Foreign Policy In Focus

How can a candidate, such as Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana or Cardinal Cláudio Hummes of Brazil, be considered conservative but still produce statements critical of neoliberal capitalism?

Cross-posted from the Dissent Magazine blog Arguing the World.

Will the next pope embrace liberation theology? The conventional answer would be: fat chance. However, without going too far out on a limb, one could also answer in the affirmative. In their own ways, both responses will likely be correct.

The chances that a true radical will be selected as Pope are next to nil. That’s because none are in the running. Technically, any baptized male Catholic can be elected to the post. But, in practice, the pope is selected from the church’s cardinals under the age of eighty. At this point, all the eligible cardinals were appointed to their positions either by Pope Benedict XVI or by Pope John Paul II. Both men vigilantly stacked the deck with cardinals whose views range, in the words of one religion professor, from conservative to ultraconservative.

Liberal theologian Hans Küng gives a harsh assessment of Benedict’s selection of Vatican personnel. “Under the German pope, a small, primarily Italian clique of yes-men, people with no sympathy for the calls to reform, were allowed to come into power,” Küng stated. “They are partly responsible for the stagnation that stifles every attempt at modernization of the church system.”

The most brilliant suggestion I’ve seen for a candidate who would decisively break with established traditions (and who would need to come from outside the current pool of cardinals) was penned by E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. In a recent column entitled, “The best choice for pope? A nun,” Dionne argued that “An all-male hierarchy adopted policies to cover up the [sex abuse scandal plaguing the church] and seemed far too inclined to put protecting the church’s image ahead of protecting children.” He added, “Throughout history, it’s not uncommon for women to be brought in to put right what men have put wrong.”

Since that’s not going to happen, we can at least hope for a church leader who recognizes and validates the critical social justice work carried out largely by nuns, rather than spending his time reprimanding women religious.

One of the candidates considered to be among the frontrunners in the papal conclave would appear, at first look, to fit that bill: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. Not only would Turkson, as an African, break the European stranglehold on the papacy, he would come to the office straight from serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. In this capacity, Turkson oversaw the release of a 2011 document that gave a fairly stinging critique of the international financial system. It blasted speculative trading, reiterated previous church warnings against “idolatry of the market,” and argued, “No one can in conscience accept the development of some countries to the detriment of others.” This is what has led some commentators to suggest that liberation theology may make a comeback if Turkson becomes pope.

But as Naunihal Singh explains at the New Yorker, Turkson has a strong conservative side. He is notably homophobic, even by church standards, having defended anti-gay legislation in Africa and having linked the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandals to cultures that are permissive of homosexuality (rather than to an internal institutional culture that prizes secrecy, hierarchy, and obedience). Turkson also caused a scandal last year by showing a fear-mongering and discredited anti-Muslim video to a meeting of church officials. The British Independent has dubbed the cardinal “Conservatism’s Cape crusader.”

While they may seem incongruous, Turkson’s seeming contradictions speak to a wider point: in order to understand the Vatican’s response to liberation theology, one must appreciate how individuals such as Turkson can be considered conservatives within the church and nevertheless produce statements strongly critical of neoliberal capitalism.

It is widely noted that, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the office of the Inquisition. There he earned the nickname “God’s Rottweiler,” leading the effort to silence creative and non-conformist voices within Catholicism. During Ratzinger’s tenure as doctrinal enforcer, the church is said to have officially rejected liberation theology.

But this is only true in part. The Vatican did object to liberation theologians’ use of Marxist sociological analysis, and it rejected their challenges to the centralized authority of Rome. Yet, at the same time, it affirmed many of the central doctrines of liberation theology, especially those relating to poverty, inequality, and economic justice. Most notably, the “preferential option for the poor,” the once-radical idea that God takes sides and identifies with the oppressed and impoverished, has been mainstreamed as Catholic theological doctrine.

To this extent, if not necessarily in the overall orientation of his ministry, the next pope is almost certain to carry forward the liberationist tradition.

Under each of the last two popes, the church has released statements about the global economy that take cues from liberation theology’s teachings. John Paul II condemned “the resurgence of a certain capitalist neoliberalism which subordinates the human person to blind market forces.” And it is worth remembering that Pope Benedict gave Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders and leading lights of liberation theology, a place of honor at anAsh Wednesday mass in 2007. Religion & Politics editor Tiffany Stanley notes that Ratzinger’s current replacement as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, German Archbishop Gerhard Müller, “is said to be sympathetic to liberation theology and even co-authored a book with Gutiérrez.”

Likewise, it’s fascinating to read the reflections of prominent Brazilian liberationist Leonardo Boff, who was famously silenced for a year in 1985 and who ultimately left the priesthood in 1992. Boff is critical of Benedict. But he was also on friendly terms with Ratzinger, and he cites occasions upon which the former cardinal referred favorably to his books.

As for the upcoming conclave, probably the best candidate one can hope for from the perspective of liberation theology is another Brazilian, Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, the former archbishop of São Paulo. Hummes has shifted towards the center in recent decades and, like Turkson, has taken some controversial and reactionary stances (in his case, opposing the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Brazil). That said, he has significant progressive bona fides.

Preaching in working-class areas in and around São Paulo in the 1970s, Hummes supported Worker’s Party dissidents organizing against the country’s military junta. As Anna Flora Anderson of the Dominican School of Theology in São Paulo explained to the BBC in 2005: “The military would quickly shut down any union meeting. So one of the great things Claudio did was to open up the smaller churches [to activists]—so the unions could meet without interference.”

Hummes is a personal friend of former Brazilian president and Worker’s Party leader Lula da Silva. He has defended the land occupations of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra. And he has long been regarded as an ally of the grassroots “base communities” that put liberation theology into practice throughout Brazil. As the Washington Post reports, on his first day on the job as archbishop of São Paulo, in 1998, Hummes “attacked the spread of global capitalism, saying the privatization of state companies and the lowering of tariffs had contributed to the ‘misery and poverty affecting millions around the world.’”

Much more than the many yes-men in the conclave, Hummes would open the door for the revival of social justice ministry in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, you should only put your money on the Brazilian to become the next pope if you like betting on long shots. As of this writing, the odd-makers have him at 50-1.

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website Democracy Uprising. You can follow Mark at his Facebook page.

Historian Ward Wilson pokes holes in the mythology of nuclear weapons.

Long awaited by many of us in the arms control and disarmament communities, historian Ward Wilson's book, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January. It doesn't fail to deliver. What at first seems like a short book soon becomes a distillate of years of the author's thinking, to which the expansive footnotes and lengthy bibliography also attest.

Wilson is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. For years unaffiliated, though, with either academy or a foundation, his writing style can be characterized as plain speaking and congenial, accessible to the general public as well as policymakers, strategists, and historians.

Sixty-eight years after the Trinity test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, arms control moves in fits and starts and total disarmament is considered unrealistic -- unattainable to its advocates, inadvisable to most. Meanwhile, those members of the public who aren't too frightened by existential issues or too distracted to face them view global warming as more urgent than nuclear weapons. Others operate under the illusion that the end of the Cold War has diminished the nuclear threat to the point where we can live with it.

Besides, the primal logic of deterrence -- discouraging an attack by your ability to respond -- makes perfect sense to many. But, nuclear weapons may not lend themselves to deterrence as well as conventional thinking holds. In fact, the idea that "nuclear deterrence works in a crisis" is one of Wilson's myths -- as is even the proposition that they keep us safe.

Actually, deterrence is the second pillar of faith in nuclear weapons. The first was erected when their detonation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II supposedly forced Japan to surrender. It's also the first myth that Wilson attempts to debunk: "Nuclear weapons shock and awe opponents." For one cannot stand without the other. As he wrote in a 2008 article (The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence) for Nonproliferation Review that helped put him on the map as a nuclear-weapons historian: "The collapse of the Hiroshima case undermines one of the cornerstones of nuclear deterrence theory."

Turns out, as Wilson writes in Five Myths, "Japan's leaders consistently displayed a lack of interest in the [conventional] bombing that was wrecking their cities." To them, it was the Russian invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island upon which the war hinged. With Russia also planning to invade Hokkaido, the northern-most of Japan's islands, Japan realized it could not fight a war against both Russia and the United States-led Western powers. Wilson then turns the question around.

Proponents of nuclear weapons who claim that Japan was forced to surrender because of the bombing of Hiroshima face a difficult question: Why would Japan's leaders have been motivated to act by an event that was not strategically decisive?

The main piece of evidence that Wilson uses to build his case against the efficacy of nuclear weapons is the Cuban missile crisis, about which you've no doubt already seen much revisionist history in commemoration of its fiftieth anniversary last year. Wilson, though, instead of concentrating on why our nukes didn't deter Russia, focuses on why Russia's nuclear threat didn't deter President John Kennedy from blockading Cuba and demanding that nuclear missiles be removed from Cuba. "So why did," Wilson asks, "nuclear deterrence fail? And why did Kennedy take steps that seem to meet [a] definition of reckless lunacy?" (Author's emphasis.)

In still more picturesque language, he rephrases the question directly.

In the most dangerous nuclear crisis the world has ever known, one leader saw the nuclear deterrence stop sign, saw the horrifying image of nuclear war painted on it, and gunned through the intersection anyway.

In other words, fear of Russia's nuclear weapons didn't keep President Kennedy from putting the pedal to the metal. Wilson again:

One way that proponents of nuclear weapons explain Kennedy's willingness to risk nuclear war is by arguing that U.S. nuclear superiority made the risk of nuclear war negligible.…But most of the senior participants and Kennedy himself said, either directly or indirectly, that nuclear superiority had had little to do with decisions made during the crisis.…by the late 1950s both sides had the ability to inflict significant damage in the event of a war, even after absorbing a nuclear strike. 

Another approach that helped lend Wilson credibility early in his career was to forbear attacking nuclear weapons from the point of view of morality and, instead, hold them accountable on the basis of their actual usefulness as weapons.

The problem with nuclear weapons is that there is no way to concretely verify the claims that are made about their importance. There is really only one data point -- Hiroshima -- determining their cash basis. The danger is that we have overinflated their value by misinterpreting that one event.

Confident that he'd win, it's as if Wilson agreed to cede the home-court advantage to the arrayed forces of national defense: "Body count aside, will nuclear weapons win wars?" (My words, not his.) More to the point, will bombing cities, known as area bombing in World War II, prove decisive in winning wars? Wilson writes:

People often talk about nuclear weapons' ability to create destruction as if it were an accepted fact that destruction and military effectiveness are the same thing. But.…destruction does not win wars.

Among the instances he cites besides Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the siege of Stalingrad during which the Wehrmacht destroyed the city with bombing and artillery. Soviet soldiers clung to the ruins and eventually outlasted the German assault. Wilson concludes:

Destroying cities and killing civilians is large beside the point in terms of military strategy.

Each of the five myths transitions to the next. Wilson pulls this off exceptional gracefulness when, at the end of Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, he addresses the subject of the nuclear genie -- the idea that nuclear know-how and technology can't be un-developed, as it were, and stuffed back into the bottle. Connecting the circle, he writes that obsolescence will obtain when it's shown that nuclear weapons are no longer viewed as useful in winning wars. 

Thousands of Libyans remain internally displaced by ethnic tensions unleashed by the revolution.

While this month marked the second anniversary since the start of Libya’s uprising, the country is still struggling with the ramifications of its upheaval and the difficulties of reconciliation following its violent conflict. Thousands of Libyans remain internally displaced by ethnic tensions unleashed by the revolution.

The city of Tawergha is perhaps the most poignant example of the exile many Libyans have experienced: it is now a veritable “ghost town,” its residents forced to take refuge elsewhere following the catastrophic battles between loyalist and rebel forces that occurred in the area. Tawergha’s estimated 30,000 to 40,000 displaced residents continue to be prevented from returning to their homes due to safety concerns. The few who have tried to return have supposedly been stopped by Misratan brigades who “threatened to kill them and burn the remains of their houses,” according to the Libya Herald.

Tawergha lies along the road between the central coastal city of Sirte—Muammar Gaddafi’s last stronghold and the city where he was both born and killed—and the northwestern city of Misrata, a rebel stronghold that rose up in rebellion in February 2011. As a result of its proximity, Tawergha was occupied by Gaddafi’s forces and used as a base for loyalist military operations against the neighboring Misrata.

Tension between the two cities remains high, as residents of both Tawergha and Misrata have experienced the fallout from the violent clashes between loyalist and rebel forces. Misratans accuse Tawerghans of siding with Gaddafi, participating in his military operations against Misrata, and committing war crimes such as rape and looting. There is also a racial element to this tension, since Tawerghans typically have noticeably darker skin, and many of Gaddafi’s forces were comprised of African mercenaries as well as Libyans.

The reprisal for Tawerghans was swift after Gaddafi’s fall, with Misratan forces launching a series of attacks on the city that Amnesty International characterized as ethnic cleansing. The town’s infrastructure is considerably damaged—even uninhabitable—as a result of the rebel capture of the town in August 2011, which precipitated widespread fires, gunfights, and NATO airstrikes. Tawergha was later looted and pillaged by anti-Gaddafi forces, and the green sign to the city has been vandalized with “Misrata” graffiti.

Libya’s Deputy Prime Minister Awad Barasi has recently announced plans to address these internally displaced citizens, meeting with ministers to discuss solutions to the problem. Without state support, there is little chance that reconciliation or lasting peace can be achieved between these displaced groups and their neighbors.

Leslie Garvey is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.

Bulgaria's younger generation carries the past more lightly.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

My current project focuses on re-interviewing the people I talked to in East-Central Europe in 1990. But if I restricted my interviews to this group of people, I’d get a rather skewed picture of the region today. After all, I’d miss out on an entire generation of people that was too young to participate in the changes or was born afterwards.

To ensure that I have a more balanced picture, I thought it would be interesting to interview the children of the original interviewees. Nevena Milosheva-Krushe, the daughter of Mariana Milosheva-Krushe, is the first of these interviews.

Like many people of her generation, Nevena has no direct experience of the communist era. She was only two years old in 1989. She remembers the stories that her elders told her. But 1989 is as far away in time for her as the 1960s were for my generation (it took me a long time, for instance, to realize that Woodstock was something other than a character in the Peanuts comic strip).

Nevena works in one of the multinational companies with an office in Sofia. She is rather optimistic by temperament, a trait she shares with her activist mother but which is sometimes a sentiment in short supply in Bulgaria. And because of her contact with other ethnic groups and her own time spent abroad, she highly values multiculturalism.

“Since I was little, I had contacts with different groups through my mother,” she told me. “And then in the university we had people from different ethnic groups and also different countries, mostly from the Balkans. And in Amsterdam, we had people from very different places. I really don’t like generalizations that all people from this group are such and such. I experienced the same thing in Amsterdam: ‘You’re a Bulgarian and this means that you are not hard-working and so on.’”

It is perhaps this awareness of the outer world – and how the outer world perceives Bulgaria – that distinguishes the younger generation from those who lived during the communist period. From an early age the post-communist generation has travelled outside of Bulgaria and/or has had access to all sorts of global media. They carry the past more lightly and are often bemused by the intense arguments that still rage over what took place before they were born.

Of course, young people in Bulgaria are all over the map, literally as well as ideologically. There are young neo-fascists and young farmers and young populists and young drug addicts and young rock musicians and many many young people who are living outside of Bulgaria. Many of these young people share little in common except for the generation gap that separates them from their dinosaur parents. But that gap doesn’t seem very large in the case of Nevena and her mother.

The Interview 

When did you first realize that you were living in a country that was completely different before you were born?

There were many things that were different compared to other countries. For instance, I remember the stories of when we had only one kind of chocolate or standing on line for bread. One of my first memories, when I was younger than 8 years old, is my grandmother telling me about the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I was 8, I traveled for the first time abroad and the difference was huge. We went to Switzerland.

Ah, well the difference between Switzerland and most countries is huge! Your mom said that you got a business degree. Where did you get that?

In Amsterdam. It was my master’s degree. My bachelor’s was at the American University in Bulgaria.

How was that experience at the American University?

Very interesting. Our educational system is much worse than the Western European and American education. But I wanted to be in Bulgaria, so that was my choice.

Were all the classes in English? 

Yes.

Was your English pretty good when you graduated high school? 

I studied some subjects in English in high school. But I needed to study quite a lot more: to learn business terms and so on.

You were interested in business early on in life?

No, actually, I wanted to study politics. I started with politics at the university. But then I wanted to stay in Bulgaria and honestly I didn’t feel like going into politics in Bulgaria. I took a business course and it was very interesting. But I also studied journalism as a second degree.

You said you wanted to stay in Bulgaria. Why?

Because I am more optimistic than most people. Many things have improved a lot here, even though people are quite negative about everything around here most of the time. Many things continue to improve regardless of what specific party is ruling.

A lot of your classmates didn’t stay in Bulgaria. Did you have arguments trying to persuade them to stay or did they try to persuade you to go?

Yes, we had arguments. But to be honest, then I went to Amsterdam for a year for my masters. What was most different there was that it was more organized. It can be quite tempting to stay somewhere else. But again, I have my family and friends here.

You weren’t tempted to stay in Amsterdam?

A little bit. But finding a regular-level job there was much more difficult than finding one here.

It was easy to find a job here when you got back from Amsterdam?

Yes. I got a job at a company called Shevana. We deal with service departments for employees traveling around the world.

What are your responsibilities?

I’m in marketing and sales. We do different campaigns, communicating with different kinds of customers.

Customers just in Bulgaria?

Everywhere.

That’s why you have to speak English.

Yes.

You’ve seen Amsterdam. You’ve studied business. How would you evaluate the business climate here in Bulgaria? Is the workplace here basically the international standard? Or are there some things that are really frustrating?

I think it’s getting better and better. Many international companies have offices here by now. Most of the bigger ones and some smaller ones. Of course we’re a good destination. The salaries can be lower but at the same time the work standard is good. In Amsterdam, the salaries would be quite higher.

Can you give an example of something that was frustrating that is no longer frustrating?

At the beginning many companies were not paying maximum health benefits. For the past five years, this has been much better.

You said at one point that you decided not to do politics. Do you think the political situation has improved?

I think there’s some improvement. For example, it might sound strange, but now we have a subway line. Of course we also have more traffic. On social issues, I think it’s getting a bit better. There’s more tolerance of differences than some years ago. Of course, there’s still some problems, many problems, but I think it’s improving a bit. More foreigners are visiting the country than before.

In your free time you mentioned that you do volunteer work?

I haven’t had a lot of time for it, but I’ve helped my mother on some of her projects. But I’d like to help children, orphans, in my free time.

She mentioned that your friends and colleagues are also interested in volunteering.

For example, I have one friend working in a bank for seven years who also feels like doing something in his free time, because business gets a little tiring. You need to not just sell products but help people, without any salary. Most people are not doing a lot. But there is a desire to do more. But then we also have to stay at work quite late.

Have you gotten involved in any of the big environmental actions?

I’ve heard about them. But I’m more interested in topics connected to children or discrimination. I have a friend who works for this type of organization. I’m thinking of helping her.

On the issue of tolerance, you’ve said that the situation on the street is a little better and there are more visiting foreigners. But there’s also the anti-Roma sentiment. How do you explain these two things?

In other countries also, there’s been these tendencies after the collapse of the communist regimes: prejudice but also some improvement in tolerance. Before, we had the same Ataka type of thing, but it was not public. These people had the same views.

They just didn’t open their mouths in public?

Yes. And they didn’t have such a political party.

How much contact did you have with other Bulgarians of different ethnicities when you were at school or growing up?

Since I was little, I had contacts with different groups through my mother. And then in the university we had people from different ethnic groups and also different countries, mostly from the Balkans. And in Amsterdam, we had people from very different places. I really don’t like generalizations that all people from this group are such and such. I experienced the same thing in Amsterdam: “You’re a Bulgarian and this means that you are not hard-working and so on.”

In the business community here, is it mostly ethnic Bulgarians? 

Mostly. But there are different people. The companies are international and for them it’s only important whether you do your job.

On the Roma issue, I’ve talked with people about three different policy directions: good jobs, good education, and political power. Which do you think is most important?

Education. But at the same time, in order to to start with education and get to political power we need to be more tolerant. In schools, for instance. Most Bulgarians are not very nice to other ethnicities.

Can you give some examples?

I remember in my first to fourth grade school, we had two Roma kids and they were mostly not treated in a nice fashion. That was not okay with me. We should start by understanding each other’s cultures.

Was there any Roma information in your textbooks or your classes when you were growing up?

No.

Ethnic Turkish culture?

Only from the history textbooks about when we were enslaved by the Ottomans. But that was a long time ago. We should now just look at people as people.

What about at the American University? Were there classes about Roma or ethnic Turkish culture?

Nothing specific.

In the United States, the civil rights movement went hand in hand with a change in textbooks. It’s hard to have a change in people’s attitudes without that change in education. You were lucky to have your mother.

You’re right about education. We need to learn more about their culture. That would help people understand each other better. We can start with that.

You were more pessimistic about the future than you were in your assessment of the past.

Yes, but my view of the future was more optimistic than most people’s.

Yes, but why didn’t you say 8 about the future?

I think we are going to develop further but at a slower pace than other countries.

What do you think about the overall economy in Bulgaria? A lot of people tell me that they go abroad or don’t come back because of the lack of jobs. Is that something you hear among your friends?

Very often. But actually, I think things are getting a bit better than before. It’s as hard as in other countries. Before you go and live somewhere for a year, you can’t know what it’s like. Many people think that Western Europe is great, all well organized and arranged. But you’re still a foreigner over there. And it’s as hard to find a job as here. The salaries are low here. But our living standard is lower too. The minimum wage is quite low. And the pensions are really a big problem. I don’t think any grandparents can live by themselves without anyone helping them. That’s a problem.

When you hear the word NGO, what do you think?

People who help society but not related to profit.

So you have a positive association. I’ve heard that people here have negative associations with NGOs.

Yes. They feel like NGOs are not doing enough. But I think it’s because they are doing things for the long term. You have to be patient for the change they’re working for to come. Of course, I communicate with business people. They are thinking in terms of short-term profit. So, that’s a different mindset.

What do you think will happen in the next Bulgarian elections in the fall? Let’s say there are two scenarios: the one you want to happen and the one you don’t want to happen.

All the times that I could vote, I wasn’t voting for a scenario I wanted to happen but for the least-worst scenario.

Because your scenario wasn’t available.

Yes. I don’t think there’s any party that’s perfect, that I want to vote for now and forever. But of course, everyone has pitfalls. And everyone is trying to do something. Even the current government.

When you say that they’re trying to do something, did you have anything in mind? Other than the new subway.

The financial situation is not so bad in the context of the global economic situation. It could be quite worse.

Why haven’t young people come together to form a political party?

I think there’s quite a lot of fear. And people are not that active in civil society, including young people. They are trying some stuff like, as you said, on the forest issue. But still we need more activity. People focus on their job, their business, and that’s it.

What do you think of when you think of Europe?

The continent.

Does the continent include Bulgaria?

Yes, the whole continent includes Bulgaria. The EU also includes us. But we’re a new member, so there are certain restrictions.

Do you think the overall experience of joining the EU is a good one

Yes.

Any negative aspects?

I don’t think so. We are a very small country, and we need to somehow to join the others. Of course the situation of the EU right now is not the best. We don’t have the Euro, and for the first time it’s a good thing that we are a little backward.

Yes, hooray for the leva!

Yes, exactly.

Do you see yourself living in Bulgaria for the rest of your life? When you talk to your friends, what do they think in terms of the future?

More people are staying here and wishing to stay here. Maybe five years ago, I knew many more people who wanted to leave. And now, many people want to stay.

When you look back to 1989, when you were two years old, and all that has changed or not changed, how would you evaluate that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being least satisfied and 10 most satisfied?

8.

Same scale, same period of time: your own personal life?

8.

When you look into the next couple years, what do you expect for Bulgaria, on a scale of one to 10, with one being more pessimistic and 10 being most optimistic?

6.

Sofia, October 2, 2012

A case of the conflicting autopsies: Palestinian and Israeli.

On Saturday, Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat died from wounds suffered while being held in an Israeli prison. Israeli officials claimed Jaradat died from a heart attack but now say the autopsy evidence is inconclusive. Palestinian officials determined his death was the result of torture.

Described as being in good health by his family and friends, it seems unlikely that 30-year-old Arafat would succumb to a heart attack. An autopsy revealed a slew of bodily injuries incurred during Jaradat’s five-day incarceration. These include: six broken bones in the neck, spine, arms, and legs, severe bruising on the back and chest, broken ribs, muscular wounds to the shoulder, chest and right hand, and facial bruising with bleeding from the lips and nose. Jaradat’s heart was healthy with no signs of damage.

The UN Security Council and UN Middle East peace envoy, Robert Serry, have called for an “independent and transparent investigation” to establish the cause of death in this case. The inquiry presents a likely catch-22 for these investigating bodies.If the report finds prison authorities complicit in the torture of Jaradat there could be an outbreak of unrest. If authorities are not found responsible Palestinians will likely say the investigation is swayed in Israel’s favor, generating significant outcry.

The back-and-forth only deepens the escalating tensions that have come to a head in past weeks. Thousands of prisoners have been participating in widespread hunger strikes to protest Israel’s administrative detention policy and bring attention to their plight. The death of Arafat Jaradat only swells the anger and outrage felt by Palestinians that could soon boil over.

The upheaval comes as President Obama is set to visit the region in the coming weeks. Israeli Defense Minister, Amos Gilad, is already claiming that Palestinian medical officials are jumping to conclusions to “stir things up” in advance of the president’s visit. But thus far Palestinians have only called for justice and fairness for detained prisoners, to avoid another tragedy like the death of Arafat Jaradat.