The Spectator - The United Nations is falling apart

 (personal underlines)

LBC - the swamp...(season 2)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-decline-of-the-un/

The United Nations is falling apart

How Antonio Guterres wrecked the organisation

24 September 2025, 5:30am

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general (Getty Images)

As the world’s leaders and foreign ministers meet in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this week, recognition of a Palestinian state is being paraded as progress towards peace. In reality, it is nothing of the sort. It only confirms what has become increasingly obvious to anyone watching the UN over the past eight years: that the organisation is in a state of malaise and its secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, the embodiment of its decline.

The UN is no stranger to dysfunction, which I saw first-hand as a security council counter-terror coordinator for five years. Every secretary-general has faced allegations of irrelevance, hypocrisy or incompetence. But Guterres stands out for having presided over an organisation that is now derided by its own staff. It is not the usual frustrations of understaffing or the griping of a bureaucracy that has never been known for efficiency. It is the weary recognition that the institution has lost its way, and that its leader appears more interested in burnishing his progressive credentials than in delivering results.

Guterres presents himself as a statesman, but in truth he is an old-fashioned European socialist with all the expected traits: endless preaching, no moral courage, and a fondness for rewarding loyal friends with plum jobs they seem unqualified for. The result is a hollowed-out organisation where personal loyalty and national patronage count for more than competence.

The UN has always had its share of cronyism – but under Guterres, that has become the organising principle of appointments, in contravention of the current imperative to make cuts. High-calibre officials with relevant experience are sidelined while mediocrities from the secretary-general’s inner circle are parachuted into high-profile posts. There was particular disquiet among UN staff earlier this year, when Guterres promoted fellow Portuguese national Miguel Graca to assistant secretary-general in March, making him a director in Guterres’s own executive office. Critics observed that a sideways move could have been made at zero cost, rather than incurring the salary burden of creating a new ASG at this time of austerity. 

Guterres is an exceptionally poor leader. I will never forget the vacuum at the top during and after Covid, when the UN became the laughing stock of New York for its excessive attachment to working from home. Instead of leading the calls to get staff back into the office, he devolved decision-making to middle management who ultimately had to bear the brunt of staff complaints about returning to Turtle Bay. As one senior UN manager said to me: ‘Guterres gets to sound like the one who cares about staff welfare, while we have to impose operational necessity on them.’

The charge sheet does not end there. Equally glaring is an inconsistency in his loud campaign for gender parity in senior appointments. This has sometimes extended to throwing carefully compiled interview shortlists back at his top aides and demanding a woman be selected. When his own re-appointment was at stake in 2021, all talk of female empowerment conveniently evaporated. There was no question of stepping aside to support a woman candidate; equality, it seems, was good enough for the bureaucracy but not for him. This hypocrisy is noticed, and it corrodes morale. In the case of the new Portuguese ASG, this particular ‘Global North’ male was allowed to buck the trend of promoting ‘Global South’ females wherever possible.

Guterres’s crusade for fashionable causes does not end with gender politics. However noble his dogged progressivism may seem in the West, such an approach has proved catastrophic in conservative host countries. I am no fan of the death penalty, but when three of the five permanent members of the Security Council have it (China, the United States and technically Russia) what justifies the UN in adopting such an inflexible stance against it in Iraq? When UN overreach leads to expulsion, it leaves the host country and its citizens without the support and protection they desperately need. In recent years, we have seen the UN effectively forced to leave Mali, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and to abandon its work in Iraq on securing justice for the victims of ISIS.

Even staff who still believe in the essential role of the UN despair of the Guterres effect. Speaking of his attendance at the Brics summit in Russia last October, where he was photographed sharing what looked like a very deferential handshake with Vladimir Putin, one official said: ‘Nato wouldn’t put Guterres in a difficult position by inviting him to their summit, but even if they did he wouldn’t attend.’ What this conveys is not just frustration, but a recognition that the UN under Guterres has lost its way. He, however, remains deaf to these warnings, apparently more interested in applause from the lowest common denominator of the general assembly than in preserving access to make a positive difference in Baghdad or Bamako.

For all the malaise inside the organisation, the UN still enjoys reverence among the wider public and an annual budget of £2.75 billion (the British government gives £100 million) for day-to-day running costs. To many people it remains the arbiter of legitimacy in world affairs, a sort of secular Vatican whose pronouncements carry moral weight simply by virtue of being made. That misplaced deference is precisely what has allowed various UN special rapporteurs to make wild assertions that Britain and some of its western allies are serial human rights abusers.

While conflict has spread in many regions in recent years, Guterres has done precious little to stop it. The Gaza war has exposed the rot most starkly. From the moment Hamas launched its 7 October massacre in 2023, murdering families in their homes, raping women and abducting children, Guterres has struggled to say plainly who was responsible. His initial reaction to the terror attack? It ‘did not happen in a vacuum’.

His interventions since have been framed almost entirely in humanitarian terms, with little mention of the hostages, and endless calls for ceasefires that made no demands of Hamas. Despite several countries voicing their concerns, the aggressively controversial Francesca Albanese was reappointed as special rapporteur for Palestine. The UN has turned a deaf ear to increasingly forceful objections from the US to its Palestinian refugee operation, UNRWA, which is hopelessly compromised by its long association with Hamas. And it is also alienating the US by refusing to work with the American-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The durability of the UN brand meant that last week’s ‘genocide’ report on Gaza landed with the authority of scripture rather than the polemic it truly was. The fact that the chair of the ‘expert panel’ which put the report together has a long history of anti-Israel bias was glossed over once her findings bore the UN stamp. The enduring illusion of UN sanctity allows the institution to launder prejudice and pass it off as impartial judgment. But this illusion of sanctity fools nobody in Washington D.C., where the UN’s most powerful member state and largest donor is sharpening its knives for an organisation in which it has lost all confidence. President Donald Trump’s UNGA speech yesterday was full of scorn for the organisation’s contribution to meeting international challenges.

Into this fog comes the great folly of statehood recognition. At the time of writing, 156 of the UN’s 193 member states have already recognised Palestine and achieved nothing. Ordinary Palestinians remain no freer, no safer and no more prosperous than before.

At best, recognition lends a sheen of legitimacy to ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt Palestinian Authority, a body so discredited that it has lost control of large parts of the West Bank to Iranian-backed groups. At worst, recognition teaches extremists that massacres work. To grant statehood in the aftermath of 7 October is to confirm that pogroms pay. Applause in the general assembly will only underline the message received on the ground.

Member states that still care about the UN should be under no illusion. An organisation that cannot call Hamas what it is, that loses missions by imposing western social agendas on sceptical hosts, and that breeds contempt among its own staff, all while somehow managing to maintain the gloss and credibility of an internationally renowned arbiter of diplomacy is not merely failing. Some of its perversities are making the world a more dangerous place.

The UN was founded to defend peace and security, and it is still needed to do just that. I have seen too many conflicts in which individual member states either have no interest or refuse to take responsibility, and we will always need the UN or something similar to step into that kind of breach. But under Antonio Guterres the UN has become a theatre of platitudes, a showcase for hypocrisy and an institution starved of resources and hollowed out by malaise.

I hope the UN survives and even thrives beyond Guterres’s tenure. It has many excellent, dedicated staff and the world still needs its services. But the organisation needs reform and new leadership. Until then, recognition of Palestine will be yet another empty gesture in a UN increasingly defined by them.

Reflexão - LBC (sobre o PS)

 Ou, como se acaba com o resto de um partido!

Miguel Prata Roque

Eurico Brilhante Dias

Isabel Moreira (pobre pai...) 

The Spectator - Happy 200th birthday to our railway

 

personal underlines - only in GB...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/happy-200th-birthday-to-our-railway/?status=Active&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BLND%20%2020250922%20%20HOUSE%20ADS%20%20JP+CID_6a6c81224ea5267d6e4a531d313f40f1

Happy 200th birthday to our railway

It’s been quite the journey

Alec Marsh22 September 2025, 5:00am

[Getty]

You might have missed this because it hasn’t exactly been saturated with media coverage, but this week is the 200th birthday of Britain’s railway. In fact, it’s the 200th birthday of all railways, since we invented them.

It was on 27 September 1825 that service began on the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Travelling a distance of just eight-and-a-half miles at about 15mph, the world’s first public commercial rail service arrived to a crowd of 10,000 and – as would become a characteristic feature of future British rail travel – was delayed by half an hour due to engineering problems.

Yes, the worldwide rail revolution began in the north-east of England – the Silicon Valley of rail. I know, not since H.G. Wells decided that the Martians should begin their interplanetary assault on Earth by taking out parts of Surrey has provincial England been so fêted. But it really happened. And as a result of what took place in Darlington that day – thanks to the genius of the concept and a thing called the British Empire which we don’t like to crow about any more – the world now has around 800,000 miles of railway, and billions of railway journeys are made each year.

So, what a gift that was. And thank you to George Stephenson, the Northumberland-born engineer and ‘father of the railways’ who together with his son, Robert, put the steam with the trains and the tracks to make it all happen. Of course, they were standing on the shoulders of giants such as the Cornish rail pioneer Richard Trevithick, but they were the ones who did it. Their Locomotion No. 1 hauled those first passengers two centuries ago, and was built at their works in Newcastle – works which would go on to build 3,000 engines by 1900 alone and eventually formed part of the rail division of the great British industrial conglomerate General Electric Company (along with a dozen other venerable names in the business). These would then merge with Alstom of France in 1989, before the GEC component of it was broken up and sold off in 1998.

Which makes you proud (at least up to the point where we sold it off), but the truth is we do still design and build trains in Derby (Alstom boasts that this is the UK’s ‘largest train factory’), and Hitachi also makes trains in Durham. And this matters, because despite inventing and pioneering computers, we no longer build many of them here, so at least we do turn out a few trains. Perhaps it’s beside the point, though, because like computers, antibiotics, democracy and football, railway is a gift that we have given the world – and it’s a gift that each of us can continue to enjoy, too. Because nothing beats rail travel.

Travelling by train is easily more enjoyable than any species of commercial air travel, with its relentless queuing, absurd belt-and-shoe removal and endless stupidity about laptops and certain quantities of fluids. The train is also far better than travelling by car, because on a train you can actually work or read or drink as much as you like. You can walk around and, of course, you get to avoid service stations, which easily qualify as the most repellent places in Britain. Trains are often faster, greener and, most importantly, they will broaden your horizons in a way that driving just doesn’t seem able to match.

Take the train from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh, for instance, and you are transported pell-mell through time and space. Raised on railway embankments you have a front-row seat on a cacophony of geographies ranging from farmland and pasture to villages, towns, light industry; you pass vast cooling towers, suburbs, cities – through the centres of York, Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne – spying cathedrals, castles and a coastline dotted with gems such as Alnmouth and Berwick-upon-Tweed, Richard III’s great gift to England. Travelling by train from London to Edinburgh isn’t just about getting from A to B: it’s a high-speed masterclass in British anthropology, geography and history. Before you know it you’re marvelling at the landscape, gawping through the window, a tourist in your own country.

And every now and then there’s the thrill of the speed when the driver puts his or her foot down. There’s a section outside London where the tables shake and you know you’re doing well over a ton (the trains can do 140mph, apparently). And below there’s the satisfying rhythm of the rolling stock on the tracks and something reassuring about the fact that we’ve been thumping up down these rails (though hopefully not these exact rails) since the line opened between London and Edinburgh in the late 1840s. In the days of the Flying Scotsman it took six hours to do the 393-mile journey between Edinburgh Waverley and King’s Cross. Now it’s a smidge over four. Perhaps there’s life in the old country yet.

But in a way, the time is irrelevant, because when you’re on the train, you’re on the train. It becomes the whole, rather immersive experience. And it’s a joy that you don’t need to be a former Conservative defence secretary with a penchant for nifty jackets to appreciate.

As well as what’s outside and what the Futurist manifesto called ‘the beauty of speed’, there is the spectacle of what is inside: the great British public. Observing our fellow man and woman in their unguarded moments is a significantly rewarding and much overlooked aspect of rail travel. You don’t overhear the intimate personal problems of perfect strangers in the ‘Quiet carriage’ when you’re on the M6 toll road, nor do you have the pleasure of being forced to listen to someone’s boorish sales negotiations. But that’s all part of the pleasure of rail, or at least it can be.

In 200 years, railways have given the world so much: timetables, the first world war (if you believe your A.J.P. Taylor), the concept of commuting itself, plus commuter towns and the resulting notion of working from home. They’ve given us dining cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, Brief Encounter and Murder on the Orient Express. Where would Crewe be without the railways? Letting the train take the strain on iron tracks has in fact enabled the creation of the industrial civilised world as we know it. It’s been quite a journey, and it all began 200 years ago this week on an eight-mile line between Stockton and Darlington – something we should all be very proud of and grateful for.

The Spectator - The evolution of the political animal

 (personal underlines)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-evolution-of-the-political-animal/?status=Active&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BLND%20%2020250922%20%20HOUSE%20ADS%20%20JP+CID_6a6c81224ea5267d6e4a531d313f40f1

The evolution of the political animal

From Downing Street cats to presidential dogs, they have a long and varied pedigree

22 September 2025, 4:59am

Larry the Downing Street cat [Getty]

Most of our politicians themselves are not obedient, kindly and loyal. Similarities between candidates and their faithful cat or dog are few – but as trolls now deter supportive spouses and photogenic children from saccharine election leaflet photos, pets are increasingly becoming familial proxies. When Nigel Farage does a TikTok about his dogs Pebble and Baxter, thousands comment approvingly. But finding a family photo of the Reform UK leader is nearly impossible. And that, says Farage and many like him, is entirely deliberate.

Political animals are not new. Caligula threatened to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul. Cardinal Wolsey’s cat is immortalised in a bronze statue in Ipswich. In the 20th century, cats assuaged Winston Churchill’s black dog, so much so that a ginger cat with white socks called Jock – now in its seventh incarnation – must remain at Chartwell in perpetuity. The British bulldog himself loved animals, with a lion and even an albino kangaroo among the beasts he donated to London Zoo.

From the establishment of the republic, animals bounded, leapt and sauntered around the White House. George Washington had hounds named Sweet Lips, Madam Moose and Taster. John Quincy Adams apparently hosted the Marquis de LaFayette’s alligator, with the reptile thrashing in the executive mansion’s bath in the story, which may be apocryphal. Teddy Roosevelt had more than 40 pets, including macaws, zebras, raccoons, roosters, pigs and rats. His son Quentin, aged five, once escorted Algonquin the pony up in the White House lift.

The Chinese invented panda diplomacy, with the People’s Republic first giving the animals to the Soviet Union. Richard Nixon famously received Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing in 1972. Less well-known is Nixon’s reciprocal gift to the Chinese: a pair of Musk oxen.

Not as welcomed, perhaps, was the Akhal-Teke stallion given to John Major by the President of Turkmenistan in 1993. A six-month negotiation, a bribe of Moscow customs officials with a truckload of melons, an attack by bandits and unfortunate handlers being injured by the toothache-afflicted animal all featured in the journey. At its conclusion, the Household Cavalry decided that, ultimately, this particular gift horse was not for them, sending it instead to live in a Carmarthenshire sanctuary.

It wasn’t the first time an animal had put a politician under pressure. Jeremy Thorpe had Rinka. In Sochi in 2006, Vladimir Putin brought his labrador, Koni, to a press conference, knowing Angela Merkel was terrified of dogs after being attacked by one in 1995. Tony Blair said the controversy over the departure of Humphrey the cat from Downing Street was the biggest crisis of his first year of office.

In contrast, Nixon’s ‘Checkers speech’, where he paid tribute to his spaniel, humanised him. Warren Harding’s dog, Laddie Boy, ‘wrote’ articles for newspapers and became famous across the USA. Fala, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dog, was the subject of a hilarious speech lampooning Roosevelt’s opponents, with the dog today remaining the only Potus pet to be featured in a presidential memorial.

A Deltapoll survey for my book, Political Animals, suggests almost half of people in the UK know Larry, the Downing Street cat – a level of name recognition for which many backbenchers would kill. And woe betide those who mess with the political animals: Ian Murray MP called Larry ‘a little shit’ as Scotland secretary. In the recent cabinet reshuffle, Murray was out. Larry, in contrast, can laze around the cabinet table any time he chooses.

Reflexão - O candidato matrix (Nuno Lebreiro)

 

(sublinhados meus)

https://observador.pt/opiniao/o-candidato-matrix/

O candidato matrix

Em boa-verdade, a grande questão dos próximos anos políticos é mesmo esta: para além da propaganda, na prática, que significa o projecto de André Ventura para o país?

Nuno Lebreiro 

30 out. 2025, 00:16

No filme de 1972, The Candidate, Robert Redford encarna um jovem idealista que, sem perspectivas reais de ganhar uma eleição para o Senado norte-americano, é convencido por um experiente director de campanha profissional a candidatar-se contra o senador incumbente, tido como invencível. Com a garantia de que, não tendo hipótese de ser eleito, poderia dizer o que lhe apetecia, de forma genuína e sem filtros, a personagem de Redford aceita o repto. A trama evolui, claro, e, a pouco e pouco, à medida que aumentam as hipóteses do candidato outsider ganhar, também aquilo que se lhe pede em termos éticos e morais começa a mudar. Ao longo do filme a história acaba focando-se na forma como existe um enorme abismo entre, por um lado, o processo de conquista do poder através da retórica, do idealismo e da boa-vontade e, pelo outro, as concessões, os compromissos e as escolhas políticas, morais e pessoais que a realidade do exercício do poder acabam por exigir.

No final, o problema do candidato passa a ser a possibilidade de vitória. Como Lenin, perante a hipótese de ser chamado a concretizar a sua retórica desprendida e genuína, o candidato pergunta-se angustiado: o que fazer? A esta pergunta, nos nossos dias e no mundo real português, também terá que responder em breve o nosso candidato moralista, solto, anti-sistema que, com timbre estridente e convicção aparentemente genuína, tem atacado o sistema político português incumbente. Infelizmente, num regime mediático onde impera o clique, a parangona e a farsa, tal pergunta tem passado relativamente despercebida, mas, em boa-verdade, a grande questão dos próximos anos políticos é mesmo esta: para além da propaganda, na prática, que significa o projecto de André Ventura para o país? Considerando a retórica anti-impostos e o anúncio desmedido de medidas caríssimas, táctica não propriamente invulgar em quem almeja chegar ao poder, onde residirá o verdadeiro compromisso de Ventura? Por enquanto, tirando uma mão cheia de ministros sombra, sobra o mistério.

Entretanto, após as últimas eleições legislativas e os célebres 23%, espíritos mais atentos e críticos talvez antecipassem que, finalmente, aquele momento de definição onde o Chega será forçado a transfigurar-se de um partido de protesto — repare-se no nome — num partido que possa, de facto, conquistar o poder, estaria para breve, e com ele, o momento “que fazer?” do candidato Robert Redford encarnado em Ventura. Só que não. Caídos do imaginário de normalidade e saúde democráticas onde Portugal não vive, quando aterrados no pântano tristonho da choldra política lusitana, sobra-nos somente a lengalenga da “extrema-direita”, “do ataque à democracia”, da indignação generalizada para com uma possibilidade que, afinal de contas, no campo dos factos, ninguém sabe sequer muito bem o que é — e a culpa de tal desconhecimento não pode ser assacada apenas a Ventura, pelo contrário, esta é sobretudo de quem cabia perguntar-lhe e exigir-lhe respostas e que se preocupa apenas em, histericamente, gritar “lobo” com a alegada “ameaça” que aquele incarna.

Entretanto, vieram as autárquicas e o Chega, em parte, esvaziou-se na abstenção — mais uma vez, aliás, tal qual nas últimas Europeias — para alívio generalizado da populaça comentadeira e alcoviteira das rádios e TV. Na volta, pensa-se agora, afinal, até há salvação para o vendaval Ventura: se transpusermos para nível nacional, imagina-se, as virtudes, proximidades e especificidades do “poder local”, eis que se afugenta a borrasca política e se salva a Situação. Já alcançar que os votos que ora não vieram votar nos múltiplos candidatos autárquicos Chega por esse país fora são votos que, quando aparecem, apenas parecem votar Ventura, esse singelo facto pareceu passar completamente despercebido a essas argutas mentes analistas do fenómeno político nacional. Mais, que o próximo acto na peça política nacional é uma eleição altamente personalizada, por voto directo, em círculo único nacional, porventura a melhor conjugação de factores que pode haver para que o eleitorado que vota Ventura, e apenas Ventura, se mobilize mais uma vez, como nas Legislativas, para aparecer nas cabines de voto, ora aí está mais uma pequena nota de rodapé que insiste em não aparecer no debate político nacional.

Não, a grande questão política ao que parece é o desgraçado cataclismo que ameaça fazer desabar os céus sobre os desgraçados portugueses se Ventura, sempre ele, tiver uma boa votação e, quem sabe, “passar à segunda volta”. Em coro, cantam a uma só voz: Marques Mendes, o comentador residente que sucedeu ao prof. Marcelo nas suas “conversas em família” na esperança — óbvia, fajuta, quase ridícula — de suceder-lhe também no cargo presidencial, já explicou que Ventura quer “destruir a democracia”. António José Seguro, o socialista renegado que anseia por roubar votos a Marques Mendes concorda. Para ele, “há uma ameaça à democracia”, ameaça para a qual um voto na sua pessoa representa, não apenas a solução, mas a casa de albergue de todos os “democratas, progressistas e humanistas”. Já Gouveia e Melo vai mais longe. Para o Almirante salvador da pátria na luta contra o tenebroso vírus da COVID, Ventura “entrou num corrupio de racismo” e, mais grave, lembra “Hitler”. São génios, senhores, são génios — ou então não, vivem no mundo político português como pretensos actores principais sem perceber patavina do que está a acontecer à sua volta.

Mais à esquerda, a coisa é igual e, como sempre, a ameaça existencial de Ventura domina o discurso. Catarina Martins, uma democrata exemplar da extrema-esquerda jacobina, anuncia a sua candidatura, não apelando à revolução, mas, à contrário, garantindo que com ela a revolução (de Ventura) nunca ocorrerá. Nunca, jamais! Em sendo a senhora eleita Presidente da República, o “Chega”, garante-nos ela, “nunca tomará posse como Governo” — quando o Bloco de Esquerda é o guardião do regime algo está podre no reino português. Já António Filipe, candidato do cadáver adiado PCP, esse assume que tudo fará para “evitar que a extrema-direita” chegue ao poder, obviamente, na medida em que a campanha do Chega e de Ventura “envergonha o país” — já o facto do PCP ainda existir deveria ser algo que nos envergonha a todos, mas enfim, é o que há. Finalmente, do Livre, sai um desconhecido que visa ocupar o espaço que Seguro larga vazio à esquerda e, claro está, também ele aspira a “defender os ideais da República”, pois esta, tal como a democracia, Abril e tudo e tudo e tudo “está sob ataque” — de quem, ora de Ventura, pois claro. São visionários, já percebemos.

Ou seja, e tal como em tempos cantou a candidata do ADN à Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, graças a esta inteligência política toda, cada vez mais pode cantar Ventura em plenos pulmões que, na política, nas eleições, em Portugal, no mundo mediático deste pequeno rectângulo à beira-mar plantado, em todo e qualquer recanto político nacional, incluindo nas cabecinhas pensadoras do regime, o papel principal é dele — e é mesmo. Nestas condições, levado em ombros pelos principais agentes políticos nacionais, em particular os adversários, alguém se pode mesmo admirar que Ventura tenha cada vez mais votos, cada vez mais peso, e esteja cada vez mais perto da vitória final? E tudo isto sem que algum dia, algum jornalista, ou algum adversário político, tenha tido a capacidade para, pelo meio do nevoeiro mediático que o próprio cria para se anunciar como D. Sebastião, forçar Ventura a dizer a única coisa que, de facto, importa — o que é que ele quer e vai mesmo fazer no caso de ganhar?

Vivemos, portanto, no devaneio completo onde o centro gravítico de tudo o que de relevante acontece na bolha mediática é André Ventura. Os jornalistas, ansiando por audiência e o momento de glória em que saquem um gaguejo ou fraquejo do centro disto tudo, acusam, atacam, picam um Ventura que, sempre de sorriso na cara, como Neo no filme Matrix, se desvia com facilidade super-sónica das balas que lhe são enviadas. Porquê? Porque, tal como Neo, Ventura controla a “matrix” política, representando o Alfa e o Omega do mundo mediático entretanto constituído em torno de si. No final, sobram dois mistérios: primeiro, que ninguém, dos candidatos aos jornalistas, perceba que o escândalo, a indignação e a fúria que é lançado contra Ventura apenas o fortalece; depois, que também não haja alma alguma preocupada com o que Ventura, por detrás das manobras e do folclore, realmente significa para o país.

Não deixa de ser extraordinário que políticos profissionais e jornalistas com décadas de experiência vivam confortáveis com esta situação, por eles co-criada, em que todo o mundo mediático se senta numa audiência virada para um palco ocupado por apenas uma pessoa. Que não percebam que é essa situação, junto com a ambiguidade que a sua proposta representa — onde cabe tudo e o seu contrário —, que lhe dá o poder, a força e o sucesso eleitoral, é ainda mais extraordinário e uma infeliz prova da mediocridade reinante que convive, e se alimenta, de um vazio que, esse sim, representa uma ameaça, não à democracia ou à República, mas ao regime político como um todo.

O caso prático do Almirante Melo comprova o ponto. Enquanto viveu na sombra da posição mediática central em que foi artificialmente colocado por diversos interesses políticos e mediáticos, estava praticamente eleito presidente à primeira volta, e garantidamente à segunda. Mas, precisamente porque, ao contrário de Ventura, não foi a arte e o engenho do próprio que o colocou nessa posição, quando forçado a sair da ambiguidade e a explicar ao que vinha, a cada vez que foi forçado a falar lá deu a douta personagem um tiro de canhão no seu próprio barco que, já de tanta água carregado, ameaça ir ao fundo ainda antes de sequer chegar às eleições. Também ele pretendeu ser ambíguo, também ele desejou chegar a todos — primeiro, àquela direita que adora uma farda, depois, ao centro que não é de esquerda nem de direita, rigorosamente ao centro entre PS e PSD, finalmente, porque os focus group revelam que Seguro deixa espaços abertos à esquerda, anunciando-se agora como sucessor de Soares e o novo grande defensor dos imigrantes que, garante ele, ao fim de dez anos são tão portugueses quanto os restantes —, assim se mostrando na prática que, sem o talento de Ventura e a cumplicidade dos media, quando a ambiguidade é forçada a materializar-se numa opção clara, se essa opção não passar de um flato lançado no vento, a força eleitoral evapora-se na atmosfera com a mesma rapidez que o metano das vacas.

Não nos iludamos. André Ventura é, de facto, o político mais influente do país. Também será, provavelmente, o mais talentoso — em terra de cegos quem tem olho é rei. Resta é perceber o que é que esse talento retórico e mediático significa para Portugal, pelo que das duas uma: ou Ventura terá em breve o seu momento Redford e consegue orquestrar um programa, uma linha de rumo concreta e um plano de acção prático para o país que agrade a uma grande maioria; ou então, porque não conseguindo tal desiderato, ou, mais provável, porque é sempre impossível agradar pela positiva, pela proposta construtiva, a todos aqueles que, até agora, o apoiam única e exclusivamente porque representa o descontentamento, a desilusão e a raiva com o regime e o sistema, de uma forma ou outra o grande desafio de Ventura é precisamente aquele que matou o Almirante — o da materialização.

Até agora o seu talento e a inabilidade dos adversários e jornalistas adiou essa necessidade, mas, mais tarde ou mais cedo esse momento chegará. Para bom interesse do país seria melhor que isso ocorresse antes de Ventura chegar ao Governo ou, quem sabe, apesar de improvável, já nos próximos meses, à Presidência da República — mas sendo o país aquilo que é não nos poderemos surpreender que a coisa continue mesmo assim, de vazio em vazio até à vitória final. Uma coisa é certa, em democracia cada povo tem aquilo que merece.

Reflexão - Os nossos inimigos têm mísseis. Nós temos princípios (Rodrigues do Carmo)

 (sublinhados meus)

https://observador.pt/opiniao/os-nossos-inimigos-tem-misseis-nos-temos-principios/

Os nossos inimigos têm mísseis. Nós temos princípios

Quem acredita que o mundo é um condomínio de filósofos acabará por descobrir, cedo ou tarde, que os filósofos não têm mísseis. E quem não os tem acaba a discutir ética no idioma de quem os dispara.

José António Rodrigues do Carmo 

29 out. 2025, 00:18

Nos últimos anos, os portugueses habituaram-se a ouvir falar de mísseis com a mesma naturalidade com que ouvem falar de futebol. Mísseis balísticos, mísseis de cruzeiro, mísseis hipersónicos. Há tempos, uma comentadora televisiva mencionou até um perturbador “míssil basilisco”. Um prodígio mito-zoológico da ignorância.

Um míssil balístico é como um foguete das festas populares. Sobe, propulsionado pela deflagração de uma substância química, atinge um apogeu e depois regressa à Terra em queda, arrastando consigo apocalipses em miniatura.

Foi inventado na Europa. O primeiro, o V-2 alemão, criado por Von Braun, foi lançado em 1942 e, dois anos depois, já caía sobre Londres e Paris semeando destruição e terror. Mais de três mil desses engenhos voaram nos últimos meses da guerra. Foi, literalmente, o primeiro objecto humano a tocar o espaço exterior, ao serviço da Alemanha e do Tio Adolfo.

Os misseis balísticos de curto alcance mantêm-se geralmente dentro da atmosfera terrestre, mas os de maior alcance viajam para fora dela, alguns vão mesmo para além dos 1500 km de altitude (a Estação Espacial Internacional orbita a 400 km de altura). Alguns atingem o solo a velocidades hipersónicas. O maior ataque de mísseis balísticos da história partiu do Irão, em 2024, com duzentos lançados de uma vez sobre Israel.

A Europa não tem nada que se pareça, porque resolveu não ter. Tirando a França e o Reino Unido, que mantêm uns quantos, mas apenas com ogivas nucleares, selados sob códigos que ninguém quer usar, o continente praticamente não tem mísseis convencionais de longo alcance. Mísseis balísticos terrestres? Quase zero. Mísseis de cruzeiro com mais de mil quilómetros de alcance? Meia dúzia, e quase todos lançados do mar.

Em contrapartida, o mundo fora do condomínio europeu parece uma feira de foguetões: Rússia, Irão, China, Taiwan, Coreias, Hezbollah, Houthis, todos com arsenais de mísseis capazes de atingir alvos a milhares de quilómetros.

Como chegámos aqui? Tudo começou com o Tratado INF, assinado em 1987 entre os EUA e a URSS. O acordo eliminava mísseis terrestres de médio alcance (500 a 5.500 km), e embora fosse pensado para Washington e Moscovo, congelou as decisões europeias durante três décadas.

O tratado morreu em 2019, mas a inércia ficou: a Europa afeiçoou-se à ideia de que não ter mísseis era uma virtude. Aliás, evitar tudo o que fizesse lembrar a guerra, era virtude. A dependência, embalada pelo moralismo, tornou-se um modo de estar. Os europeus deitaram-se à sombra do guarda-chuva nuclear americano e concentraram-se no conforto de quem acha que já está para lá da História.

O problema é que a dissuasão terceirizada só funciona enquanto o senhorio, neste caso, os EUA, estiver para aí virado. Quando começa a olhar de esguelha, como está a acontecer, a coisa muda de figura. Os EUA fartaram-se. A Europa pregou, durante décadas, uma espécie de pacifismo aristocrático que incluía um rotineiro deboche do aliado que lhes assegurava a tranquilidade. Acreditou que a geopolítica se resolvia com palestras sobre género e descarbonização. Recusou-se a possuir mísseis de cruzeiro e balísticos de longo alcance para cargas convencionais. Foi uma opção política e cultural, embalada por idealismos kantianos e pela reconfortante convicção de que a guerra era um anacronismo impróprio de pessoas civilizadas. Hoje, essa escolha revela-se não só ingénua como perigosa e suicida.

Resultado: muitos países, muitos orçamentos, muitas certezas e nenhuma capacidade terrestre de ataque profundo. A França, valha a verdade, tem os seus MdCN. Mísseis de cruzeiro navais com alcance de cerca de 1.400 km. O Reino Unido mantém algumas dezenas de Tomahawk em submarinos. E é tudo. De resto, o que existe são mísseis de cruzeiro de curto alcance, lançados de plataformas aéreas. Storm Shadow, Taurus, e outros, bons para ataques tácticos, mas dependentes de aviões e de condições de supremacia aérea. No chão, onde a Rússia, o Irão ou a Coreia do Norte têm as suas plataformas balísticas, a Europa não tem nada.

Sim, há finalmente, algum despertar. A França, a Alemanha, a Itália e a Polónia estão a desenvolver novos mísseis de cruzeiro terrestres com alcances entre 1000 e 2000 km de alcance. Um esforço tardio, mas necessário. A França e o Reino Unido também trabalham no FC/ASW (Stratus), o sucessor do Storm Shadow e do Exocet.

Do outro lado, a Rússia dispara regularmente os seus Iskander-M (balísticos) e Khinzal (cruzeiro), sobre a Ucrânia. Mísseis hipersónicos, difíceis de interceptar. O Irão tem um catálogo inteiro: Fateh, Zolfaghar, Shahab, Ghadr, Emad, todos testados e usados, muitos já com precisão métrica. O Hezbollah tem mísseis iranianos capazes de cobrir todo o território israelita e chegar a Chipre. Os Houthis, no Iémen, disparam Burkan e Qiam contra navios e refinarias a centenas de quilómetros.

A Europa não joga neste campeonato. As consequências de um continente desarmado são óbvias até para um estudante do secundário. Sem mísseis de longo alcance, a dissuasão europeia é uma anedota.

Não há como responder a um ataque sem escalar. Quando a Rússia dispara um Iskander convencional sobre Kharkiv ou quando o Irão lança uma chuva de mísseis a 1 500 km, a Europa limita-se a mandar condolências e declarações e manifestar profunda preocupação.

Não estamos a falar de teoria: estamos a ver, na prática, quem tem meios para ferir à distância e quem fica à mercê do tempo, do vento e do arbítrio do inimigo.Porque a resposta que alguns países da Europa têm, só pode ser por via aérea. Cara, exigente, escalatória, dependente de reabastecimentos e vulnerável a defesas modernas.

Na guerra, quem tem meios impõe o ritmo. Quem não tem, marca reuniões e fala de diplomacia. E aqui surge um incentivo perverso: se o agressor sabe que a Europa não pode retaliar ao mesmo nível, mais provavelmente arriscará a agressão.  A ausência de capacidade de resposta simétrica não dissuade; encoraja. Se um míssil convencional se abate sobre uma cidade europeia, como se responde? Com aviões numa operação que exige supremacia aérea e reabastecimentos em voo? Com um comunicado a repudiar o ataque, a convocar uma cimeira e reafirmar a nossa determinação?

Alguns dizem que possuir certas armas é imoral, recuperando o conceito de “armas pouco agradáveis a Deus”, decantado em 1215, no Concílio de Latrão a propósito da besta. Mas a moralidade, sem meios, é uma flor de estufa num campo de minas. Nenhum hospital se protege com retórica. Nenhuma cidade resiste com flores e comunicados.

E há outro efeito perverso: um general impedido de recorrer a certas armas, mais dificilmente conceberá respostas criativas e antecipatórias e tenderá a andar sempre um passo atrás do inimigo O que há que fazer é também óbvio: É tempo de deixar o romance kantiano na estante e encarar a guerra tal como ela é. A recusa de possuir certas armas não é virtude, é apenas vulnerabilidade. Virtude é ter meios e não precisar de os usar. Porque o inimigo sabe que, se nos ferir, não ficará impune. A dissuasão não se faz com palavras, faz-se com capacidade, vontade e credibilidade.

A Europa precisa de acelerar programas de “deep strike” convencionais: mísseis de cruzeiro que vão até aos 2000 km, e mísseis balísticos de teatro. Lançáveis de plataformas terrestres, navais e aéreas. E, sobretudo, definir doutrina clara de resposta: rápida, proporcional e credível.

O mundo mudou e os mísseis voltaram a ser o idioma da força. Os nossos inimigos falam-no fluentemente e nós ainda estamos a conjugar o verbo “condenar”. Se continuarmos assim, não tardaremos a perceber que, na guerra, quem só tem princípios e não tem meios, acaba sempre no papel de figurante moral.

Quem insiste em acreditar que o mundo é um condomínio de filósofos, acabará por descobrir, mais tarde ou mais cedo, que os filósofos não têm mísseis. E quem não os tem, acaba a discutir ética no idioma de quem os dispara.

The Spectator - Running is being ruined by the ‘wellness’ brigade

 

(personal underlines)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/running-is-being-ruined-by-the-wellness-brigade/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=LIFE%20%2020251005%20%20SG%20%20ExpressVPN+CID_eae59237e05c0889f6250260e11f929d

Running is being ruined by the ‘wellness’ brigade

It’s become all about expensive gear and gratuitous posturing

5 October 2025, 5:00am

[iStock]

Is there a more obnoxious introduction in 21st-century Britain than the words ‘I’m a runner’? ‘I’m a runner,’ followed by the gulp of a protein shake or (shudder) the announcement of a 5k personal best. ‘I’m a runner,’ from a wheezing wannabe in carbon-plated trainers: ‘The shoes Kelvin Kiptum wore when he broke the marathon world record? Yes, yes they are.’

I am no Kelvin Kiptum. I’m not even Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run. But I am a runner, with the blackened toenails, tight hamstrings and race medals to prove it. It seems that those things are no longer worth much, though. Just as walking was subsumed by step counts, food by calorie trackers and sleep by eight-hour monitors, running has fallen foul of the bourgeois commodification that veils itself as ‘wellness’. So much for gentrification: these days, we’re seeing the plague of middle-class runnerfication, as swarms of joggers in ludicrously expensive gear and hi-tech gadgets become as common a sight as gastropubs and branches of Gail’s.

Take a stroll (or jog) on any given weekend and you’ll see what I mean. Last year record numbers of Britons took up running, according to Sport England, with 349,000 more regular joggers than in 2023. Much of this, no doubt, was fuelled by Parkrun – the weekly 5k event turned global sensation – which celebrated its 20th anniversary last autumn with a 6,000-plus turnout in Bushy Park, south London. 

But you don’t even need to step outside to see the evidence. Look at Instagram, where bright young ‘runfluencers’ such as Mary McCarthy, Jennifer Mannion and Savannah Sachdev have cultivated thousands of followers through their swift (or proudly snail-like) paces and multi-year run streaks. Look at the running apps – a market expected to grow by more than 14 per cent in the next eight years – such as the £1.6 billion route mapper Strava and its recently acquired AI ‘coach’, Runna. Look at the London Marathon website, spangled with the smug announcement that it’s registered a world-record-smashing 1.1 million ballot entries for next year’s race. 

Even dating apps have cashed in on the boom, with Tinder launching its own run club last year. And celebrities aren’t immune, with singer Harry Styles the most recent addition to the coveted ‘sub three-hour marathon’ club after completing the Berlin course last month. No wonder the Atlantic called running the ‘new quarter-life crisis’: if you have pre-rheumatic knees and live anywhere near a pavement, the chances are you’ll be pounding it. 

‘What’s so wrong with that?’ you may ask as you slurp on your isotonic energy gel. After all, the lure of running is obvious: it’s free (in theory), it’s demonstrably good for your wellbeing and it’s an effective way to shed the pounds. To protect a National Health Service panting beneath the pressure of the obesity crisis and mental ill health, becoming a ‘runner’ is arguably a noble – nay necessary – pursuit. 

And yet, of course, it’s not that simple. Long gone are the days when you could pull on a moth-eaten T-shirt and go for a ten-minute pootle round the block. Unless you’re clocking up the kilometres for ‘kudos’ (that’s Strava’s equivalent of social media ‘likes’) with a Garmin watch, hydration vest and £150 heart rate monitor strapped around your chest, it simply doesn’t count. You don’t even have to be running to see this consumerism in action. Nike and US brand Hyperice will launch their ‘hyperboot’ in the UK this month: battery-powered trainers you can pop on for 15 minutes before or after a run to improve blood flow, for the princely sum of £699.99.

Nowhere is this tedious commodification more obvious than where I live in south-west London – a tarmac idyll for Lululemon-clad athletes. During my last evening loop around Battersea Park, I counted no fewer than 28 fellow runners clogging up the pathways. So ubiquitous are the pavement patrols that even a friend of mine, who once missed a flight to Buenos Aires because he refused to run for it, caved into the pressure and signed up for the Barcelona Marathon. When building up to 26.2 miles from no miles at all, little wonder that he (like many) ended up with shin splints, dodgy ankles and a torn ACL. (By the way, for the purposes of this piece, he’s still asked I call him a ‘runner’.)

Just last week I saw three posts from a runfluencer on the verge of despair because he’d completed ‘the worst half-marathon of his life’ in – horror of horrors – one hour, 23 minutes. This, to be clear, is not an elite athlete; just an ordinary man with a few dozen brain cells and copious time to train. His is hardly the plight of Pheidippides, the legendary marathoner who ran to Athens to announce the Ancient Greeks’ victory in battle and promptly died from the effort. But, then again, even Pheidippides might have pulled through for a Puma sponsorship deal and some high-protein ready meals to flog.

This isn’t the first running boom in the past 50 years. Nor will it be the last. And yet it’s notable that this latest explosion comes hot on the heels of the Covid years, when once-daily exercise was one of the only legal reasons to leave the house and ‘staying healthy’ took on a more sinister significance. Against that backdrop, the posturing of ‘runners’ – the obsession with pace and over-priced gear and carbohydrate consumption – is almost gratuitous. At best, running is about the freedom of dirt on your shoes, strength in your legs and not a thought in your head. At worst, it’s a dangerous cycle of control and comparison, the most grotesque type of consumerist culture in which food becomes fuel, bodies become gym equipment and personal bests become just another number to beat. 

Perhaps the best runner to look to, then, is the great Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who has been running every day since 1982. While promoting his 188-page ode to the sport, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, he wrote simply: ‘I’m not a great runner, but I’m a strong runner. That’s one of the very few gifts I can be proud of.’ Is there a more humble, more worthy way of explaining why you run? Not for style, speed or to log on social media, but simply because you can? 

So much for ‘I’m a runner’. Ask yourself: why, exactly, are you?

Fotos - Mais um treino

 Uma viagem de barco para o treino dos Vetvals no colégio Valsassina em 28.10.2025

The Spectator - Why don’t we know how many people are in Britain?

 

(personal underlines)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-dont-we-know-how-many-people-are-in-britain/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020250130%20%20AL+CID_29da306a1469bad49aeef39e0cbf7613

Why don’t we know how many people are in Britain?

Sam Bidwell

How many people live in Britain? You would think there would be a straightforward answer, but it eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds.

This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projected that our population will grow by some 4.9 million people over the next seven years, bringing Britain’s official population to over 70 million. The bulk of that population growth will come from immigration – nearly ten million people.

But can these projections be trusted? Never mind how many people will live in Britain in seven years, we do not know how many people are living here now. This is despite the fact that – going by the number of CCTV cameras per (estimated) capita – Britons are among the most surveilled people in the world. Big Brother may be watching, but he isn’t counting.

While the ONS does produce mid-year population estimates, these are often considerably wide of the mark. The last national census, in the spring of 2021, proved that point. The total reported population was off by nearly 300,000 from the ONS’s estimate for the year.

Other estimates fare even worse. The Annual Population Survey, which samples about 150,000 households nationwide, has seen response rates plummet from around half in 2017 to less than one in five last year. The APS is so useless that its national statistical accreditation was suspended in October.

Unlike some other countries, such as Sweden, Britain has no centralised population register. We don’t count people in or out of the country, so our population figures are based on rough estimates. Imposing such checks at the border is more difficult than it sounds. Dual passport holders and the UK-Ireland Common Travel Area both present logistical hurdles.

If the British state is bad at population estimates, the private sector is no better. A recent report conducted by Edge Analytics on behalf of Thames Water suggested that as many as one in 12 people could be living in London illegally. However, the methodology was far from robust. Rather than measuring actual water usage, it used out-of-date migration estimates from 2017 and assumed the irregular migrant population peaked the previous year.

Yet even though no company or organisation can give a complete picture of how many people are in the country or who they are, one trend is clear. Whenever official population figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always undercounted.

In England alone, nearly 64 million patients are registered with GP practices, higher than the ONS’s estimated national population of 58 million. In 2021, NHS figures indicated a Covid vaccination rate of more than 100 per cent in some areas. In other words, more people had received Covid jabs than were registered as NHS patients.

The problem of population undercounting isn’t new, but it has worsened in recent years, largely because of unusually high post-Brexit migration (both legal and illegal). The surge of non-EU migrants after the end of the Covid lockdowns – the so-called ‘Boriswave’ – represented such a radical increase in numbers that statisticians have struggled to keep up. The ONS’s estimate for net migration in 2022 alone has been revised upwards three times, from an initial figure of 606,000 to 872,000.

This estimate is mostly for legal migrants. Illegal migrants are even harder to track. Though discussions about illegal immigration often focus on the ‘small boats’ crossing the Channel, this is not the only way to achieve undocumented residence in the UK. The vast majority of illegal immigrants arrive legally and then overstay their visas. Many of these overstayers fade into the ‘grey market’, taking up unofficial positions in the gig economy and renting from landlords who are willing to turn a blind eye.

The state’s record at removing these illegal migrants is remarkably poor. The number of ‘enforced returns’ has fallen sharply in the past 20 years, from 21,425 in 2004 to a mid-pandemic low of around 3,000. Last year’s figure of 7,706 represents a slight improvement, but it is still well below the pre-pandemic average. 

If 7,706 returns sounds low, that’s because it is. Though estimates range widely, the latest figures suggest that Britain could be home to 745,000 illegal immigrants. That’s more than any other country in Europe, and the true number could be higher still. In October 2017, David Wood, the former head of immigration enforcement at the Home Office, suggested that the figure could be as high as 1.2 million. 

Against these enormous numbers, 7,706 is a drop in the ocean, particularly when inadequate record-keeping and porous borders ensure that the illegal immigrant population can replenish itself year on year. For every return which the Home Office enforces, how many new visa overstayers does it miss? We simply do not know.

What’s to blame for the country’s data deficiency? Officially, stretched resources are at fault, and this is partially true. The ONS faces the mammoth task of collecting, recording and reporting hundreds of different datasets each year. From time to time, efficiencies will need to be made. None of this will have been helped by the ONS’s relocation in 2006, when around a thousand jobs were transferred to Newport. This early example of ‘levelling up’ has made it difficult for our national statistical body to recruit top talent: as many as nine in ten staff members did not follow their jobs to Wales, while a grand total of seven senior civil servants chose to make the move.

Ultimately, the failure to collect accurate population data is also a product of deliberate decision-making. When time and money are limited, bodies such as the ONS must decide which datasets they want to keep publishing, and which they want to discontinue. And when potentially controversial migration datasets happen to fall out of publication, ministers are unlikely to clamour for their return. Collecting more accurate data on the population at large risks exposing the scale of our national failure on migration, and would force the government to confront the fact that so many British businesses now rely on illegal immigrant labour.

‘Well, no one told me there was a new world order.’

Efforts to spare politicians’ blushes have real-life consequences. At every level, public policy decisions rely on the assumption of accurate demographic data. An inflated population puts unexpected pressure on public services and infrastructure. It means increased water and electricity usage, more cars on the roads and more passengers on public transport. If the figures being used for investment decisions underestimate the true size of the population, then the investment inevitably won’t be enough. 

Population undercounting also means more strain on the NHS and on schools. It means a tighter-than-expected housing market, as fewer homes are built than are needed and there is more competition for rental properties. It means that many small business owners have to compete with unscrupulous firms that use grey-market labour to suppress wage costs. Those working here illegally are unlikely to report their employers to the authorities for underpaying them.

Britain’s phantom population problem affects nearly every aspect of life in this country. What can be done to address it? We must at least improve our national data collection capacity. Some have suggested that we might need to conduct an emergency census, to allow us to fully grasp the scale of the Boriswave – though this will be a challenge to organise without taking a serious look at how the ONS collects and processes data.

There are lessons from the US, if we care to learn them, about how to combat illegal migration. In the first days of his second term, a reinvigorated President Donald Trump has already suspended new visa applications at the southern borders, redeployed active duty troops to help with removal flights and allowed authorities to arrest illegal migrants in schools, churches and hospitals. On Monday alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 956 people.

Whether or not Trump’s successes will inspire a similar flurry of activity from our own government remains to be seen.