Joachim Kuhs, February 27, 2024, EU Finance and Ukraine War

European Parliament, Strasbourg, P9 CRE-PROV (2024)02-27(2-025-0000). 

Herr President, esteemed Commissioner Han, valued colleagues, Herr State Secretary. 

Even this laboriously negotiated and stripped down revision of the seven year financial framework will fail. Whereon do I fix this? Now, if Herr Orban needs be sent to drink coffee so that all negotiation leaders thus agree, then everyone recognizes: Here, something is not in order. Is this a rotten compromise? 

When in the second round, two-thirds of the 50 billion euros for the Ukraine facility is financed by debt, and it is supposed this would not burden the EU budget, then, valued colleagues, one is self-deceived. Do you really believe that the Ukraine following this frightful war will be in a position to service the interest payments, to say nothing of the paying back the principal debt? 

When a third of 21 billion euros is scraped together from all sides and new gaps are thereby everywhere opened up, then every Schwabisch Hausfrau knows: That can only cause discord and irritation. 

Yet what most depresses me personally, and this I’ve said already in committee: Have you, honored colleagues, even once asked the people in the Ukraine what they really want? Do they really want more money? That, I do not believe. These people want peace for their country. If we here in plenary session – just recently, Herr Gahler, you said it – continue to promote the war with weapons deliveries, and not work towards peace, then we thus make ourselves culpable for the people in the Ukraine, and also for the soldiers, who daily die or are crippled by the hundreds. Dear colleagues, let us finally stop this war! 

 

[trans: tem]

Jürgen Braun, February 21, 2024, Navalny, Russia and Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/153, pp. 19512-19513. 

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

The core of every democracy is the opposition, not the government. There are governments in China, North Korea, Iran; however, there is opposition only in democracies. 

            Norbert Röttgen (CSDU/CSU): In Russia also! 

Make a note! 

Russia has been deprived of its most important oppositionist. On Alexei Navalny, millions of cultured Russians in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk had placed their hopes. They wanted a fatherland that would be a part of that common European house of which Michail Gorbaschev spoke and for which Navalny fought. 

For this fight, he first needed to pay with his health, then with his freedom and finally with his life. The convictions he tangibly represented thereby played a subordinate role; for thoughts are not crimes. When anyone is unjustly confined or is persecuted, one should also then stand up for him when one does not share his convictions – in the case of Navalny as also in the case of Assange. 

Nevertheless, a look today at Navalny’s tangible positions is worthwhile, especially since the old parties ably ignore these positions. Alexei Navalny was a patriot – according to green-left standards, even a nationalist. He fought against a prevailing corruption and the erosion of the state of law. While for ethnic Russians an infrastructure is scarcely available, party bosses enrich themselves without limit. And the political competition is either not permitted for election, or is similarly banned. Yet Navalny also fought against excess foreign influence. He never forgot that the murderers of the oppositionists Politkovskaya and Nemzov were the Moslem handymen of the regime. He criticized illegal immigration and the spread of Islam on Russian territory. He criticized the accompanying criminality and religious radicalization. He also wanted no building of mosques in Moscow, since he was a patriot. The sympathy of the Ampel parties and of the Union at the death of Navalny thus appears more than questionable; since against anyone like him, they would have immediately introduced a party expulsion proceeding on account of so-called hostility to Islam or foreigners, and in no way would have celebrated him as a hero. 

Let us recall in remembrance: For what was Navalny officially condemned? For so-called “extremism” and the propagation of “narcissistic ideology”. Does that perhaps remind you of something, dear colleagues? 

Agniesczka Brugger (Greens): To compare yourself with Alexei Navalny! That is an impudence! 

With a cunning similar to Putin’s, you proceed against the only opposition in this country. 

            Frank Schwabe (SPD): Unterirdisch!

Minister Faeser even openly discusses an AfD ban and sics the domestic secret service on us. 

Omid Nouripour (Greens): There is no secret service in Germany! There is only an intelligence service! 

That no longer has the least thing to do with legality. The Internet Enforcement Act of the preceding government even finds official applause in Russia and China – thus, internet censors. For years there in Russia, opposition gatherings were forbidden, as were demonstrations against Navalny’s imprisonment, and in fact under the pretext of Corona. And that we also know from the best Germany ever. 

            Frank Schwabe (SPD): Mein Gott! 

            Derya Türk-Nachbaur (SPD): Shabby! Sick!

And not least: The state media in Germany increasingly attempts to generate a climate of non-contradiction [Widerspruchlosigkeit], a political unity brew. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such stupidity! Such rubbish! 

            Stephan Brandner AfD): Completely right!

In the face of the farmers’ protests against the Greens, the journalist Knut Bauer just last week raged on the compulsory financed state radio that one dared to disturb the event of a – I cite – “government party”. This same mentality in the GEZ media is similarly found in the Russian state media. 

Agniesczka Brugger (Greens): Your AfD-mimimi has nothing to do with the debate’s subject. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Just listen for once! That is the truth!

And there, it is held to be criminal when the government is criticized. 

            Julia Klöckner (CDU/CS): Here, no one is imprisoned! 

And there, judicial positions are politically appointed. And there, movements of private citizens’ finances are controlled. Frau Faeser has again done so as before. Minister Faeser thus wants Russian conditions in Germany. 

            Renata Alt (FDP): Shame on you! 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such stupidity! 

            Frank Schwabe (SPD): Yet it is your friends who sit in Moscow!

There are governments everywhere, even in dictatorships. The decisive difference between dictatorships and democracies is not in the existence of a government, but in that of an opposition, of a free and unrestricted acting opposition. 

            Till Steffen (Greens): What are you afraid of? 

            Frank Schwabe (SPD): Yet you drive to Moscow for Herr Putin! 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Putin’s sychophant!

 Now after the death of a courageous oppositionist, let us in the future the more take to heart to let the citizens freely vote and to promote free political competition, instead of wanting to ban opposition parties. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Excellent! 

 

[trans: tem]

Bernhard Zimniok, February 7, 2024, Digital Services Act

European Parliament, Straßburg, P9 CRE PROV (2024) 02-07(3-183-0000). 

Herr President. 

During Corona we clearly saw how divergent opinions were defamed by the mainstream as hate and incitement and were rigorously censored in the social media. That these opinions then later proved in large part to be correct – one need only think of the ostensible protection of the vaccination or the ostensible utility of masks – clearly shows that for the state it is only about the prerogative of interpretation [Deutungshoheit], about being able to justify the inhuman Covid preventive measures. 

The lesson should be to strengthen freedom of opinion, to prevent censorship and to oppose state fake news campaigns. Yet the present situation in Germany now indicates exactly the other direction. The anti-democratic strivings of the government are even intensified: Government demonstrations against the opposition on the basis of a fake news campaign stimulated by the government – as there is only in totalitarian systems. 

This is supported by the government broadcasters ARD and ZDF which at these demonstrations more than 100 times interviewed ostensibly random demonstration participants who then were revealed as representatives of the governing parties. These anti-democratic proceedings once again prove how important social media is at the present time, where citizens can independently inform themselves. And precisely on that account, the Commission opposes freedom of opinion on the platforms by means of the Digital Services Act. The Digital Services Act therefore ought to be just so comprehensively abolished as the public broadcasting in Germany. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Gauland, February 22, 2024, Russia, Munich and Realpolitik

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/154, p. 19630. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

“War is a mere continuation of politics with other means” [„Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln“]. Everyone knows this sentence of Clausewitz. In traditional international law, a war therefore ends with a political result, a conclusion of peace. If however one party to a war excludes the other from the civilized world with a judgement of unworthiness [Unwerturteil], a conclusion of peace becomes impossible. 

Since 1648, as the peace treaty of Münster and Osnabrück ended the ideological war between protestants and catholics, the rule applies that all subject to international law are alike in the sense of a like ability to speak. Even in the times of the Cold War, there were talks between both sides. The expression that one is not allowed to let the line of communication to rupture,  belonged until recently to the standard vocabulary of German foreign policy. 

            Kurt Abraham (CDU/CSU): Who then has broken the line? 

Why, ladies and gentlemen, does this no longer apply to Russia?

            Kurt Abraham (CDU/CSU): Because the Russians have broken the line! 

It was a political failure that Russian representatives were uninvited at the Munich Security Conference, a conference the motto of which is “Peace through Dialogue“ – not through weapons deliveries. 

Realpolitik, ladies and gentlemen, is the art of the possible. The possible is often not to be had without painful compromise. Values-led foreign policy on the other hand, as we lately manage it, does not know the lesser evil. When values-led foreign policy leads to that communication and negotiations stop, or are simply just not undertaken, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik. And when the values-led foreign policy leads to that the war will then be continued when the war aims are not achieved, it needs to be replaced by Realpolitik. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the central distinction between Realpolitik and that which we meanwhile have come to know as “values-led foreign policy“. 

Marianne Schieder (SPD): It is a lie when you assert that there were no talks. You know that! 

Values societies feel themselves obligated to fight against unworthiness [Unwert]. With a representative of unworthiness, values societies conduct no negotiations. The opponent of war becomes an absolute enemy. His interests are criminal. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): That is called war crimes! 

The enemy must be annihilated. That unfortunately leads, with a known consistency, to that the war escalates. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is your vocabulary, not ours!

Ladies and gentlemen, Putin conducts a war which can be held to be unjust and wrong, 

            Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): “can be held”! 

or needs be. So as to end it, however, nothing is served by assuming his criteria; but on the contrary, by again recalling Münster and Osnabrück and by overcoming the Western inability of speech [Sprachlosigkeit]. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, for that is required a Metternich at the Vienna Congress or a Kissinger in Peking, instead of a presenter of war. It’s too bad that no one in Munich wanted to undertake that role. Therefore, we will also have no peace if we so continue. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Sylvia Limmer, February 7, 2024, Farmers

European Parliament, Straßburg, P9 CRE-PROV(2024)02-07(3-040-0000). 

Herr President. 

And again this week outraged farmers stand in front of the the European Parliament in Straßburg, just as last week in Brussels. Do eggs, liquid manure and burning hay actually need to just blow up in your faces? 

It’s not only about the suspension of the idled acreage, not only about the stifling bureaucracy created by you, about Mercosur and unfair competition; it is not only about bio-quotas fixed by statute, bans on animal husbandry and care of wolves, the revisions of means of crop protection, and so forth and so on. 

Farmers plainly suffer from impractical political charlatans with their Green Deal and its hand-outs, and they do not want to let themselves be involved in the course of a fully confused climate rescue and to be degraded to CO₂ gardeners. 

Perhaps business wanders away without a sound, the farmers however are bound up with their land, and they will not weaken. And they now no longer allow themselves to be ignored. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, February 1, 2024, Scholz Government and Pensions

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/151, pp. 19276-19277. 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honored citizens. 

Germany is being passed down [Deutschland wird nach unten durchgereicht]: The economy shrinks, the bankruptcy wave rolls, and achievers in droves leave the country. The infrastructure collapses, the healthcare system is exhausted – to say nothing of the education system. 

That is the balance of a government which, quite alone, wants to save the world and the climate, and, for that and quite without necessity, destroys the foundations of existence of an industrial nation, which pumps billions into Bürgergeld, yet leaves nothing over for the employees, which sinks untold sums for ideological nonsense and, for that, is ready to squeeze the people to the last cent. 

How can that be? “Champagne for all!”, that was the Ampel’s deal: Children’s basic security for the SPD, climate fuss for the Greens, and “no tax increases” for the FDP. It could have been so nice. Instead, last year came the reckoning: Everything which the Ampel, it needs be said, has tricked together – none of it was constitutional. And even the budget, of which we here today speak, stands on shaky footing. 

Now, at the latest, it would be to announce a change of course, to say nothing of saving. Saving: That means – for those who do not know – to spend less money there where it need not be, so as to have it where it will be needed. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yes, where then?

You unfortunately do the opposite. You raise the taxes on CO₂ and benzine, you raise the trucking fee, and you raise the taxes for the restaurant trade. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yet you just said we should save!

You take the farmers hostage and beyond that demand still higher taxes for meat. Then it is only for the rich. What a glorious idea! 

And what you promised as a relief for the citizens – construction help, heating help, climate money – that slips away. There never was the money for that. 

Yet – und das ist gut so – the citizens begin to understand. The money is certainly not gone, it is just elsewhere. Suddenly, there is talk in the streets of bike paths in Peru, of gender projects in Colombia, of development aid for China. We pay for the pensions for other EU countries – countries in which the per capita assets are far above ours. 

Before all, however, we pay untold sums for a failed energy transition which massively overcharges the budget and our social accounts, and which will burden us for generations. 

Perhaps look for once at the studies from Holland and Denmark, or at least what Herr Raffelhüschen has written. 

            Claudia Raffelhüschen (FDP): Oah!

The results are unequivocal: The costs of migration are ruining our social state. What follows from that is clear: Still more rapidly rising contributions for pensions, health and care – and still fewer benefits for those who are to provide for all of this with their work. That is the new reality in Germany: As it happens, for those who finance the whole thing with their tax money, there remains scarcely anything. This is unique in Europe. 

            Martin Rosemann (SPD): All dumb stuff!

This is the reason why in Germany no normal earner can still afford a house, or in old age, the  care home. 

You can, Minister Heil, still so often emphasize, “Work makes the difference” – the people know better. That ultimately is also an origin of the rising costs in Bürgergeld. 

It is directly therefore an original sin that the Ampel in its greed wants to further avail itself of the employees’ money. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): That is just nonsense, what you are telling here!

With threadbare reasoning, you already had the finger in the till of the Federal Agency for Labor. That, after the last hearing, Gott sei dank, you have no longer dared – not nearly from insight, but alone out of fear of the next constitutional slap. 

Instead, you continue to plunder the statutory pensions, those additional allowances guaranteed by statute which you cut without further ado up to 2027 by a total of around 6.8 billion euros. 

For your next great project, the equities pension [Akteinrente], in which you are so proud, here are a couple of numbers: When, for that, you borrow 12 billion euros as a one-time credit and stick it in a fund, when do you think you would you at least restore the eliminated 6.8 billion euros? In the year 2050. And when you each year borrow 12 billion on credit and continually deposit it in a fund, the 6.8 billion is in back there until the year 2032 – besides the payments of up to 108 billion. 

Unfortunately, that does not at all help the Pension Insurance; since the sustainability reserve will be exhausted by 2026 as a result of your present cutbacks. Yet what do numbers matter when the government now needs money? And that shows what employees and pensioners are worth to the government. 

This development is dangerous. 

When the people no longer have the feeling that their work pays, when they no longer have the feeling that the government keeps its promises, then you lay the axe to the foundation of our society. Therefore I say today: Learn from the disaster which you have let loose with false incentives for the Bürgergeld, do not abuse the citizens’ income and assets for your wrong way, and turn back to the ground of reality! 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]