Robby Schlund, May 6, 2021, Long Covid

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/227, p. 28983.

Right honorable Frau President. Esteemed colleagues.

Who would have thought that politicians are able to make thoroughly reasonable proposals? And I do not mean your motions, which we are here discussing, but the physician and state councillor Christoph Hufeland of the 19^th Century. For he postulated: “Prophylaxis is better than healing!” What unites we of the AfD in spirit with him is that prophylaxis and prevention are to be definitively preferred to a protracted treatment of illnesses. We besides in this place presented this initiative already at the beginning of February of last year. In that regard, three pillars of an efficient pandemic management play an important role; namely, first, prevention, second, medical treatment and third, international research, for example, for a common vaccine.  

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Hear, hear!

Ladies and gentlemen, try just for once to get a grip on the pandemic and when you have done that, then we can willingly discuss the consequences and collateral damages, which for those affected really are very bad – yet which are already cared for in a very good healthcare system. Some of which was also here got underway.  

All the more so is it not to understand how so up to today the vaccine Sputnik V has not been permitted and how so our healthcare system has still not at all concerned itself with the second Russian vaccine, EpiVacCorona. Already at the beginning of April, it was communicated from Russian science that this vaccine is highly effective against all mutations, including the South African, and it is meanwhile also recognized that this has scarcely any side effects. It is also distinguished by that, following a Corona illness, distinctly fewer post-Corona symptoms would occur.

Now here I actually find something missing in your motions; for the people not only have a right to freedom of vaccination, but plainly also a right to free choice of vaccines and vaccine types. If you here brought in such efficient motions, you could again win back the shattered trust in the vaccination policy.

Yesterday for example, we were discussing the discharges at the Sana clinics. In this regard, it needs be asked whether some of those making motions have considered that by means of your ideas it will come directly to a further commercialization and capitalization in the hospital market. Therefore, allow me a citation – I cite with permission of the Frau President – from Dr. John Mandrola, cardiologist from America, and a sharp critic of a long Covid strategy, ending:

From the perspective of a hospital operator, long Covid offers an opportunity to                    increase market share and to earn money.

That this for you, dear FDP, presents no problem does not really, honestly said, surprise me.

           Harald Weinberg (Linke): Because it is imbecility!

Yet in regards the colleagues of the Linke, I have my misgivings. Since with so many leftist-market-liberal concerns, I can sometimes thoroughly understand your colleague, Frau Wagenknecht.

We agree to the transfer. Many thanks.

          Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Man, man, man!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Rüdiger Lucassen, May 7, 2021, Bundeswehr and Basic Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/228, p. 29191.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

With the motion [Drucksache 19/29310] submitted by the AfD, the Bundestag would have necessarily resolved decades ago to finally create a constitutional basis for the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions. In clear text: For 30 years, CDU, SPD and Greens dispatch German soldiers all over the world and as to that there is in the Basic Law [Grundgesetz] not a single word.

In 1994, the Federal Constitutional Court decided that so-called out-of-area missions can be legitimated with Article 25 of the Basic Law – a legal auxiliary construction with which the Bundestag works now already for almost 30 years. Out of Area, ausserhalb des Gebiets, that is what it is about. The Bundeswehr – some will yet recall – is an army for the defense of the States and the Bund.That is its constitutional duty. All else can only be permissible in very well-grounded exceptional cases.

…It was ever again enjoined that it was owed to the soldiers to quite precisely examine what they were being sent into. Since 1994, the Bundestag has voted over 200 times for the prolongation of a mandate, not a single time against. Thus 200 times a real examination of conscience, an examination of conscience im Akkord. The truth is: Sticking to the government parties, nothing more at all will be examined, neither the missions’ sense or purpose, nor prospects of success, nor constitutional legitimacy and certainly not one’s own conscience. It will be nodded through; no substantial questions will be put. This also lies in the lack of a constitutional regulation.

Ladies and gentlemen, these days the failed mission in Afghanistan goes to an end. It was hitherto the Bundeswehr’s longest and bloodiest mission. Six weeks ago, the government coalition here prolonged the mandate. And now? All falls down. Within six weeks, a 180 degree turn from “We must continue” to “We must get out”. Real political flexibility! It is good the mission in Afghanistan now goes to an end. The goal must be to bring home safe and sound all German soldiers; since there is nothing more to win which could justify a risk.

This brings me to a present aspect. The Defense Minister has instructed that the special forces commando [KSK] be dispatched to secure the departure from Afghanistan. And to be calculated into this critical phase, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer encumbers the KSK’s mission readiness with a certain affair. On Monday, the state attorney’s office allowed the seizure of the service handy and laptop of [KSK] commander Markus Kreitmayr.

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): What then has that to do with                               the Basic Law?

He is suspected of having made himself culpable of an obstruction of justice in office [Er steht in Verdacht, sich der Strafvereitelung im Amt schuldig gemacht zu haben].

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): What has that to do with the                                    Basic Law?

And the Minister still asserts to have known nothing of the commander’s illegal orders.

           Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): What then has that to do with                               the Basic Law?

           Volker Ullrich (CDU/CSU): It’s about the constitutional legal fundamentals! 

           Philipp Amthor (CDU/CSU): He hasn’t much to say on that!

So as for once to clearly say: I am convinced that in this matter Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has lied to the parliament.

           Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): It has nothing to do with                                       the Basic Law!

The KSK has a leadership against which the state attorney’s office is proceeding and which has completely lost the trust of the soldiers under its command.

Frau Minister, your political survival is at the disposal;

           Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): What has that to do with the                                  Basic Law?

that I know. But it is now about the very lives of our soldiers.

           Vice-president Dagmar Ziegler: Please come to a conclusion.

Conduct yourself accordingly.

Thank you.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

 

 

 

 

Jens Maier, May 7, 2021, Constitution Defense

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/228, pp. 29124-29125. 

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

This draft law describes a further step in the direction of a total surveillance of society. What is sold here as an ostensible reaction to the present incidence in the area of rightist terrorism is the pretext for taking into view targeted, individual persons in ways simpler than hitherto. In German, that means: Anyone can now, in simpler ways short of criminal prosecution, come under the surveillance of the Constitution Defense.

Since the Constitution Defense was to be at least what its name pretends to be: An authority which defends the Constitution; that is, the free, democratic basic order. Until the undignified departure of Hans-Georg Maaßen, it was even on the whole still possible to affirm this. Meanwhile however the Constitution Defense has been reduced to purely a government defense. Its activity consists inter alia of spying on opposition politicians, denouncing opposition parties and in playing along with the media in supporting defamation campaigns.

Thereby will be found criteria unforeseen by the law; as for example, the declaration of a party as a test case. With his first appearance as the new president of the Federal Office, Herr Haldenwang, the chief defender of the Constitution, nevertheless showed what he thinks of the German order of law: Legal, illegal, it’s all the same – the main thing is to pacify the service head, Herr Seehofer. The Administrative Court at Cologne then needed to intervene and, at the motion of the AfD, put a muzzle on Herr Haldenwang and his people on account of these violations of the law. It showed that the Constitution Defense plainly does not operate neutrally and independently, but is incorporated into the sphere of the Federal Interior Ministry and is openly ready to deliver what is there desired, Herr Seehofer.

If an over-1,000 page opinion is needed to be able to inscribe a party as a case of suspicion, then – like a former justice, I must say –

            Benjamin Strasser (FDP): The emphasis is on “former”!

there speaks a presumption that there is not much in the suspicion; otherwise, this bulk was not needed.

Since the time Herr Haldenwang leads the Federal Office, the mask has fallen away. The Constitution Defense has forfeited its legitimacy, its reputation, and gambled away the trust invested in it. It has decayed into an instrument of oppression.

Benjamin Strasser (FDP): Who began the proceeding against you? Was it not Herr Maaßen, Herr colleague Maier?

This can be particularly clearly recognized in connection with the Querdenker.

The Constitution Defense is thereby developing, step by step, in a direction which we in Germany, but primarily in the former DDR, already once had. We of the AfD therefore say: A fundamental reform of the Constitution Defense, and its reduction to closely limited core duties, is needed. There must be an end to the political mise-en-scène of the Constitution Defense. There must be an end to the abuse of the trust invested in the Constitution Defense and to the destruction and hazarding of the reputation of decent people for reasons of political favor.

As long as things are as they are, one cannot recommend a draft law such as this, which foresees additional authority for the Constitution Defense.

            Thorsten Frei (CDU/CSU): Maaß-los!

The reading of messaging services through the so-called Quellen-TKÜ [sources of telecommunications surveillance] means that for citizens who use Whatsapp or something similar, the Constitution Defense can now, and at best with permission, read along. The telecommunications providers even need to take care that the service is able to connect its surveillance equipment directly beside their servers.

The boundary for the on-line searching through of smart phones and computers is thereby passing away. For in the planned alteration of §11 of Article 10 of the law, it is foreseen that not only the current communication will be surveilled, but also the content of the communication, which from the time of the order would have been able to be recorded but had not been recorded. That is nothing other than a reading of information which lies in the past but which has been stored. In the result, that is not only a Quellen-TKÜ but already an on-line searching that we hold to be disproportionate. We therefore reject it. In committee will here be some things still to be discussed.

Many thanks.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): But not with you.

 

[trans: tem]