Karsten Hilse, May 19, 2022, Climate and Government

German Bundestag, May 19, 2022, Plenarprotokoll 20/37, p. 3519.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen.

One first must be as bold as you of the Union: Just as you in your apparent opposition role suddenly notice that, for example, unreined immigration or the abolition of nuclear power plants are not the best of ideas, so you now place a motion for the acceleration of planning and approval proceedings – quite as if you had not sat in the government for the last 16 years, but moreover had not done everything with ever new laws and prescriptions for the “climate protection” to drive the citizens, who for example wanted to build a house, to madness, officials and unions to despair, and the costs to unimagined heights.

Freely according to Konrad Adenauer: “What interest to me is my idle talk of yesterday?”, only with the great distinction that he who grapples with real problems on that account needs to alter his opinion so as to successfully deal with and solve the problem. You however hunt after, in common with the green Communists of the Ampel, a phantom problem by the name of “man-made climate catastrophe" and want to drive forward the transformation of our industry, of which alone emigration is a consequence, and with it the loss of millions of high value creation workplaces. Adenauer acted in the interest of Germany, you in the interest of corrupt lobbyists, as we unfortunately also find in this parliament.

Naturally it is right to accelerate planning proceedings. Nevertheless, some of the means put forward by you are not only inappropriate; they also recall in fatal ways proceedings unworthy of a democracy, as for example in the former DDR or today’s China.

Not for nothing has Herr Habeck confidently posed in an interview the seriously meant question of whether our democracy or state dirigisme à la China would be better suited to enforce [erzwingen] measures against the alleged climate catastrophe. Against the will of those affected; cost what it will, and when that is one’s own people. In the interview, Herr Habeck indeed acknowledged democracy; we naturally appreciate that.

            Konstantin Kuhle (FDP): You could also do that!

Some of the measures moved are nevertheless milestones in the direction of a Chinese situation.

And the Union makes proposals to which we most quickly come. So as to break the resistance, for example, against the nature-destroying, bird-killing, sick-making monster, complaints shall only be allowed to be presented at the superior administrative courts and the complaints shall no longer have a delaying effect. Should all demands in your motion be implemented, you would not thereby maintain prosperity, but to a considerable degree annihilate it, bring a blackout a great step closer and destroy our nature to a never thereto known extent.

Dismiss the climate ideology. Make proposals so we may invigorate our economy, maintain our prosperity and protect our nature. Then you have us on your side. However, as long as you participate in the de facto annihilation of Germany, we will fight you and your plans, naturally with democratic means – for the preservation of our homeland and for the well-being of our people.

I am grateful for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

René Springer, May 19, 2022, Afghanistan Investigation Committee

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/37, pp. 3544-3545. 

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear guests. Dear soldiers and veterans who perhaps are watching.

The Alternative für Deutschland here in the German Bundestag today moves for the appointment of an investigation committee for a reappraisal of the mission in Afghanistan, which in 2001 was begun by red-green, was carried on by four additional Federal governments, and in 2021 ended in a disaster. Not one, single goal was attained. Afghanistan was thrown into chaos.

What were the goals of the Federal government? The principal goals were the preservation of security and creation of a self-supported stability. The fact is that the number of terrorism deaths in the course of time, and with the presence of the Western troops, increased year for year. In the year 2007 for example, there were 2,000 terrorism deaths; the year 2009, 8,600 terrorism deaths – a fourfold increase. In 2016, the blood toll of the Afghan armed forces was so great that the Afghan government and the U.S. government decided to no longer publish the numbers, and the Federal government joined in this deception strategy. All together from 2001 to 2021 are 212,000 deaths to lament. This is the result of a values-conducted foreign policy, in regards to which the export of values and democracy were more important than the reality on the ground, the cultural identity of the Afghans and the traditions of these people. In the eyes of many Afghans, we were not liberators, we were occupiers, a Western foreign body in an archaic, tribal culture, and thus ourselves a factor in the increasing instability in this country.

An additional goal of the Federal government was the promotion of the state of law, democracy and women’s rights. A research opinion of the Bundestag’s scientific service now says: There was never a functioning state of law in Afghanistan in the years of 2001 to 2021. Afghanistan was at the latest since 2010 a de facto failed state. The Taliban won the upper hand, and thereby also corruption, the drug economy and militia arbitrariness. For an additional ten long years, the Federal government nevertheless spread an endurance rhetoric and led the public to believe in an improvement of the situation which was not in place.

And what about women’s rights? Today is the burkha – as is read in the newspapers – again obligatory for women. Women’s freedom to travel without male escort is restricted. Girls are no longer allowed to attend continued schooling. That is the result of feminist foreign policy!

            Gyde Jesen (FDP): Rubbish!

The Federal government pursued the goal of fighting drug cultivation in Afghanistan. The announced goal was the halving of the drug cultivation area. In fact, the opium production from 2001, the last year of Taliban rule, to 2021 increased 36 times. 36 times more drug production, although the fight against drugs had been proclaimed. Afghanistan is today the principal drug producer, the principal opium producer worldwide, and supplies 24 million drug consumers, 80 percent of all users. In 2021, Afghanistan was also the world’s second largest producer of hashish. No citizen understands how the fight against drugs can be announced and there then arises a state which works its way to become a global player in the drug economy. No man understands this.

An additional goal of the Federal government was to enable the Afghan security forces to guarantee security in its own country. In 2003, the Afghan armed forces numbered 6,000; by 2020, 270,000. The armed forces included more troops and police than the Bundeswehr. Despite this, following the withdrawal of Western troops, the Taliban without encountering resistance worthy of the name could re-conquer Afghanistan. The results of 20 years of education, equipment, financing and training were pulverized within a few days. How is something like that possible?

Ladies and gentlemen, this war had many losers, yet also winners. The losers are the German taxpayers who have paid over 17 billion euros for this mission. The losers are over 100,000 German soldiers who were senselessly used as cannon fodder [verheizt] in this mission. The losers are the 59 dead German soldiers and thousands with mission-conditioned psychic illnesses with which today they still have to struggle. And the profiters? That is the arms industry which did a good business; primarily however it is the Taliban who today sit stronger in the saddle than in 2001, and who are extremely well armed by means of our equipment and by means of our formation.

Endlessly many questions are yielded from this 20 year mission; and these questions we want to clarify in the scope of an investigation committee. How could five Federal governments deceive themselves and the German public for two decades? Why did the Federal government set up as partners corrupt warlords and war criminals whose only interest was building their own power, yet not in stability?  How could it be that the opium production was continually higher than under the rule of the Taliban? Why did the Federal government so long refuse to conduct talks with the Taliban, as was demanded by then SPD chief Kurt Beck in 2007 and as was ultimately done by Trump, the U.S. President? How much tax money landed in the hands of corrupt power elites? And before all: How could an entire army, which was larger than the Bundeswehr, collapse within a few days? In our view, these questions need to be clarified.

I thus come to conclusion. The appraisal of the 20 year Afghanistan mission will not heal wounded and traumatized soldiers. It will also bring back none of the 3 dead police and 59 dead soldiers. Yet we owe it to them and their relatives to unsparingly clarify the disaster, the wrong decisions, the empty promises, the deceptions, the lies. We want to and we must hold to account those politically responsible. That is the goal which we pursue with this motion for the appointment of an investigation committee on Afghanistan.

I am grateful for the attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Albrecht Glaser, May 19, 2022, Taxes, Debts and Democracy

German Bundestag, May 19, 2022, Plenarprotokoll 20/37, pp. 3531-3533. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The draft law aims at committing the tax law as the most important instrument for the stabilization and the strengthening of the business cycle – as it says in the grounds – so as to ameliorate the economic consequences of the pandemic. The previous speakers enumerated the several measures: Degressive AfA [depreciation allowance], loss deduction, tax-free nursing bonus, extension of the home office allowance, and many other things more.

The CDU/CSU delegation’s motion to amend aims in the same direction with numerous demands which in the last two years were proposed by the AfD delegation many times. As is usual in this house, they were all also reflexively rejected by the CDU.

In this time of political agony also occurs the senseless revival of the real property tax. That was tax memorial care, the opposite of reform.

            Frauke Heiligstadt (SPD): Speak on the theme!

In these days, the owners of 35 million pieces of land receive a mountain of paper so as to ascertain their real property values. Under supplementary point 1, urgently proposed by us, a time extension for overcoming this bureaucracy monster is hereby requested. Already in the Kirchhoff proposal for authentic tax reform of ten years ago, the real property tax no longer occurs, and in the head of every tax reformer it also no longer occurs.

In the grounds for the CDU/CSU motion, it further says that the persistently high inflation and the low growth of the economy could be indicators of a stagflation. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, that is in fact the state of understanding. The inflation rate of April of this year was at 7.4 percent. The energy costs have climbed in a year’s comparison by 35 percent; natural gas with 47.5 percent has contributed to the price climb, and the heating oil with 98.6 percent.

The ghost of inflation in the EU thus comes to life – which was to be expected. For years, we were told that inflation was defeated. Then an inflation of under but near 2 percent was the new price stability – the ECB’s own house definition. As the inflation rate moved over the 2 percent line, the narrative of the symmetric inflation goals was applied so as to somehow talk away this process. These days, the ECB divulges – I cite:

We believe that inflation in the course of this year will recede and in the next and following years will be much lower than in this year.

How can one explain this degree of denial of reality? The U.S. central bank certainly needed to raise the interest rates to fight inflation. The ECB instead manages commission work for the “Club Med” of the Romance states which for years command the ECB Council – of the ECB’s independence, there is not a trace. Frau Lagarde was and is a French politician. Of economics she understands, incidentally mentioned, nothing.

The only interest of this majority and its president is to protect the over-indebted Romance countries from state insolvency. If the European interest rates are raised, the costs climb for the state debts. If inflation remains or becomes greater, the state debts melt away. That is the leading maxim of Lagarde and her Club. There, a German central bank governor has not a chance. Better therefore that he resign to take his hat, as in the case recently of two German economists.

The stock of central bank money has increased since 2008 to the end of this year from 880 billion euros to 6 trillion euros; that is a sevenfold increase of the money supply. In the same time, the GDP in the eurozone has climbed by about 32 percent. That means a money supply increase of 600 percent in the face of an economic growth of 32 percent, a proceeding which would be inconceivable with a really independent Bundesbank.

The financing of state budgets by means of central bank presses, de-coupled from real goods production, has in the history of mankind always led to state crises. The zero and negative interest rates policy for years strengthens the effect of this unchecked debts policy. The ECB in large part co-financed the members states’ debts excesses, and thereby initially enabled it. The state debts of the euro countries have grown since the financial crisis from 6.7 trillion euros to 11.3 trillion euros; more than 200 times were the stability criteria ripped up, naturally without sanctions.

            Frauke Heiligstadt (SPD): Theme!

From this 4.6 trillion euro growth of debts which produces this inflation, with which you tinker, the ECB alone has taken 76 percent onto its own books by means of the purchase of state loans. It has thereby in a striking manner violated the express ban on state financing according to Article 123 of the AEUV.

            Nadine Heselhaus (SPD): Wrong!

The EuGH [European High Court] naturally sees all of that differently because there the majority of the judges is the same as that on the ECB Council and in the [EU] Commission.

            Frauke Heiligstadt (SPD): We are speaking on the Corona tax assistance act!

            Markus Herbrand (FDP): The inflation speech, that comes tomorrow afternoon!

The EU Commission accompanies the debts madness with an additional, even so counter to regulation indebtedness of its own, to the sum of 828 billion euros for so-called resilience measures for over-indebted states.

Why all of this? A breaking apart of the EU regime shall be prevented at any price – “whatever it takes”. Who wants to transform this Union into a great state, as it is foreseen in the coalition contract, must destroy many national democracies which were united to prevent such a development. He wants and will produce an ungovernable something which takes the place of national states, which can only be democracies; only they can be democracies!

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP) Oh!

Precisely that is what the EU conference has aimed at as a result, with 800 biased [gezinkten] participants: 800, of 550 million inhabitants. That had to have been a partial acceptance of representative opinion.

What will now be done by this government by means of placebos for energy costs, by means of short-term relief for energy taxes and even by means of delayed improvement in the area of business taxes, is the attempt to repair at the national level the failures of the EU and the ECB. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, this will not succeed.

The EU states find themselves in a dilemma. The inflation will lead either to a massive contraction of the population’s purchasing power and to a mass expropriation of savers, or we will again experience a state debts crisis which is not be mastered.

            Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): Wrong speech!

I come to an end, Frau President.

            Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): “Frau President”, that is good!

All of this will put into question the existence of the euro, whether it suits you or not. We will abstain from the draft law put forward, we will vote for the CDU/CSU motion.

Yet both, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, will change nothing of the general weather conditions which I have sketched for you.

            Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): Herr Glaser, it is no longer a Präsidentin!

            Albrecht Glaser (AfD): Sorry! I cannot see behind!

 

[trans: tem]