1- Over the years, we have warned about the changes that have hit societies in various countries and continents post-modern times. As with everything, these changes have good parts and others, which have brutal roots that we come to know as they leave traces of destruction that, despite scientific and technological developments, do not prevent or remove what is in the minds of those who rule and those who obey.
2- Pope Francis called on Saturday for the release of all journalists “unjustly imprisoned”. He lamented the deaths of “all those who sacrificed their lives for their profession last year” in a speech given during the Jubilee of Communicators.
3- “In this Holy Year, in this Jubilee of the world of communication, Pope Francis has called on governments to ensure that all journalists unjustly imprisoned are released. Francis was speaking in front of around 6,000 communicators, remembering all who “are imprisoned for having been faithful to their profession as journalists, photographers, and cameramen, for having wanted to see with their own eyes and for having tried to report what they saw.” He also recalled that the freedom of journalists increases the freedom of all, which is also the freedom of each individual.
4- Pope Francis, focusing on freedom of expression of thought, insisted on the need for it to be defended and protected, as well as the fundamental right to be informed, and recalled that freedom of the press and freedom of expression of thought must be defended and protected, advocating that the fundamental right to be informed must not be forgotten, claiming that “the freedom of journalists increases the ‘freedom of each of us as well as the freedom of all fellow citizens’.
5- These appeals from Pope Francis come at a time when some parties and the politicians who lead them are presenting themselves as immaculate, as happened a few days ago with the leader of Chega in the Azores, José Pacheco, saying that the matter of the alleged theft of suitcases by the member of the National parliament Miguel Arruda “is a matter that has been very badly handled by the media” and that the case is “a cabal” against “Chega himself”…
6- But Chega’s leader doesn’t stop there and goes further, saying that about freedom of the press, it is necessary to create “legislation that strongly and violently penalizes any journalist who gives bad news and puts people’s good names at risk”. What the leader of a political party in the region is saying about a case that is before the courts is an attack on press freedom and reveals a desire to return once again to another dictatorship. …. which died 50 years ago
7- When we point out the lack of politicians with talent, mastery, and empathy, capable of becoming a source of inspiration and having value in the communication they transmit to their fellow citizens, it is a warning in the face of the uncertainties that hang in the air and that we have seen as a global and possible “revolution,” which is starting in the USA, and will spread to South America and China, and then to Europe, which is at a crossroads, and without leaders who are up to the task of taking the reins of a policy that contains the will of the world’s big three to divide their governance among themselves, and then “enslave” those who are left to watch the ships and planes pass by.
8- The current situation cannot be solved with hot clothes or new dictatorships, as some aspire to. Yesterday, amid fainting and riots on a flight carrying 148 people deported from the United States and bound for Brazil, a new era began in the land that many Europeans have longed for for centuries.
9- We need to keep a close eye on what will happen in the coming months, but that means anticipating the policies to be taken by the various countries of Europe to prevent a second escape from slavery, as happened more than 2000 years ago. However, it is not foreseeable that we will now find a new Moses, who at the time divided the waters between Egypt and Israel and prevented a major catastrophe.

Américo Natalino Viveiros is the Director/ Editor of the newspaper Correio dos Açores. He was a member of the center-right government led by Dr. Mota Amaral.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).