COP 27 must ensure firm action

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, COP 27 conference venue

The United Nations COP 27 climate conference, which starts at the end of this week, could be of pivotal importance to the entire planet and of special significance to Portugal.

Portugal is doing all the right things to limit global warming, but it remains highly vulnerable because of what much bigger nations are not doing.

The United States, China and India, the countries creating the highest levels of ruinous greenhouse gas emissions, are not honouring their pledges at past UN climate conferences. This year, China even pulled out of co-operative talks with the US about how to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Former Portuguese Prime Minister and currently serving his second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, has said: “We are in a life-or-death struggle for our own safety today and our survival tomorrow.” 

He added that COP 27 must ensure sufficient action and not be just “another dead-end discussion.”

Attention on global warming has been distracted in many countries by the COVID pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine and crises centred on the cost of energy, food and maintaining health services. In Africa, it has been distracted by internal conflicts, poverty and starvation.

Some scientists believe it is already too late to stop global temperatures rising above the crucial 1.5°C or even 2°C levels to avoid catastrophe. Some are predicting that levels may rise by more than 4°C by the end of the century.

The whole subject will be debated again at the 27^th UN climate conference, which begins in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, next Sunday, November 6. It will continue for 12 days.

The many heads of state and government ministers, along with mayors, CEOs, climate scientists and activists attending, will not include Britain’s King Charles III or Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. They have opted out. Greta Thunberg says she will not be attending either, presumably because she doesn’t want to hear more blah, blah, blah.

Many young people from around the world, however, will be present and a special pavilion is being set up for them at the conference centre. For the first time, the European Union will also have its own pavilion at a COP meeting.

Europe is becoming hotter faster than almost any other region in the world. This year Portugal has experienced its hottest temperatures ever. They reached 46°C in a number of places and a record 47.5°C in the north-eastern Alentejo. There had been so little rain by late May that most of Portugal, north to south, suffered severe or extreme droughts. 

More is sure to come. Indeed, the next few years could to be much worse, meaning longer and increasingly intensive heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and flooding due to rising sea levels.  If so, the economic impact will be profound, particularly on the tourism and agriculture sectors.

The wildfire environmental and wildlife  destruction is worsened by low precipitation, which is predicted to drop by as much as 50% in summers, with temperatures topping 40°C becoming the norm. Sea levels will continue to rise along Portugal’s entire coastline, threatening some coastal cities, towns, villages and beaches with submersion.

The worrying health risks include a rising mortality rate among children and the elderly due to unbearable lengthy heat waves. The temperatures could also promote tropical diseases such as malaria.

Portugal is striving as best it can to help bring global warming under control, especially by increasing its use of hydroelectric, wind and solar power, thus reducing the need for fossil fuels. It is one of the leaders in Europe on this.

Hopefully, the COP 27 conference will successfully urge the world’s major nations to spend less time on hateful political wrangling and concentrate far more on the future of planet Earth.

 

 

British expats bewildered by chaos

Britain's new Prime Minister, 42-year-old Rishi Sunak

Many British expats in Portugal have been understandably angered and embarrassed by last week’s political and economic anarchy back home.

Respect for Britain’s government has plummeted across Europe, in the United States and elsewhere around the world, with people aghast at the frenzied turmoil within the UK’s ruling Conservative Party.

Some found the recent events to be farcical, even funny. But no, they were deadly serious and fully factual.

 Liz Truss was forced out of office as prime minister by her own party just 44 days after being enthusiastically voted in.

The damage was self-inflicted as she had made a total shambles of things by complicating an already dire financial situation in one of the world’s biggest economies.

The friend Truss chose as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, released a mini-budget that included the biggest tax cuts in half a century, which would have mainly benefitted the wealthier segments of British society.

Truss sacked him as the financial markets reacted. The pound nosedived in value, leading borrowing costs to shoot up.

Soaring interest rates threatened higher mortgage payments for millions of British citizens.

It took the International Monetary Fund to urgently point out that the planned tax cuts might stoke inflation.

The Bank of England felt obliged to take drastic measures, including buying an unlimited quantity of government bonds to protect the UK economy from crashing further.

Truss sacked her friend after he had been in the job for just 38 days and appointed a new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

As the fourth chancellor in four months, Hunt calmed the markets somewhat by completely overturning the planned tax cuts of his predecessor, which the PM had supported.

Having just claimed in the House of Commons that she was “a fighter not a quitter”, Truss quit and became by far the shortest serving prime minister in British history.

Aged just 47, Truss is now entitled to an annual public payment of £115,000. Many British pensioners feel outraged because of concerns about their own more modest public payments amid the cost of living crisis that has forced many working people into poverty.

Truss’ predecessor, Boris Johnson, who led Britain out of the European Union, was forced to resign in early July after a series of ‘Partygate’ scandals.

It beggared belief that  many Conservatives wanted Boris back after Truss resigned.

He flew home from a holiday in the Caribbean in the hope of regaining his position, despite being an obvious liar who is soon to be investigated for misleading members of parliament.  He declined to enter the leadership race just the night before this Monday’s deadline.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party, which is holding a big majority of support according to all opinion polls, demanded a general election giving the country, not just the Conservatives, the opportunity to choose the next prime minister. The muddled government ruled that out.

In the absence of any other viable contender as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, Rishi Sunak will now have to sort out the mess, including a £40 billion black hole in the economy, while the population are facing a booming recession at home plus a great loss to Britain’s reputation internationally.

British expats, for their own futures and those of family and friends here and in their homeland, are hoping for a rapid end to the current tumultuous uncertainly and a return to stability.

New air defence shield welcome

Although one of the least vulnerable countries in Europe to missile attacks from Russia, Portugal will be all the safer thanks to a new defence system initiated by Germany.

Fifteen countries have joined the proposed “European Sky Shield” that is to be set up using a common procurement of defence equipment. The system will enable the interception of any Russian cruise or ballistic missiles armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.

The co-operative arrangement comes at a time when the war in Ukraine is escalating and President Putin has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against Europe and the United States.

The countries participating in the new shield project are Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. All are NATO members except Finland, which is still in the process of joining.

Defence ministers signed a letter of intent in Brussels last Thursday to provide what has been described as “a fully interoperable and seamlessly integrated system that will significantly improve NATO’s ability to defend against all air and missile threats.”

Furthermore, it will offer a multinational and multifaceted” approach, which will offer “a flexible and scalable” way for European countries to strengthen their defence in an efficient and cost-effective manner, according to a NATO statement. The system is expected to make use of a combination of Israeli, US and German missile interception equipment.

So far, neither Portugal nor Spain has been formally requested to participate in the project, presumably because of their relatively distant location, but Spain has said it would certainly consider doing so if asked. Portugal might do so too as it is well known to be an enthusiastically committed founder member of NATO. France and Poland have opted out as they have their own individual missile defence systems.

While less vulnerable than the countries on Europe’s eastern flank, Portugal will welcome the boost to European missile protection because of the potential threat to its Atlantic ports, or even a possible spread of nuclear fallout from the east.

Putin’s has said he is not bluffing in making his threats to go nuclear. His ability to do so with long-range missiles are being taken very seriously by all defence ministers and specialist think tanks in the West. The need for the shield comes at a time of growing desperation in the Kremlin, which is facing increasing gains by the Ukrainian forces and increasing anti-war protests at home. A concern is that Putin is being backed into a corner that may provoke extreme and maybe even  illogical panic action. That said, the West has made it absolutely clear that it is ready to make any appropriate response necessary.

Russia has already unleashed thousands of missiles against Ukraine. Last week in yet another alleged war crime, many rained down on civilian targets and critical energy infrastructures in cities across Ukraine.

Fatima miracle: fact or fiction?

A crowd, said to have numbered as many as 70,000, witnessed the so-called Miracle of the Sun above the village of Fatima in central Portugal on 13^th October 1917. But was it really a divine miracle, or is it all a bizarre myth?

The event occurred during the Second World War and just a few years before Russia formed the Soviet Union. The latter is of special relevance to the Fatima faithful because of Russia’s present war in Ukraine. The 1917 crowd gathered in response to a prophesy aired by three local shepherd children who claimed to have been in contact over the previous five months with the Virgin Mary, whom they referred to as Our Lady of Fatima or Our Lady of the Rosary. They said she had told them to pray for peace and that she would perform a miracle that October.

On a stormy, wet afternoon, many in the crowd (pictured below) said that for a period of about ten minutes the sun resembled a silver disc. It appeared to tremble, dance and zigzag down towards the Earth amid a vivid range of colours.

Scientists have always dismissed the notion that there was any unnatural solar activity. Noting that there were inconsistent and contradictory comments among the crowd, sceptics have suggested that believers had deceived themselves with wishful expectations.

The Catholic Church itself harboured doubts and it was not until 1930 that it was officially declared a miracle “worthy of belief.”

By that time Church and State in Portugal had been separated by a constitutional decree. It was during Portugal’s First Republic, which ran from 5^th October 1910 to May 1926. The State was fiercely critical of the Catholic Church, which had been the national religion with a huge following since the founding of the nation on 5^th October 1143. Governments during the First Republic would like to have eliminated it, but the Church found solace and strengthened resistance in the ever-increasing public following of the apparitions reported by the three shepherd children on the 13th of each month, May to October, 1917.

The separation of Church and State was further cemented into Portugal’s constitution in 1976, two years after the ‘Carnation Revolution’. The two have enjoyed a trouble-free relationship ever since. Modern governments have appreciated the economic contribution to tourism by the Sanctuary of Fatima, which each year attracts millions of pilgrims from around the world. The figure for the centenary year, 2017, reached 9.4 million from about 100 countries who came to the Sanctuary for prayer and to express adulation.   

As all pilgrims are aware, the Blessed Virgin is said to have entrusted the visionary children with three “secrets” one of which warned that communist Russia would “spread its errors” unless it was “consecrated to my immaculate heart.”

The eldest of the children, Lucia Santos, (pictured left below) said the request was repeated to her by the Virgin Mary in an appearance in 1929. Why a matter of such geopolitical importance had been revealed in the first place only to unschooled children, indoctrinated with Catholic dogma by their peasant mothers in the remote Portuguese countryside, may not bother Catholics, but Humanists put it all down to delusion.

The act of consecration became a highly controversial subject, especially among traditionalist Catholics who consider all the popes since the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in the 1960s to be heretics. Three of these popes carried out consecrations without naming Russia. Only in March this year was the consecration carried out with the specific mention of Russia by Pope Francis. At the same time, the pontiff named Ukraine against which the Russians had launched their invasion one month earlier.

If the Miracle of the Sun and the Blessed Virgin’s wishes are not merely mythical, peace may at long last soon envelope the world, however unlikely that currently seems.

The Sanctuary of Fatima

The Catholic Church in disgrace

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With the approach of the 105^th anniversary of The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in central Portugal, Catholics have been shocked by yet another revelation about the sexual abuse of children within the church.

The Vatican has at long last acknowledged that in 2020 a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Catholic bishop received “disciplinary restrictions” and was banned from “contact with minors” because of allegations that he raped and abused teenage boys.

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo is accused of carrying out these crimes decades ago in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. The Vatican first became involved in the case in 2019 if not before, but information about its disciplinary action only came last week, a day after a Dutch magazine, De Groene Amsterdammer, published the accusations in explicit accounts by two of the priest’s alleged victims.

Bishop Belo, 74, shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with his friend José Ramos-Horta for their efforts in bringing peace and independence to East Timor after years of war with neighbouring Indonesia that killed hundreds of thousands of citizens. Since learning of the Vatican’s secret sanctioning of Belo, East Timor citizens have rallied to his side.

The leader of an East Timor youth organisation said at the weekend: “We will still stand with Bishop Belo because we realise, as a human being, Belo has weaknesses or mistakes like others. If he does wrongdoing, it’s his individual fault, nothing to do with the religion.” Not all, even in East Timor, would agree.

In 2002, the same year East Timor gained independence; Pope John Paul II accepted Bishop Belo’s resignation as head of the church in the East Timor capital, Dili. The following year, Belo came to Portugal for cancer treatment. It is thought he settled here and still lives in this country.

Earlier this year the former pope Benedict XVl admitted giving false information to a German inquiry into sexual abuse by Catholic clerics there. Plenty of accurate information has been pouring out from investigations into abuse scandals that have been going on for decades globally.

Pope Francis has declared “zero tolerance” for Catholic sexual abuse, saying he will take personal responsibility for ending it.

An independent inquiry into child abuse within the Catholic Church in Portugal is on-going. It is being carried out by a six-member committee, which includes psychiatrists and a former Supreme Court judge. Hundreds of people have come forward from across the country to give personal evidence with the promise of anonymity. The investigation was officially launched on January 1. The committee is expected to report to the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference at the end of this year.

An earlier independent inquiry in France concluded that there had been about 216,000 victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy between 1950 and 2020. It is estimated that many thousands more occurred in the decades before that.

In Australia it was found that in some dioceses more than 15% of priests had perpetuated sexual crimes against 4,444 children between 1950 and 2010. Most of the abuse took part in churches, but was ignored by the church authorities.

In Ireland, about 15,000 children were abused within Catholic institutions between 1970 and 1990 alone. An investigation showed that priests and nuns had terrorised boys and girls with beatings and rape in Church-run orphanages and schools that were places of fear, neglect, humiliation and endemic sexual abuse.

Crimes of a similar nature have been going on in just about every country with a Catholic presence. In the United States, hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid to Catholic abuse victims in out of court settlements.  In Canada, the church has apologised for the abuse of indigenous children in residential schools. The Catholic Church in Poland for many years covered up the crimes being committed by members of the clergy. The story is the same in New Zealand as well as countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

A big majority of Portuguese people say they are Roman Catholics, but the numbers who regularly attend Mass is dwindling. And yet hundreds of thousands of pilgrims continue to make their way to the Sanctuary of Fatima to pray on the 13^th of each month from May to October in hope of healings and a better life.

 

A republic mourns a monarch

For a fully independent republic like Portugal to officially declare a three-day period of national mourning for a foreign monarch is remarkable, but such is the respect for the late Queen Elizabeth ll and this country’s centuries of close ties with Britain.

The mourning here overlaps the funeral in London on Monday attended by Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa among many other heads of state.

Under the Treaty of Windsor as long ago as 1386, Portugal and Britain forged a bond of friendship known as the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. This was centuries before the two maritime nations located on the western edge of the European continent created, without any conflict between them, separate empires across the world. The alliance is still in force today.

Portugal’s last monarch was Dom Manuel ll. His reign came to an end with the October Revolution in 1910. Manuel lived the last two decades of his life in exile in Twickenham, England.

In 1932, the year Manuel died, the then British monarch, King George V, addressed his people for the first time on the radio. He wished them a happy Christmas in a speech composed by the legendary writer Rudyard Kipling.

George V’s granddaughter Elizabeth was just six years old at the time. Her coronation in 1953 was broadcast live on television channels and this is said to have been the major event that established television as a mainstream medium in Britain. She has totally dominated it day and night since her passing on Thursday 8^th September.

Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, made two state visits to Portugal. The first was in 1957 during the Estado Novo dictatorship of António Oliveira Salazar. The second was in 1985 when crowds in the port city of Setubal cheered and chanted ‘Viva la a Rainha’ before the royal couple went on a four-day tour of Lisbon, Porto and Evora in the Alentejo.

Prince Charles visited Portugal with his wife Princess Diana in 1987. They attended a memorial service marking the 600^th anniversary of the marriage of Portugal’s King Dom João l to Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of England’s John of Gaunt. It coincided with the 1386 Treaty of Windsor alliance. Prince Charles made another visit, this time in 2011 with his present wife, Camilla, now the new king’s consort.

With the easing of the COVID pandemic, the number of British holidaymakers in Portugal has been surging again. Currently there are more than 46,000 British citizens registered as living in Portugal, the second largest number of expatriates after those from the former Portuguese colony of Brazil. 

A pause in an EU – UK battle

 

Dramatic developments previously expected this week involving the Portuguese diplomat João Vale de Almeida have probably been put on hold for the period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth ll.

As ambassador of the European Union in the United Kingdom, Vale de Almeida is facing fierce and complex opposition from the UK’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss over the Brexit treaty.

Leaders from every EU country, including Portugal’s  President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, sent tributes and messages of condolence to Her Majesty’s family and to the people of Great Britain.

Just before the Queen’s passing, the focus for Ambassador Vale de Almeida was a battle over the Northern Ireland protocol, the most sensitive element of the Brexit deal signed in 1996. Truss has said she is going to unilaterally change part of the protocol. The European Commission absolutely rejects this and has indicated that any unilateral change or scrapping the protocol altogether as Truss’s predecessor Boris Johnson suggested, could lead to a trade war.

Vale de Almeida, a former ambassador to the United States and later the United Nations, has made it clear that in his opinion it would be both “illegal and unrealistic” for the UK to fail to honour its commitment to the Brexit deal.

“It is illegal because it would be a breach of EU, UK and international law. It is unrealistic because it does not provide a real alternative to the protocol.” The government’s approach was probably “on a road to nowhere.”

Should Liz Truss with the backing of her hard-core conservatives go ahead, the EU has vowed to impose sanctions that could bring about a complete suspension of the whole Brexit trade deal, a move that Portugal would support, but that would have enormous consequences for the UK economy.

The protocol was originally agreed in order to avoid a hard border between NI, a region within the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which, like Portugal, is a firm member of the EU. The protocol also seeks to protect the Belfast Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence in ‘the Troubles’’.

In Northern Ireland, leaders of both the majority Sinn Fein party that wants Irish unity, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that wants the closest possible ties with Britain, have expressed their sincere respect for Queen Elizabeth. So too has the leader of the Irish government in Dublin.

On the eve of a brief visit to Northern Ireland in her final days as foreign secretary, Liz Truss said she was going to override part of the Brexit divorce deal, a statement that outraged all but NI unionists. It was described by some of those who oppose the idea as “political insanity”.

Vale de Albeida is understood to be highly concerned about the low level of trust between the UK and the EU: “between our leaders, between all of us that are involved in this relationship.”

Relationships are right on the edge with a desperate need for further negotiations, which both sides claim the other is avoiding at a time when both are facing crippling energy and cost of living crises.

Meanwhile, the NI devolved government is unable to function because in February the DUP thrust it into limbo until the protocol is scrapped. Sinn Fein, as well as the centrist Alliance Party, the third largest in NI - plus the majority of NI citizens who voted against Brexit in the referendum -  want the protocol to remain in place.

In his first phone call to congratulate Liz Truss on taking over as prime minister, President Joe Biden, who is proud of his Irish ancestry, appealed to her to abide by the protocol agreement. Not to do so would hinder not only trade arrangements between the EU and the UK, but between the UK and the US.

Liz Truss is tough and likened to the ‘Iron Lady’, Margaret Thatcher. Her main adversary in Brussels is an equally tough lady, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who will certainly not be bullied into accepting any breach of the internationally binding Brexit trade agreement. 

As Ambassador Vale de Almeida has insisted, further negations are vital. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Marcos Sefcovic, has said that “the call for the UK government to engage with us has been clear for a year.” He added: “A way forward can be found.”

Very privately, Queen Elizabeth would almost certainly have agreed.