The Assassination of David Graeber

Death In Venice

Hey Folks,

As regular readers will be aware, I am the world’s leading proponent of the theory that David Graeber was assassinated.

I am happy to report that the theory seems to be gaining traction. Today, I was pleased to log in to Substack and find Tobin Owl speculating about this very topic.

Debts Are To Be Paid

So, I’ve decided to repost it. I’d also like to quickly share a couple of things I’ve come across more recently which I think bolster my hypothesis, which is that Graeber’s wife Nika Dubrovsky poisoned him with arsenic or another poison which can surreptitiously administered in food or beverages.

David Graeber and the woman he married for some reason

All their pictures look like this…

Or this…

As you may be aware, David Graeber died in September 2020 after complaining to his friends of several telltale symptoms of poisoning.

He even posted about them on Twitter less than two months before he died suddenly.

Some of you may be confused by exactly what I am suggesting, because in order to follow me, you must understand understand what slow poisoning is.

WHAT IS SLOW POISONING?

According to Chat GPT:

Slow poisoning refers to the act of administering small, non-lethal doses of poison over an extended period of time. Unlike acute poisoning, which causes immediate and obvious symptoms, slow poisoning works gradually, often mimicking natural illnesses or ailments, making it difficult to detect or associate with foul play.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of slow poisoning:

1. Mechanism:

   • In slow poisoning, toxic substances are introduced into a person's body incrementally. Each dose might be too small to kill but is enough to weaken the victim over time. The cumulative effect eventually leads to severe illness or death.

   • Some substances used in slow poisoning might cause damage to specific organs, like the liver or kidneys, impair bodily functions, or weaken the immune system.

2. Symptoms:

   • Symptoms vary depending on the poison used but generally include fatigue, weakness, nausea, headaches, abdominal pain, or other chronic symptoms that could be mistaken for natural illness. As the poisoning continues, symptoms worsen, and the victim may develop organ failure or other life-threatening conditions.

   • Because the poisoning is slow, the victim may not even suspect foul play and might seek treatment for what appears to be a naturally progressing illness.

3. Historical Examples:

   • Slow poisoning was infamously associated with the use of arsenic, which, in small doses over time, could be undetectable. Arsenic poisoning typically leads to symptoms like vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and confusion before progressing to more severe health problems.

   • In 17th and 18th century Europe, there was a widespread fear of slow poisoners, such as the notorious La Voisin in France, who was implicated in many poisonings in the royal court. Slow poison was a favored method for those looking to avoid detection, as it mimicked natural illness.

4. Cultural Impact:

   • Slow poisoning became a trope in literature and popular culture, with stories of intrigue, betrayal, and secret murders, often involving aristocrats or those seeking to eliminate rivals without drawing suspicion.

   • It contributed to the development of toxicology as scientists sought ways to detect poisons that might otherwise go unnoticed.

5. Detection:

   • In modern times, advances in medical science, especially toxicology, have made slow poisoning much easier to detect through blood tests, tissue samples, and forensic analysis. Even historical cases of slow poisoning can sometimes be confirmed through modern forensic techniques when examining old remains.

Slow poisoning was historically a method of assassination, capitalizing on its ability to mask itself as a natural progression of illness, making it particularly insidious and difficult to identify without suspicion.

If Nika Dubrovsky did intend to kill David Graeber through slow poisoning, it seems that she did a bad job.

On August 28th, Graeber posted a video in which he describes himself as “a little under the weather” and looking somewhat haggard, but certainly not at death’s door.

Perhaps she got impatient or unintentionally administered an overdose. Whatever the case might be, David Graeber died suddenly.

Coincidentally (or not), he died in Venice, Italy. Pro tip - if you’re planning a murder, do it in another country, preferably one where the police don’t speak English.

To make things weirder, in one of her Patreon posts, Nika Dubrovsky mentioned that the beach where her husband collapsed was the exact same beach where Luchino Visconti shot Death in Venice.

Here is the most detailed account of Graeber’s death I have found, written by Molly Fischer for New York Magazine:

Pandemic life in London had been a challenge for Graeber: He was constitutionally averse to quarantine. “It was tough for David to abide by the rules of isolation, not go to the cafés, not meet with neighbors,” Dubrovsky recalled. He hated wearing masks. Early in 2020, they’d both felt sick but couldn’t get tested; out of loyalty to the NHS, he refused to see a private doctor, even as his symptoms dragged on. As the summer ended, Çubukçu was finishing a book review. She sent a draft and he wrote back right away. He told her that he’d read it, that he was on the train to Venice, and that he wasn’t feeling well at all.

He hoped, in somewhat the manner of a Victorian invalid, that the trip might improve his health. He’d been nursing “strange symptoms” for months, Dubrovsky remembers: aches, exhaustion, tingling fingers, a soapy taste in his mouth. But then: “He was never really in tip-top shape, from the moment I knew him,” Sarican pointed out. She was one of the friends who met Dubrovsky and Graeber in Venice, and on their second day, a group went to the beach. Graeber was eager to swim. “We were just being silly, jumping through the waves,” Sarican remembers. Graeber was saying how much it was like Fire Island, although the waves were bigger on Fire Island, he thought. “He just kept talking about his childhood in a way that I never really remembered David doing so much,” Sarican told me. “He spoke about his childhood quite a bit that day.”

After a walk and some ice cream, Graeber retreated to a café. When Sarican returned from one last swim, “he just seemed very unwell” — sweating profusely and in pain. She assumed he was having a bad reaction to something that he had eaten, but the paramedics, when they arrived, seemed more concerned. As he rode to the hospital, Dubrovsky followed behind in a cab; COVID regulations were in effect. She waited hours in an empty hall of the Ospedale SS Giovanni E Paolo for news. She called her adult daughter, who spoke a little Italian, and who did her best to translate what Dubrovsky was told. A scan had discovered internal bleeding, and doctors were preparing Graeber for surgery when he went into cardiac arrest. “He was joking with me,” Dubrovsky remembered — saying that things weren’t really so bad, that he’d be fine — “and then suddenly the doctors said he died.” The autopsy found that his cause of death was internal bleeding caused by pancreatitis necrosis. Later, the ER doctor who’d treated him told Dubrovsky that the condition could be triggered by a virus — perhaps COVID, but there was no way to know.

So according to the wife who presumably inherited Graeber’s estate, internal bleeding and sudden organ failure can totally by a caused by an unspecified virus such as COVID. Case closed.

If you believe that, I’ve got a vaccine to sell you. It gives you immunity to gullibility. Only five billion dollars. A bargain at twice the price! Can you really afford not to make the most of this thrilling once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

The autopsy done after David Graeber’s death attributed the cause of his death to necrotic pancreatitis.

I have not seen any mentions of any toxicology report related to David Graeber’s death. As far as I can tell, foul play was never investigated as a potential cause of death. Apparently, as soon as they’d determined that he died of necrotic pancreatitis, they called it a day.

I decided to ask ChatGPT a salient question: Can arsenic poisoning cause necrotic pancreatitis?

Here’s the answer I got:

Arsenic poisoning can potentially cause a range of severe health effects, including damage to various organs. While it is not the most commonly associated cause of necrotic pancreatitis, arsenic is known to be highly toxic and can lead to significant health issues.

Arsenic Poisoning and Pancreatic Damage:

Arsenic Toxicity: Arsenic can cause acute symptoms such as vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Long-term exposure to arsenic is known to increase the risk of various cancers and can lead to chronic health conditions.

Pancreatic Effects: In cases of severe arsenic poisoning, there may be damage to the pancreas, though it is more typically associated with other types of organ damage or systemic effects rather than specifically necrotic pancreatitis.

Necrotic Pancreatitis:

Causes: Necrotic pancreatitis is often associated with conditions such as chronic alcohol abuse, gallstones, or certain medications. It involves the death of pancreatic tissue due to severe inflammation and is a serious, life-threatening condition.

Arsenic’s Role: Although arsenic can contribute to a range of organ damage and systemic problems, direct causation of necrotic pancreatitis is less common. However, it is not entirely impossible that severe poisoning could indirectly contribute to pancreatic issues.

And keep in mind - I’m not saying that Nika Dubrovsky used arsenic. There are a lot of poisons she could have used. But if David Graeber’s death was a homicide, then she’s obviously the prime suspect. After all, she was his next-of-kin.

Let that sink in. Unless I’ve missed something, Nika Dubrovsky now legally owns all of David Graeber’s writing. She now has the power to suppress the publication of anything that the Powers That Shouldn’t Be might not want to see the light of day.

Did I mention that David Graeber had a vast amount of unpublished writing?

I could go on and on, but I want to you to leave you with energy to enjoy Tobin’s article.

If you’re interested in exploring the rabbit hole, you can check out this piece, which explores the mystery of why Graeber’s paradigm-shattering masterpiece La Sagesse de Kandiaronk was never published in English until I translated it.

for the Wild,

Crow Qu’appelle

DEBTS ARE TO BE PAID

by Tobin Owl

David Graeber may have been killed.

Crow Qu’appelle suggests his wife may have done it. There are signs he was poisoned.

But to me it’s not so important who did the dirty work, or how… but why.

And if you read Chapter One of Debt: The First Thousand Years it will be obvious to you why.

Debt was published in 2011, the same year Graeber helped to inspire and guide the Occupy Wall Street movement that had sprung up in response to bank bailouts in the wake of the 2008 depression.

If David Graeber had been a nobody like me, it wouldn’t have been too much of a concern. Let the plebes say what they like; everybody knows they’re just blowing off steam.

But he wasn’t.

He’d been active in the Global Justice movement since the early 2000s—an international resistance movement against the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, etc.—also known as the “anti-globalization” or “alter-globalization” movement.

The IMF along with the World Bank and the UN were formed in the wake of WWII to grant monetary and political advantage to a consortium of influential international financiers based mainly in the US and Britain. Graeber explains that the IMF basically acts as the world’s debt enforcers: “You might say, the high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs.”

Resistance to this global debt mafia has not been limited to anarchist intellectual circles in affluent countries; it has been led by the world’s poor. In 2001 alone, 76 people from poor countries were counted among the martyred—surely deemed a small price to financial dictators to maintain their hegemony, unscrupulous manipulators who see humans as mere vermin to be exploited at will.

Resistance to IMF and World Bank policies in poor countries in 2001 documents that seventy six people, including a fourteen-year-old boy, were killed, and thousands injured and arrested in protests which took place across twenty three developing countries and involved millions of poor people.

In September 2000, on the eve of massive protests at the Prague meetings of the IMF and World Bank, WDM [World Development Movement] released its first States of Unrest report. It revealed a previously undocumented pattern of protest and civil unrest in developing countries directed against the policies imposed and championed by the IMF and World Bank. It demonstrated that protests against these institutions and their policies were not limited to privileged 'students and anarchists' from rich countries, as some politicians and the IMF and World Bank themselves had tried to claim, but lead [sic] by the world's poorest people.

—“Anti-IMF Protests Sweep Developing World”, April 2002

In Chapter One of Debt, Graeber says their immediate goal had been to stop IMF restructuring policies that had severe consequences for the world’s poor—something they’d accomplished surprisingly quickly—but that their “more long-term aim was debt amnesty. Something along the lines of the biblical Jubilee.”

The mention of Jubilee isn’t incidental. Cyclical cancellation of debts, freeing of debt slaves, and even the return of land to its previous owners who’d been forced to sell under dire circumstances could be seen as legal concessions gained, not only in Hebrew law but throughout the ancient world, through centuries of experience that keeping the populace permanently shackled to debt they can never pay eventually leads to violent revolt. “As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say,” Graeber explains, “in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: ‘Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.’”

Of course, you can see why this kind of talk wouldn’t go over so well with the current occupiers of the throne of finance.

In Pirate Enlightenment (2019), Graeber says he lost his home in 2014 due to “machinations of police intelligence.”

In 2020, at age 59, he died a mysterious death. His wife blamed it on “Covid.”Of course, we all know that everybody who died in 2020 died of… er… Covid. What else could it have been?

Listen to Debt Chapter 1 below…

How many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see
…
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

P.S. On another note, our friends at the Art of Liberty have asked us to promote an exciting upcoming event, and it is our pleasure to do so, given the event’s star-studded line-up! If only Uncle Sam would let bygones be bygones and let me into the U.S.!

Liberty on the Rocks - Sedona - The Voluntaryism Conference - Nov 1st-3rd