These were questions that I posed to the President of the EU Commission and the Council in the Plenary Debate, today, at the European Parliament, on the economic crisis and the euro.
Their answer: none.

- Aircraft N8068V, GLF 5, (aircraft formerly registered as N379P, the  infamous “Guantanamo Express”, with dozens of passages through Portugal) in a private civil flight, operated by Premier Executive (another company used by the CIA),  which in 8/9/2004 flew from Mitiga, Tripoli, to Guantanamo.  And on 15/9/2004 the same plane flew from Guantanamo to Tripoli, with authorisation to pass through Portuguese air space (given by INAC?)
http://www.anagomes.eu/PublicDocs/ea8a0710-b093-4ba3-896e-a52a5c173fe1.pdf

- Aircraft UR82029, operated by ANTONOV DESIGN BUREAU, flew on 26/27 September 2004 from Tripoli to the Lajes Air Base (Azores), authorized to make a technical stopover there (INAC?).  From Lajes it flew to Port-au-Prince (Haiti). 
The same aircraft, operated by the same company, flew again from Benghazi to Lajes on the 8th of September 2005 and from Lajes to Port-au-Prince, with the indication (according to the INAC list) of  “dangerous cargo/UN flight”.  Really? Which cargo?  Dangerous for whom? For public health? For danger of explosion, contamination, terrorist attack?  Was it duly checked and secured while in Portuguese territory? Was Portuguese Air Force not consulted and involved in securing the “dangerous cargo” or  did it not care about this flight, despite the fact that  it landed right there under  it’s nose,  in the same airstrip of the Portuguese-American Lajes Air Base?http://www.anagomes.eu/PublicDocs/19ec1b2b-7146-42c0-93bc-ea322cea75ed.pdf

This not an exhaustive list. But aren’t the few above identified flights heading or coming from Khadafi’s Libya, worth of interest and full disclosure by Portuguese authorities? Well, they passed  through Portuguese territory and were authorized by Portugal to do so. Or were the Portuguese authorities too busy to check, possibly watching … birds?

The stigmatization of the Greek people in other European countries is, therefore, extremely unfair, in particular in Germany, a country which has never paid war compensations to Greece, as it should have.

European solidarity is required from Germany towards Greece and other European partners in financial difficulties today: their spending sprees in the last years were very much promoted by the first beneficiary of the Euro: Germany. And Germany was one the the first EU Member States to violate the Stability and Growth Pact criteria in 2004/2005: what is the morality in demanding now that other Eurozone Member States inscribe in their Constitution the “golden rule”, besides the economic and constitutional oxymorons?

The only way for Greece to reverse the speculation that has brought interest rates for its sovereign borrowing to the current outrageous levels, the only way to avoid contagion to Italy, Spain, France and else and the only way to avoid recession and social upheaval in Europe (Germany included), requires the Eurozone joint emmission of eurobonds.
Germany will have to agree to the mutualization of the sovereign debt via eurobonds, sooner or later, with or without Mrs. Merkel in the Kanzlerei.

And the later that will happen, the bigger the risks for Germany to kill its own golden goose: the Euro. And its own guardian angel: Europe.

If the EU is destroyed and if Europe falls back into a violent mess again, Germans will bear heavy costs. Much heavier than just financial costs.

On the other hand, in Congress, everyone asked about the crisis in Europe, everyone was speaking about Greece, everyone feared contagion – even the less informed Senators and Representatives knew that Portugal and Spain, and then Italy, were being targeted. They asked how it was, how it will be, what is Europe going to do.

Regulation, regulation, regulation for the financial sector – among EU and US legislators there was agreement that it is indispensable and that it has not happened yet. In the USA, the Dodd-Frank Act is being boycotted in its implementation, as everyone acknowledges: “too much money, too much lobbying” from the banks, finance companies, etc.

The control of tax havens/ the “Delaware question”, which I persistently raised with American colleagues, is indispensable. Everyone seems to agree on that. But few actually even try to explain why nothing has happened.

What indeed dominated the political and public discussions in that week in the USA – and that goes on – is the dispute between the Administration and Congress about the authorization to raise the debt ceiling, so that the USA does not default at the beginning of August. Something will be worked out right at the end of the deadline, everyone assured the European parliamentarians.

The tug-of-war goes on: ten days later, people seem to delight in the brinkmanship – in the USA, as much as in the EU: it was necessary for the alarm bells to ring on contagion to Italy and Spain, to make the EU Council finnaly take some minimally sensible measures to flexibilize the EFSF and to lower interest rates and extend maturities in the loans extended to Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

In the USA, the dispute shows that Republicans, who are now somewhat hostage of the elected Representatives from the ultra-conservative, populist, extremist and evangelicals gathered under the “Tea Party” umbrella, are already nastily campaigning to try to prevent the re-election of President Obama next year. He is becoming more and more unbearable to all these reactionnary forces; and to a few Democrats as well, worried about their own re-election….

In an incoherent way, the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, Mitch Mcconnell, suggested that the President should assume alone the decision to raise the debt level, overlooking the House – the same House that weeks earlier censored the President for advancing militarily in Libya without consulting …the House. The suggestion seems incongruent, but it looks that it might provide the way out from the dispute. Which is seen by most Americans as an artificial dispute: actually, this is the first time that Obama asked a raise of the debt ceiling. Bush son asked seven times and always got away with it. That also happened more than fifty times since the 60s.

In fact, in the USA, as in Europe, the real dispute is all about who is going to pay for the crisis: the richer or the poorer and the middle class. The latter are the ones to feel the cuts in welfare and healthcare financing, as the right wishes, as it wants that no more taxes are charged on the rich. Or, indeed, that no tax breakes (namely those granted by Bush son) are withdrawn from the rich.

The system is terribly unfair, as the multimillionaire Warren Buffet admits. He is the main stock holder of Moody’s and points out that his secretary pays more than double than him in tax: she is taxed 33% for her salary, whereas he contributes with merely 14% of the millions of profit from the capital he invests.

MSNBC makes the case on how the resistance from the rightwing to raising taxes for the rich, instilled by media like FOX News, has a lot to do with the interests of the Murdoch empire, which has been earning fabulous profits in the last decades, since Rupert Murdoch naturalized himself American, taking advantage of all sorts of tax-exemptions.

In the USA, as in Portugal and in Europe, we always come back to the same old question: are we going to use the State to redistribute wealth and force the rich to share somehow with the poorer or, on the contrary, are we going to make the rich even richer, to the detriment of the poor and the middle classes?

As you said, the sovereign debt crisis demonstrates the interdependence of all our economies. But there is another lesson to retain: that austerity, alone, does not work. Just the opposite, as the Greek case shows. That prescription is ultimately burying the economies of Greece,Portugal, Ireland, Spain and else. Furthermore, it exposes the Euro to market speculation.

What is the Council then waiting to adopt truly European and solidarity measures? Such as eurobonds, to mutualise the  debt; a financial transaction tax to finance economic recovery and employment in Europe; and advancing economic governance, including harmonization of fiscal, industrial and trade policies to narrow the macroeconomic imbalances among EU Member States?

What is the Council waiting to force European banks to communicate to the Greek government all the Greek assets which they helped siphon off  to tax havens  in the last year, helping in this way to frustrate the European assistance plan?

- President Barroso,

What will the Council and Commission do if the Greek Parliament does not approve the the European Council plan tomorrow? What is the Council’s plan B?

Does the Council realize that, with the stupid and painful impact on citizens of its neo-liberal prescriptions, it is not only sinking Greece, but also the Euro, the European construction, and democracy in Europe itself, in addition to triggering a global crisis which may be  worse than the one  caused by the Lehman Brothers’ collapse,  as our American allies have been warning?”

These are questions that I addressed this afternoon to Presidents  van Rompuy and Barroso, at a debate in the European Parliament.

Both replied they were confident that the Greek  Parliament would approve the new package of austerity measures.
Barroso denied, therefore, that there is a Plan B…  (so, if the Greek Parliament does not pass the measures, is the EU going to let Greece fall in bankrrupcy?).
Barroso admited, however, that Greek money is,  indeed,  being shiphoned off abroad.  He did it with visible exasperation, commensurate with the exposure of  the incapacity of the EU to prevent it.

And that tells a lot about the efficiency of the measures so far conceived  by the European Council to react to the crisis!

Yet I acknowledge the accuracy of the many warnings  Prof. JFA is making  on the inadequateconditions  under which Portugal joined the Eurozone and its implications  for disarming the Portuguese authorities in controlling and managing  the national economy.

I also agree with his overall analysis  - on yesterday’s discussion with José Gomes Ferreira,broadcasted by SIC Notícias -  about the virtues, insufficiencies and mistakes he detects in the MOU signed by Portugal  with Troika,  including the negligeable impact he points out in the PSD/CDS Government plan to reduce the TSU (Taxa Social Unica, the corporate tax) with the purpose of  stimulating the production of exportable goods.

But I do not agree, fundamentally, with the stand of  Prof. JFA proposing that Portugal should leave the Euro”orderly”  and seek to be assisted in that process by the EU, as the only way to trigger significant economic growth again, to decrease public debt and to return toborrowing in the markets.

Prof. JFA himself  recognizes that his proposal neglects possible political implications. Which would be tremendous and horrific, for Portugal and for Europe.

Indeed, leaving the Euro would determine Portugal’s abandonment of the European project.And that would represent a dramatic  failure of the European Union.

And, in fact, there is and there will be no guarantee that the EU would ”assist”  Portugal  in leaving  the Eurozone ”orderly”, regardless of how much one could ask for it.  Even assisted, a departure  of Portugal from the Euro would be… an “assisted suicide”,  with  the public and private debts skyrocketing.

Any initiative from Portugal - or Greece, or Ireland… - promoting the abandonment of the Euro, in the current context of  European crisis, would constitute a fatal political blow not only to the Euro’s sustainability, but also to the sustainability of the European Union itself.

I know that it took 80 years of excruciating discussions and a civil war to have the USA move into agreeing on a common currency, the US dollar, and into a federal State. All that happened in a different historical and strategic context.

But in the globalised era we live in, giving up the Euro after having come this far,  would mean giving up the  European Union: nothing less than unassisted suicide for all EU Member States and peoples.

Giving up the Euro and Europe cannot,  in any way, serve the interests of Portugal and the Portuguese people.