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]

Stephan Brandner, February 2, 2024, Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/152, pp. 19424-19425. 

Frau President. 

Dear joyous, liberal, straightforward, Deutschland-loving friends of the Alternative für Deutschland! Dear German democratic old delegation and ultra-left remainder, standing for the opposite. The budget debate draws to an end, and it is for me to find a few solemn words, and which are found. 

Four days of budget debate, four days of constant propaganda destruction [Dauerwerbeschleife] for the Alternative für Deutschland: Not one speech without the mention of my party. 

On the one side, the CDU/CSU delegation’s bugging us and our positions; that was partially an advertisement for us. On the other side, denigration, tirades of hate and incitement, Orwellian excess on the part of the blinded, light brown blend and those still further left. Many thanks for that! 

I believe anyone who still was not persuaded by the AfD, has been – following this budget debate and, before all, following the speeches of Michael Espendiller, ladies and gentlemen. 

You were right: Never again! Never again unity party, never again unity delegations, never again unity media, never again socialism, never again state demonstrations! Before all, never again socialism, not red, not brown and not green. Yet also no state bankruptcy, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Jamila Schäefer (Greens): Never again fascism!

This state bankruptcy is touching near. We do not say that, the so-called Economy Minister Habeck and the Eastern Commissioner say that: “We have…no more money”. 

Ladies and gentlemen, two years Ampel, two years of a FDP Finance Minister, two years of Quartetto Infernale – one can also speak of a gang of four on the government bench: Habeck, Scholz, Lindner and Baerbock. They have ruined our country. They have shamed our country. In two years, you have flattened one of the greatest economies on this Earth; that might be historically unique. No more money! Yet still money, for example, for a Federal Presidential Schloss Bellevue which for a loss of 500 million euros shall be renovated. Granted to the Federal President is even 200 million euros for a transition. How many dwellings could be built for that, ladies and gentlemen? Consider: A Federal President who labels millions of people out there as rats! All who are not of his opinion, are rats. 

I call upon you, dear Herr Steinmaier, reconsider that! Rats, which must finance your building excesses, ultimately finance a rat hole. 

Many thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

             Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is an insolence! Pfui Teufel!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, January 31, 2024, Foreign Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19170-19171. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube. And, of course, dear Frau Baerbock. 

One of my favorite headlines of last week was: “Russian Campaign Uncovered”. The Foreign Office shall have undertaken a data analysis which of course is totally trustworthy, yet quite incidentally is put forward in Spiegel. 

This data analysis comes to the conclusion that on X thousands of German language tweets were removed which include the accusation that the Federal government neglects its own people so as to support the Ukraine. O mein Gott! How has it come to this? One is, ja, completely shocked. Or yet: One is informed. 

One need only read the Finance Ministry’s report of December 2023 in which is found that, since the war’s beginning, Germany has arranged a total expenditure in the sum of 27.8 billion euros for the benefit of the Ukraine. This number does not at all include the German contribution for the EU program. Thus, 27.8 billion euros: That is nearly the 2024 budget for the Foreign Office, the Family Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry reckoned together. Yet for this Ampel of horrors, this presumably is all just peanuts. Electricity comes out of the socket, money grows on trees and stylists are paid by the taxpayers. 

Apropos taxpayers: While we here in this country burden our citizens’ income with tax rates between 14 and 45 percent, there is in the Ukraine a slim flat income tax of 18 percent, plus a 1.5 percent war tax. That means, the average Ukrainian oligarch pays less tax as a percentage than most of the normal employees in Germany. Presumably, the Christmas ski season in the Ukraine thus again runs recht gut. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): You should be ashamed! This is unbelievable!

To the enjoyment of these pleasures come of course only those able to afford it and, in wondrous ways, are not with their countrymen at the front, 

            Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member?

at the front, where entire generations of Ukrainians are sent to death by their President, instead of finally starting armistice negotiations. 

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda! 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Shame on you!

Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member – I have stopped the clock – do you accept a question or remark from member Farle? 

No, thanks. 

And this naturally interests the Ampel not at all. 

In Germany meanwhile flutter into the mail boxes the utility bills for renters, which demand in part additional payments in the four-figure range. It is estimated that an average 581 euros has been the additional payment per renter. Price driver number one: The energy costs. 

The government’s tellers of fairy tales will now again object that Putin is guilty for the high energy prices. That however is not the truth. Since it is the foreign policy and the energy policy of the Ampel and its black-red predecessor government which have gotten us into trouble. 

Besides, no one yet has been able to explain to me why it is now so much better to be dependent on American LNG instead of Russian gas. It certainly cannot be the fault of Putin's evil Politik; otherwise, the government might also make no energy deals with the United Arab Emirates. I do not know whether you have heard, but women’s rights do not look so good there. 

Deborah Düring (Greens): Since when are you interested in women’s rights? This is just a farce! 

           Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): An AfDer mouths the words “women’s rights”!

Yet to the Federal government it is quite obviously all the same – just so as the human rights of the Israelis who are routinely rocketed by their Hamas neighbors and cut down with the utmost barbarity. For years, the Federal government nevertheless supports the so-called Palestinian aid work of UNWRA with contributions in the millions. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Have pity! Mercy!

And for ever has there been evidence that this organization supports the Hamas terrorists. 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): You are the Kremlin’s useful idiots!

On X on Sunday, we were allowed to learn that twelve members had participated in the Hamas surprise attack on October 7 of last year. And for precisely these long since known reasons, my delegation for years ever and ever again demanded to stop the payments to UNRWA and to completely dissolve UNRWA. 

Yet ever again the same thing happened: When the great media wave of indignation rolled, the payments were frozen for effect in the media, only so as to again be furtively undertaken a brief time later. And thus this Federal government not only supports terrorists and murderers, but furthermore, for example, the traffickers in the Mediterranean. And here besides we have moved for the elimination of the means. 

While we are on eliminations: We have also moved that the means for the political foundations in the Foreign Office budget of around 84 million euros be cut. With this money, all of the old parties manage a kind of network of their own embassies. Look, for example, at the website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. There are worldwide locations; for example, in Manila, Islamabad, Lima, Harari and Tiflis. And so it is in regards all the foundations of the old parties – except of course in regards the AfD. 

Yet the question actually is: Need the German taxpayer pay for that? Our answer to that is quite clear: Nein, he need not. In that we put this question in regards all positions of Frau Baerbock’s budget, we could identify a savings potential of a total sum of 1.4 billion euros. We thereby require 21.5 percent less money than this Ampel of horrors. And quite honestly, I think, there is still more. 

Many thanks for your attention. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Dank sei Gott!

 

[trans: tem]