----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Henwood To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:11 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: was Arafat, um, you know? - poisoned?
John Mage wrote:
>Doug wrote:
>
>>[from Popbitch]
>>
>> >> Arafatwa <<
>> Is Yasser the new Freddie?
>or
><http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-11/11/article06.shtml>
>
>or both... or neither...
The guy was 75 and lived under a lot of stress.
I wonder - will Israel come to miss the old codger?
Doug ============ Yes, but get them to admit it.
On the subject of poisoning... It was my first thoughts when I heard That Yasir Arafat was incapacitated.
I was looking for book reviews of "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael C. Ruppert.
This isn't one of them... Just a bit of synchronicity ~~~~~~~
HighBeam Research Title: Crossing the Rubicon Date: 10/4/2002; Publication: Jerusalem Post; Author: CHARLEY J. LEVINE
Jerusalem Post 10-04-2002
Headline: Crossing the Rubicon Byline: CHARLEY J. LEVINE Edition; In Jerusalem Section: Opinion Page: 06
Friday, October 4, 2002 -- I know. It's not politically correct to think it. It's not smart. It's tempting fate, opening a mouth to Satan and all that. But somebody has to say it, so here goes.
We won!
Our own personal war against terror is far from over, but the truth of the matter is that we have crossed the Rubicon - that is to say, reached a certain point of historical gravity and come out the other side victorious.
We have been so understandably preoccupied with day- to-day threats and bloodletting that we have lost sight of the long-term reality. Even though that reality remains terribly disturbing, the Big Picture is much brighter.
I offer this announcement based on five distinct, incontrovertible facts:
The Arab violence is winding down
Please don't point to the latest horrific bombing or drive-by shooting. I am painfully aware of these.
[...] [...]
Then, he said this:
"But think back to the period of even six months ago. We were afflicted virtually non-stop with daily suicide bombers and porous penetration into Israel through our boundary seams. In contrast, our security forces have heroically stopped innumerable would-be attackers, and last-gasp plots have fallen to the farcical opera level of Three Stooges-like conspiracies to poison the soup in downtown restaurants." [...]
And I thought of Yasir Arafat... sipping a bowl of soup, vomiting, doubling over, and collapsing. ~~~~~
Along the same line of thought [ tangential ]:
Doctors may have killed Napoleon 11:21 23 July 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99996187
Napoleon Bonaparte was not murdered, but was killed by his overenthusiastic doctors, according to a study of records from the emperor's final weeks.
Controversy over Napoleon's death in exile on the island of St Helena has been raging for more than half a century. Most historians accept the official version: that he died from stomach cancer.
This was the verdict of an autopsy by his personal physician, Francesco Antommarchi, which was observed by five English doctors. What is more, Napoleon's father had died of the same disease.
The most colourful version of events is that the emperor was murdered by his confidant Count Charles de Montholon. The army officer was supposedly in the pay of French royalists worried that Napoleon would return to France. Montholon could have poisoned the emperor by putting arsenic in his wine - an idea that was bolstered by the discovery of arsenic in locks of Napoleon's hair collected after his death.
Now forensic pathologist Steven Karch at the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department and his team have come up with the idea that it was medical misadventure that finished Napoleon off.
Rapid heartbeats
Every day the doctors gave Napoleon an enema to relieve his symptoms. "They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things," Karch says. This, combined with regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate to make him vomit, would have left his body seriously short of potassium, which can lead to a lethal heart condition called "torsades de pointes" in which bouts of rapid heartbeats disrupt blood flow to the brain.
Any arsenic in Napoleon's body, which may have come from coal smoke and other sources in the environment, would also have predisposed him to torsades, but on its own is unlikely to have pushed him over the edge, Karch says.
The final straw was probably 600 milligrams of mercuric chloride given as a purge. This was five times the normal dose, and would have depleted his potassium levels further. Napoleon died two days later. [...]