We are in the middle of the ridiculous season, or, if you prefer, the silly season. This is the time of year, so-called in the media corporations, because it is low on news and journalistic standards or editorial lines let their guard down and report on the frivolities of the season. Well! Nowadays, if we scrutinize the concept, we can safely say that it can be used for any time of year, perhaps another advantage of post-truth, globalists will say. I won’t know any more, as I don’t want to disappoint readers. I have a habit, during the summer months, of lightening these writings so as not to disturb your well-deserved vacations or, if that’s not the case, to not let the tranquility of bright summer days be clouded by issues that, despite the season, continue to happen and directly or indirectly influence our lives.

The storms are here, and there is no way to ignore them. In fact, their effects are already being felt in the number of days left in the month after paying the bills, in public health services, in education, and in increasing poverty and exclusion. While we all feel and know the effects to a greater or lesser extent, we do not all have the same view of the root causes and, above all, of the path we must follow to achieve a more just and cooperative world where peace is the reality that humanity demands.

One day, I heard and saw a Jewish woman, born in 1941, being asked what her biggest problem was, and her answer was: Gaza. She then explained her concerns about the Palestinian people and her incomprehension of the actions of the Zionist state.

If I had been asked the same question, although I share the concerns of this citizen, I would say that the biggest problem is Palestine, occupied by a colonial project designed by world Zionism. And the complicity of most European countries and the United States. It is not just Gaza, it is the whole of historic Palestine, it is the entire Palestinian people who, since 1948, have been the victims of genocide. There is no other word to describe the terror in occupied Palestine. A genocide broadcast live, in the face of which the silence of citizens is complicity, and the political action of the European Union, the United States, and other countries emerging on the world stage is hypocrisy.

The European indifference to this tragedy is not new. It is structural. And it reveals a diplomatic subservience that is not limited to the Palestinian case. The European Union, which once dreamed of being an autonomous bloc, has become a submissive echo of Atlantic strategy. In Libya, it enthusiastically participated in the destruction of a functioning state, plunging the Mediterranean into prolonged chaos. In Ukraine, it feeds the illusion of an impossible military victory, while prolonging suffering and blocking any political solution. In Palestine, it rehearses ambiguous phrases that commit it to nothing. And on the migration issue, its cynicism is total: it criminalizes the victims of the wars it helped provoke and finances militias and walls to contain them.

The continuation of the Israel/EU Association Agreement, which remains in force, is symptomatic of the cowardly complicity with the massacre that has now reached a level of terror that shames us all. The EU, in the words of a former European political leader, is an “economic giant but a political dwarf”; the epithet has been known since NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and has been confirmed over the last 30 years. This proverbial phrase remains poignantly relevant today. Take the result of the recent agreement between the EU and the US. This agreement, concluded with great fanfare under the guise of “strategic collaboration on technology and trade,” reinforces this dependence. Brussels is kneeling before Washington in critical areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, the defense industry, and energy flows. This dependence is also evident in the acceptance of 15% tariffs on exports to the US, welcomed without any reciprocal tariff on imports of US products. The EU, which some continue to regard as a social, economic, and political model, has become an extension of the White House. The autonomy of the EU’s unelected bodies and the political families that dominate the European Parliament is now a myth or, worse still, a rhetorical pretext to justify decisions taken without the involvement of the people and member countries.

In Portugal, global storms echo with their own contours. As our country is a fragile and peripheral economy, it is not difficult to predict that complex times are ahead for those who live from their work, whether they are employees, self-employed workers, or micro, small, and medium-sized entrepreneurs. But suppose external decisions are going to affect us. In that case, internal decisions, with the ideological matrix of the so-called free market, will also contribute to worsening the living conditions of the Portuguese people and increasing social divisions.

The aware that the issue, as I see it, does not have widespread support, I cannot, However, I cannot fail to address it in this article, not least because of the decision by the President of the Republic who, as is public knowledge, has requested a review of the constitutionality of certain provisions of the “Legal Regime for the Entry, Stay, Exit, and Removal of Foreigners from the National Territory,” commonly known as the “foreigners’ law,” which was recently approved by the Assembly of the Republic. But that is not all. The proposed amendments to the “Nationality Law” have been strongly criticized in various sectors of national public opinion. And all this is happening in a country that claims to staunchly defend human rights, as if migration and family reunification were not basic human rights and the acquisition of nationality were not an intrinsic condition for full integration into the host country.

These two legal instruments aim to penalize immigrant communities who have sought a place in Portugal to improve their living conditions, just as hundreds of thousands of Portuguese did when they emigrated for the same reasons and were also met with misunderstanding and discrimination at their destination. A country with centuries of emigration and roots spread across all continents, which has seen the birth of communities of Portuguese descent scattered around the world, should view belonging with democratic openness and not with administrative mistrust or as a weapon of political manipulation. Citizenship cannot be held hostage to cultural prejudices or political equations whose variables only serve to fuel illegal immigration and expose citizens to mafias that feed on human trafficking and servitude to unscrupulous businessmen, whether or not they are Portuguese nationals.

The announced changes to labor laws that aim to further destabilize the labor market, facilitate dismissals, and open up outsourcing after a process of collective dismissal, reduce the real value of wages, and reduce breastfeeding time are signs, among others, that the social situation in Portugal will worsen. The National Health Service is resisting in a heroic effort, but is faltering under the pressure of chronic underfunding. Public schools, which were once a beacon of mobility and social advancement, are now a place of resistance, devaluation, and attrition for those who work there, but also a place of struggle to maintain their quality. Structural poverty is spreading. Social discouragement is growing.

Among the frivolities of the season, the fireworks of summer campaigns, and the froth of everyday life, what is essential is in danger of being lost. But some truths persist, even under the sun. And some silences scream. Summer cannot be an excuse for indifference. Because storms do not follow a calendar. Nor do they have a season of their own. Indifference is an ally of power and dominant thinking. Let us not be accomplices through silence and indifference.

Ponta Delgada, August 5, 2025

Aníbal C. Pires, poet.

In Diário Insular, August 6, 2025

Translated by Diniz Borges