posted
I think it's more a case of everyone jumping on "AIDS = bummer" as being just a bit dated. Plus the fact that you have theorised that he might be bisexual, based on the fact that
1/ He is married, and 2/ A right-wing columnist thinks that he's a Benny.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Simply because AIDS is not strictly a disease associated with homosexual activity and intravenous drug use anymore does not mean that those are not the most prevalent means by which HIV is trasmitted. That was even the case in the United States as of 2 years ago. I haven't seen anyone fighting this story in the press with statistics showing these patterns are not the same in the middle east.
And it's not the right-wing columnist that came forward with the information. He's reporting the story. The source is the former head of the DIE, the Romanian counterpart to the Soviet KGB. If there's blood in the water, a person with a story this explosive is usually torn limb from limb. But I haven't seen anyone attacking Pacepa's credibility yet.
No one can know for certain except Arafat how he contracted it. But it's a confluence of several coincidences that increase the probability that he is suffering from late stage AIDS relative to the probability that he is suffering from other diseases that have the same patterns of symptoms.
I think we just need to acknowledge that there is more than a distant chance that this is true.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
And there's nothing to suggest that he has AIDS or is even HIV+. There are mysterious blood ilnesses, and things that cause liver failure, that take a long time to identify - if they are at all. Before I met her my wife had some sort of strange blood illness that was never diagnosed. She recovered and shows no ill effects to this day.
posted
I would say there's plenty to suggest he might have it, but nothing to prove he has it.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by David Sands: That's possible too. I just object to everyone jumping on him not being straight as too ludicrous to be believable.
I just think it's really difficult for political leaders to keep secrets like sexual orientation a secret: much less someone so throughly watched as Arafat has been. You really think someone in the Israli secret services would'nt have leaked evidence of Arafat's being gay to discredit him to his fellow muslim extremists? -if there were any, that is.
I cant think of anywhere safer for Arafat to travel to for a hospital stay than France (not france-bashing here): they have great facilities and none of his enemies live there or are beholden to Israel.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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(How long could Arafat reasonably expect to keep certain high-risk behavoirs secret, I wonder, were he to have ever engaged in any? There's no shortage of people who would jump at the chance to discredit him. I suppose, on the other hand, that smear campaigns are sort of trumped by actual gunfire, so who knows.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think there are some good reasons why it would not have come out. The first is that Arafat desperately wanted it to stay a secret and could have exercised enough discipline in his own ranks to keep too many people with enough credibility from coming forward that could out it. Now, I will say that hearing that Arafat being gay these past few days was not something I had never heard rumors of before. It was just more likely until now that such an idea was a smear. However, given enough effort and an inner circle that's smart enough to know how to prevent leaks, it's not impossible they kept a loose lid over this until now. There have been other leaders who have kept such secrets before. McGreevy in NJ was the latest. Lots of people thought Eleanor Roosevelt was gay. Living in Virginia, I have had several friends with connections to the Secret Service detail in the White House, and they said Hillary Clinton might have tendencies. It's possible to keep this secret enough that people not intimately aware of the latest intelligence on terrorists' personal lives could easily have never heard of Arafat being gay.
As for Mossad or another organization outing him, I think there are good reasons for that not having happened. The usefulness of such information would be as a wedge to drive apart the PLO and Hamas. However, Hamas probably doesn't take what Israel says seriously, and unless it came from someone outside Israeli circles like Pacepa, it just wouldn't be credible. Moreover, there was no direct evidence of any behavior until Pacepa came forward with his testimony. Since there are plenty of other avenues they could have traveled for ways to split the leadership, they might have considered it more profitable to try the others. In addition to all that, the war between the camps has been relatively even for the past few months. Why help one side win and unite leadership that could make the other side more effective?
As for reasons for traveling to France, what I've been reading lately is that the Percy hospital staff was considered most likely to be able to keep this a secret. Arafat was scared to death of his chief rival, Hamas, from using his sickness an death to peel away support from the PLO. Hamas wants to take control, and Arafat is desperately trying to keep his family and inner circle in power. It's unverifiable, I admit. But France is the most pro-Palestinian country in Europe, so it's a plausible explanation.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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quote: There have been other leaders who have kept such secrets before. McGreevy in NJ was the latest.
Except for the fact that he didn't actually keep it, but instead watched it bust out in a messy, career-ending display.
I put it to you that we can't really answer this question, since, by definition, secrets we know about have not been kept.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
You're going to an awful lot of trouble to argue that Arafat is gay, you know. Just because someone MIGHT have AIDS. And I can't believe that, twenty years after people were having their lives ruined (or rather, even more ruined than they were before) because AIDS researchers refused to consider that the disease affected anyone other than homosexuals, that you're doing the same thing. And. . . what does it matter anyway? You want to prove that the guy is even nastier than most people think he is anyway? If he's gay, so what?
And as for France being pro-Palestinian, well what of it? The Palestinians need all the help they can get. They've been fucked over just as much as the Jews were, but them being darker-skinned no-one cares as much. It doesn't help that they haven't reacted too welll to their plight, at this stage I think that both sides are equally fucked-up, but I reject entirely the idea that Israel deserves the unconditional support of the entire Western world and anyone who disagrees is anti-Semitic.
posted
In any case, while it's true that more gay people have AIDS than straight people, about 1/3rd of of AIDS sufferers are straight. That's nowhere near a small enlough percentage for us to start making assumptions. We're not in "Arafat has testicular cancer, therefore he MUST BE A MAN!" terrortory.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
News from france this morinig is that he's knock knock knockin' on Alllah's door...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Israeli officials are speculating that today's the day, because today is Lailat al-Kader, the day God is supposed to have revealed the Koran to Mohammed. So his death would be "symbolic."
posted
Sol: good point to make about the secret/not secret dichotomy. My only response is that I'm not certain that Arafat was technically keeping it a secret. Instead, he was preventing too wide a dissemination around the press. But I'm not familiar enough with that area of that conflict to say. McGreevy, though, might not be leaving office with nothing. Maybe a mandate!
Tim, Lee, & Liam: let me try to explain my thinking this way. What I'm trying to do by bringing the topic up is put forth all the plausible explanations for his current condition and the way events have been unfolding. I won't say that Arafat being either homosexual or infected with HIV has been conclusively proven. It hasn't been. For Suha's and their daughter's sake I hope I'm wrong. But what I'm trying to get across is that as an actuarial exercise the possibility that either of those is true is higher than I think people are giving it credit for. Were I an epidemiological actuary, I might have put up precise figures. However, since I'm not, we all have to deal in less mathematically precise prose. I'm not reading our prose as giving appropriate weight to the possibility relative to the possibilities that he is suffering from lupus, stomach cancer, or leukemia. Therefore, I have kept defending the possibility (not the certainty) that he is dying of AIDS.
Lee: many people who attack Israel are doing so for anti-semitic reasons. But many other attack their policies out of principle. I have always thought you were firmly in the latter camp. If I came across as thinking the former, I apologize. It was certainly not something I meant to imply if I did.
-------------------- "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survivial or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
"...attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence."
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6th century B.C.E.
Registered: May 1999
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