Sebastian Münzenmaier, February 10, 2023, Housing and Immigration

German Bundestag, February 10, 2023, Plenarprotokoll 20/86, pp. 10317-10318.

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In a “best Germany of all time”, according to a homelessness report, almost 40,000 people are on the street, all together around 260,000 have no fixed shelter. Who with open eyes moves through German cities can see this suffering under many bridges and in many subway stations.

The motion put forward by the Linke now wants to fight this problem with the Housing First concept. Positive examples and some studies show that the concept thoroughly works. First a dwelling and then assistance in specific areas of living which are often concerned with an improvement and for a dwelling stability. We also welcome this concept. We are strongly persuaded that Housing First can be a component of a strategy against homelessness.  

Yet if this concept “Housing First” is to function, then known conditions need to be fulfilled, and that is the great contradiction of your motion, ladies and gentlemen. Since it is just your political dispositions which prevent successful strategies in regards homelessness. That has two reasons.

First. In Germany prevails an acute housing shortage, as you yourselves correctly write in your motion. Today, we are lacking 700,000 dwellings. That is besides the greatest deficit in more than 20 years. And what does the policy do to counter that? At the Federal level, the Federal ministries fail completely. The great goal of 400,000 dwellings – it really is an impudence that have have once again defended it – you have botched, you will botch it, you will never achieve it. You have this year crashingly failed. Apparently, not even 200,000 dwellings will be built this year. The only sensible thing which could done with your Ampel building ministry would be: We abolish it. We re-designate the offices as dwelling space. Then would Frau Geywitz have at least achieved one sensible thing in her life.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): You are again today quite witty?

Yet not only you of the Ampel are guilty of the housing misery – you need not get excited – the Linke also in part contribute to it.

Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Nevertheless quite witty, what you say there! Man, man, man!

You write in your motion, dear Linke, it should be managed “according to the example of the State of Berlin”. To me, that is real satire. It is, ja, nice, Frau Katja Kipping, that you use your last days as a Senator to visit us here in the Bundestag; we rejoice. Yet I would prefer you did your work in Berlin; since the housing market in Berlin, where you of the Linke have co-governed since 2016, is overall one of the most catastrophic. For years, the number of approved new housing constructions declines. And instead of promoting new housing construction, the Linke prefer to blather on about expropriations and, with their socialist projects like the rent cap, drive the last builders out of Berlin. You are not part of the solution, you are the problem, dear Linke delegation.

Dirk-Ulrich Mende (SPD): You are the problem!

Let us come to the second reason why your dispositions do not function. Even if you do not want to hear it – you may again bleat alike –

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Intelligent interjection, that was!

who wants Housing First must live “Germany First”. The uncontrolled mass immigration of the last years exorbitantly increases the housing demand.

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): Yet it rapidly turns the corner!

Yes, I know, you do not want to hear it. Last year, 1.3 million foreigners came to Germany; those are not my numbers. I did not invite them; that was you.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): It was Putin who provided for that!

1.3 million foreigners! The empirica regio reckons in 2023 alone with an additional 600,000 households of Ukrainians alone in the housing market. Quite honestly: You always rile yourselves up over it!

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): You always rile yourself up!

Yet is it then so difficult to grasp – I know it is apparently for one or the other really difficult – that you are able to just once bestow any dwelling in Germany? You can give them either to German citizens who produce the prosperity of this country, or implement them for projects like Housing First,

Leni Breymaier (SPD): What then do you want to do with the people? You wicked man, you!

or give them to anyone who yesterday has stumbled over the border.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Oh, oh, oh!

Yet you can give them only once. That is prioritization, that is the duty of politics. You appear willing to simply not understand it, ladies and gentlemen.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): You prioritize between people! That is offensive!

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): You are a humanitarian disaster on two legs!

For us of the AfD, the priorites in this area are clearly set: To build more housing, deport those obligated to leave, stop migration and instead make housing space available for our own people and gladly for projects like Housing First.

Allow me in conclusion to direct some words to the Berliners who are voting on Sunday.

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Yet that must be quickly, please.

Who wants Housing First must vote “Germany First”. For affordable rents, new housing space and a pleasant neighbor, there is on Sunday just one option:

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

All votes for the AfD!

I am grateful to you for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, February 9, 2023, Peace in the Ukraine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/85, pp. 10104-10105.

Frau President, Ladies and gentlemen.

I do not imagine to be able to convince you with our motion [Drucksache 20/5551] of the necessity of a peace initiative.

            Ulrich Lechte (SPD): Nonsense!

In that regard, you adhere much too much to a purely military thinking. Yet you will need to substantiate to people why ever more and ever more powerful weapons shall pave the way to peace. Instead of diplomacy, the Leopard should settle it. Today it is combat panzers, tomorrow combat aircraft; it is already discussed. And the day after tomorrow, perhaps NATO soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

“There are to be no red lines” is emphasized from Kiev. Of course the Ukraine has an interest in drawing us into this war. Our chief diplomat occupies herself with having one party indicted before a special tribunal, instead of day and night seeking ways out of the crisis and possibilities for an armistice. Yet “without a political-strategic overall concept, weapons deliveries are pure militarism”. This estimate originates from a former Chancellor’s military policy advisor, Vad. From there, the American Chief of Staff Milley proceeds to that a victory of the Ukraine is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way.

Yet an action corresponding to this insight is counter to the Western supposition that Putin wants to obliterate the Ukraine and thus no compromise is possible.

            Ulrich Lechte (SPD): He said it!

In serious discussions, ladies and gentlemen, this supposition has never been examined.

            Anikó Glogowski-Merten (FDP): He himself said it!

And Russia’s security interests vis-à-vis NATO are considered in the West as only having been advanced, without submitting them to a test by means of discussions. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time that we finally do that, instead of sliding on a steep plane ever more violently in the direction of a European war, or indeed into an atomic confrontation of which the UN Secretary-General himself has meanwhile warned.

Our motion offers a way.

            Daniel Baldy (SPD): It says nothing!

More and better is always possible, only the direction must agree: Away from a victory of one and a defeat of the other side; away from military logic. This war is to be won by no one. Only when we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution does peace have chance.

            Erhard Grundl (Greens): Says Radio Moscow!

Without the insight that a military solution was not to be achieved, even the Thirty Years War would never have come to an end.

            Daniel Baldy (SPD): Was that also a Vogelschiss?

Hopefully, for us, it does not last so long.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Alice Weidel, February 8, 2023, Germany, the U.S.A. and War

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/84, pp. 9957-9959.

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

Herr Scholz, can you actually in the morning calmly look in the mirror, thinking of the concentrated incompetence and cascade of blunders for which the Federal government lead by you stands?

            Achim Post (SPD-Minden): Helau! Helau!

You afford yourself a Foreign Minister who in her dilettantism on the international stage plainly announced a declaration of war on Russia which unleashed spite and shock in the rest of the world. A Foreign Minister who feels herself responsible for not only the entire world but also for countries which, I cite: “lie hundreds of thousands of kilometers distant”; that is, anywhere out there in the solar system. Unbelievable!

Economy Minister Habeck presently deals worldwide in matters of climate protection, announces bombastic delivery agreements which similarly again burst apart, and quite openly dreams of having Germany dissolve into an EU federal state governed from Brussels.

 – You say “exactly”! That is exactly what you want!

We certainly do not speak for the first time of your shortly to be part-time Interior Minister who thinks of abusing her office in the next three-quarters of a year as an election campaign platform and safety belt. Her actual duty, the safety of the citizens, she has already for long neglected for her obsession with a fight against the right, for her opening of the last migration sluice gates in line with the unspeakable naturalization law.

Or your Health Minister Lauterbach, long since become a tragi-comic caricature, who evidently is still occupied with putting the blame on others for his Corona blind flight and his failures in regards all other duties.

Such a cabinet no one can take seriously. Under your government, Germany ultimately becomes the laughing stock of the world, and in the eyes of neutral observers becomes ever more like a developing country. In this regard, you really are the worthy successor of Angela Merkel.  

The foreign policy shoes of earlier Chancellors – we think of Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Schmidt – are anyhow too big for you. Time and again, in questions which are of decisive importance for the future of our country, you let let yourself be led about like a schoolboy.

You stand there dumb as the President of the United States boasted [auftrumpfte] before the world press that the U.S.A. had the means of preventing the opening of the Baltic Sea Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Around half a year after the explosion of both pipelines, you are still silent as to those responsible for this public act of state terrorism.

U.S. vice foreign minister Victoria Nuland’s jubilation that an infrastructure vital for Germany’s energy supply is just, I cite: “a piece of metal on the seabed” might perhaps be an answer. Yet the citizens of this country expect a clarification from you of who has perpetrated this attack on a lifeline of German industry. And they want to hear from you what you are in fact undertaking so as to again make possible the supply of Germany by favorable and viable energy carriers, and from Russia.

Liquid gas from the U.S.A. at overpriced costs is no solution.

The exploding prices for energy imports, together with the high inflation unleashed by the ECB, are the reason for, the origin of the loss of real purchasing power taken out of the net pay of the Bund’s citizens at a level of 4 percent last year. Such a loss of prosperity is unexampled in the history of Germany. Unexampled! It drives the middle class into impoverishment and the productive industry into the arms of the American solicitors who, with low taxes and low energy costs, at the same time woo it with the protectionism of their own American industry. One must picture that! And yet you still abet this de-industrialization! The windmills with which your government wants to still further stuff this country are in any case no solution. They are subvention graves and money destruction machines which will intensify our energy problems. When no wind blows, 50,000 or 100,000 windmills deliver exactly as little electricity as the present 30,000 which already disfigure our country. The so-called renewable sources of energy presently contribute less to Germany’s electricity supply than the last three remaining nuclear power plants. To disconnect them would be economic suicide.

– You of the SPD laugh. We can picture that. Since you so often attack from behind the citizens and the economy and declare the disconnection debate to be ended. Germany requires the comeback of nuclear energy. Yes, of course we require it. Tomorrow ask the other government heads in Brussels, Herr Chancellor! No one finds the German anti-nuclear power mania to be good, no one wants to follow you in this way. You now also receive pressure from the European partners due to your irresponsible asylum and naturalization policy. We rejoice at the summit!

Take the lead, Herr Scholz as you, ja, always do, exactly as with the fatal decision for the delivery of combat panzers to the Ukraine! Your initial hesitation honors you. Yet in the end you have let yourself be compelled by the warmongers in your own ranks and on the other side of the Atlantic

Achim Post (SPD-Minden): Man, man, man!

to take this step and to make Germany – now I want to say something to you – a de facto war party in a war which is not ours. That is what it’s about!

            Achim Post (SPD-Minden): All dumb stuff!

And look: Your excellent partners are no longer at all so hasty with the delivery of their panzers!

            Götz Frömming (AfD): All at once!

They are no longer at all so hasty. The U.S.A. wants to deliver its panzers just in a year, and slimmed down. Yet you have demanded of the new Defense Minister, whom you have somehow mobilized as a last conscription, to declare to one of the few functioning panzer companies that they must give up their modern and mission-ready combat panzers. And that there are at all modern and mission-ready combat panzers in the Bundeswehr after 16 Merkel years is, ja, just as so astonishing. That needs be said for once.  

Thus, Herr Merz, instead of always shoving everything on to others: You were for 16 years in the government and have economized all of that lock, stock and barrel.

And when you speak of the Bundeswehr’s special fund which has been passed here: That was agreed to to strengthen the Bundeswehr and not to make a gift of whichever combat panzers to the Ukraine as we are surely doing.

You draw on the Bundeswehr and undermine our defense capability so as to prolong the war in the Ukraine and to make a target of Germany.

Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): On that account we put 100 billion in the Bundeswehr! You know not of what you speak!

You make Germany a target while the U.S. arms industry, at a safe distance, does a very good business.

The enthusiasm for weapons deliveries to the Ukraine and for the economic sanctions against Russia which, as is well known, harm Germany and Europe more than Russia, remains confined to the U.S.A. and its European followers. In the rest of the world, one pursues one’s own interests. Your socialist comrade Lula has lately demonstrated that to you on your trip to Brazil as he once again led you about in front of all the world.

Brazil has no interest in a climate policy according to German notions which lead straightaway to de-industrialization and loss of prosperity. Brazil also has no interest in a green ideology plaything like that unworldly bureaucracy monster, the supply chain law, which hinders free trade. Brazil does not want to become a war party by means of weapons deliveries, but to throw its weight on the scales, exactly as do India and China, to negotiate a peace agreement for the Ukraine. Such an initiative would have been able to come from you, Herr Chancellor, and it has long since needed to come from Germany.

For once do not ask the couch strategists from the coalition delegations and the Union who have not served, ask experienced military people: Neither the Ukraine nor Russia will be able to achieve their maximum goals in this war. So as to end it, they will sooner or later need to negotiate a compromise. The question is, How many people until then need die, until then how much destruction and suffering will be served up? You cannot compel an atomic power into a total defeat without risking blowing up the world. The worry, ridiculed by you, of an escalation of the war into an atomic war which haunts many people, is not irrational.

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Come to a conclusion please.

It is real.

And the great SPD foreign policy politician Egon Bahr – you once had great foreign policy politicians –

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Frau colleague, please come to a conclusion.

– I come to an end, Herr President – often emphasized what Otto von Bismarck also well knew, what your coalition partners, as is known, want to cancel: States have no friends, but states have interests.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): We would today not be re-unified if that applied!

Thus represent the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany, Herr Chancellor. In that regard, I wish you much success.

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]