Gereon Bollmann, April 7, 2022, Equal Treatment Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/28, pp. 2451-2452.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

We are occupied today with an alteration of the general equal treatment law. Yet if the draft law is for once looked at more precisely, the disillusionment is great; since – colleague Wolf has already made mention of it – it is not about content, it is about an appointment to positions.

            Kaweh Mansoori (SPD): The content comes in a second step.

The appointment of the anti-discrimination leadership positions was lately many times – we have already heard from Herr Lehmann – challenged by a competing action. Yet it now does not somehow affect a lawful selection decision, though the posts were left vacant for four long years, and now the legislature should rule as quickly as possible. The applicant shall no longer be named by the Family Minister upon the proposal of the Federal government, but he shall be elected by the Bundestag.

            Ulle Schauws (Greens): Ja! Then you also can vote. That is just super!

Yet how nice that a suitable applicant can be now heaved into office without needing to fear a disagreeable competing action!

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): Oje!

Dear colleagues, daily in the public service numerous posts will be bestowed. Just because the Family Ministry is not in a position for a lawful selection process, nevertheless no law need be changed, Herr Lehmann.

Ulle Schauws (Greens): It also has to do with the theme’s higher value and importance! If for once you made yourself aware of it!

Simply suffices the strict adherence to the best selection. Here for once take remedial aid! Naturally this does not work if one wants to unconditionally assist a political favorite into this position. Nevertheless, give a bit more effort to the objections!

According to the draft law, the applicant shall be elected by the Bundestag. Yet behind the scenes the decision, as before, abides with the executive; since without a proposal from the Federal government, an election simply does not take place. It is thus a fairy tale. The leadership positions certainly do not obtain a higher value as a result of an election proceeding.

            Ulle Schauws (Greens): Just!

Since the executive still holds in its hands the decisive threads as before.

            Ulle Schauws (Greens): Naturally is that a higher valuation!

Ja, you think so.

In addition, the new regulation contradicts a central determination of our constitutional law, namely the separation of powers principle of Article 20, paragraph 2, line 2, of the Basic Law. – Take a look, just for once, Herr Rix. – According to this principle, the Bundestag has to limit itself to legislative activity and the control of the government. The appointment to a service post in the public administration is however neither legislation nor control.

            Filiz Polat (Greens): You want to be a lawyer and have no idea!

And this cannot be compared to the election of the Chancellor; since the election of the Chancellor is an exception, and exceptions are always to be handled on a limited basis.Thus the Bundestag elects neither the Ministers, the State Secretaries or other applicants for the higher service in the Federal officialdom. The recruitment of personnel is on the contrary the highest duty of the executive.

            Ulle Schauws (Greens): Crying does not make it better!

And even if we here elect no minister: Why should it then be right with regards to the separation of powers to appoint to an administrative post within a ministry by means of an election? This in any case is not disclosed to me.

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): To me neither.

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): You need not vote!

Once again, a draft law of the coalition disregards our Basic Law. It is somewhat pitiful to again need to look at how carelessly fundamental and unchanging pillars of a free, democratic state of law will be dealt with, which such outstanding thinkers as Aristotle, John Locke or Montesquieu have developed to stabilize a state by means of the separation of powers.

We reject election by the Bundestag for the service posts. We will watch with close attention how many remaining friends of our Basic Law this sovereign house indeed still has.

Many thanks for your attention.

            Katja Mast (SPD): Old, white men!

Ulle Schauws (Greens): That was incompetent! Child-men! You have understood simply nothing!

Filiz Polat (Greens): What an uncultivated man you are! Where did you have your upbringing?

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Jan Wenzel Schmidt, April 7, 2022, Part-time Employment Compensation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/28, pp. 2421-2422.

Many thanks, Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

I dedicate my first speech in the German Bundestag to all working citizens in Germany.

I speak of people who get up in the morning every day and go to work to feed their families, and at the end of the month if they are lucky with great difficulty read a zero in their account statement.

The basis of livelihood of millions of these people has been brought into question on account of the lockdown and Corona compulsory preventive measures. This everyone knows who is personally acquainted with normal people, and not only by looking through the darkened glass of a government car. Who yesterday was working full-time could, thanks to Corona, in the morning be on part-time employment. While this sovereign house for some hours conducted a silly debate on the vaccination obligation, over half a million people are now in a state of part-time work. These, ladies and gentlemen, are the unsozial priorities of this government.

Still more unsozial is the tax policy which asks our citizens trapped in part-time work to pay cash. In Germany, there is the so-called progression reservation. This is concerned that, for figuring the tax burden, the actually tax-free part-time work money will be taken into account. That means in clear text: They have on the whole less money, because the part-time employment money will only partially compensate the loss of earnings, yet at the same time the part-time employment money increases their tax burden. It happens that any who want to work yet are not allowed to work will now subsequently pay as per Herr Lindner’s tax ruling. This indeed must be that liberal tax policy which the FDP has ever promised us.  

And now it happens that the Linke party comes creeping out of its under 5 percent corner and wants tax relief for the part-time workers. Valued colleagues of the Linke, I rejoice that the comrades meanwhile find some time between Antifa demonstrations, gender fuss and hatred of Germany to simulate sozial policy for one’s own people.

            Carina Konrad (FDP): Alter Schwede!

Yet here even Erich Honecker is more believable than you. Since the AfD already two years ago made this proposal for the relief of the part-time workers. Look it up in the publications. What you have proposed after a two year delay was a long time ago in a much larger package demanded by us for the entire working population. Yet it is ever so in socialism: Justice ultimately becomes a matter of indifference if one has the wrong party book. You then rejected our motion for the relief of part-time workers, and now you put forward this cheap plagiarism.

We take this as an incentive – as an incentive to continue to fight for a relief of all working Germans, as an incentive that one can be sozial without thereby becoming red.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Joachim Wundrak, April 7, 2022, Libya

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/28, p. 2434.

Frau President. Valued colleagues. Ladies and gentlemen.

We debate today on a Bundeswehr mission which in many regards is controversial. Irini is the successor operation of Operation Sophia which in 2019 due to a dispute, particularly between Italy and Germany, needed to be suspended.

Background for the suspension of Sophia was the dispute over the mandate for rescue at sea of migrants which conflicted with another mandate, namely halting the trafficking [Schleuser] criminality. The Italian government at that time correctly pointed to the contradiction of this mission stoking the trafficking activity, by which the presence of the Sophia ships was included in the calculation of the traffickers.

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): That is just rubbish!

A similar evaluation came from the British Parliament which more than once designated the Sophia mission as failed.

A core mandate of the successor operation Irini now is the implementation of the Security Council’s resolution for an arms embargo against Libya. To a secondary mandate belongs the gaining of information on human smuggling and on illegal exports of petroleum from Libya.

How does the balance of the mandate’s fulfillment now appear after two years? Here for one is the unevenness in regards the enforcement of the arms embargo. This is in flagrant contrast to the EU’s claim to guarantee strict neutrality vis-à-vis the parties to the conflict. The elected government of Libya criticizes that it is one-sidedly disadvantaged by the arms embargo at sea, while the combatant Haftar may be supplied with weapons via land and air connections. Among the supporters of the government side are found prominent NATO partners, among whom are also three EU members. On the other side, Russia and the Ukraine especially deliver considerable weapons systems to Haftar.

It is thus, ladies and gentlemen, not to be wondered that the enforceability of Irini is close to nil. This is very clearly indicated by multiple attempts to control ships commissioned by Turkey and under suspicion of being underway in the transport of weapons in western Libya. Turkey vehemently resists the searching of the ships, and succeeds in all cases. Only one tanker with kerosene for eastern Libya was confiscated because it was agreed that this was for military purposes instead of for allegedly civilian aviation.

Here we are at the keyword: The oil business, as everyone knows, is the true background of the on-going conflict in Libya. The large European oil firms are present and attain high profits. And both parties to the conflict work profitably together in the oil business so that there exists little interest in an alteration of the status quo.

Thus one must come to the evaluation that the mission in the framework of Irini only very insufficiently, if at all, fulfills the mandated commission. It is thus essentially a question of a show window mandate for the EU so as to promote its security policy ambitions, GSVP [Common Security and Defense Policy] and PESCO [Permanent Structured Cooperation].

Against the background of the present security policy situation – and here I agree with Frau Minister Lambrecht – it would be far more sensible and fitting to concentrate our navy’s expense of time and resources on the core mandate of the Bundeswehr, namely the defense of the States and Bund, primarily in the Baltic and the North Sea. We therefore regard this new mandate Irini as superfluous.

Thank you for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Jürgen Braun, April 6, 2022, Butscha

German Bundestag, April 6, 2022, Plenarprotokoll 20/27, pp. 2274-2275.

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Butscha was a peaceful small town directly outside the Kiev gates with a large lake and many greens. In the pre-revolutionary time, the Kiev bourgeoisie rode there in the Sommerfrische, as would then have been said in this country. This past is now no longer recalled; since until a few days ago corpses lined the streets of Butscha, as during the Holodomor, the Communist genocide of the Ukrainians.

Naturally in every war can not only the aggressor but even so the defender commit war crimes. We of the AfD demand a two-stage inquiry, initially as quickly as possible by the three experts named last week for the Ukraine by the UN human rights council – the Norwegian chief investigator of this commission already led the Rwanda tribunal – and as a second stage, in case the commission attained corresponding results, a war crimes tribunal, as for the former Yugoslavia, which conducts a complete clarification without regard to the warring parties.

What now however is available are satellite photos and reports of witnesses. Tatiana Vladimirovna, an old lady from Butscha, told of how her husband was killed: Three soldiers, one of them a Chechen, stormed into their dwelling, abused and carried him away. The Chechen threatened her with a beating in case she resisted. She sought after her husband for days. There was no information at the Russian army. A friend finally told her there were corpses in a cellar of a neighbor’s house. Tatiana recognized her husband only by his gym shoes, so deformed were the bodies, and she needed to bury him in common with friends; since the Russian troops did not once trouble themselves to toss some dirt on the bodies.

The inspection prima facie – that is, at first appearance – speaks for a clear culpability of one, specific side. And should this prove to be true, then consequences must be drawn from this gruesome business.

Questioned as to the background of such crimes, the eastern European historian Jörg Baberowski declared, cite:

The Russian army’s soldiers are deficiently supplied, suffer hunger, freeze. They are tyrannized by their officers. People who are exposed to such treatment are besides themselves, as soon as an opportunity presents itself, to treat other people exactly so…

Butscha testifies to this. On March 31, the Russian armed forces withdrew. On April 1, Ukrainian army occupied the town. The first video from Butscha, still widely unnoticed by the western media, emerges on the same day and American satellite photos meanwhile show that the corpses lay there for days. Despite this, on Russian state television it was asserted all was arranged. Corpses were simply not the corpses displayed by the first day’s first photos following the re-occupation.

The Russian propaganda was also fed by German state broadcasting. The Bund’s fact checker, Georg Restle, who just recently praised Putin as a Realpolitiker, now explains to us that the Ukrainians had secured no access to Butscha for journalists. In that regard, for weeks the ARD simply had no reporter of its own in Kiev, despite compulsory fees in a sum of billions.  

The CDU now in opposition suddenly discovers its spirit of resistance. Their chairman Angela Merkel was only just concerned that Germany was in some way dependent on Russian gas – and in fact with her heedless left-green withdrawal from nuclear.

And it is also a legacy of Merkel when Chancellor Scholz initially agrees, as the recent European government chief, to Russia’s partial disconnection from SWIFT, even after Victor Orban whom you, dear colleagues of the Union, have for years denigrated as a friend of Putin.

Exemplary of our government’s connection with the Ukraine war is a scene from the human rights committee which I witnessed two weeks ago. The colleague Engelhardt of the SPD complained in regards a briefing that the trans-women of Ukraine are treated not as women but as men and the defense duty applies to them. The comrade seriously asked whether the Federal government is committed to that the Ukrainians also recognize trans-women as women. This unfortunately is no joke.

What the Ukraine now needs is not lessons in gender matters; it is the last thing they now need. What the Ukraine needs is a strong, militant Europe of fatherlands.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]