Barbara Lenk, January 27, 2023, Digital Identity

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/83, pp. 9934-9935.

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

The Union demands in the motion put forward that secure digital identities be introduced in Germany as soon as possible, a proposal which indeed over ten years ago was started, yet was only half-heartedly implemented. Already in November 2010 was the personal certificate [Personalausweis] with its online function introduced in Germany. Yet this form of a digital identity was scarcely used in this country, with at one time just 10 percent. The reasons are at hand: Noteworthy applications are lacking. The online function is plainly and simply scarcely recognized by the people. It is thus no wonder that trust is lacking. And who is responsible for this digital obstruction? That delegation which today demands the introduction of secure digital identities in Germany.

            Stefan Müller (CDU/CSU): Did you actually copy the speech of the Ampel?

Yet the Ampel’s sad digital policy can also be criticized. That unfortunately is still bitterly necessary.

I come now to your motion. Your motion’s first demand is practically hollow. By the end of the first quarter of 2023, you demand a strategy for digital identities. As if we still hadn’t enough strategies!

            Markus Reichel (CDU/CSU): We don’t!

There are already national strategies for artificial intelligence, for data, for Open Source, ja, for digital in general. Valued ladies and gentlemen, we have no conception problem, but an implementation problem.

            Markus Reichel (CDU/CSU): We also have a conception problem!

To here write an additional strategy paper would be the same as a digital insolvency delay.

The people in Germany self-evidently expect a secure solution for their digital identities. That refers not only to the claim to digital services but also to purchase and financial transactions on the net. Valued colleagues, that is an urgent theme. That is indicated by the frantically growing number of internet frauds based on misuse of available identities.

Valued colleagues of the Union, your motion rightly criticizes that the Ampel for long has not realized the so-called Smart eID and only holds out a prospect of rapid realization, without saying where actually is the catch. In the presented form, your delegation’s motion is scarcely capable of consent. Some aspects are not addressed in your motion. For one, the question of a possibly obligatory use of a digital identity is not presented. For another, the question of an analog fallback option is lacking. Further, there follows no theme development of the technical possibilities in foreign states of selecting without contact the personal certificate over the eID function. For this problematic, the AfD delegation first needs to put a minor inquiry.

Valued ladies and gentlemen, a goal of a secure digital identity is, for example, to spare the citizens from dealing with officials, or simplifying everyday living. We should however not lose sight of the risks of an all-around surveillance.

Valued colleagues of the Union delegation, we invite you in the future to bring in parliamentary initiatives for digital policy themes in common with us as opposition in the German Bundestag.

            Josef Oster (CDU/CSU): Oje!

            Markus Reichel (CDU/CSU): Nay. That, I believe, will not happen!

That might promise more prospect of success – for goodness sake.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Jürgen Braun, January 27, 2023, Persecution of Christians

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/83, pp. 9922-9923.

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

“A message written in blood to the nation of the cross” was the title of a video which the “Islamic State” published on February 15, 2015. It showed the beheading of 21 mostly Coptic Christians on the Libyan seashore. The Catholic writer Martin Mosebach has dedicated a book to the 21 martyrs. Mosebach considered this video – cite:

to be a picture of enmity…which in the Western world actually appeared to be overcome following the victory over Hitler – unconditional and uncompromising enmity; enmity which can only end with the annihilation of one of the two enemies.

This act was no single incident. That this and other mass murders were at all possible is also a consequence of Western policy. What Barack Obama and the Merkel government concerted to euphemize as an “Arab Spring” was in the end nothing other than a victory march of Islamism

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): Shameless!

which cost thousands of human lives.

The scorn and persecution of Christians is on the daily order of almost all Islamic countries. The murderers commit their acts not seldom targeted on Christian holy days; and that, worldwide: Christmas 2011, Nigeria: Islamic attack on a church, 37 people murdered; Palm Sunday, 2017, Egypt: Islamic bomb attack on two churches, 45 people murdered; Easter Sunday 2019, Sri Lanka: Islamic bomb attacks on three churches, more than 300 people murdered – that is just a tiny selection from an endlessly long series of murders. Despite this, there is still no remembrance day against hatred of Christians. That, we want to change [Drucksache 20/5368].

“Islamophobia” is a combat term of the Iranian terror master Khomeni. Yet there are three days of remembrance or action alone against this so-called “Islamophobia”: Of the UN, of the EU and in Germany. All of these remembrance days have the purpose of drumming into us that Moslems especially suffer under persecution. In that regard, Moslems are most persecuted not by some other religion, but primarily by Moslems of other orientations within Moslem states.

Götz Frömming (AfD): That is so!

The Islamic hatred of Christians is as old as Islam, and it claims countless human lives.

That this state of affairs is scarcely established in the people’s consciousness is not least to be  ascribed to the political-media complex. Yet hostility to Christians also enters where there is no state persecution of Christians, not least in Europe. The excesses of Islamic hostility to Christians reach us also: In France, the Interior Ministry alone in 2021 counted more than 800 anti-Christian criminal acts of which around 150 were spoliations of church buildings. France threatens to become a Menetekel. What is usual there will also overflow into neighboring countries like Germany. Just this week, an Islamist again committed an attack in a church – in a Spanish church: He murdered a sacristan and wounded a priest.

The German-Israeli author Chaim Noll deems that Europe needs to watch over its churches as we now already need to watch over our synagogues. The Isis beheading video ends with a view which shows the sea drenched with the blood of Christians. Mosebach writes of that – cite:

Many perpetrators of political violence in the past 100 years have hoped that a new world and new rectitude would come forth from streams of blood   

In regards these perpetrators of violence, it is primarily a matter of communists. There are still today Communist states. In China, North Korea and Cuba, we encounter in any case massive persecution of Christians.

Yet the political-media complex is not interested in solidarity with our brothers in faith throughout the world. Instead, it participates in the hostility to Christians, somewhat like Claudia Roth demanding the removal of the Bible verse from the cupola of the Berliner Stadtschloss.

            Peter Heidt (FDP): That must come!

In that regard, scarcely any religion is so peace-loving as Christianity with its rejection of worldly vengeance. Thus, religious minorities live nowhere so unmolested as in Christian countries. It is time that we demand such a freedom from fear [Unbelligtsein] for Christians worldwide.  

            Rasha Nasr (SPD): That you happen today to put such a motion! A disgrace!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

             

 

 

 

  

 

Leif-Erik Holm, January 26, 2023, German Economy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/82, pp. 9739-9740.

Dear citizens. Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Herr Minister Habeck, you say that the crisis is governable. I say: Before all, we can thank the weather god that we have so mild a winter. This has created the possibility of still changing things. Otherwise, it would appear very, very gloomy in our country.

No problem has been solved. You needed to finally come to that and your report grants nothing at all of that. You serve up to us the same transformation sauce as in last year. That will not improve the situation; it will further intensify it. Yet we all in common cannot want that.

What do you do against the inflation? Nothing. We have seen the numbers in your report. Six percent inflation. If we take out the energy relief at the pump, we are at 7.5 percent. At the savings account, there is perhaps one percent interest if it goes well. That means, there is a money devaluation of five or six percent each year for that bit of savings which we have. In that regard, everything at the supermarket becomes more expensive. It is a sozial annihilation program and in return you so far do nothing.

You see the data. The brewers have just said: The beer becomes more expensive. Now you can say: Not absolutely everyone needs drink beer. That may be. Yet it is much more dramatic in regards our industrial backbone. Large concerns are at the tipping point: BASF, Bayer, BioNTech. The de-industrialization of our country continues and I sense here in this room no panic at all. It somehow appears to be that all of that will be accepted. Yet that cannot be!

We are no longer internationally competitive. The others slowly surpass us. We need to do something to counter that, by which we finally improve our general conditions in Germany and bring down energy prices, and indeed permanently.

What is it then when the automobile industry goes, when chemicals step by step disappear from our country? In the end, no one remains to whom the Mittelstand can sell something. The Mittelstand has “Germany for life”, it remains here, it must remain here. If the giants are gone, then they do not quickly come again. The workplaces are lost. In cannot so continue. To the contrary, you as Economy Minister need now finally lead.

You can happily dream of becoming the green economy party of which I have read today. That of course is of no use to you if the hitherto economy has been run away.

No, this crisis is not so governable. In any case, not if one believes himself in this situation to be able, with the fantasy of an expensive eco-transformation, to continue into an energy nothing. You thereby put in play our prosperity.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): If we do nothing, then we put in play the prosperity!                        Mein Gott!

There is much to do. There are so many things to do: The reconstruction of the infrastructure – even here, you are blockading, as we see, the street reconstruction – , the bureaucracy deconstruction. Elsewhere, guidelines are abolished. What happens with us? We require a “supply chain care obligation law” [Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz]; all actually speak this word monstrosity. Does anyone here still want to speak seriously of bureaucracy deconstruction? Nothing happens in this country.

Other countries perceive that the withdrawal from nuclear power was nonsense because we require at every time a sufficient supply of energy. We need nevertheless act when we see that in the auto industry the electricity costs for the production of one auto have risen to 800 euros. In the U.S.A., they have also risen, but to 250 dollars. This distinction makes clear: We cannot live long with these energy prices. The energy prices must come down; we need a sufficient energy supply.

On that account, the power plants at hand need to continue to run beyond April 15, 2023. We have secure power plants. The Belgians do it: They let them continue to run for ten years – power plants which are less secure than ours. Why, please, don’t we do it when even your Federal Network Agency chief says: “That could actually be done”?

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): He did not!

            Felix Banaszak (Greens): Not at all! False accusation!

He said it for the French power plants which we also use. And if it applies to the French power plants, then it rightly applies for our secure nuclear power plants.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): No!

            Felix Banaszak (Greens): That is a false accusation!

No, it is your policy which refuses to accept these things. You refuse to accept a rational energy policy which is necessary, as is managed by other countries around us. There have been warnings of electricity rationing. The city plants warn of long-term doubled prices for electricity and gas. All of this happens in our country. It is your false policy.

Herr Minister, you squander too much time on developing new, rosy, feel-good dictates for your economy report. Please finally do your official duty so that our businesses remain here and our workplaces continue to remain in this country.

Thank you.

 

[trans: tem]