IMF issues plan to starve Portuguese people even further in 2013

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | JANUARY 10, 2013

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho warned a month ago: The Portuguese, that bears a progressive and growing cut in services for the last year and a half, intends to save another 4,000 million euros a year starting now. For ideas on where to do it, the Portuguese Executive requested a report to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The report was released on Thursday and immediately sparked controversy (and fear) in the Portuguese population, as cuts and adjustments will be constant and repetitive in the months to come.

Technicians at the Washington-based institution advised Portugal to, among other measures, fire workers, increase working hours for government employees, reduce (more) unemployment benefits and cut (even more) pensions. Only then, they say, will the country reach 4,000 million euros in savings that the Liberal government of Passos Coelho considers necessary to reform the state so that, in his opinion, the Portuguese nation becomes efficient and competitive.

To begin, the IMF experts say the Portuguese system of social protection “is directed disproportionately towards the wealthier and the older.” It adds that the system “pushes out younger workers while keeping the older inside.” To solve that problem, the IMF suggests that unemployment insurance, which now provides subsidies for 26 months and that has already been cut, should be cut even further, and that once it gets to  ten months, it is reduced further to become simply a payment of social allowance of just over 400 euros.

The IMF also recommends reducing the wages of civil servants in an amount which can range between 3% and 7%, and get rid of up to 120,000 public employees (from 10% to 20%), focusing mainly on teachers , health professionals and low-skilled employees. In addition, Fund staff recommend ending the discrimination suffered by other employees, who work 40 hours a week, with respect to staff, whose working week is 35.

According to the IMF, the payment for doctor visits (already implemented in Portugal) could be increased up to a third of the expense involved in supplying such service. Right now, going to the emergency room in a hospital in Lisbon costs 20 euros. If the government accepted the IMF’s recommendation, the same visit would cost 50 euros. A mammogram can cost 15 euros and a GP consultation would cost around ten euros.

Pensioners, whose payments have been greatly cut, will experience even more cuts. According to the IMF, for starters, Portugal should raise the retirement age from 65 to 66 years, reduce the amount received by pensioners by 20% so that all payments are equally low.

The report has raised considerable media dust. The left accuses the government of Passos Coelho of thoroughly dismantling the country piece by piece, and establishing a process that will cost more than a mere private insurance scheme. Portuguese State Secretary, Carlos Moedas, has clarified that the report is “very good”  and that it will be considered by the Government.

The Portuguese government plans to present in February its own savings plan, which is why it requested the report from the IMF. Now, Portugal plans to include almost all of the recommendations in the report as its own since the IMF itself has now called for such measures.

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Portugal Approves Polemic Budget Amid Massive Public Protests

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 27, 2012

If anyone wants to understand how much disregard governments have for their people, it will suffice to look at Portugal. The country is one of the European nations in worse condition, which caused massive public protests on the streets of the capital Lisbon as well as other cities. Despite the protests and the Portuguese government approved an ever more austere budget after 224 members of Congress discussed and voted for it.

Meanwhile, outside the Congressional building, thousands of people called by the unions and various civic associations, screamed and protested peacefully against the same budget in a desperate attempt to stop it, or at least to voice their anger. Eventually, enough votes from the coalition government conservative CDS-PP PSD decided to approve the text. All opposition (Socialist Party Portuguese, Portuguese Communist Party, the Left Bloc and the Greens) spoke against it.

The multitude of protestors included unionists, housewives, unemployed, students and others. One of these protesters carried a banner with a simple and powerful message: “Get me out of this film.” In one corner, a young man seemed to use a cardboard stand to solicit that people signed his petition against the upcoming move to privatize the water supply.

Everyone is convinced that the newly approved budget is going to make life worse yet some more. It’s true. The text includes, among other measures, a brutal tax increase described by the opposition as a genuine “tax bomb” aimed at wiping the government’s debt and to achieve the goals imposed by Portugal’s new owners, the Troika. The Government argues that a budget is conditional and that its scope to develop another one is very low given the need to adjust spending to meet its commitments.

The cuts are affecting many and especially the Portuguese salaried middle classes, which already carry the enormous weight of the economic downturn in a country that was ‘rescued’ in April 2011 to avoid bankruptcy.

So, starting next year, several sections are taken out from Portuguese Income Tax to raise more revenue in addition to a 3.5% general tax on everyone that will start in January. The hardest hit groups under this new tax scheme are retired people, those who receive unemployment benefits and others who get government subsidies for health benefits. In general, higher taxes, fees and surcharges will all increase for the  Portuguese population and such increases will equal a complete full salary. Government workers and those who are retired will continue to live without their yearly bonuses paid to them once a year, but that was cancelled by the government a year ago.

Indeed, 2013 will be much tougher for the Portuguese people. The economy, according to the government, will fall by 1%, consumption will drop by 2.5% and unemployment will climb to 16.8%. There will be cuts, yet without specifying if they will reach Health and Education. Everything will work a little worse. It is expected that the country achieves a tiny sign of a recovery in 2014, if anything at all, said today the Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar.

The problem is that last year, Gaspar said the same thing referring to 2013, which has made it less likely that people and experts believe what Gaspar says.

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Out of Fashion NATO continues to Expand its Wars

Russia Today

NATO’s blueprint for change mentions cooperation with Russia as a new priority, but Moscow is pushing for more than just words.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who leads the “wise men” responsible for drafting NATO’s New Strategic Concept, stressed that “to safeguard security at home the alliance must continue to treat collective defense as its core purpose.”

Albright, however, added the loose disclaimer that “providing for security is a more complicated proposition than in the past.” This means that NATO – like some sort of transnational corporation that must forever increase in size in order to survive – will be forced to travel further afield in the future, as the challenges continue to mount and disperse.

“NATO must be versatile and efficient enough to operate far from home,” she argued.

“Alliance leaders should learn from its experiences in Afghanistan… the need to deploy forces at a strategic distance for an extended period of time. There should be no question that NATO’s fundamental purpose is to protect the security of its members, but providing for security is a more complicated proposition than in the past.”

Albright, in an effort to assuage Russian apprehensions over the Western organization’s policy shift, reiterated for the umpteenth time that the new concept was not “a threat to Russia.”

“We do not see the gradual enlargement of NATO… as something that should be viewed as a threat to Russia,” she said, “and we all believe that and will continue to state it and the Russians in their own turn have to decide how they react.”

One between-the-lines interpretation of Albright’s comment could be that “NATO will act as it will, and Russia is free to respond however it feels necessary.” In other words: take our new global strategy or leave it; Moscow will just have to take Brussels on its word that the military bloc will never exist as a threat to Russia’s security.

In May 2009, Russia released its own updated national security strategy, which specifically mentioned NATO as one of the country’s greatest threats.

“The instability of the existing global and regional architecture, especially in the Euro-Atlantic region… is an increasing threat to the international security,” the document said.

Interestingly, especially in light of the ongoing battles being waged courtesy of US forces in oil-rich Middle East/Central Asian countries, the Russian paper mentioned “competition for resources” as a potential geopolitical flashpoint in the years to come.

“In a competition for resources, problems that involve the use of military force cannot be ruled out, which would destroy the balance of forces close to the borders of the Russian Federation and her allies,” it said.

But it is not simply a matter of NATO introducing weighty game pieces in Russia’s “near abroad” that is playing havoc with the Kremlin’s nerves; it is America’s unflinching determination to drop an antimissile system into Eastern Europe that is the primary source of US-Russian tensions today.

One man’s shield is another man’s sword

In February, Romania and Bulgaria announced they were in talks with US President Barack Obama’s administration on deploying elements of the US missile shield on their territories from 2015.

The move came after Obama shelved plans to deploy missile-defense elements in the Czech Republic and Poland due to “a reassessment of the threat from Iran.”

Russia fiercely opposed the plan – both the original one hatched by the previous Bush administration, and the latest one by Obama – calling it a direct threat to its national security.

According to the new NATO blueprint for change, Russia will figure into the new system. The question remains: How? As a mere occasional observer of the cool new technology, or a hands-on participant in the entire process? And if the latter, will they be involved from construction to activation?

“Missile defense is most effective when it is a joint enterprise and cooperation … between the alliance and its partners – especially Russia – is highly desirable,” the NATO blueprint advised.

“We are faced with a real threat and we need real protection against a real threat, and to that end we need an effective missile defence system which covers all populations in all allied nations,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of North Atlantic Treaty Organization told reporters at a news conference.

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told his own news conference on Tuesday that it will be clear by the end of the year exactly to what degree Russia will cooperate with NATO in the missile defense system, while stressing that the level of cooperation includes everything from “from A to Z.”

“But cooperation needs to be from A to Z: to the end,” Ivanov said, adding, “We will assess the threats together, evaluate the risks together, and begin creating a defense system together.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) in April that Moscow advises that “the system of global missile defense must protect not only a definite country or a group of countries, but also function in the interests of all responsible participants of the international society.”

Medvedev said Russia is opposed to the formation of air defense systems because they eventually “damage the current balanced system between the main nuclear powers.”

“Either we are together or [Russia has] have to react somehow,” he said.

NATO foreign ministers agreed at an informal meeting in Estonia in April that it was essential to begin dialogue with Russia on cooperation in the sphere of anti-missile defense.

A new strategic concept should be drafted by the NATO Secretary General this summer on the basis of the report. The new strategic concept will then be approved by the NATO summit in Lisbon in November. On the basis of that summit we will finally have a peek at NATO’s hand. Will it be a bluff, or a sincere desire to reset relations with Moscow?

Give NATO-Russian cooperation a chance?

The document mentioned Russia’s decision to open an air corridor route over its territory to accommodate NATO military flights into Afghanistan, where 100,000 coalition troops are fighting a protracted war against Taliban forces. Incidentally, two-thirds of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are from the United States, and for Washington, the outcome of this war may very well spell make or break for NATO.

Already this year, 200 NATO soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, compared with 119 in the same period last year. Europe’s patience for such bloodshed will not last forever.

In a recent article in the Financial Times, Richard Haas, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, argued that NATO’s future role only makes sense “as an expeditionary force in an unstable world,” while predicting that the ties that bind Europe, NATO and the US together will eventually come undone.

“European political culture has evolved in ways that make it harder to field militaries willing to bear the cost in blood,” Haas writes, before quoting Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense, who complained about “the demilitarization of Europe – where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it.”

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