Notes on the history of a cocked up news business

Ion Miha Pacepa, Nicolae Ceau?escu’s chief spook noted in his 1987 book “Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief” that Arafat was light in his loafers. A proclivity the al-Aqsa “martyrs” surely would have appreciated. Their behaivior might temper the thrills of the Peace/violent revolt “Palestina” kids in Eutopia.

"I just called the microphone monitoring center to ask about the 'Fedayee,'" Arafat's code name, explained Munteaunu. "After the meeting with the Comrade, he went directly to the guest house and had dinner. At this very moment, the 'Fedayee' is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He's playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena."

Munteaunu continued: "I've never before seen so much cleverness, blood and filth all together in one man."

And this cold-war cold-blooded intelligence chief, who may have even been involved with a plot to kill the Pope, found him repellant:

"The report was indeed an incredible account of fanaticism, of devotion to his cause, of tangled oriental political maneuvers, of lies, of embezzled PLO funds deposited in Swiss banks, and of homosexual relationships, beginning with his teacher when he was a teen-ager and ending with his current bodyguards. After reading the report, I felt a compulsion to take a shower whenever I had been kissed by Arafat, or even just shaken his hand."

The collusion of the western press along with the Arab press about the nature and circumstances of his death and yawningly typical – much like this nearly buried feature about the meaning of individual freedom in an Islamic state like the one Hizballah is trying to impose on an inwardly and outwardly secular Lebanon: Iranian Police Destroying Satellite Dishes in Tehran - possibly to curb the local gentry’s enthusiasm and keep from busting out the scotch?

Not likely.