Tino Chrupalla, August 25, 2021, Epidemic and Vaccination

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/238, pp. 31501-31502.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen.

Near the end of this special session, it is about the epidemic situation and Corona. The incidence value throughout Germany climbs from 56 in the previous week to 60 in this week. What evidentiary power and justification for the so-called epidemic emergency situation do you then derive from that, worthy Federal government?

Let us come to my home, Saxony. There, despite the lowest rate of vaccination, the incidence is at 16.2. What or who is responsible for these numbers, Herr Wanderwitz? The penchant for dictatorship with which you as commissioner for the east characterize my countrymen in Saxony? Quite clearly it is not the hapless policy of CDU Minister-president Michael Kretschmer.

Now, worthy Federal cabinet, it so appears regarding you as if something like insight and reason were to be noticed.

            Stephan Brandner (AFD): What?

This appears to be spreading in our Federal system – in this case, from the States to the Bund. This, nevertheless, is late! As a first step in the direction of reason, you now assume the number of the so-called hospitalizations as a benchmark. Finally, one can only say. The demand to thereby orient yourselves was advanced by us months ago, Herr Dobrindt.

Or could it therein possibly be that we find ourselves in an election campaign and that you with your CDU Chancellor candidate swim clear of the falls? We have, ja, today heard his limp [lasche] speech. And could it be, Herr Lauterbach, that you, with your panic-making and angst production, want to capture additional votes for the SPD? And just by the way, Frau Baerbock: Do you think that with your freight bike you succeed in driving ahead of the challenges in Germany? Your party thereby has conclusively contributed to that our society stands before a heap of rubble which was once called skilled trades and Mittelstand, German work ethic, Made in Germany – in short, the social market economy.

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): That is, ja, original!

Let me come to the vaccination theme. The recently published Oxford study shows us: Completely vaccinated persons can be infectious and the viral count is comparable with that of the non-vaccinated. Can you comprehend that under the circumstances our citizens make use of their right not to let themselves be vaccinated? The Alternative für Deutschland insists that: A decision to vaccinate must remain the individual decision of each citizen. Given the circumstances, we see no necessity to further restrict basic rights, and reject an obligation to vaccinate.

            Alexander Krauß (CDU/CSU): Yet no one demands that!

And please take notice: Citizens who do not want to let themselves be vaccinated are no “vaccination deniers”. They claim their given basic rights to decide for themselves their health and thereby their lives. And, Herr Spahn, basic rights are not negotiable. 

Worthy colleagues, beyond that, as a father of a family I say to you: In a case of Covid-19, no state vaccination obligation for children is permitted.

            Alexander Krauß (CDU/CSU): Yet no one demands that!

Our children nevertheless need be protected against the subsequent health consequences. That is the duty of policy and politicians, Herr Dobrindt. Have all the self-named virologists here in the Bundestag meanwhile lost respect for the future of the children in our country? I ask you.

And there is no end to the political influence. The experts of the STIKO [standing committee on vaccination] for long refused to speak in favor of a Corona vaccination recommendation for all minors from twelve years. Union politicians like Söder and Spahn did not want to leave it at that, and ever again exercised pressure on the STIKO. Consequently, un-Health Minister Spahn set aside the experts’ position and, on August 2 with the States’ health ministers, decided on a so-called vaccination offer for all minors from twelve years.

What comes next? The citizens of our country shall soon be purchasing participation in everyday life with the obligatory costs of testing. And that will again be at the cost of the local economy and retail trade, to say nothing of culture. You thereby further divide this country, Herr Dobrindt.

Worthy Federal government, please finally for once work with our citizens in your communications to de-escalate.

Alexander Dobrindt (CDU/CSU): Is that what you do when you speak of a “Corona dictatorship”?

Especially I request of colleague Karl Lauterbach: Finally for once propagate courage and confidence in our country instead of weekly conjuring up a new apocalypse. The AfD delegation rejects a prolongation of the epidemic situation in Germany.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, August 25, 2021, Afghanistan

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/238, pp. 30999-31000.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In Afghanistan, the results of a 20-year-long Western engagement have been pulverized within a few days. The Taliban could re-conquer the country without striking an opposition worthy of the name and the German government knew nothing of it. The BND [Federal Intelligence Service] knew nothing of it, Foreign Minister Maas was entirely surprised while the Taliban conquered Kabul, the Chancellor sat in a cinema, and the Defense Minister publicly baked tarte flambée.

The mission has cost the lives of 59 Bundeswehr soldiers and the health of hundreds. Billions of euros were wasted in the Hindukush. And all of that for what? Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Americans had started a war against terror and sent troops to the Hindukush. It was the sheer action for action’s sake of a great power attacked. Thus a reason for war need be subsequently furnished. It left off at friendly names like the “export of democracy” and “nation building”. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer with hindsight based the mission on women’s rights. Without the Bundeswehr, she said – the Chancellor has indeed today repeated it – there would today apparently be no schools for girls and no women in the highest offices.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, so as to carry gender justice into the Moslem world, German men need lose their lives there.

            Mechthild Rawert (SPD): Oh, that is disgusting!

How many Afghan women in high office or girls in school actually make up for one dead German soldier?

In March 2004, the Defense Minister Peter Struck – the Chancellor has recalled it – had declared: The security of the Federal Republic will also be defended in the Hindukush. – Today we can, in view of the expected migration streams form Afghanistan, subsequently correct Herr Struck. It needs be rightly named: The security of Germany was first endangered in the Hindukush – and then lost.

While the Bundeswehr officially fought terror, the oppression of women and violent ethnic structures there, the policy imported the carriers of such structures to Germany. The soldiers offered their bones to the Hindukush for a policy which brings the Hindukush to Germany. The Allies were always a year, an army, an idea behind.

In Afghanistan, the idea of “One World” and the export of the Western way of living has failed with a crash. Our values, ladies and gentlemen, are not universal. The majority of Afghans whistle at Westernization.  Who believes that generations of ethno-cultural formation can be treated with enlightenment courses and gender-mainstreaming only attests to a monstrous ignorance. Every culture is simply not compatible with every other culture. Many people do not want to live like us at any price – and we also not like them.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is foolish, and sometimes life-threatening, to haul them to us. Nevertheless, the EU Interior Commissioner Johansson demands that endangered persons from Afghanistan be quickly re-settled in Europe so as to here find a new home; the number of which she estimates to be up to 5 million; the Federal Interior Minister has propagated this same number. That, ladies and gentlemen, is complete madness!

According to an estimate of high-ranking soldiers who had long served in Afghanistan, the number of the local auxiliaries [Ortskräfte], that is those natives who in fact have worked loyally for the Bundeswehr, varies in the lower four-figure range. To an inquiry of the Greens in the year 2018, the government named 576 Ortskräfte. To these people and their families we can and will give asylum, but to no one beyond that.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already declared that his country will accept not a single Afghan. Most other Europeans will react similarly. Our country can cope with a second 2015 neither financially nor in terms of security policy.

The lesson of the Bundeswehr’s Afghanistan mission reads: Our army has nothing to seek in foreign lands. Exceptions to that are where proximate German interests are affected, such as the fight against piracy. Otherwise, it is to be exclusively an instrument of national defense. Instead of defending women’s rights against the Taliban in the Orient, it should preferably defend the German borders from dangers

            Claudia Roth (Greens): My goodness!

which arise from the influx of people to whom our way of living is fully foreign.

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Alice Weidel, August 25, 2021, Catastrophe Management

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/238, pp. 31026-31027.

Right honorable Frau President. Frau Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The last weeks and months of the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel sink into a succession of crises which have been characterized by false decisions, inactivity and government failure.

The July flood catastrophe in Rheinland-Pfalz and Nordrhein-Westfalen has again receded into the background of the headlines. Yet people on the Rhine and in Ahrtal still stand before the rubble of their homes and livelihood; in many locales lacking the required support, infrastructure not to be foregone still lies in ruins. And more than 180 people have died in the flooding and its consequences – victims of weather events with torrential downpours which as ever again for centuries visit the affected regions; yet also – and this needs be frankly clarified – victims of insufficient catastrophe defenses and failures of the state, of omitted precautions and delayed warnings.

The attempt to instrumentalize the suffering of the people in the flooded areas for the enforcement of climate protection dirigisme is an especially shabby diversion from one’s own ignorance and incompetence.

We today discuss and decide on the financial facet of the reconstruction. Six weeks after the destructive flooding, this is more than overdue. We would have long since been able to speak on this had the other delegations in this house similarly joined in the demand of the AfD delegation requesting a special session, instead of once again engaging in petty, little partisan games of exclusion over the responsibility for the citizens’ well-being. Yet at that point in time – and this also needs be clearly said – Armin Laschet, the CDU’s candidate for Chancellor – still stood giggling in the catastrophe zone. Perhaps for that reason, he too did not want the special session.

The omissions and neglect, the cases of state and authority failure, and the structural deficiency which this flood catastrophe has brought to light are not allowed to be swept under the table. To expend money, and to pat oneself on the back for that, is easy. The citizens however by right expect answers which up to today they have not obtained.

Just as did the German Weather Service, so also the European flood alarm system had warned for days of the catastrophe. Why were not passed along in time the warnings by which people could bring themselves and their property to safety? The debacle a year ago of the national warning day obviously lead to no consequences. Sirens which remain silent or are simply not there, alarm systems which do not function: This is a scandal which emblematically describes the state of this country under your leadership.

And why do we need the world’s most expensive public broadcasting if in the hour of catastrophe it not once completes the alarm signals? Automated SMS warnings are now in the draft law. In other countries, they are long since standard. Why not with us? You had thought of Corona quarantine warnings for boundary crossing, for catastrophe defense not.

Thus occur equipment and organization deficits and a personnel shortage in the civil and catastrophe defense. Those affected by the flooding were for days left in the lurch. Catastrophe defense on the level of a developing country is unworthy of an industrial country of Germany’s rank.

It’s true: Catastrophe defense is essentially a duty of the States, in Rheinland-Pfalz moreover for ten years in the hands of a Green minister. The failures of state and authorities in the flood catastrophe however expose a fundamental problem at all political levels. In Germany, the state is strong in regards dangling and patronizing the citizens, in regards collecting and distributing tax money; but it is weak when it is about the fulfillment of its core competences – in taking responsibility for order, law, domestic and foreign security – and in regards the repulse of tangible dangers.

Who wants to save the world climate in 50 years and tutor other countries on withdrawal from coal and nuclear, yet who in his own country does not once manage to sound the warning sirens, he makes himself ridiculous. And who wants to make the citizens believe that tax increases and industry shut-downs for the climate could in the future prevent heavy rains and regional extreme weather, he intentionally plays false.

We therefore need to bring back politics to the ground of reality. Instead of blessing the entire world, we first need for once to again bring Germany into order and concentrate ourselves on the tangible duties and real dangers. In the matter of flood and catastrophe defense, that for example means: To better fund waste water systems and canalizations for heavy rains, adapt building plans, create retention basins and overflow acreage, toughen and build up protective construction and infrastructure, and modernize, continually examine and keep functional the alarm systems. That naturally is more troublesome and less spectacular than making big speeches on climate defense and the saving of the planet, yet it is this for which politicians are elected and paid by the citizens: With all power to serve the welfare of the country and its people [mit aller Kraft dem Wohl des Landes und seiner Bevölkerung dienen].

 

[trans: tem]