Russia: Arafat's death not caused by radiation

Well this comes as a surprise. I hadn't been following this too closely after many had jumped to saying he was killed by Polonium poisoning. It seems Russia disagrees?

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian probe into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has found no trace of radioactive poisoning, the chief of the government agency that conducted the study said Thursday.

Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said the agency had no plans to conduct further tests.

"It was a natural death; there was no impact of radiation," Uiba said, according to Russian news agencies.

Source

Well, that would seem to be a definitive result, although I'd sure like independant outside confirmation just to feel like it all got done right.

I've wondered what the point would have ever been to killing him, risking a Martyr being made in the process and rushing a process which was well advanced for natural causes taking him anyway. The time to kill him would have been years earlier, IMO, when he was legitimately leading an active militant movement and running what were classed as ongoing terrorist campaigns. He'd become downright soft and moderate (by comparison) by his old age ...and it sounds like he may well have died as nature intended.

Opinions? Russia seems quite the source to believe and take without question by many these days on a very wide variety of things. Does it carry to this?

* Related story from Nov: Palestinian leader Arafat was murdered with polonium: widow

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well it's odd that they'd weigh in on this now? Or at all actually.

Could it be in relation to Alexander Litvinenko I wonder?

Discredit the use of polonium on Arafat, so by proxy it discredits the use of it on Litvinenko?

Wrabbit2000
Well this comes as a surprise.

No, actually it isn't, well not for those of us who were asking questions since the beginning.

It seems Russia disagrees?

Would you expect them to agree?

I've wondered what the point would have ever been to killing him, risking a Martyr being made in the process and rushing a process which was well advanced for natural causes taking him anyway. The time to kill him would have been years earlier, IMO, when he was legitimately leading an active militant movement and running what were classed as ongoing terrorist campaigns. He'd become downright soft and moderate (by comparison) by his old age

Turmoil and instability would have fit in well with Russia's plan to counter balance the weight of the US/Israel alliance. Can't have a well respected and followed man influencing people to start talking and laying down arms eh?

...and it sounds like he may well have died as nature intended.

According to the Russians...

Opinions?

Sounds like the Russians are attempting to take advantage of their new found notoriety in order to repaint possible deeds of the past. Sins of their fathers? Meh, Good luck. Some here will remain objective.

Russia seems quite the source to believe and take without question by many these days on a very wide variety of things

15 minutes of fame.

What are the Russians basing their report on? The French report comes from testing after exhuming the body but the article doesn't say anything about the Russians having access to the body. Not to mention the Swiss also found traces of polonium. So how could the French and Swiss find polonium but not the Russians.

Even though I really don't think that Arafat was murdered with Polonium, I would take the Russian's word on this with a grain of salt given that we know they have used Polonium to murder people before.

It would be like the Borgias telling you that someone was absolutely, conclusively not poisoned. On the one hand, they ought to know, but on the other, since they're the only ones known to have done it ... well, would they be honest about it if that was the cause of death?

reply to post by SLAYER69


I think Alpha captured my basis for surprise. Russia has awoken from long hibernation as an active world power and they're moving back in to take their place in the overall order. It's coming in so many ways, and so quickly that they're downright unpredictable to my American mind on things like this?

They could have found positive results..and made Israel and/or US interests look bad again for suspicions the media would happily carry. That would seem to be in line to their policy goals at the moment. Then again, finding negative throws the Swiss and French into little fits as a direct and complete stated contradiction to them.

Maybe tweaking the French and Swiss noses was more important to them at this moment than American and Israeli ones? ...Of course, we could also allow for the results being entirely accurate. Who do you choose?

Russia is on par and capable with any nation in the world for this sort of thing. Every bit the match of Swiss or French, at least....so it comes down to agenda considerations when they give mutually exclusive results?

You wanna flip the coin or shall I?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


No mystery-

In 2001 Dr. Ariella Oppenheim and her team at Tel Aviv University released their study which found that the “Jews” were mainly Khazars, from Khazaria, a Caucasus country which is now called Kazakhstan, Georgia, and other names. The Khazarians converted from pagan religions to talmudic Judaism after the 8th century, but of course, racially they remain Khazars.

The Khazars were and are a genome that is mainly Turkish and Mongolian blood.

Thus today, when you see a “Jew,” what you are actually encountering is a Khazar who practices Judaism. The Khazar has no Israelite blood. His ancestors are not the Israelites of the Bible. They did not worship the God, Jehovah, but instead literally were a phallic cult. They worshiped Satan by means of the male penis idol. The Khazars were never in the land of Israel. They are not the seed of Abraham. They have no promise from God. Now we know this as absolute scientific fact.


In late 2012, yet another Israeli-born scientist, Dr. Eran Elhaik, of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Science, Johns Hopkins Medical University, published his research in The Journal of Biology and Evolution. Considered by geneticists worldwide as the “definitive study” and peer-approved, this authoritative research confirmed Dr. Oppenheim’s earlier findings and went even further.

“There are no blood or family connections among the Jews,” reported Dr. Elhaik. “The various groups of Jews in the world today do not share a common genetic origin. Their genome is largely Khazar.”

“Whatever Israelite blood the Khazar Jews have,” added Dr. Elhaik, “is miniscule.”

Like Dr. Oppenheim, Elhaik’s research connected today’s Jews to the Turkic clans of Khazaria, in the Russian Caucasus.


But like Arthur says-
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer


So in the meantime you are antisemite, anti Zionist, anti Israel, biggot, racist, terrorist until most everyone gets to phase 3.accepted as being self-evident

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I've heard it said in other places that when it comes to world politics, Russia plays chess and the US plays poker. That may be why we're having trouble with them.

Flip the mindset and expand the game. That doesn't mean the US is lousy just that we play with a different mindset as poker takes it's own skillset and strategy. Both games have merit.

I've always been a lousy chess player. I prefer my strategy games to look more in-depth/detailed than black and white pieces on a board. That gets too abstract for me to plot properly.

So ... take a longer view. Putin is a master at this I think. His life shows that.

buster2010
What are the Russians basing their report on? The French report comes from testing after exhuming the body but the article doesn't say anything about the Russians having access to the body. Not to mention the Swiss also found traces of polonium. So how could the French and Swiss find polonium but not the Russians.

Since you asked, I went looking a bit for a more definitive story on this detail. The one I quoted grouped Russian, French and Swiss scientists together as making physical examinations here ..but true.. That helps to nail down and as the OP, my job I suppose. Here is a bit more.

(This is from November and Russian results were unofficial for announcement at that point)

(Reuters) - The head of a Russian forensics agency said on Tuesday that samples from the body of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had revealed no traces of radioactive polonium, a Russian news agency reported.

However, the government scientific body later denied that it had made any official statement about the research, saying only that it had handed its results to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

followed later by:

A Palestinian medical team took samples from Arafat's corpse in the West Bank last year and gave them to Swiss, French and Russian forensic teams in an attempt to determine whether he was murdered with the hard-to-trace radioactive poison.

Source: Reuters

That should help for those details, anyway.

Of course, if a Palestinian team took the samples, there could have been contamination after the fact. They have interest in making it look like Arafat was poisoned rather than having just died. Did any of the three testing teams take their own samples or were they all relying on the Palestinians to do the sampling for them?

reply to post by ketsuko


Well, if we want to open it to total speculation of any possibility ... Maybe it wasn't even Arafat's body. He could still be alive! Who can say??

..or we could take some real BASIC things on Faith.....to include the fact Polonium isn't available just anywhere for contamination or in this world in a form to use as a weapon and kill with. I'm also going to take it on faith that Palestinians didn't hit the graveyard with shovels and a pick-up truck to tell everyone what they brought to share the next day. I'm betting there was intense scrutiny of this from start to finish.

Of course, I'm always open to contradictory evidence?

Ironically here, as many know and one story notes ...Russia was the first and I believe only nation to date to use Polonium 210 as a weapon of assassination. I suppose they're best experienced to spot it or the lack of it in others.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The clinical symptoms Arafat suffered prior to death were not consistent with Polonium poisoning according to the Swiss, and you are talking about finding traces of a murder weapon that has a half-life of 138.4 days after 8 years or 2,920 days or 21 times its half-life. And, it's not like any poisoner would have used large amounts to begin with. Arafat was old and in poor health and wouldn't have needed a lot of help to see him off.

So, maybe that's why I'm a bit skeptical that they're supposedly finding Polonium everywhere.

reply to post by ketsuko

(shrug) Don't look at me...lol I just share the stories. I don't make the content.

The Swiss and French are the ones saying they detected it all this time later. I know I wrote the OP a little tongue in cheek on that last part about how far to trust Russian data, but only because it seems some take anything and everything the Russian Federation announces these days as 100% truth, without question...while nothing a Western country says could ever be true, because they all lie all the time. (ahem.. yeah... as if Russia is the pillar of virtue and honesty..)

In the end though, it sounds like they likely got the accurate result, IMO and you name a couple good reasons right there I hadn't really thought about. The Half Life being one, although I'd guess they looked as much for the signature damage of Alpha radiation as they did anything else. Still...damage to indicate isn't what some said was found.

Weird one. They cannot physically be correct across the board. Someone can't read a lab result or is lying. No question in my mind. Just which one?

OH, I know. This story stinks right across the board.

Why dig him up with this story and do it now? Why claim poisoning in such an exotic manner?

There are so many things that could have happened, and IMO, no one really had a good motive to kill someone who was already clearly on his way out.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


He was 75 when he died and didn't look in great physical condition, I bet he ate rich foods and drank wine to wash it down, and probably was under a lot of pressure in his leadership role which all points to natural causes. Besides what is the gain in assassinating him? has anything improved since his death?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


It also doesn't help that journalists these days don't actually understand anything about what they're reporting on.

Most of the articles I could dig up only mention that they are "testing for Polonium." How do you test for something that should have decayed a long time ago to the point where any amount left would be ridiculously small? None of them mention whether they are actually testing for the substance or damage consistent with it. It could be either or both and different labs could be taking different approaches, but none of the reports go into that level of detail.

I realize from my own journalism courses that they're trained to write as though their audience is no more than 5th grade level at reading, but that doesn't mean they should assume everyone is that ignorant as well. And writing like this certainly won't elevate anyone. How hard is it to do a little basic research? It's not like it takes that long.

Ah! Kids these days ... They're reporting for the narrative to change the world, not to actually report the facts.