Well, when a left-handed redhaired Republican Methodist Uzbek compiles a record like Arafat’s, I’ll be happy to rip into him.
Or her.
He’ll surely die shortly if he has not already. Arafat had the opportunity to choose peace many times, yet most times he sided with terrorists. The Israelis offered him about 90% of what he wanted, yet he spurned their offer. He was no friend of America and no friend of peace. I hope for his sake that he was able to right himself with God while he had the chance.
What now? The danger of course is that either his successor will be even worse or, perhaps worse than that, that there will be no leader at all. Arafat’s followers could become leaderless thugs bent on eternal violence or they could fragment into warring factions. Perhaps the opposite will happen, and someone will emerge to lead the Palestinians to peace. What will happen is anybody’s guess.
Good for you, meantime why not enjoy the panoply of hate speech more readily accessible through google.
Arafat in a coma, I know, I know it’s serious…
My own brand is more literate and amusing, thank you.
In other words, I’m not taking your assessment of “hate speech” seriously.
Like the lady says, Peace without justice is no peace at all.
Never happened, a myth long since debunked.
Nor was America any friend of his. God though, has always been on his side.
Those who claim God is on their side should be worrying about whether they are on God’s side.
He’s dead.
Those who presume to know whether the man had an account to settle to with god say more than they know.
He sponsored terrorism and was committed to the destruction of Israel. Stick your attitude.
Neither are true.
And if they were God would still be on his side.
I finally saw video of him on TV and his behavior was very strange. The first clip showed him blowing kisses in a bizzare way and the second clip showed him propped up in a chair, surrounded by people. There was a person on each side of him holding his hand and just before the end of the clip he tried to kiss the hand of one of them. He REAAAALLY looked out of it. If he wasn’t totally zoned on pain killers then he was riding the train to dimentia hell.
It looks like God’s been on a coffee break these last few days, where Yassir is concerned. Maybe they had a falling out over a gambling debt, or something.
Mysterious ways.
Well, I’ll speculate that God wasn’t on Arafat’s side. Arafat, unlike Moses, didn’t even get to see his people headed in the general direction of the Promised Land (though unable to enter it himself).
If there is a god, that person is justice.
And the whole Moses thing is a myth, didn’t you know that?
No, sir! That is a lie, and a damned lie too! :mad:
Judging from how much money he has scammed from the Palestinians (mostly from international ‘assistance’), and that even as frigging bomb-making terrorist he got a Nobel peace-prize, I’d say he entered the promised land long ago. That he burned the bridges behind him is another matter, but he made out like a bandit at the expense of the same people that will be howling in the street when they finally pronounce that digusting bastard ‘dead’.
You’re kidding, right?
God is a paranoid schizophrenic.
[sub]Or at least his press release has led me to believe.[/sub]
I would like to get some of the docs in here, as it is a thread speculating on health. So Qadgop, DrPaprika, anyone else, care to help this MD/PhD student who has been in grad school all millenium out here? I’m speculating wildly here, but maybe I’ll hit a right note or two.
His diagnosis as of a week ago was thrombocytopenia (low platelets). This of course can be caused by any number of things, including causes like blood dyscrasias and leukemia, and all kinds of secondary things. Break it down into underproduction, caused by durgs or viruses or some kind of bone marrow problems (like invasion by cancer) or leukemias or increased destruction (many of these have scary initials like TTP, ITP, HUS, DIC, but they are all sucky and are very deadly).
There is no definitive diagnosis as of yet, which to me can mean one of three things. 1) He is terminal and they don’t want to say anything. 2) His health has been neglected and/or mistreated so long that he has so many compounding problems that it has confounded a diagnosis. 3) They have no clue, for whatever reason. I think it is probably a combination of 1) and 2).
Next, his current health. He obviously was not stable in Ramallah – he apparently had a tenuous grip on consciousness and lucidity. This indicates a severe sign, in my book: that he was perhaps subject to brain ischemia. I think his initial diagnosis of flu with this symptom may point to the more scary diseases on the list: thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) or hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Another one that may be probable is some kind of cancer exacerbation or an acute leukemia. Another one is a profound sepsis. All of these are terribly bad.
What is obvious is that he has become less stable and seemingly unmanageable. With profound thrombocytopenia, many of the tricks to keeping blood pressure up are lost because of such profound internal bleeding. The internal bleeding and loss of perfusion can lead to all kinds of organ damage, and he apparently is on life support which usually means he is incapacitated enough to have lost control of his own breathing. Patients do come out of these situations, but with his long history of declining health and frailty, with the failure to improve at all in the past week, and with the reports of brain death leaking out, I wouldn’t put money on it.
The arguments of him being dead or not may also be cultural as well as medical. In the US, when the brain dies, there is no question about the rest of the body. In fact, you are not even allowed to continue life support if a patient fails to meet the barest criteria of brain function (apnea test is one test but there are others). That may not be the case in France. Or it may be, but may not be for the Muslim culture, and France is acceding to their desires. Especially if there is a political power struggle being resolved at present (i.e. Qureia is grabbing power from Abu Mazen and Dahlan and Hamas and the others).
IANADoctor, but according to all latest news reports, Arafat is on life-support with no chance of regaining self-sufficiency; many reports are claiming brain-death.
Israeli radio has said that the doctors are waiting for his wife, Suhaa, to give them the OK on disconnecting him.
My take is that they will let him die today, the last Friday of Ramadan, which is an extremely holy day and a blessed day to die on - but only after the crowds at the big Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Ramadan Friday prayer has dispersed! (They are at least somewhat pragmatic, and won’t want a riot on their hands - especially in the heart of Jerusalem, where Israeli security forces will be hard-pressed to keep things under control without things spiralling out of hand into a blood-bath). Something like 4 PM Israel time, or around 9 AM US Eastern time.
Also, today is almost to the day the same date that Rabin, his partner in the Oslo accords, was murdered (Rabin was murdered on Nov. 4)… There is some potentially powerful symbolism afoot here.
I may well end up being wrong about all of this, but my gut feeling for the situation is saying I have far better odds than pure chance of ending up correct…
In the end, I think those who should be most relieved with his passing are the Palestinians themselves. He has brought them untold more anguish and suffering than they might have suffered under other, more caring and pragmatic leadership. They probably could have already had a state of their own, were it not (OK, among other things) for Arafat’s bickering and refusnik’ism at Camp David in Sept. 2000.
While I find this hard to say about the death of any human being, even an arch-terrorist and, let’s face it, an all-around bad guy like Arafat, I think his death, which will almost certainly be announced within the next few hours or days at most, may allow some new hope for the Mid-East Peace process.
Dani