Sócrates

‘No one does wrong willingly or knowingly’ – Socrates, Greek philosopher

On November 21st at 10 PM, 2014  José Sócrates – ex-prime minister and former leader of the Socialist Party – was arrested at Lisbon’s airport, after flying home from Paris, under suspicion of money laundering, corruption, forgery and fiscal fraud.
He was held in preventive custody for 11 months but had to be released due to lack of evidence.

Almost 3 years later the Public Prosecutor’s Office officially closed down the final investigation – called Operation Marqués, named after the former residence of the prime minister at the Marqués de Pombal square in Lisbon – and published the results last week in a more than 4000 page’s thick report.

Except for Sócrates – prime minister between 2005 and 2011 – 9 companies and 19 individuals – amongst them important bankers, directors and public administrators – were together charged with 188 crimes.

According to the accusation, Sócrates received between 2006 and 2009 more than 24 million euros in bribes from the private enterprise Lena, the luxury tourist company Vale do Lobos and the biggest bank at that time, Banco Espírito Santo. The money is supposed to be hidden in bank accounts in Switzerland.

Carlos Santos Silva, businessman and personal friend of Sócrates, is said to be the key person in the process, acting as the mediator between the former prime minister and the involved companies.

It’s for the first time in the history of Portugal, that a former prime minister is accused of corruption during the execution of his function as head of state. But that’s not all. Operation Marqués also incriminates ex-CEO’s from big government agencies like Portugal Telecom and the state-owned bank Caixa Geral dos Depositos.

Socrates’ lawyers declared the accusations “totally unfounded and complete nonsense.” The defense is – by law – given 50 days to react to the accusations but already has requested an extension of one year, to be able to analyze the document in detail.

The ex-prime minister himself calls the report “a fantasy, a fable without any facts or evidence” and elucidates “that the purpose of the state has never been to investigate a crime, but to harass a target.”

This week his third book ‘The evil we deplore’ was published.’


Socrates ( 469-399 BC) was a Greek philosopher and considered the father of western philosophy. He showed how argument, debate, and discussion could help men to understand difficult issues.  In 399 BC he was put on trial for ‘refusing to recognize the gods of the state’, found guilty and forced to commit suicide by taking poison.

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Sueing

Large parts of the countries interior look spooky these days with charred trees and incinerated road signs.
40% off all wildfires in Europe this year occurred in Portugal, far more than in any other country.

Last summer schoolchildren from the Leiria region in central Portugal watched their district burn as a result of the most destructive and deadliest forest fires in the country’s history. The fires – which have been linked by some experts to climate change – have claimed the lives of at least 65 people and left hundreds injured.

“Climate change causes many problems, but if I had to name the one that worries me most, it would be the increase in the number of wildfires – especially this summer as the fires caused many deaths in our country”, says a boy of the group of children – aged between 6 and 14 – from Leiria, seeking crowdfunding to sue 47 European countries for their failure to tackle climate change, threatening their right to life.

These countries are collectively responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse emissions. They also hold a significant proportion of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves. The case is also being taken to court to raise public awareness about the shortcomings in government policies on climate change.

With the support of the NGO Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), the group of children taking action is seeking an initial £35,000 to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg The crowdfunding bid was published on the platform CrowdJustice [ https://www.crowdjustice.com ] and to date, just over half of the amount needed, has been pledged.

“Tragedies like this are becoming the new norm because governments are failing to make the necessary cuts to their greenhouse emissions”, according to a spokesman from GLAN.
“Instead of suing just Portugal, the case will be taken against all of the major emitters, which have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights.”

“The court will be asked two things. Firstly, that these 47 countries must significantly strengthen their emissions-cutting policies and secondly, that they must commit to keeping most of their existing fossil fuel reserves in the ground”.

A victory, in this case, would be ground-breaking as the decisions of the Court are binding across Europe.

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Rich

Rich people rule and poor people live the best they can – Jóse Saramago

While poor people are hardly recovering from the economic crisis, rich people get richer. Portugal’s 25 richest families possess this year €18.8 billion – 10% of the country’s wealth (GNP) – against 15 billion euro in 2016. ‘This almost 4 billion increase is the biggest in recent years’, according to the Portuguese magazine Exame.

Heading the list is the Amorim family with a net worth of €3.8 billion. The founding father of the imperium Américo Amorim – also known as ‘the king of cork’ [ https://lusolobo.com/kurk] – died last June at the age of 82. He was Portugal’s richest man and occupied in 2017 position 385 – ahead of Donald Trump – on Forbes’ list of wealthiest people in the world.

Second is Soares dos Santos – holding the largest supermarket chain in the country, Pingo Doce – with a personal fortune of €2.5 billion.

In third place the Guimarães de Mello family – owner of Brisa, Portugal’s biggest road and toll enterprise – estimated to be worth €1.5 billion.

The first woman can be found in eighth place. Maria Isabel dos Santos is Portugal’s richest woman – shareholder in the Jerónimo Martins group – and worth €665 million.

‘To think that nowadays in our country one million people – that is 10% of the population – regular have to skip meals due to financial problems is a shame’, says Carla Lopes, a nutritionist at the Public Health Institute of the University of Porto.
One-fifth of the population is facing a situation of food insecurity, meaning their access to healthy food is limited due to financial constraints.

‘If you compare this to ten years ago, we can see a marked increase, reflecting the impact of the past economic crisis’, says Helena Canhão, an investigator at the Health Science Faculty of the New University of Lisbon.‘ This is a serious public health problem as unhealthy nutrition leads to chronic diseases, like diabetes and obesity.’

Fortunately, the tide is turning. The economy is growing, export rising and unemployment dropping [Fairy tale ]
The challenge for the left wing government of António Costa in the years to come, is to realize its socialist ambitions by distributing wealth in a more equal way.

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Permit

Portugal sells EU citizenship to corrupt millionaires, while thousands of refugees are knocking in vain on Europe’s door.

The waiter in restaurant São Pedro do Estoril speaks with that typical melodious accent. ‘You are right’, Liandro says. ‘I’ am not from here but from Belo Horizonte in Brazil. If I can keep up working in Portugal for five years, I’m allowed to apply for a passport and work all over Europe. The work is good and the people are nice, but I don’t know if I can miss my family back home that long. Deus é que sabe (God only knows).’

For wealthy people, there is a far much easier way. Portugal’s ‘golden residence permit’ – visto gold – requires an investment of 500,000 euros in property in exchange for permanent residency and visa-free travel through Europe’s Schengen area.

According to the government two-thirds of the more than 5000 ‘golden visas’ – issued since 2012 – have been to Chinese applicants. In recent years however, the number of Brazilian and  African investors is rising. The program has already generated more than 3 billion euros.

Real estate has long been attractive to criminals due to the potential to launder large quantities of cash. Last week the British newspaper the Guardian, together with the Portuguese weekly Expresso, published in a leaked document a list of corrupt Brazilian business executives and relatives of Angolan politicians – being accused of bribery – who had secretly bought access to Europe via Portugal’s visto gold scheme.

One of them is Otávio Azevedo, former president of Brazil’s second-largest construction company, Andrade Gutierrez. He received an 18-year sentence last year, after admitting a string of corruption offenses. Two years before his arrest he bought a € 1.4 million property in Lisbon and subsequently applied for a golden visa in 2014.

Another is Sergio Lins Andrade, chairman and main shareholder of the same company, who in 2014 acquired a Lisbon property worth € 665,000 through the golden visa program. He is estimated by Forbes to be worth $ 1.5 billion.

Relatives of the Angolan vice president Manuel Vincente – until 2012 chief executive of the country’s state oil company Sonagol – are also mentioned in the document. Vincente faced allegations earlier this year when he tried to bribe a Portuguese magistrate in order to suppress an investigation into corruption at Sonagol.

In a statement, the government said its golden visa scheme ‘strictly follows all legally established security procedures’. The European Commission already announced an investigation into all the golden visa programmes in the EU.

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Black

‘Portugal is one of the most racist countries in the EU’ – European Social Survey

– ‘No one has ever said to me that I could not rent the house because I’m black’

Mamadou Ba is born in Senegal and has the Portuguese nationality. He is graduated, has a steady job at the Parliament, and speaks with a slight African accent. When he is calling for an apartment in Lisbon’s Parque das Nações neighborhood, he gets an appointment 2 days later. Although the tenant promises him to send an SMS with additional information, he never does. If shortly thereafter a journalist of the newspaper Público– with a Portuguese name and a Lisbon accent – calls the same tenant, he immediately gets the necessary information by phone and an appointment for the next day. In only two out of five phone calls, Mamadou and the journalist were treated the same way.

– ‘It’s hard for blacks to find a job. There’s always a preference for whites.’

Amélia Costa is born in Guinee-Bissau and in possession of a Portuguese passport. When submitting her application for a management position, she doesn’t include a photo in her CV. After a call from the director of Human Resources, she is invited to an interview.
On entry, the director stares at her in amazement. ‘Apparently, he was expecting someone else’, she says.
The interview is going well and Amélia gets the job. When she asks the director at a later stage, why he looked so surprised when they first met, he says ‘the person I called and the person I met, didn’t seem to be the same’. ‘Since you speak without an accent, I didn’t expect you to be a black person. If you had submitted a photo with your CV, I probably would never have called you for an interview’, he confessed.
‘In Portugal, you hardly come across black people in leading positions or in the media. You’ll find them back office, in factories, kitchens, and supermarkets. We are not even given a chance to get to know us’, she explains.

– ‘The presence of black lecturers in the academic community is nil’

‘It isn’t true that social class eliminates racism.
‘If I come somewhere, where I’ am the only black person, I will be discriminated.
It’s no question of social discrimination, it’s the color of the skin’.
‘I’ll give you some examples’, she explains in Público.

‘When I return at the airport from a trip abroad, they often direct me to the line for Non-European passports and my luggage is nearly always checked by customs’. ‘Once I entered a meeting and heard a colleague – a bit too loud – say: ‘I don’t understand what that black one is doing here.’
And something that happened to me recently in the Santa Marta hospital, when I asked for a particular department and someone showed me the way. ‘When you see an indication that says Outpatients, you turn right – can you read?’
Inocência Mata is the only black professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, where she is teaching since 1990.

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Basta

‘There are nurses who don’t care anymore if they are fired’ – Ana Rita Cavaco.

In the week that Apple presents its newest iPhone X with face recognition, Portuguese nurses show their faces in a 5-day strike, as the climax in a dragging conflict between the nursing trade union (SEP) and the Minister of Health – Adalberto Campos Fernandes – who promptly called the strike ‘illegal and immoral.’

‘We are still counting, but everything indicates, that an overwhelming majority – over 90% – of the nurses are supporting this action’, says José de Azevedo, leader of the SEP on the first day of the strike.

The conflict with the Ministry of Health already started before summer, when nurse specialists – in particular, the midwifery professionals – asked for a higher salary that, as a result of the country’s economic cutbacks in 2009, had been frozen for 8 years.

There are about 6000 nurse specialists working in the country, comprising nurses in mental health, pediatrics, rehabilitation, surgery and community health. Midwifery nurses are the biggest group, most of them working in the Obstetric departments of hospitals.

The number of qualified nurses in Portugal is – with 1 in 200 inhabitants – one of the lowest in the EU.
‘There is a lack of 30.000 nurses in the country and sick leave has doubled to 10% over the last two years’, says Ana Rita Cavaco, president of the Portuguese Nurse Association.

‘We have proposed the Ministry to train 3000 additional nurses over the next 10 years. That would cost the Government 65 million euro – a mere 0,6% of the health budget – but we are still waiting for an answer.’

Nurses in Portugal earn a salary of 1200 euros gross per month – twice the minimum wage – irrespective their experience or additional training.
It is therefore not surprising that more than 15.000 of them have left the country in search for greener pastures [Diaspora ], in particular England, where nurse specialists earn nearly twice as much.

Apart from low wages, nurses also criticize the lack of career perspectives – that was canceled as well in 2009 – and demand the reintroduction of specializations, together with a gradual wage increase of 2400 euros per month over 3 years.

Finally, the nursing trade union claims a 35-hour working week for all nurses, whether they are specialized or not.

The Federation of Medical Specialists supports the nurses’ demands and announced in their turn a doctor’s strike of 2 days in October.

It is better to stay fit in Portugal this fall.

BOM FIM DE SEMANA                                                                                                           (pictures Lusa)

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Excercise

Childhood exercise has a protective effect on health later in life.

While active childhood reduces obesity  ( Zwaargewichten) in the short term, long term benefits might even be more crucial. Recent studies show, that the more exercise children had during adolescence, the more likely they were to be successful professionally. The reason for this is, that fitness at a young age is directly related to the developing brain, which does not complete its formation until one’s 20s.
In addition, adolescents who regular exercise, are more motivated to exercise as adults.

2 in 3 Portuguese are endangering their health by not taking enough exercise, leading to serious health conditions, like heart disease, diabetes, cancers (breast and bowel), depression and dementia.

Walking for 10 – 20 minutes at a brisk pace every day (150 minutes a week is recommended), not just increases fitness and improves mood, but also reduces the risk of early death by 15%, according to the World Health Organization.
Walking requires no special skills or equipment and is acceptable for most people.

Cycling is a good alternative to using the car. It not only reduces traffic congestion but also benefits the environment and health. Regular cycling ( 45 km a week) cuts the risk of death from any cause by 40% and the incidence of heart disease and cancer by 45%.

But is cycling a realistic option in Lisbon, known as the city of seven hills?

The Lisboa Horizontal project calculated, that 65% (nearly 700 km) of its streets have less than 4% inclination and hence accessible by bike.

In June EMEL, the city’s transport body, introduced 100 public hire bikes – two-thirds of them electric –and 10 docking stations in the Parque das Nações neighborhood.

This number is to be extended to 1400 bikes – 950 electric ones to cope with the hilly parts –being installed in the flatter parts of Lisbon – the Plateau area, the touristic Baixa and along the waterfront of the Tagus river.

The biggest problem, however, isn’t hills but the prevailing car culture. Lisbon takes first place in all EU capitals when it comes to car use.
Moreover, Portuguese parking is incredibly selfish and vehicles regularly block cycle tracts, jeopardizing safe cycling.

Change is not easy for everyone to swallow. Last week local residents, in the Alvalade and Avenidas Novas neighborhoods, complained about losing parking places, forcing EMEL to remove 15 brand-new docking stations from the area.

A luta continua – the fight goes on!

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Fairy tale

It’s like Lenin said: look for the persons who benefit and you will know.

Once upon a time, there was a friendly country, in the South of Europe bordering the Atlantic Ocean, that used to export cork, tinned sardines and cheap labor.

But back in 2008 things changed as a worldwide economic recession forced the country on its knees. No longer able to pay its government debt, it had to beg friends for help and borrowed a total of 76 billion from the IMF and the European Community.

These friends – that now had become creditors – demanded strict measures, that were enthusiastically implemented by the country’s then conservative government. It started raining austerities for many years and the people suffered.
There were massive cuts in education, health services, and social spending. Salaries plummeted, poverty increased and unemployment skyrocketed to a record 17% in 2013.

But at the end of 2015, the sun broke through the dark clouds and a brand-new socialist government – with the support of more radical parties like the Left Bloc and the Communist Party – came to power. Never before had a coalition of the Democratic Left-ruled the country. Not even in 1975, when the Carnation Revolution re-established democracy.

The message of the new government was crystal clear. Stop austerity measures and increase demand. ‘By refunding income to the people in a moderate way, people get confidence and investment returns’, explains economy minister Manuel Caldeira Cabral.
The new leaders promised to raise the minimum wage, pensions, and social security and a wealth tax was introduced on property valued over 600.000 euro.

And it worked. Two years after taking power the government is showing an economic growth of 2.5% – the strongest since the beginning of the recession – and a reduction of the deficit by half, lower than ever. Meanwhile, foreign investment jumped 13%, unemployment dropped below 10% and 17 billion (65%) of the loan from the IMF is repaid.

In one year 155.000 new jobs were created – a record in twenty years. Tourism and industry – in particular footwear– are booming and export increases more than import.

In two years’ time, Portugal has not only won the European Football Championship and the Eurovision Song festival for the very first time, it also increased public investment, reduced the deficit, beheaded unemployment and sustained economic growth.
It looks like fairy tales do exist.

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Bias

When I was stopped by the police and asked them ‘why’, the officer said ‘a black man is always suspicious’ – José Fernandes, legal advisor.

In Portugal, prisons are painted black! Of every 10 prisoners, 9 (90%) are Africans. If you are from Cape Verde, the situation becomes even worse, as 15 times more Cape Verdeans than Portuguese stay in jail. Compared with these figures Afro-Americans are relatively better off. In the US black people are ‘only’ 5 times more likely to be imprisoned than their fellow Americans.

‘These numbers are shocking’, says Alípio Ribeiro, an attorney from the Criminal Investigation Department and confirm what he already thought: ‘there is a legal system for whites and a legal system for blacks’.
‘You can’t just derive from these data, that black people are more criminal. It is much more likely that black people are locked up easier. Apparently little is needed to put them in prison.’

Approximately 1% of the population – 100.000 people – originates from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, most of them from Cape Verde. The majority lives around the capital, in deprived neighborhoods, like Amadora and Sintra. Their exact number is unknown as collecting ethnic data is prohibited by Portuguese law.

Already in 2014, the Immigration Observatory indicated that sentences are tougher when committed by black Africans. Information from the General Directorate of the Department of Justice (DGPJ) and recently disclosed by the Portuguese newspaper Público, shows that black Africans indeed get the maximum sentence twice as often for offenses like robbery and domestic assault.

Celso Manata, head of DGPJ, however, rejects the idea that the legal system is discriminatory. He admits that there is an over-representation of blacks in Portuguese prisons, but believes that ‘this is caused by the poor socio-economic circumstances of black people, who therefore are more likely to commit a crime’.

‘In a society aimed at keeping an eye on certain communities, it is not surprising that the number of prisoners from these communities will be greater’, declares José Semedo, a lawyer at the National Immigrant Support Centre.
’Both our legal and prison system are much more aggressive to black people’.This is also reflected in the fact, that black people often have to serve their time and hardly get remission. ‘These findings clearly demonstrate that black prisoners are not getting the best defense and therefore stay unnecessary long behind bars.’

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Portugalidades

‘My grandparents had five children, three boys, and two girls. They all looked different,’ says Ermelinda – my 64 years old neighbor – when I ask her what actually makes the Portuguese Portuguese.

‘João was the smallest with his 166 cm. Both his hair and eyes were dark brown. Manuel was just about 190 cm. He had black hair and very dark eyes. Ana was also tall, 180 cm but she was blond and had greenish eyes. Cecilia just looked like a Swedish girl, with her blazing blond hair and crystal blue eyes. António had beautiful hazel eyes, his hair was brown too. Now, would you please tell me, who looks the most Portuguese ?’

The ‘typical’ Portuguese doesn’t exist in a country that has been occupied by a great number of civilizations – Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths, Celts, Swabians, and Arabs.
On top of that, 400 years of slave trade has added black African genes to the population, something the white community here doesn’t like to be reminded off.

According to Manuel Sobrinho Simões – Head of the Pathology and Immunology Department of the University of Porto – Portuguese indeed have a remarkable mixture of genes. ‘If there is something typical of the Portuguese genome pole, then it’s the enormous diversity.’

The country is about twice as big as the Netherlands but has – with 10.3 million – much fewer inhabitants. In the last couple of years, urbanization has increased at the expense of the countryside and the coastal region has become more densely populated, younger and richer.
The two largest cities – Lisbon at the river Tagus and Porto at the river Douro – cover together only 5% of the territory, while 60% of the population and 50% of the industrial companies are located there.

The national territory can – according to the Ministry of Environment – roughly be divided into:

40% forest (pine trees, eucalyptus, cork oak)
30% farmland (agriculture and livestock)
20% urban area (towns, villages, railways, roads)
10% inland water (rivers, lakes, dams)

Over the past 22 years, farmland has decreased with 2000 km² while urbanization increased with 1000 km². During the same period, forestation increased with 2000 km² – an equivalent to about 250.000 football fields!

The bad news is, that this year already three-quarter of the increase has been destroyed by wildfires, including the tragic one in Pedrógão Grande, killing 64 people. And the nightmare hasn’t stopped yet!

(photos Público & Observador)                                                   Bom fim de semana

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