arafat's always had shadowy financial dealings, i remember a few years ago he was brokering a loan over a billion dollars in hungary through the normal swiss banks. i think he was the kinder, gentler arafat at that point. anyhow, the dude had more begrudging acceptance than passionate support for 15 years and only got through the last decade by claiming leadership by means of survivalist signatures with israel. some true prophet, huh? the rich semi-caucasoid wife kept in paris is hilarious.

zen, here's the weird thing about arafat and the US---you can get support from the people who make it their goal in life to get behind despicable and inherently flawed causes for the sake of being different and unpopular. arafat had money, lots of it, because the rest of the middle east would just pay him to not agitate things---the berkeley/birkenstock crowd actually reached out to him for stuff like help in distributing or endorsing a flattering book. and the guy told them to fuck off, not even the twats in north korea turn down a chance for marginal writers and kale-eaters to run around garnering sympathy and theoretically destabilizing shit.

anyone wanna set odds for who goes first between castro and col. muamma(i think he's run libya since the 60's)?