Dennis Edwards: CHEGA means "ENOUGH!" The people have had ENOUGH with the left-wing agenda coming from Europe. That's why CHEGA is gaining support.
Portugal just SHOCKED the world and is FINALLY WAKING UP!
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Friday, April 21, 2017
In Portugal, Drug Use Is Treated As A Medical Issue, Not A Crime
Lauren Frayer, NPR, April 18, 2017
Gandelina Damião, 78, is permanently hunched, carrying her sorrow. She lost three children to heroin in the 1990s.
A quarter century ago, her cobblestone lane, up a grassy hill from Lisbon’s Tagus River, was littered with syringes. She recalls having to search for her teenagers in graffitied stone buildings nearby, where they would shoot up.
“It was a huge blow,” Damião says, pointing to framed photos on her wall of Paulo, Miguel and Liliana. “I was a good mother. I never gave them money for drugs. But I couldn’t save them.”
For much of the 20th century, Portugal was a closed, Catholic society, with a military dictator and no drug education. In the early 1970s, young Portuguese men were drafted to fight wars in the country’s African colonies, where many were exposed to drugs for the first time. Some came home addicted.
In 1974, there was a revolution–and an explosion of freedom.
“It was a little bit like the Americans in Vietnam. Whiskey was cheaper than water, and cannabis was easy to access. So people came home from war with some [drug] habits,” says João Goulão, Portugal’s drug czar. “Suddenly everything was different [after the revolution]. Freedom! And drugs were something that came with that freedom. But we were completely naive.”
By the 1990s, 1 percent of Portugal’s population was hooked on heroin. It was one of the worst drug epidemics in the world, and it prompted Portugal’s government to take a novel approach: It decriminalized all drugs. Starting in 2001, possession or use of any drug–even heroin–has been treated as a health issue, not a crime.
Goulão, who had worked as a family physician in his 20s, at the height of the crisis, says there was very little opposition to the policy change.
“Every family had its own drug addict. It was so, so present in everyday life, that it turned public opinion,” Goulão says. “We are dealing with a chronic relapsing disease, and this is a disease like any other. I do not put a diabetic in jail, for instance.”
Under the 2001 decriminalization law, authored by Goulão, drug dealers are still sent to prison. But anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug–including heroin–gets mandatory medical treatment. No judge, no courtroom, no jail.
Instead they end up in a sparsely furnished, discreet, unmarked office in downtown Lisbon, for counselling with government sociologists, who decide whether to refer them to drug treatment centers.
“It’s cheaper to treat people than to incarcerate them,” says sociologist Nuno Cabaz. “If I come across someone who wants my help, I’m in a much better position to provide it than a judge would ever be. Simple as that.”
Cabaz’s team of 10 counselors handles all of Lisbon’s roughly 2,500 drug cases a year. It may sound like a lot, but it’s actually a 75 percent drop from the 1990s. Portugal’s drug-induced death rate has plummeted to five times lower than the European Union average.
Along a row of abandoned buildings in northern Lisbon, field psychologists took NPR to meet some of Portugal’s remaining drug users. The hillside is littered with needles, and bursting with wildflowers. The sky rumbles with airliners landing at the international airport nearby.
There’s a philosophy book on a cement stoop next to a middle-aged man who’s smoking crack cocaine. He gives his name as Rui, and says the stigma against addicts has eased since decriminalization.
“Now, not so much. It’s less, because the methadone is coming, and people are treating this problem,” he says. “They see the drugs with another perspective.”
Every day, a government van pulls up and gives him a dose of methadone, an opioid that helps wean people off of heroin. It’s a step toward harm-reduction. He still does cocaine, but no longer shoots up.
Drug-related HIV infections in Portugal have dropped 95 percent.
Drug workers hand out packets with clean needles and condoms, and listen to another addict, Antonio, describe his anxiety.
“If the drugs hurt too much my body, I escape a little, and then I come back again,” he says. “But it’s a world I cannot escape! If I turn there, it’s there–it’s everywhere. I cannot escape.”
For every person in Portugal who cannot escape addiction, there’s daily methadone, counseling and free treatment. A generation ago, these addicts were put in jail. Now they’re on the street.
But polls show the Portuguese–having lived through the ravages of a heroin epidemic–overwhelmingly support this policy.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Portugal went 107 hours on only renewable energy
From the morning of May 7 to the afternoon of May 11, Portugal’s electricity consumption was fully covered by renewable sources.
For 107 hours, Portugal powered all of its electricity from biofuels, hydropower plants, wind turbines, solar panels, and geothermal heat. But this is not the first time that Portugal has boasted an impressive energy statistic.
For a few hours at the end of 2011, all of the country’s electricity demands were met by renewable energy. The country’s annual renewable energy consumption has grown in recent years. In 2013, Portugal got almost 26 percent of its electricity from renewables, rising to 63 percent in 2014. But because of a drought, Portugal’s source of renewable electricity decreased to 50.4 percent in 2015.
Portugal generates 30 percent of its electricity from hydropower, about one quarter from wind, 6.4 percent from biofuels and waste, and 1.2 percent from solar. Wind energy production grew by more that 600 percent between 2004 and 2009, and in 2014, Portugal was second only to Denmark in wind power.
Of course, Portugal’s bold renewable energy initiative would not be possible everywhere. As of 2015, the country had a population of about 10.8 million, whereas the US is home to nearly 320 million. Geographically, the country is about the size of Maine.
But in comparison to other countries in the European Union, who are more similar to Portugal in terms of population and geographical size, Portugal’s renewable energy initiatives are still impressive.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
The Rape of Portugal!
I have been watching the situation in Ukraine with much sadness. Is the uprising taking place really a spontaneous reaction of the people? Or is this crisis being provoked by International financial interests trying to pull Ukraine into the Western hemisphere’s influence or divide it into two pieces? There is no simple answer. But I will share my experience in Portugal to propose what could really be happening.
When Portugal, Greece and Spain joined the European Union financial aid poured into those countries. In the time before 2004 much money came in as financial help toward the building of roads and stadiums. Portugal and Spain had won the bid for the Euro football games while Greece would provide the summer Olympics. So in order to build the stadiums and roads and infrastructure to support those stadiums loans were granted. Everything was great and dandy. Jobs were abundant. Foreigners poured into the country from Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine and Romania, and from Brazil. I am specifically talking about my experience in Portugal, but Spain and Greece have parallel stories. At the same time, new shopping malls were built and Portugal at one time had the newest and biggest shopping mall in all of Europe, the Columbus Shopping Mall in Lisbon.
At the same time, European agreements with China allowed the Chinese merchants to also enter the country with many tax benefits. It was a great time of financial bubble. Portugal and Greece also went to the final of the European Cup. A great euphoria and optimism existed both in sports arena and in the psychology of the people. The government encouraged business to invest in new technologies to stay competitive. Banks were loaning money with easy access to credit and encouraging people to take more. Many thought the new financial explosion would last forever. They unwisely borrowed expecting all things to continue as they were.
Meanwhile corrupt politicians were pocketing money. The Chinese imports started affecting the local clothing and pottery industries. When the bubble burst the small industrial base had already been eroded. The pottery industry collapsed and almost completely disappeared. The clothing industry collapsed, also. The new shopping malls with the international names imported clothing from China, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Thailand. Many Portuguese companies went bust as Portuguese lost their family fortunes. The new free motorways made access to the larger commercial center easy and assured them of clients. While the traditional local business dribbled to a trickle.
The European quotas on milk and fish further squeezed the traditional Portuguese economy. Farmers were paid to stop raising so much dairy or fined if they exceeded their quotas. Fishermen were encouraged to retire early to bring down the Portuguese fishing catch beneath the new European quotas. The traditional Portuguese economy was being decimated. The new supermarkets aided by the free motorways led to the movement of money away from the local small business toward the big internationals whose products were from either outside of Portugal or outside of Europe completely.
During this time, the socialists were in power and busy spending. They pushed through two amendments on abortion that failed to gain the necessary votes. The third amendment did not get enough votes to be counted as a legal reflection of the will of the people as fewer than 50% of the population participated. Therefore they used a new method. The Congress which was strongly socialist passed a law approving abortion. When this law went to the Conservative President for his signature, most believed he would veto it. However, just the week before the Polish Prime Minister, a friend of the Portuguese President, had been killed in a mysterious plane crash. The Portuguese President’s wife confessed they were afraid for their lives and so her husband did not veto the abortion bill as expected. How strange that the members of the Polish government died in one stroke. The Polish Prime Minister was against the European agenda of abortion and gay rights being strongly Catholic. His Central Banking president had kept Poland debt free. The Health Minister had refused to buy the Gripe A vaccine which kept the government from being in debt to the pharmaceutical industry. These important anti-European agenda ministers were all gone in one smooth stroke of “bad-luck.” What a coincidence?
In the meantime, here in Portugal, the financial bubble was building. The Socialist government offered free computers to the children of poor families to help to become computer literate. At the same time, mobile phones and internet and cable and disk multi-channel television were opening up the culture to new influences. Before this flood gate was opened the traditional Portuguese television was strongly Portuguese. Then came the new SIC TV program which promoted gay personalities and humor. But now the door has been opened and the traditional Portuguese culture is under heavy attack and slowly being corrupted and eliminated.
Some time ago the strongly socialist congress passed a bill in favor of gay marriage. Again the President did not veto it as he said a veto would only be overturned by Congress. Last week, the Congress passed a bill to allow gay marriages to adopt children. The bill went to the President to sign into law. The President did not veto it, but sent it on to the Constitutional Court to see if it was constitutional. The Constitutional Court voted that the bill was unconstitutional. The socialists and communists protested that the Court was standing in the way of democracy and the will of the people. The war goes on. The Antichrist forces in Europe are slowly and surely destroying the strongly Catholic and Christian beliefs of the people of Southern European. Poland and Ukraine could be their next objective. Ireland and Iceland may have already been their targets. Romania and others are also in their sights.
That’s how I see it from Portugal. The new wealth that the Portuguese experienced enabled them to buy the machines that were needed to slowly erode their faith away and embrace the European Union’s agenda of abortion and gay marriage. The Bible says the love of money is the route of all evil. Portuguese lusted after those things that money could buy which they thought would bring them happiness. They have more things but have compromised their values. The international bankers burst the financial bubble and left Portugal with debts to pay. In order to pay them they have had to sell off their state owned businesses. They have had to make those free motorways pay roads. Their children cannot find jobs in Portugal as the factories have closed and the youth have had to move abroad. The traditional family unit has been destroyed. Internet and computer games dominate the lives of youth. Traditional Catholic morality no longer exists. And no one stands up against the wake of destruction.
Will similar methods be used in Poland and Ukraine to bring them in line with the New World Order agenda? It only remains to be seen. Jesus said, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” But the meek and poor countries are being offered the riches of this life and many are falling for it. The Portuguese are poor once again. Eighty percent of the people do not have money to survive for a whole year. Thirty percent are living day by day. Sixty percent of the people receive minimum salary or less per month. The financial bubble helped put into the homes of the Portuguese people these new gadgets that the internationalists are using to erode away the faith of adult and youth alike. The debt to be paid to the Central Bankers will take many years of economizing. Pensions have been cut. Age of retirement has been raised to sixty-six years. The workday has been extended to eight and a half hours a day. The European Union promised the Portuguese everything, but it indeed has been the rape of Portugal, as well as, Spain and Greece and Ireland. Will your country be next?
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Portugal's birthrate plummeting, a sign of more economic trouble ahead
By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, June 23, 2013
LISBON—For an enterprise in the business of welcoming life, the birthing ward in Portugal’s largest maternity hospital is eerily quiet. On a recent morning, not a single expectant father nervously paced the orange laminated floors. Unhurried nurses pass rows of darkened rooms with empty beds, busying themselves with paperwork and a mere three women in labor.
Elsewhere in the hospital, signs of Europe’s crisis within a crisis are everywhere. Serving a country that was battling a low birthrate even before the region’s economy fell off a cliff, Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital delivered about 7,000 babies a year until recently. But with economic uncertainty causing young couples to rethink family plans or leave these shores for other countries, the number of births crashed last year to 4,500, leading the hospital to mothball an entire wing and slash 20 percent of the staff.
The recent fall in births across Portugal—to 89,841 babies in 2012, a 14 percent drop since 2008—has been so acute that the national government is moving to close a slew of maternity wards nationwide. In an increasingly childless country, 239 schools are closing this year and sales of products such as baby diapers and children’s shampoos are plummeting.
At the same time, in the fast-graying interior, gas stations and motels are being converted into nursing homes even as stores selling toys and baby clothes shut their doors. Here in Lisbon, Alfredo da Costa—founded in 1932 when this once-great maritime nation still commanded a global empire—is on the chopping block, set for closure this year.
“We used to hear the best kind of cries in these halls, of babies,” said Teresa Tome, Alfredo da Costa’s head pediatrician, as she strode down the quiet birthing ward. She later added, “The recent decrease in births has been dramatic. This is because of the economic crisis, all the unemployment, all the uncertainty about the future. It is making a bad problem for the country worse.”
Portugal is at the forefront of Europe’s latest baby bust, one that is shorting the fuse on a time bomb of social costs in some of the world’s most rapidly aging societies.
As in many corners of the industrialized world, Europe has faced a gradual decline in birthrates since the 1960s. But in a number of the region’s hardest-hit countries, a modest rebound during the 2000s—when European governments welcomed immigrants and rolled out cash benefits for young couples starting families—has now gone into reverse.
Birthrates are falling again in several nations that are confronting massive unemployment, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Cyprus. The baby shortage, economists say, is set to pile on the woe for a swath of the continent that may already be facing a decade or more of economic fallout from the debt crisis that started in 2009.
By 2030, the retired population in Portugal, for instance, is expected to surge by 27.4 percent, with those older than 65 predicted to make up nearly one in every four residents. With fewer future workers and taxpayers being born, however, the Portuguese are confronting what could be an accelerated fiscal reckoning to provide for their aging population. Portugal is ahead of other nations in Europe in planning for those explosive costs. But some government officials here concede that far deeper cuts—as well as a push toward a united social security system within the European Union—may be needed to cope with what is turning out to be a worse-than-expected demographic crisis.
The diminishing number of young Portuguese could lead to a vacuum of dynamism and innovation in the years ahead, signaling what could be a long-term decline in the fortunes of nations in a region harboring some of the United States’ largest trading partners and closest political allies.
The U.S. birthrate has also come down sharply since the 1960s. But the United States is projected to witness a generous influx of immigrants in the years ahead while also maintaining a more robust birthrate than those European nations hit the hardest.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Five things I’ve learned on the ground in Portugal
Simon Black on JULY 10, 2012
July 10, 2012
Porto, Portugal
Portugal is a country that I’ve always enjoyed, full of warm, welcoming people, excellent wine, and great weather.
I came to Porto, the country’s second largest city of some 1.5 million, to get a sense of what’s been happening since the eurocalypse.
1. Capitulation of hope
Excluding the city’s still-bustling tourist areas, it’s very quiet around the city.
Street-level retail shops and restaurants are either devoid of customers or have been vacated. On many blocks I’ve seen more “for lease” signs than operating businesses.
Officially, the unemployment rate is 15.2% in Portugal, and the economy will contract 3% this year… yet the clear lack of economic activity suggests the real figures are much greater.
Without doubt, reality has set in. Locals have capitulated ‘hope’ that the good times will magically re-appear and have adjusted their habits accordingly.
2. Austerity: too little, too late
For the last several years, national government spending has contributed nearly 40% of Portugal’s GDP. In Europe, this has only been bested by (you guessed it) Greece and Ireland.
Including local and provincial governments, in fact, total government expenditure here surpasses 50% of GDP. It’s insane.
Under the terms of their bail-out last year, they’ve been forced to cut back. Sort of.
The government recently tried reforming public worker benefits, for example. But Portugal’s Constitutional Court overturned the move, ruling that cutting public workers’ Christmas bonuses and generous paid holidays is unconstitutional.
They’ve also made attempts at overhauling the broken pension system. But then the president himself, Mr. Anibal Cavaco Silva, began complaining about his own pension being trimmed.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
All the national and local governments have really been able to do is cut small, rounding-error line items from the budget… landscaping, trash collection, things like that.
You can see the results on the streets– the grass is growing knee-high in public areas away from Porto’s main tourist spots.
But none of this is going to make a dent in the budget. ‘Austerity’ here is truly meaningless, and these guys are going to slide right back into insolvency. I’d expect Portugal’s 10-year yield (currently 10.3%) to rise.
3. Absurdly cheap.
Portugal is now one of the cheapest civilized places in the world to live. As part of the contraction, both asset prices and many retail prices in Portugal have dropped substantially.
The middle/upper-middle class segments of the real estate market have gone no-bid, and investment property owners with mortgages to service are getting desperate.
To give you an idea, I’m renting a spacious 3-bedroom, 2000 square foot luxury apartment in a new(ish) development that was completed during the real estate boom a few years ago. It’s costing me a whopping $60/night.
The complex is a ghost town. I’ve seen four human beings in as many days, and as I stand on the terrace surveying the other units, most of what I see is vacant.
Property owners I’ve spoken to say that they don’t want to rent to locals under a long-term lease because the locals can’t pay. And when they stop paying, the government makes eviction very difficult.
This makes their market of potential lessees quite small, hence cheap prices.
4. Gold businesses are doing well
All over town you can see these new ‘cash for gold’ type franchises being set up. It’s crazy, you’ll even see two or three of them on the same block across the street from one another. It’s like Starbucks.
Many of them are doing brisk business as locals look to raise spare cash. And the businesses are only buying gold, not selling.
5. Lack of productive youth
There is a noticeable, disproportionate lack of young people between the ages of 15 to 35 or so.
It seems that much of Portugal’s youth is heading to greener pastures, most notably to Brazil where they can easily obtain residency, find a job, and integrate into society… or to frontier markets like Angola (a former colony with a booming resource economy).
No doubt, people with skills and courage are getting the hell out.
