Portugal's hopes for a prosperous new year

The most promising news of the year has been China's pledge to help Portugal find its way out of the crisis that is threatening to wreck the country's economy.

China's President Hu Jintao announced the idea while on a state visit to Lisbon last month. Portugal's Finance Minister had it set in stone during his visit to Beijing last week.

"We made a great leap forward in strengthening our ties at all levels - in trade and investment as well as in the area of financing," said Teixeiro dos Santos, borrowing Chairman Mao Tse-tung's famous slogan during the late 1950s campaign to transform China's agrarian economy.

Teixeiro dos Santos' latest visit to Beijing was his second in three months and came a week after a trip to Brazil. Crucially - and in contrast to Portugal - both China and Brazil are recording strong growth.

So despite the prophets of doom who insist a bailout is inevitable, Portugal may have a card or two up its sleeve.

Bearing in mind that a Financial Times survey earlier this month rated Teixeiro dos Santos as Europe's second worst Finance Minister, how does his recent performance compare with other recent decisions concerning Europe and the wider world?

As we enter the season of merriment with its tidings of comfort and joy, a new bambino of sorts has been born, not in Bethlehem, but in Brussels. Begotten by the Lisbon Treaty, it has been christened the European External Action Service, EEAS for short.

Basically, EEAS is an EU foreign office representing all 27 member states. It was formally launched at the Europe Commission's headquarters in Brussels on 1st December, the first anniversary of the Lisbon Treaty. Alas, the champagne celebrations were somewhat muted because of cash problems. In its early infancy, EEAS has been stunted by an unholy parental row over the EU's budget for next year. Hopefully the budget will be approved before Christmas Day.

When the European Council appointed Catherine Ashton to the lofty position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy it declared that she would be “assisted” by EEAS. She will have a staff of no less than 5,500, mostly absorbed from existing EU institutions. It will be “a diplomatic corps to rival any in the world,” as one observer put it.

Already, EEAS is reckoned to be €45 million over budget for next year. Its budget is expected to be three times that of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office and may reach €9.5 billion by 2013.

Catherine Ashton, otherwise known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a labour peer, will receive a salary of €265,470 plus various EU allowances, making her the highest paid female politician in the world. Not bad for a Lancashire lass hardly anyone had ever heard of and who has never been elected to anything.

Fifty of the Baroness' assistants will earn more than Britain's Prime Minister. Other expenses include tight security arrangements for hundreds of new offices in Brussels and the purchase of 150 new bullet-proof limousines. Opponents say EEAS will be yet another layer of EU bureaucracy, that it will compete with existing national diplomatic services and be a waste of money.

But let's look on the sunny side. Never mind the pay cuts and tax hikes ordinary folk in this country will have to suffer as from 1st January 2011. With the help of China, and maybe even EEAS as well, Portugal can look forward to a prosperous new year – though it may be some time yet before we know which year that might be.

WikiLeaks' cables on McCanns

Yesterday's disclosure that British police helped the Portuguese police “develop the evidence” against Madeleine McCann's parents at the time they were made formal suspects, arguidos, in 2007 comes as no great surprise, but it raises new concerns about the workings of WikiLeaks.

The disclosure was contained in a diplomatic cable marked “confidential” sent by the US Ambassador to Lisbon, Al Hoffman, two weeks after the Portuguese police named the McCanns as formal suspects. WikiLeaks made the cable available to the Guardian and other newspapers.

In the final analysis, the leaked cable adds little to the gargantuan fund of factual information, speculation, fantasies and hogwash that have piled up since Madeleine went missing on 7 May 2007. Even so, it sheds a touch of insight into shared police findings.

In a cable dated 21 September 2007, Ambassador Hoffman said he had spoken about the McCann case during a meeting with his British counterpart, Alex Ellis. Hoffman wrote: “Madeleine McCann's disappearance in the south of Portugal in May 2007 has generated international media attention with controversy surrounding the Portuguese-led police investigation and the actions of Madeleine's parents

"Without delving into the details of the case, Ellis admitted that the British police had developed the current evidence against the McCann parents, and he stressed that authorities from both countries were working co-operatively."

In one of two cables mentioning the McCanns, Ambassador Hoffman quoted Ambassador Ellis as saying "that the media frenzy was to be expected and was acceptable as long as government officials keep their comments behind closed doors"

The cables did not specify what evidence British police had gathered, or whether UK investigators were involved in the decision to name the McCanns as formal suspects. At the time, it was the Portuguese police who took all the stick in the British press for making the McCanns arguidos.

The Guardian reported yesterday: “The comments attributed to the ambassador appear to contradict the widespread perception at the time that Portuguese investigators were the driving force behind the treatment of the McCanns as suspects in the case.”

Said the Daily Mail: “The comments suggest British police had a far greater role in the investigation of the McCanns than has previously been thought.”

In the past, British and Portuguese newspapers have widely reported that the British authorities had substantial involvement in the investigation. For example, a British sniffer dog was said to have picked up the scent of a dead body in the Praia da Luz apartment used by the holidaying McCann family. The Forensic Science Service in the UK analysed material sent to Britain by Portuguese police but British scientists warned that DNA tests on a sample from a hire car used by the McCanns were inconclusive.

Responding yesterday to the latest leak, a spokesman for the McCanns brushed it off as “an entirely historic note”. He said that Kate and Gerry had their arguido status lifted “with the Portuguese authorities making it perfectly clear that there was absolutely no evidence to implicate them in Madeleine's disappearance.”

The couple's lawyer in Portugal, Rogério Alves, said nothing new had emerged to justify re-opening the investigation.

An official response yesterday from the British Embassy did not mention the McCanns. The Embassy statement said: “We condemn any unauthorised release of classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK. They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and may put lives at risk. We have a very strong relationship with the US Government. That will continue.”

Almost everyone will agree with a remark by Portugal's President Aníbal Cavaco Silva. “There is one thing that surprises me,” he said. “How can a country like the United States have a security system that is ultimately so fragile that it allows confidential and secret telegrams from ambassadors in all parts of the world to become accessible in this way? That for me is the big surprise.”

Meanwhile, what is taxing many minds is not the mass of diverse diplomatic material so far revealed by WikiLeaks, but WikiLeaks itself and how far this new form of journalism is prepared to go. Disclosures about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and remarks made by and about various world leaders are one thing, but here was WikiLeaks revealing information about a private conversation about a confidential police investigation into a highly sensitive case about a missing child.

Is this sort of thing right or wrong? Is it morally good or bad?

Can we expect WikiLeaks, or their imitator successors, to move from archived diplomatic cables to current criminal dossiers, personal health reports or other intimate records about ordinary citizens? Where will it end? Will anything at all remain off-limits in future?

The Institute for Global Ethics, an independent organisation with offices in the US, Canada and the UK, contends in an article just published that by pitting truth against honesty, WikiLeaks yanks us between two of the most powerful moral propositions within any democracy.

“On one hand stands our devotion to transparency and the free flow of truth; on the other lies our pledge of allegiance to issues of privacy and confidentiality. Taken to extremes, both propositions can run us off the rails.”

Tyrants and anarchists thrive in extreme situations but so far we’re not operating at extremes, writes Dr Rushworth Kidder, founder of the Institute. “WikiLeaks isn’t creating wholesale anarchy, and Western democracies aren’t being run by tyrants. In fact, we’re still in the moral middle range, where a genuine ethical case can be made for both transparency and secrecy.”

But WikiLeaks raises other “right-versus-right” dilemmas such as individuals versus community, short term versus long term and justice versus mercy, says Dr Kidder.

“Which of these moral arguments should prevail? Which is right? Searching for answers, we trip over two competing trends. One reminds us that public distrust in government is at historically high levels. That’s fertile ground for WikiLeaks' seeds to take root. The other reminds us that our most effective weapon against terrorism (which is also on the rise) is the clandestine gathering and analysis of intelligence. That’s ample reason for public revulsion against WikiLeaks.”

Sue Ellen Allen's story of prison, power and pain

Eight years ago this week, former Algarve resident Sue Ellen Allen was sentenced in Phoenix, Arizona, to a lengthy term of imprisonment that turned out to be both horrific and hugely uplifting. She told me yesterday: “I have so much to celebrate this year. It is a miracle I am alive and I live in constant gratitude.”

In 1994, Sue Ellen and her husband, David Grammer, were indicted by a grand jury and charged with defrauding US investors of around 1.1 million dollars.  After pleading not guilty but believing they had little chance of acquittal, they absconded. The following year they were tried in absentia.  

The couple lived as fugitives under false names in the Silves area of the Algarve until the summer of 2002. Former friends alleged the Grammers had defrauded them of investments and threatened to turn them in to the authorities. Sue Ellen, who was suffering from cancer, decided the game was up. She called the US Embassy in Lisbon.

“With only two more chemo sessions to go, our cozy world, our three dogs and four cats, vegetable garden, fresh food and pillow-filled world collapses,” she recalls in her recently published memoir, which contains a lot of fascinating detail.

“Yes, we are living in Portugal illegally. Yes, we are blackmailed with violence and exposure unless we pay a very large sum of money that we do not have.

“I suppose we could have fled, but we agree it is time to go back. I take a deep breath and pick up the phone to call the American Embassy in Lisbon. 'Hello, my name is Sue Ellen Allen and I’m wanted in the state of Arizona for business fraud.'

“There is a very long silence. Finally, the person on the other end asks for my information. 'I’ll have to get back to you.' Six phone calls and three days later, on Friday, the FBI calls from Madrid and we agree to meet them in Lisbon on Monday afternoon at two o’clock at the American Embassy.”

Sue Ellen and David thought they would be taken into custody and spend the night at the Embassy, but that didn't happen. The FBI agents who had flown in from Madrid said they had no jurisdiction in Portugal and so the fugitives could spend the night where they pleased. The flight left at eight the next morning and it was up to them to be there or not. They stayed in a Movenpick Hotel, split a BLT sandwich and each had a rum and coke.

“How naïve we are,” continues Sue Ellen in her memoir. “We cannot begin to conceive what is in store for us. With cancer, life is frightening, but the penal system is a spiral into hell.

“At the Embassy in Lisbon we are treated humanely; in New Jersey, things are still civilized. In Arizona, however, the good manners stop. The sheriff there prides himself on running the toughest jails in America. It is designed to strip you of your dignity, self-esteem, and sanity. Into this I walk with balding head, collapsed veins, and trembling heart.”

Sue Ellen and David were each sentenced to 10 years in jail. Sue Ellen served six years and nine months. David served seven years and four months. Both were released on parole. In her memoir, Sue Ellen describes her period in prison as “an unbelievable journey”.

The memoir is entitled The Slumber Party from Hell. “It wasn’t all hell,” she admits. “It was never heaven, but there are memories I would not trade, memories that will guide and define the next part of my life.”

The death of her cellmate, Gina Panetta, had a particularly profound affect. “Gina’s death started this memoir and Gina’s death started the next part of my life. She gave me my passion and my purpose,” writes Sue Ellen.

Together with her cellmate's parents she founded an organisation called GINA's Team. The organisation actively promotes education and self-sufficiency for incarcerated women and men at no cost to the prisons in the US.

“We bring volunteer community leaders, speakers and educators into prisons to teach life skills subjects. Our volunteer programs provide inmates with much-needed tools for re-entry, provide community members as role models and allow volunteers to see inmates as human beings.”

While the death of her cellmate gave inspiration, there were times in prison when Sue Ellen was so depressed that she contemplated suicide. Her life was in danger anyway because of cancer. But she emerged from behind bars in March this year in an extraordinary resolute and optimistic frame of mind.

Last weekend she wrote in a blog: “In September, 2002, I had a mastectomy. If you’ve read my book, you know it was a horrific experience that I equate to being alone in the deepest, darkest hole. On November 23, 2010, I had a second, preventative mastectomy and I equate this experience to being in a sun-filled meadow of flowers and sweet breezes, with family and friends surrounding me.

“The first surgery was performed while I was an inmate in our local jail. The second was performed at the Virginia Piper Centre in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have come full circle. It’s only been two weeks and I admit I don’t feel fantastic, but I know it is a miracle that I am alive. There were so many things the jail denied for my healing and comfort. This time, I was stunned with the attention and details to make sure I was cared for in every way so the healing would begin immediately.”

Sue Ellen, now 65, describes her experiences since leaving the Algarve as a story about turning pain into power. “I believe we must take the pain, the grief, the fear and the anger from our journeys and turn it into power. Turn the pain into power, not power for ourselves - power to help others who are lost or hopeless or terrified or angry, power to comfort and love.”

PORTUGAL INSIGHT

CIA illegal secret flights saga

Shame and possible prosecutions loom as the saga of the CIA's so-called extraordinary rendition flights through Portugal rumbles on.

Despite official denials, new allegations have been made that Portugal helped the United States secretly transfer detainees who ended up being tortured at the notorious Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

It is claimed that the US requested, and was granted, permission for CIA flights carrying terrorist suspects to pass through Portuguese airspace. If true, this would be in violation of supposedly sacrosanct international charters and conventions.

In the latest development, a former Guantanamo inmate, Omar Deghayes, has claimed that some ex-prisoners are planning to sue the Portuguese authorities. Omar Deghayes, a 41-year-old Libyan, spent more than five years at Guantanamo Bay after being arrested in Pakistan. He was released in 2008, reportedly due to pressure from the British government.

An official Portuguese investigation into reports of CIA extraordinary rendition flights found no evidence of Portuguese wrong-doing. Suspicion persists that the US State Department leant on Portugal to stifle the investigation.

The Portuguese Attorney General's Office has declared that the investigation will only be reopened if new, credible and relevant facts come to light.

This announcement follows the release last week by Wikileaks of a cable indicating that the Portuguese government was asked to allow use of facilities in the Azores in the transportation of alleged terrorists.

The cable marked “secret” was sent from the US Embassy in Lisbon in October 2006, during the Bush administration. It drew attention to the likely political impact on Portugal if evidence demonstrating complicity in the secret CIA flights were to be made public.

Prime Minister José Sócrates, told parliament in 2008 that no member of his left-of-centre Socialist government (PS) had been asked for, or had granted, permission for extraordinary rendition flights through Portuguese airspace.

There has been much speculation that a number of such flights took place between 2002 and 2005, before the Socialists took office, during the last administration of the right-of-centre Social Democrats (PSD).

For example, a Gulfstream IV aircraft was reportedly flown from the airport on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores to Guantanamo Bay in November 2003. Doubts have been cast on 34 other ostensibly commercial flights through Portuguese airspace between 2002 and 2005.

A European parliamentary investigation in 2007 reported that the CIA had used European airspace for more than 1,200 flights between 2001 and 2005. Most European MPs endorsed the report's conclusion that some member states had “turned a blind eye” to the flights.

The committee that carried out the investigation criticised the “lack of co-operation from many member states” in their inquiries.

And so it goes on..... The picture is deliberately fuzzy. Full disclosure is awaited.

Like them or loath them, Wikileaks will probably shed more damning light on Portugal's involvement in this seemingly shameful saga if further US Lisbon Embassy cables are made public.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

End to euro, yes to press, no to toll

Some commentators are daring to suggest that this Christmas might be the euro's last. Its future might be prolonged, however, if Portugal is hung out to dry along with Greece and Ireland. In that way the rot can be stopped before it reaches Spain. It certainly seems increasingly likely that Portugal will have to ask for a bailout from the other EU countries and the International Monetary Fund. If Spain were forced into such a position, this would be far more serious internationally, with consequences of global magnitude. Three very different scenarios are being talked about. A two-tiered euro might be formed, with France and Germany in the upper level. Otherwise, euro zone members might be forced into increased fiscal and political unity. A third scenario envisages Germany walking out and going back to the deutschmark. Those escudos tucked under the mattress might come in handy after all.

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The European Court of Human Rights has ordered the Portuguese Government to pay €83,999 to the newspaper Publico as compensation for violating the paper's right to freedom of expression. In 2001, Publico reported that the football club Sporting Lisbon owed €2.3 million to the taxman. Sporting Lisbon denied the claim and sued. The paper was acquitted of defamation. The decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal in Lisbon in 2006. The following year, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling and ordered the paper to pay compensation of €75,000. Publico then took the case to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Yesterday it pronounced in favour of the paper saying that its report had sufficient factual basis and publishing it was in the public interest. One is tempted to pass comment, but perhaps not.

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The committee organising the campaign against the introduction of tolls on the A22 trans-Algarve motorway is planning a “surprise protest” sometime before Christmas. A further demonstration is promised for January. The committee is also planning to present a petition with 14,000 signatures to parliament in Lisbon. Two demonstrations have been held so far. Some Portuguese reason that tolls have to be paid on motorways elsewhere in the country, so why not in the Algarve? Protestors argue that tolls would push traffic on to the EN125, which cannot be regarded as a viable alternative route. Tolls would be to the detriment of the all-important tourist industry and many already hard-hit local businesses. The government intends to impose tolls from next April. To register disapproval, go to http://viadoinfante2010.blogspot.com

INSIDE ALGARVE

America enters the war on weevils

The United States is the latest country to become involved in the war against the red palm weevil. It will be interesting to see how the Americans fare, because all efforts to contain the weevil in the Algarve seem futile.

The weevil, the same beast that is drastically altering the scenery here, was discovered in two palms in a residential area of Laguna Beach, Orange County, California. The Department of Food and Agriculture said they were the first such cases anywhere in the US.

It is inconceivable that the weevil would have been confined to just two trees. As we well know here, infestation can go undetected for quite a while. By the time symptoms become visible, it's too late.

Ann Christoph, a Laguna Beach landscape architect and former mayor, knew a thing or two about the new illegal immigrants. “It is very serious because the weevil gets inside the trees and sucks the life out of them,” she said. “White fly just hangs around on the leaves of trees, but the weevil goes to the heart of the palms.”

Meetings were convened to discuss strategies for dealing with the new threat. Since then, things have gone quiet. Hopefully the Americans have managed to eradicate the problem in its infancy, but it might be over optimistic.

The Algarve is a paradise for the red palm weevil. California would be too - and on a far grander scale. Canary Island date palms, its favourite food, are an integral part of Southern California. The trees and dates are a multi-million dollar industry.

American investigators have concluded that the source of the Laguna Beach weevils was the international trade in live palms, even though importation of palms into the United States is prohibited. Same as in the Algarve.

Prevention and cure efforts here clearly amounted to far too little, far too late. It is unlikely that any American war effort could now be helpful to us.

The red palm weevil, known to the Portuguese as Gorgulho Vermelho and scientifically as Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, originated in south-east Asia. Its destructive powers greatly worried coconut palm growers in India more than a century ago.

The weevil's spread northwards and westwards hugely accelerated in the 1980s. It did not “work its way” across Asia or “find its way” into Africa as some reports would have us believe. It was irresponsibly transported by humans. Put simply, traders in pursuit of big profits imported trees to unaffected areas from well-known contaminated zones.

By 1985 the weevil had occupied Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. By 1990 it had reached Iran. Two years later, infected palm offshoots were exported from the United Arab Emirates to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories.

The first weevils to cross the Mediterranean were carried in palms shipped from Egypt to the Costa del Sol in 1994. It was madness. The devastating nature of the pest was well known in Egypt, yet Spain had no importation restrictions in place at the time.

Two years went by before the Spanish government got around to imposing restrictions. Four years later the law was toned down. By then a lucrative trade in palms was flourishing across open EU borders.

The weevil had already spread from Andalusia to other areas of Spain, including Murcia, Valencia, Cataluña, the Balearic Islands and even the Canaries. It continued its European odyssey and turned up in force in Greece, Cyprus, Malta, France and Italy.

The EU Commission issued a belated directive banning importation from non-EU countries and demanding that all palms should travel with a phytosanitary certificate.

The high risk of the weevil entering the Algarve and the strict preventative measures needed to stop that happening should have been obvious to the Portuguese Government, the regional agriculture directorate and to local palm importers. Yet in 2007, infected trees were brought in from both Egypt and Spain without quarantine or any other impediment whatsoever.

The weevils quickly established themselves here. Municipal authorities, apparently oblivious to the problem, ignored infested trees right in the centre of towns and villages. Gormlessly, vulnerable new palms were actually added to roadsides and roundabouts.

The landscape right across the Algarve is now littered with dead and dying palms. Local battles are going on to save individual trees by setting traps, injecting and spraying, but the weevils are winning the war.

Containment efforts are expensive and ultimately pointless. Eradication is impossible until the last of the weevil's favourite palms has collapsed.

These trees were never in the Algarve in the first place. Why don't we stick to fostering indigenous plants that clearly enjoy it here?

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Wild weather, bailout blues and pine crime

The wild winter weather is not confined to the northern half of Europe. Snow drifts are blocking many roads and isolated villages in Portugal. About 40,000 people were left without electricity yesterday because of thunderstorms, high winds and torrential rain. Civil protection workers were out dealing with landslides, fallen trees and flooded houses in the centre and north of the country. Lisbon and the Alentejo were also hit. Warnings have been issued about rough seas along the Algarve's southern and western coasts. Appalling weather conditions wreaked havoc at the weekend in Madeira and the Azores.

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The Guardian newspaper has reported that it is now virtually taken for granted in Brussels that Portugal will need a bailout. The paper said it has been told by two EU ambassadors that Portugal would need to be rescued “very soon,” despite repeated public statements to the contrary. "Portugal will need to be saved. The big issue is Spain," said another senior diplomat. The Reuters news agency is reporting this morning that euro zone finance ministers meeting today will be under pressure to increase the size of a 750 billion euro safety net for countries such as Portugal and Spain in order to halt contagion.

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Police have arrested more than 35 people and seized more than 50 tonnes of stolen pine cones in a month-long operation in the district of Santarém. Police say that pine cone thieves are usually agile, unemployed and with previous convictions for theft. Much of the thieving goes on up high in the trees in the dead of night. Legitimate pine nut collection and sales is a multi-million euro business in Portugal. Producers reckon that 15% to 20% of their crop is stolen each year.