25th April 1974 - then and now

The revolution of 25th April 1974 transformed the political and social set-up and gave great hope to the people of Portugal. Thirty-nine years on, hope is in short supply. It has evaporated in the face of the intractable economic crisis. What has gone wrong?

During the decade before 1974, the country was still relatively underdeveloped with poor infrastructures and inefficient agriculture, but growth rates for GDP were among the highest in Europe. By 1973, the on-going colonial wars were exacting a heavy toll in terms of financial cost and in promoting mass emigration among the better educated and most technically skilled who wanted to avoid conscription.

 The ‘Carnation Revolution’ replaced dictatorship with democracy. It also led to a succession of economically inept governments and a litany of mismanagement, corruption and greed that has brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy.

In the aftermath of the military coup, the nationalisation of banks and industries and the expropriation of agricultural estates led to collapse across all sectors of the economy.

The 1980s saw a return to economic and social stability of sorts. After joining the European Union in 1986, trade ties increased, structural and cohesion funds flowed in, and tourism took over from farming and fishing as the main economic activity in the south of the country.

Living standards continued to rise and prosperity spread among an expanding middle class in the 1990s. On 1st January 2001, Portugal adopted the euro. In the five years that followed, household debt expanded, unemployment increased and GDP growth dropped to the lowest of any country on the continent.

At the beginning of 2010, Portugal joined Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain in a full-blown debt crisis that the Socialist government of José Sócrates was unable to bring under control. One of its last acts in 2011 was to apply for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.

As the centre-right government of Pedro Passos Coelho struggles to repay the €78 billion bailout, a need for a second mega loan may be looming. Some analysts insist Passos Coelho has lost his way in a mission impossible - that the debt burden is such that Portugal will never be able to pay it off. If that is the case, what is point of trying?

Among those who hold that opinion is Mário Soares, an arch critic of the dictatorship who rose to prominence immediately after the revolution. The former Socialist leader and now elder statesman said recently in a radio interview: “No matter how much [the government] impoverishes people or steals from their pensions, the state will never be able to pay back what it owes. When you can’t pay, the only solution is not to pay.”

He is urging all left-of-centre political forces to bring down the present government and repudiate the austerity measures demanded by the IMF-EU troika of lenders. 

Before the Carnation Revolution, people all across the country were restive and hungry for change. They are again. Contempt for authority is being fuelled by the collapse of many businesses, rising costs and austerity measures that are impacting on education, employment and health, causing widespread suffering, especially among young families, the elderly and the poor.

Proposals for even more severe austerity are infuriating vociferous opponents who increasingly see the present government as taking on the mantle of a dictatorship.

Portugal could be on the verge of another pivotal transition. It is unlikely to be as dramatic as a military coup. It is the people not the army who are in the forefront of the demand for change this time.

Amid the current paucity of hope, street protests in what is being described as a “historic day of struggle” are planned for May 1. 

Odd weather - and likely to get odder

By our standards, here in the far south of Portugal it had been a long, wet winter. Then suddenly, from one day to the next at the end of last week, spring finally burst forth.

Bee-eaters, our most flamboyantly coloured nesting birds, have returned

from Africa and are hawking for insects in the radiant blue sky. The Golden Orioles are back too, flashing through the lush green woodlands. Cuckoos announced their arrival in the drizzle a few weeks ago - now they won’t shut up. It’s mid-April and the countryside is awash with outrageous orchids and other wildflowers galore.

What a change from the month of March, which had been as miserable as most could remember. Portugal and Spain had floods. It was the coldest March in the UK since 1962. It was the coldest in Germany since their records began in the 1880s. More than 100,000 people in Poland spent the Easter weekend without electricity after heavy snow dragged down power lines. Extreme conditions prevailed all across the continent.

Meteorologists explained that the jet stream had been operating much further south than usual. As a result, the Mediterranean countries experienced the early spring weather normally associated with northern Europe. Only lately did the jet stream head northwards, bringing a return to more typical spring weather.

As we in the Algarve happily cast off our woollies as temperatures shot up towards the high 20s, the soothsayers began forecasting a scorcher of a summer.

One thing for sure, climate change is happening, influenced by humans or not. International participants attending a major conference on the subject in Dublin this week warned that unless properly addressed, global warming will lead to widespread famine and, yes, even more crippling economic and social problems.

Numerous studies predict that average temperatures in Europe generally will rise this century by up to 6º higher than they were in the 1980s. The warming in summer is expected to be greatest in Portugal and other countries in the Mediterranean climatic zone.  

Average summer temperatures in Lisbon and the Algarve, for example, may rise from 28º t0 34º, with a noticeable increase by 2030 in the number of days exceeding 40ºC. 

Rainfall is expected to decrease on the Portuguese mainland this century by between 20% and 40%. The Azores is unlikely to be so dramatically affected, but precipitation in Madeira could plummet by 30% even though temperature increases there may be only of the order of 2º or 3º. 

The outlook is being analysed by the European Centre for Climate Adaptation (ECCA), which constantly monitors what a large number of international research organisations and scientific journals are saying on the subject.

“The Algarve could be negatively affected by climate change,” states the ECCA, meaning it may become a less attractive place to live or visit in both environmental and economic terms. Higher average temperatures, an increase in the frequency of droughts, heat waves and outbreaks of forest fires will induce greater risks of soil erosion. Desertification may become irreversible.

Such a scenario would mean dramatic changes in the landscape and biodiversity of southern Portugal. While some traditional crops may cease to be productive, there may be increases in tick and mosquito-borne diseases, including a possible re-emergence of malaria. Water shortages may restrict the operation of tourist facilities such as swimming pools and golf courses.

Of course, some dismiss the science of climate change and talk of our vulnerability as mere conjecture and therefore not worthy of taking seriously. Others have simply no interest.

Only slowly is climate change entering the decision-making of governments, investors and tourist enterprises in Europe, says the ECCA. “Studies that have examined the climate change risk appraisal of local tourism officials and operators have consistently found relatively low levels of concern and little evidence of long-term strategic planning in anticipation of future changes in climate.”

It suggests  that, “in Portugal, the aim should be to direct tourist flows firstly towards the off-peak season, and secondly to the northern part of the country, in which tourism is still relatively underdeveloped.”

 Meanwhile, here in the sun-blessed far south, the spring of 2o13 could not be lovelier.

Portugal seeks to fill fiscal black hole

Incredibly, Portugal has plunged from being a role model in its handling of the debit crisis to a potential basket case that may have to go begging for a second bailout. Some analysts say events here could instigate even worse and wider mayhem elsewhere in the eurozone.

The current international spotlight on the life of Margaret Thatcher provides a poignant reminder that the recent turn of events in Portugal is totally in line with the Iron Lady’s scepticism about European economic and monetary union.

Writing in the Guardian, business reporter Graeme Wearden managed to put a lighter spin on things: “No sooner had Cyprus been whisked out of the operation room and into intensive care than Portugal returned to casualty.”

Reeling from the setback delivered by the nation’s constitutional court on top of blistering criticism from opposition politicians and a wide cross-section of citizens, the Portuguese government is now studying plan B.

Widely praised in Brussels for sticking to the stringent terms of the €78 billion bailout negotiated with international creditors two years ago, confidence suddenly nose-dived when Portugal’s highest court ruled that some of the key austerity measures included in the 2013 budget were not acceptable.

The court rejected pay cuts for government workers and pensioners, thus confronting the government with finding an alternative way of making savings of €1.3 billion this year. It also cast doubts on how much further austerity will be tolerated, not only by angry citizens but by the nation’s top judges.

The European Commission welcomed Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s promise that his government remained committed to the adjustment programme, including its fiscal targets and timeline.

The proposed alternative deficit reduction measures are deeper cuts in public service, especially social security, education, health services and state-run companies. They are expected to be presented at the end of this month, or early next, and will almost certainly bring yet more job losses, hardship and anger.

The Fitch credit rating agency wondered if the ruling of the constitutional court “could be interpreted as saying that all public spending cuts that affect civil servants are unconstitutional.” It added: “If that interpretation is correct, the ruling represents a setback to future fiscal adjustment efforts in Portugal.”

The wider fear is that politicians in the other struggling euro economies may face complications if their own judges examine the constitutional correctness of austerity measures.

Troika representatives will soon be back in Lisbon to assess how Portugal is now going to cope. Meanwhile, eurozone finance ministers meeting in Dublin this weekend agreed "in principle" to give Portugal and Ireland seven more years to repay their loans. Portugal hopes this will facilitate a return to full market financing. But the Commission says the extension is dependent on the government providing compelling evidence that it has found an alternative solution to the €1.3 billion shortfall.

Regaining full market access may not happen this year.  “In our opinion, at best, this may occur in 2014,” declared a Barclays report. “Negative growth, rising unemployment, and delayed fiscal targets could even push Portugal to require additional official funding in 2014.”

As a backdrop to all this, the United States Treasury secretary Joseph “Jack” Lew,  on his first official visit to Europe, suggested to EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso among others that austerity should be relaxed in favour of more focus on policies that drive economic growth.

Many in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe have been saying this for years, arguing that austerity measures depress growth and are counterproductive.

While the debate rages on, Portugal may soon emerge from the casualty ward, but it will still need intensive care.

Conman Ken proves crime does pay!

The Welsh fugitive conman Kenner Elias Jones, a Walter Mitty character who disappeared two years ago after being tracked down in Portugal, has showed up in Spain, still leading an extraordinary life of fantasy and fraud.

Best known as Ken Jones, he has defrauded charities, religious institutions and hospitals, as well as many companies and individuals, in a criminal career spanning 40 years and involving more than 60 convictions.

In recent months he has been up to his old tricks in the Murcia region of

southeastern Spain. The Guardia Civil in Cartagena say they are aware of Jones staying in local hotels and leaving without paying the bills, but like their counterparts previously in Portugal, they seem unable or unwilling to arrest him.

Jones, 62, ‘collapsed’ in a restaurant and was taken to a district hospital near San Javier where he stayed having tests for six weeks. On being discharged, apparently in good health, he promised to settle the bill of more €26,000 with medical insurance. He had pulled the same stunt in a Portuguese hospital.

Over the past couple of weeks and using the Christian name Elias rather than Kenner or Ken, Jones has been spotted relaxing in the Murcia seaside resort of Santiago de la Ribeira. It is thought he may now be in Valencia, either gadding about or relaxing in hospital.

Charged with stealing thousands of pounds from an employer in the UK, he absconded from Lewes Crown Court in Sussex before his trial 10 years ago. He has been on the run ever since.

Long before that, he had been sentenced in the Old Bailey in London to three years’ imprisonment for committing theft and forgery. Coventry Crown Court sentenced him to 15-months’ jail for obtaining money by deception. He received a further 18-month sentence for deception and fraud from the Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court in South Wales.

Originally from Caernarfon, Gwynedd in North Wales, his colourful career has also included imprisonment and deportation from both Canada and the United States where he was deemed by officials to be “a danger to society.” A senior immigration officer in the US described him as “the best conman I have ever encountered in my entire career.”

Between fleeing the UK in 2003 and turning up in Portugal in 2011, Jones, a.k.a. Kenneth Ngeiwo Hawkins, spent years in Kenya posing as a doctor and administered medicines to children athough he had no medical qualifications. He is still wanted in Kenya for alleged debts of more than US$100,000.

An estate agent in the town of Palmela, south of Lisbon, told me how in 2011 Jones approached him saying he wanted to buy a house in the €400,000 to €600,000 price range. The wily Welshman went on to diddle the agent out of hundreds of euros by saying his foreign credit card was incompatible with the Portuguese system and he needed money urgently for medicine and other vital expenses.

On the understanding that Jones was transferring money from an overseas bank account, a Palmela travel agent handed over tickets worth €2,500 for Jones’ wife and two adopted children to fly into Lisbon from Kenya. The travel agent reported the scam to the Polícia Judiciária but she never got her money.

The return trip to Kenya was paid for by the Cáritas charitable organisation in Sétubal, according to a reliable Palmela source.

After being exposed in Portugal by dogged investigators from the BBC Wales Week In Week Out TV programme, Jones disappeared again and has gone about his wicked ways unreported until now. He is still pretending to be a qualified doctor and an ordained Anglican priest. He tells people he is planning to rejoin his family in Kenya where in 2003 he set up a charity called Luke’s Foundation. Even for the highly imaginative Ken Jones, getting out of Europe may now prove to be difficult: his passport expired at the end of January this year.

Those who have met him say he is a very intelligent, easy-to-talk-to, plausible and likeable person who confesses to multiple lamentable health problems – but then those are normal characteristics in a successful conman.

A full, unexpunged account of his activities over the past 40 years in his own words would make a riveting book – but who would believe it?

* algarvenewswatch will welcome any further accurate, honest information from readers. Please post comments below or send information to lenport@gmail.com. Be assured that sources will remain strictly confidential if that is their wish. 

Ana Moura - in tune with the times

Amid all the depressing economic news emanating day after day in Portugal, even melancholic fado music can provide welcome light relief, especially when sung by Ana Moura. It is also giving solace of sorts to Portuguese emigrants who have sought a better life abroad.

There can be no greater compliment to a female fado singer than to be likened to the iconic Amália Rodrigues. Although bordering on the heretical to some older fado aficionados, this is the kind of reputation Ana Moura is garnering on her current tour of Europe and North America.

So far this month she has performed to full houses in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington and Cleveland. This weekend it’s Chicago and Minneapolis, then on to North Carolina and Ontario.

A correspondent for the Boston Globe described Moura as “one of the latest singers to come out of the Lisbon taverns, where fado’s essence resides, and become one of its global ambassadors. She embodies, at a high level, modern fado’s duality: her potent contralto and her traditional fado treatments have earned her Amália comparisons at home – the ultimate connoisseur’s praise.”

As a fado “ambassador,” Moura is rivalling Mozambique-born Mariza who in the past decade has reportedly sold a million records and played more than a thousand concerts worldwide.

Moura has been singing fado since the age of six. Her interpretations of the form of music unique to the Portuguese have moved on from the purely traditional songs she learned from her fado-singing parents in Santarém.

“I started to grow up and listen to all kinds of styles, and I always sang many styles, but I always felt as a fado singer. It’s a way to express your feelings, your soul,” says Moura, now 33.

Rather shy off-stage, she has resisted being ‘programmed’ as a performer and cherished individual freedom of expression. “We are authentic if we sing with our souls. It should come from inside. I want the spontaneity that my parents taught me when I was young,” she says.

It helps, but you don’t have to understand Portuguese to appreciate fado. “If you have the emotion, the message can be felt by the audience even if they don’t understand the lyrics,” she told the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. In her recently released album, Desfado, three of the 14 songs are in English. One is called “Thank You, and the lyrics include the lines “Thank you for making me cry” and “Thank you for breaking my heart.”

Said a music critic in the New York Daily News, “The point, it seems, is to savour emotion itself, to celebrate the frisson of feeling beyond consequence. It takes a singer of rare passion to articulate the nuances of such risks and, right now, the Lisbon-based Moura stands at the forefront of them.”

Her innovative fado renditions sometimes incorporate elements of modern popular music. Some of her melodies are even downright jaunty, but much of what she sings is still plaintive. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones put his finger on it by describing fado as “Portuguese blues.”

On meeting her for the first time, Richards also succinctly summed up another of Moura’s attributes: “She’s very, very pretty.”

The mutual admiration between the Rolling Stones and the beguilingly demure Miss Moura was (and still is) obvious from YouTube videos of them rehearsing and performing together in Lisbon back in 2007 (click on link below).

Today in Portugal, Moura's 'blues' could not be more in tune with this time of deep pessimism over debt, austerity, unemployment and the future for the nation’s youth.

While her current concert tour is attracting admirers of various nationalities, many in her audiences are Portuguese emigrants. Over the past two years, since the country entered its worst recession in decades, some 240,000 people have left to join the millions of other Portuguese already living abroad. Moura’s music nicely satisfies feelings of homesickness, nostalgia, fate - saudades.

* Ana Moura is performing in the Barbican Centre in London on 20th April. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjoV2GUFvg

Criminals, wanted and unwanted

The law often works excruciatingly slowly and in dark, convoluted ways. Overshadowed internationally by the latest episode in the 12-year-old legal saga being enacted in Britain over the radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, there is lingering concern in Portugal about gangster Abu Salem who is facing trial for alleged heinous crimes committed in India two decades ago.

Born into a modest family in the north of India in 1968, Abu Salem rose rapidly from taxi driver and petty crook to billionaire underworld don. He is accused of involvement in extortion, murder and playing an active role in the 1993 Mumbai bomb atrocities that killed more than 250 people and injured 700.

Portuguese police arrested Salem in Lisbon in 2002 along with his Bollywood actress girlfriend Monica Bedi. She went on to serve two years in a Portuguese jail for her association with Salem and possessing forged travel documents.

In February 2004 a Portuguese court approved Salem’s extradition to face charges in India. He was eventually deported in November 2005. The deportation was dependent on Indian government assurances that Salem would not face the death penalty or be kept behind bars for more than 25 years.

Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to abolish capital punishment. It imposed an absolute ban long before joining the prohibition under the European Convention on Human Rights in 1976.

While Salem awaited trial, police in New Delhi and Mumbai came up with further charges carrying the death penalty. A court in Portugal responded in September 2011 by cancelling the earlier deportation ruling. Then last July, with Salem still incarcerated in a high-security Indian prison, the Portuguese Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s cancellation.

Last week while on a visit to India with a business delegation to discuss bilateral economic, trade and social security arrangements, the Portuguese foreign minister raised the matter of Salem’s extradition with his Indian counterpart.

“I think the judiciary in Portugal has raised some issues. The judiciary here in our country will take care of them,” External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said in a joint press conference with Paulo de Sacadura Cabral Portas. 

Mr Khurshid conveyed India's “deep appreciation for the positive support” extended by Portugal on the extradition. He said India would “remain compliant with the expectations,” of the Portuguese legal system and judiciary, an assurance of sorts that Cabral Portas found “reasonable.”

Efforts in Britain to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan to face terrorism charges have been going on now for seven years at a cost to the British taxpayer of half a million pounds in legal aid alone. Despite assurances from Jordan, it is argued that confessions obtained by torture would be used against Qatada. While his continued presence infuriates the British government, Justice Minister Lord McNally said this week that the legal protection holding up the deportation request was “part of what makes us a civilised society.”

In marked contrast to all this ponderous deliberation, the attempt by law enforcers in the United States to extradite the former Black Panther, convicted murderer, prison escapee and hijacker George Wright was dealt with in Portugal remarkably swiftly.

Arrested near Lisbon in September 2011 after 41 years on the run, the FBI wanted Wright back in America to serve the rest of his 1972 New Jersey jail sentence. By the time they tracked him down, however, he had morphed into José Luís Jorge dos Santos, 67, a Portuguese citizen married to a Portuguese woman by whom he had fathered two sons in a country with a statute of limitations, even for murderers.

In less than two months, a panel of three judges ruled that the statute of limitations had expired and so Mr Wright a.k.a. Sr Santos could not be extradited. A month later the decision was upheld by Portugal’s Supreme Court and the case formally closed. Wright was suddenly a free man for the first time in 50 years.

Meanwhile, there has been much criticism of endemic inefficiency in the execution of justice in Portugal, so much so that judicial reform was one of the key demands in the €74 million bailout deal.  Also, a recent study indicated that the Portuguese are among the citizens of Europe with the least confidence in their country’s legal system.

Flawed as it is, though, some might argue that in some ways, highlighted by the cases of Abu Salem and George Wright, the legal system here is part of what makes this a civilised society.

‘People power’ and Portugal’s economy

The March 2 anti-austerity demonstrations thrust Portugal into the limelight far beyond Europe in newspapers as diverse as USA Today and the Times of India, the Jamaica Observer and the Bangkok Post.

Editors and readers would have been struck by the scale of the event (hundreds of thousands of protesters in more than 40 cities). The name of the main organisers had gutsy appeal: Que se Lixe a Troika (variously translated as ‘Damn’, ‘Screw’ or ‘F***’ the Troika).

The story was enlivened because it was a display of ‘people power’ coinciding with a visit to Lisbon by representatives of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Demands that the government must resign and renditions of the song that echoed the Portuguese revolution of 1974 added an extra edge.

One of the more searing quotes came from Fabio Carvalho, a filmmaker taking part in the protest in Lisbon. He told Reuters:  “This government has left the people on bread and water, selling off state assets for peanuts to pay back debts that were contracted by corrupt politicians to benefit bankers.”

The opposition Socialist leader, António José Seguro was succinct in his appraisal: “It is time to stop austerity, to stop the impoverishment of the Portuguese and Portugal.”

All in all, a mixture of zestful organisation and heart-felt spontaneity resulted in street drama full of sound bites and powerful images reflecting social angst - yet free from the violence that has marred similar protests in other countries in the Mediterranean region.

But what did it achieve?

The main messages certainly did not go unnoticed by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, his centre-right government or the Troika lenders who insisted on austerity measures as a condition for the €78 billion bailout in 2011.

In denouncing the present government in general and its imposition of severe austerity in particular, the protesters have added impetus to the Movemento 12 de Março formed by activists in 2011 to “make every citizen a politician” in the promotion of democracy in this country.

The 2011 demonstrations helped bring about the collapse of the last Socialist government and there is now renewed determination to oust the present conservative administration.

Declared Armenio Carlos, Secretary-General of the CGTP, Portugal’s largest trade union: “Today it is clear that this government has no political legitimacy, has no moral legitimacy, has no ethical legitimacy to continue to govern, because any visit by any minister is followed with protests and demands for the resignation of the government. The government has become the problem that prevents the solution.”

Widely condemned as they are, Passos Coelho and his government have a comfortable majority in Parliament. National elections are still two years away.

After chairing a meeting in Brussels of EU finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem of the Netherlands told reporters that Portugal is “on track and performing well despite challenging macroeconomic circumstances.”

Portugal’s Minister of Finance Vitor Gaspar said at the end of the Brussels meeting that the crucial message for the protesters and others was that “all the efforts and the sacrifices made by the Portuguese….will be successful.”

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal pointed out: “The government's commitment to the bailout conditions has encouraged international investors, enabling Portugal to sell its bonds in the market and increasing its chances of covering its financing needs when the bailout program expires in mid-2014.” But, the paper added, “growing political and social opposition to the austerity measures could threaten the government’s control of its finances.”

The EU finance ministers have since agreed in principle to requests by both Portugal and Ireland for extensions to the deadlines for repayments of their loans. Analysts believe the Troika may go along with the requests in order to avert the growing danger of further political turmoil. We will have to wait a little longer to find out.

Bloomberg this week quoted the EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn as saying: “I hope we can conclude this work and give a strong message of confidence” when the ministers meet in Dublin in April.”

The April message is unlikely to satisfy the anti-austerity, anti-Passos Coelho lobby.  Meanwhile, it is far from clear what alternative economic recovery plan would be better and who would be better equipped to implement it.

Discontent on both sides of the Med

Stability in Europe depends on stability along the southern rim of the Mediterranean Sea.

This was one of the key points in a message from the Portuguese president of the EU Commission, José Manuel Barroso, at the start of a conference last week entitled “Thinking out of the box: Devising new European policies to face the Arab Spring.”

Two days of speeches from the conference podium and discussions at roundtable sessions and in workshops at the University of Minho in the north of Portugal, involved academics from a variety of disciplines and countries. They explored how best to address the on-going consequences of the social and political upheavals in North Africa.

Participants focused on the complexities of such matters as security risks, border controls and fears of mass migratory movements across the Mediterranean into southern Europe.

In setting the tone, Barroso said: “The process of change is just beginning and the transitions are far from complete. It will take time until we can say whether all those young men and women who came to the streets to demonstrate against authoritarian regimes will see their expectations fulfilled.”

He emphasised “that events in our neighbourhood have a special importance for the future prosperity and stability of the European Union.”

When negotiating with the EU, the governments of North Africa must take into account the views of their people. And the EU needs to develop a stronger engagement directly with civil society organisations in the Arab countries, he said.

Barroso added that the EU is offering “support to economic reforms” in the Arab Spring countries as “part of a wider strategy to promote inclusive growth, create more jobs and tackle social challenges.”

A few days later, the president’s words sounded strangely apt in a different context when representatives of the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank – the so-called ‘Troika’ of lenders – arrived in Lisbon to assess the latest economic situation here.

They were greeted by an announcement from the Que se Lixe a Troika (Damn the Troika) movement of renewed mass demonstrations across the country. A cacophony of opposition politicians, trade unionists, street protesters and the Portuguese public at large is declaring that the severe austerity programme insisted upon by the ‘Troika’ is stifling and simply not working.

“The fiscal targets are unachievable. Social conditions are worsening and democracy is suffering. Worst of all, people have no reason to believe the future will be any better. The programme has failed and it has to be changed,” declared an editorial in Público, one of Portugal’s most respected daily newspapers.

More than two years after the ‘Jasmine Revolution’  at the dawn of the Arab Spring, which brought down oppressive governments, demonstrators in this country are reviving Grândola, Vila Morena, the song that became synonymous with the 1974 ‘Carnation Revolution’, which  toppled Portugal’s last dictatorship.

Not on the scale of the turmoil in Egypt, Libya or Tunisia of course, but discontent in normally placid Portugal is simmering and seems to be heading towards boiling point.

The clear message from those taking part in the latest anti-austerity protests is that the time has come for not only new economic policies, but also a new government, one that respects the views of the people. 

The never-ending flow of fake money

Huge quantities of counterfeit cash hit the headlines this week. It made a change from the relentless, dismal news about the shortage of the real stuff.

A Portuguese police raid on Tuesday resulted in what has been described as “the world’s largest seizure of counterfeit euros.” It was an interesting comeuppance in what is regarded as “the world’s second oldest profession.”

The seizure in the northern city of Oporto comprised 1,901 fake €200 banknotes with a face value of €380,200. The notes were of “exceptional quality,” according to the police. Only one person was arrested - a 46-year-old foreigner.

Earlier this month police broke up a ring of five Portuguese nationals allegedly counterfeiting or passing on €30,000 worth of fake €20 and €50  notes.

In another counterfeiting story this week, the British intelligence service MI5 revealed that Nazi Germany succeeded in “destroying” the credibility of British bank notes during the Second World War by flooding Europe with forgeries.

Secret documents just released show that the Nazis began forging British currency in 1940 as part of Germany’s invasion plan. The idea was  both to raise money for the Nazi cause and to create a lack of confidence in the British currency.

The Germans initially released the forgeries in neutral Portugal and Spain. It apparently worked well. According to an MI5 report written in 1945: “What they subsequently produced was a type of forgery so skillful that it is impossible for anyone other than a specially trained expert to detect the difference between them and genuine notes.” By the end of the war, the fake cash was so plentiful that Bank of England notes would not be accepted on the Continent.

Counterfeiting has been going on since money was first issued in ancient societies, starting from about 600BC. It used to be an offence punishable by death. England’s most infamous female counterfeiter, Catherine Murphy, was burnt at the stake in 1788, the last person to be so executed in Britain.

Portugal has the dubious distinction of having produced one of the most notorious counterfeiters of all time. His name was Artur Virgilio Alves dos Reis. Born in Lisbon in 1898 the son of an undertaker who went bankrupt, Reis’ subsequent obsession with his profession brought out the best and the worst in him.

A consummate conman as well as a highly successful criminal entrepreneur, Reis glossed over his modest education by falsifying impressive credentials in engineering and various sciences, supposedly awarded by Oxford University. Crooked activities in Portuguese Angola turned him into the major shareholder of Transafrican Railways and a very rich young man. 

Back in Lisbon and still in his mid twenties, Reis immersed himself in outrageously innovative shenanigans that put into circulation escudo banknotes amounting to the equivalent of almost 1.0% of Portugal’s GDP. He did this by inveigling a legitimate British banknote printer into producing totally unauthorised Bank of Portugal currency. The Bank of Portugal had to order the withdrawal from circulation of all 500 escudo banknotes in the country. The so-called Portuguese Banknote Crisis of 1925 had enormous political as well as economic consequences.

Reis was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Upon his release from jail he was offered a job as a bank employee.   He turned it down.

By comparison to the 1925 case, this week’s seizure in Portugal seems modest. Although it may arguably have been the biggest single haul in the history of the euro, the French police in 2004 reportedly rounded up about €1.8 million from two laboratories after an estimated 145,000 counterfeit €10 and €20 notes had already gone into circulation.

In modern times, computer and advanced photocopying technology has greatly enhanced traditional counterfeiting skills, forcing official printers to devise much more sophisticated techniques. Still, countless phony banknotes in all kinds of currencies are said to be in circulation and going undetected.

Here are a few tips for checking euro notes. Real notes are made of a special cotton material that makes them feel firm, not flimsy, when you run  a finger along the edge.

All euro notes feature a hologram. On €20, €10 and €5 notes the hologram is a band running all the way down the front right-hand side. On €50 notes and higher, the  hologram is a squat design located on the front lower right. In normal light, the holograms show the denomination value, but when you hold the note up to a bright light you should see not the value but euro symbols and tiny numbers and letters.

Also when holding notes up to a light, check for a watermark image on the front left-hand side, and a dark magnetic security thread crossing near the middle.

Held under a strong light and tilted at a 45º angle, a vertical band with euro signs and the denomination should be visible near the middle on the back of €5, €10 and €20 notes.

When €50, €100, €200 or €500 notes are held under a strong light and tilted back and forth, the  hologram should alternatively display the denomination and either the image of a window or a doorway (as pictured here).  

Pope makes way for a younger pontiff

The initial shockwaves that followed Pope Benedict’s resignation announcement this week were followed surprisingly quickly by expressions of approval and optimism.

Benedict XVI, 85, is the first Pope to resign in six centuries, but the feeling is that he has done the right thing, bearing in mind not only his age, but the parlous state of the Catholic Church. The feeling in Portugal and elsewhere is that a younger and more energetic pontiff is now needed.

Among the first senior members of the Church in Portugal to comment publicly was the Bishop of Fátima, Monsignor António Marto. He said the resignation would present an opportunity to pick a new pope from a country in the developing world.

“Europe today is going through a period of cultural tiredness, exhaustion, which is reflected in the way Christianity is lived,” Bishop Marto told reporters. “You don't see that in Africa or Latin America where there is freshness, an enthusiasm about living the faith.

“Perhaps we need a pope who can look beyond Europe and bring to the entire church a certain vitality that is seen on other continents.”

The “cultural tiredness” of which Bishop Marto spoke is reflected in the fact that although nearly 90% of people in Portugal profess to be Catholic, fewer than 20% regularly attend Mass. The figure could be much lower than that, especially among the young.

In 2000, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Benedict was known under his predecessor Pope John Paul II, gave the official interpretation of the long suppressed “Third Secret” of Fátima that stemmed from the reported appearances of the Virgin Mary at Fátima on six consecutive months in 1917. They have been described by the Vatican as “undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions.”

Ratzinger dismissed notions that the third secret was the Virgin Mary’s warning of doom, either for the Church or the whole world. In a lengthy theological commentary, he spoke of such things as “private revelation” as opposed to “public revelation.” His explanation of the contents and meaning of the third secret was widely criticised as a 'cover-up.'

Since then, growing secularism, opposition from dissident Catholic traditionalists and child sex abuse scandals have drawn a great many people away from the Church in Europe and North America. Meanwhile, Church attendance is growing in Africa and almost half the world’s Catholics live in Latin America.

While on his way to visit Portugal in May 2010, Benedict XVI declared that the widespread abuse of children by members of the clergy showed that the greatest threat to the Catholic Church came from “sin within.”

“Today we see in a truly terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies, but is born of sin within the Church,” the pontiff told reporters on a plane bound for Portugal to mark the 93rd anniversary of the reported apparitions.

A turnout of some half a million people for an open-air Mass celebrated by Benedict at the Fátima shrine was seen as clear support for him personally.

“As far as the crisis and scandals are concerned, I think that the people wanted to show that they can distinguish between exceptions and the vast majority of their priests,” Portuguese episcopal spokesman Manuel Morujão told reporters.

But the pontiff continued to court controversy after Portugal had already decriminalised abortion and at a time when the country was about to legalise gay marriage. He told Catholic social workers at Fátima that abortion and gay marriage were “insidious and dangerous threats to the common good.”

All that is in the past now, of course. Catholics are looking to the future. Benedict has emphasised that he is retiring “for the good of the Church.” The conclave of cardinals will begin the process of finding a new pope on March 15.

The Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon,  D. José Policarpo, took part in the election process in 2005 and was himself described as “a dark horse” candidate to replace John Paul II. He said this week that Benedict’s eight year pontificate had been a very difficult one and hoped his resignation would result in a younger pontiff with the ability to lead the church into a new era.

Asteroid on track for close encounter

Having survived the widely predicted end of the world a couple of months ago, another fantastically fearsome event is right on schedule - for next Friday, February 15^th.

Experts say the fast approaching 2012 DA14 asteroid is the biggest object to pass so close to the Earth since regular asteroid surveys began. It was first spotted in February last year by La Sagra astronomical observatory in the mountains of neighbouring Andalusia.

An intriguing fact that seems to have gone unreported by the mainstream media is that this observatory is very modestly equipped and unoccupied except for a single caretaker or maintenance man. It is controlled remotely by people located elsewhere in Spain – and in Hong Kong!

What has certainly not gone unreported is that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. More than 60 million years on, however, we hominids can relax and continue our strange ways as if nothing unusual is happening.

This latest asteroid will bypass us with no ill effects whatsoever. Indeed, most of us would have been totally unaware of anything special in prospect had it not been for the media who do love to ratchet up the fear factor at every opportunity.

The normally conservative Daily Telegraph has informed us that “the 130,000 tonne space rock will miss Earth so narrowly that it will come within the orbit of some communication satellites, travelling at a speed of five miles per second – eight times the speed of a bullet from a rifle.”

Trust the Daily Mail to point out that if 2012 DA14 did hit the Earth – which it won’t – it could wipe out a city the size of Greater London.

Just in case bankers and businessmen were getting a little too complacent, the Wall Street Journal has noted that “if there were an impact, energy generated from 2012 DA14 would be an estimated 120 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Many newspapers and TV networks have relayed the words of Donald Yeomans, manager of the near-Earth object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. He told a press conference: “This asteroid seems to be passing the sweet spot between the GPS satellites and weather and communications satellites.”

It only seems to be passing the sweet spot?

Apart from the very remote possibility that viewers may find their favourite Sky TV programmes rudely interrupted, none us will notice anything different at all. No sudden gust of wind, no bang in the night, not even a pinprick of sinister light visible to the naked eye. Just business as usual as the rock sweeps by on its way to heaven knows where.

Actually, at 45 metres across, this is quite a small rock by celestial standards, and there have been plenty of them during the Earth’s four-and-a-half billion-year history.

According to Time magazine: “The fact is, there are a whole lot more of them than you likely know: from Feb. 5 to May 5 of this year, no fewer than 77 space rocks that could, in theory have Earth’s name on them, will be whizzing by. On March 20 alone, when you may have been planning to celebrate the first day of spring, there will be seven.”

Meanwhile, to ensure harmony, for goodness sake don’t forget that the big day to celebrate close encounters is not Friday 15th, but Thursday 14th - Valentine’s Day!