Chávez strikes again!

[Takhisis]

Once again, this master of parody does something completely stupid.
Do bear in mind that the 28th of December is the Latin American equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon April Fool, but still… apparently he insists.

Spoiler :

Hugo Chávez hints at US cancer plot

Venezuelan president suggests spate of cancer among leftwing South American leaders may be inflicted by US technology

He has called George W Bush the devil and described Barack Obama as a clown.

But Hugo Chávez's customary jabs at his neighbours to the north took an unusual turn this week, when the Venezuelan president suggested that Washington might be behind a wave of cancer among Latin American heads of state.

"Would it be so strange that they've invented the technology to spread cancer and we won't know about it for 50 years?" Chávez pondered, one day after Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and would undergo surgery in January.

Speaking on Wednesday during an end-of-year address to the armed forces, Chávez hinted that a spate of cancer among the region's leaders could be a US plot – although he conceded he had no proof and did not want to make "reckless" accusations.

"I repeat: I am not accusing anyone. I am simply taking advantage of my freedom to reflect and air my opinions faced with some very strange and hard to explain goings-on," he said at the event, broadcast live on state television.

Recent years have seen a series of leftwing Latin America leaders diagnosed with cancer including Brazil's current president, Dilma Rousseff, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In late June Chávez admitted he was also being treated for cancer, telling Venezuelans that doctors had removed "cancerous cells" from his body.

"I don't know but … it is very odd than we have seen Lugo affected by cancer, Dilma when she was [presidential] candidate, me, going into an election year, not long ago Lula and now Cristina," Chávez said this week.

"It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America. It's at the very least strange, very strange," the Venezuelan president said, according to government radio Radio Nacional de Venezuela.

Despite his lack of evidence Chávez hinted that other Latin American leaders should watch out – and recalled how US doctors could have infected 2,500 Guatemalans with STDs during the 1940s.

"Evo take care of yourself. Correa, be careful. We just don't know," he said, referring to Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador.

Chávez said he had received words of warning from Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, reputedly the target of dozens of failed and often bizarre assassination plots including a fungus-infected diving suit and an exploding cigar.

"Fidel always told me, 'Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don't know what,'" he said.

While Venezuela's economy remains closely bound to the United States – the South American country exports more than 800,000 barrels of oil there each day – Chávez's colourful attacks on the Washington have been a regular fixture of his presidency.

Apart from the regular insults hurled at its leaders, Chávez has also accused the US of plotting to invade his country and involvement in a 2002 coup attempt that briefly toppled him from power.

In July this year Evo Morales floated a conspiracy theory of his own, suggesting the CIA might deliberately plant drugs on Bolivia's presidential plane in order to discredit his government.

"Do you know what? I think they have to be preparing something," he said. "So much [so] that I'm afraid to go with our airplane to the United States."

 

[Arwon]

Man just yesterday someone I know was making a tinfoil hat joke about all the Latin American leaders getting cancer and now Hugo goes and ruins the fun.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

So how does that work, exactly?

 

[Bugfatty300]

Any one else notice how fat Chavez has gotten?

 

[amadeus]

So how does that work, exactly?

AT&T built a cell phone tower and GE built some high-tension power lines next to his house.

 

[Patroklos]

The Russians have radiation poisoning, we have cancer. What of it?

 

[Leoreth]

"I repeat: I am not accusing anyone. I am simply taking advantage of my freedom to reflect and air my opinions faced with some very strange and hard to explain goings-on," he said at the event, broadcast live on state television.

Chávez adopts the Glenn Beck tactic!

 

[Bamspeedy]

But Hugo Chávez's customary jabs at his neighbours to the north took an unusual turn this week

Unusual, yes, but it's not like he's never acted like this before with his whole "US has an earthquake machine" thing.

 

[Cutlass]

Chávez adopts the Glenn Beck tactic!

Did Chávez ever actually deny raping and killing a young girl in 1985?

 

[Quackers]

So how does that work, exactly?

Plotonium-210 in your drink @ dinner. Like the Alexander Litivinenko case.
You can also get irridiated by X-rays - the Stasi apparently murdered a few people this way.

 

[Traitorfish]

Unusual, yes, but it's not like he's never acted like this before with his whole "US has an earthquake machine" thing.

Didn't it turn out that he'd never said that? Way I heard it, it was from some opinion post on the state media's website, and was picked up by the international media who kind of ran away with it. I mean, I don't doubt the silly bugger would claim something like the OP, but he's not a total lunatic.

 

[NickyJ]

I think Hugo is spot on. And you know what? I think dem damn capitalists killed Kim Jong Il. And on top of that, the U.S. government is somehow going to make the world end in December of 2012. You heard it here first, folks.

 

[Leoreth]

Actually, as so often, you heard it first on the Daily Show: Barack Obamayan.

By the way, Stewart is wearing the Glenn Beck glasses in that one. Coincidence? I think not!

 

[Azale]

Yea, the US would never try to carry out some kind of secret assassination campaign against Latin American leaders using unconventional methods.

 

[timtofly]

I think he is just racist.

 

[Patroklos]

Everyone knows the CIA kills people via syphallis. Silly Chavez.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think he is just racist.

Given that he's of mixed European, indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan ancestry, I really have to ask: racist against who?

 

[plarq]

Given that he's of mixed European, indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan ancestry, I really have to ask: racist against who?

Middle Eastern people like Jews and Arabs, South Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders.

 

[Takhisis]

So Jews and Arabs, South Asians, East Asians and Pacific Islanders are all Middle Eastern people?

Back on Chávez: he says that people are poisoned by x-ray scanners at airports. I thought VIPs such as Heads of State didn't have to endure those?

 

[Laurencius]

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that people aren't out to get you.

The hand of the US has been behind the majority of attacks against leftist leaders, either overtly or covertly.

The US has a long history of secret testing of biological agents on humans beings.

The US spent years denying "Gulf War Syndrome" claiming that these people were crackpots. However, in 1996, the Dept. of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.

1931 Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients.

1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.

1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick's Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).

1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .

In February, 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released report GAO-08-366 titled, "Chemical and Biological Defense, DOD and VA Need to Improve Efforts to Identify and Notify Individuals Potentially Exposed during Chemical and Biological Tests." The report stated that tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians may have been exposed to biological and chemical substances through DOD tests. In 2003, the DOD reported it had identified 5,842 military personnel and estimated 350 civilians as being potentially exposed during the testing, known as Project 112.

So is it really far-fetched to think that the outbreak of cancer on Chavez, Lula, Rouseff, Lugo, and Cristina Fernandez is suspicious?