of euros.

The most hopeless dreamers in your ranks do not believe it possible to now procure an additional 50 percent build-up by 2022, especially when in the coming years many of your installations are omitted from the assessment and then, on account of being uneconomic, will be permanently shut down.

Your electro-fidget installations [Zappelstromanlagen] generate electricity for a great diversity of regions and not for where it is needed. The necessary electrical distribution lines have in part still not been planned. In contrast to that, there exists in Germany over 500,000 kilometers of presently available natural gas lines which can be connected to any of the newly planned power plant sites. Furthermore, a gas and steam power plant, in contrast to the low-value energy generation methods compelled by you, delivers great amounts of valuable district heating.

And while it may not actually interest you, let us nevertheless speak for once of the citizens’ money. Gas is currently more expensive than brown or bituminous coal. With the withdrawal from coal and nuclear power, price increases are to be expected here which then must be borne by businesses and the people. However, thanks to Nord Stream 2, the delivered amounts will evidently be increased and energy experts in fact expect a price reduction per cubic meter of gas – not only in Germany, but also in the bordering European states. For all the European nations and for the transit nations Ukraine and Poland, for whom you are constantly concerned, a reduced gas price is expected, as per the experts of the EWI and the University of Cologne.  

Ladies and gentlemen, so you see: We need this gas line – in fact on account of your energy policy. Had we an energy policy built on modern nuclear and coal power plants, we could have the luxury of questioning the project. Yet you yourselves with your bungled energy transformation have left no alternative to piping the gas.

            Johann Saathoff (SPD): What has that to do with sustainability? How is that                                             defined as sustainability?

Not only we see it so but, according to a poll by the ZDF “Politbarometers”, so do 70 percent of the citizens of this country. The best for last: Nord Stream 2 would be a significant economic factor in an otherwise structurally weak federal state. This gas supply can produce what you so happily promise in flowery speeches in the Bundestag: Sustainable workplaces with which people in their Heimat may have an honorable living and so contribute to a social, progressive Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

Thanks.

 

[trans: tem]