Yep, it’s another controversial statement from Hugo Chavez — but he really seems to dial up the Nut-O-Meter to 11 with this cancer conspiracy theory. Late yesterday Chavez decided to go on national TV and drop the mild suggestion (not an outright allegation, he insists!) that the U.S. maybe, just maybe, gave five current and former South American heads of state cancer. “It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now … I don’t know. I’m just reflecting,” Chavez said, according to Reuters. “But this is very, very, very strange … it’s a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities.” Cancer ray guns from space? Carcinogenic handshakes? Chavez’s tin-foiled tale comes off of Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez cancer diagnosis being made public yesterday. She, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s ex-leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Chavez himself have all recently been diagnosed. So, five is trend. That’s all the science you need for a conspiracy theory. It couldn’t possibily have anything to do with those leaders’ average age being 61
Is Hugo Chavez suffering from delusional paranoia?
Typical headline from the corporate media: “Hugo Chavez Nuttily Claims the U.S. Gives South American Leaders Cancer“. The article explains:
Hahaha, laughable, isn’t it?
Well, yes and no. That five out of twenty Latin American leaders would have cancer at the same time is statistically irrelevant, if only because the of very small overall total (20). I am fairly sure that the laws of probabilities have nothing at all to say about such a ‘statistic’.
However, there is no need to talk about “cancer ray guns from space” or “carcinogenic handshakes”. Let me remind you of a few undeniable facts:
Fact: Both Apartheid South Africa and Israel have worked on ethnic bioweapons (see here and here). In this case, the purpose of the weapons is to target specific ethnic groups, such as Black South Africans or non-Jews. This is, in fact, harder to do than to target one specific individual.
Fact: The Russians have openly admitted that they killed the notorious Wahabi terrorist Ibn Al-Khattab by using a special poisoned letter whose toxic agent was specifically coded to harm only somebody with Khattab’s DNA. Many other people touched the letter and suffered no harm at all while Khattab died with 24 hours of touching the poisoned letter.
Fact: According to Cuban officials, the CIA attempted to kill Fidel Castro a total of 638 times. This figure is probably bloated, but it is safe to assume that such attempts were numerous indeed.
Fact: the list of individuals assassinated by the CIA worldwide is too long to be compiled, but from 1967-1972 Phoenix Program to the quasi-simultaneous 1981 murders of Panamanian President Omar Torrijos and Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldós Aguilera, the CIA has a long history of assassinations of foreign leaders and an even longer history of overthrowing regimes it does not approve of.
Fact: Venezuela is, along with Cuba, Iran and the DPRK, one of the few countries deserving a special “task force” headed by a special “mission manager” officially tasked with “collective timely intelligence” independently of the CIA or the Department of State.
So what is there to laugh about? The USA have the means, motive and opportunity and they have a long history of doing exactly that in similar circumstances.
None of this proves anything, of course. In fact, if the USA is targeting Latin American leaders with genetic bioweapons this would be extremely hard to prove. And one could even argue that the way Hugo Chavez has recently accumulated mistake after mistake does more damage to the Bolivarian Revolution and the ideals of “Chavismo” then any CIA plot (I personally get emails from some hard left-anachists friends who live in Venezuela who are totally disgusted by Chavez almost every week).
All I am saying is that Chavez’s hypothesis (it’s not even a theory) is not laughable or ridiculous at face value. No, Hugo Chavez is not suffering from delusional paranoia and that there is no reason to ridicule Chavez over this statement.
The Saker
I fear Chavez may have passed his sell by date. He’s gone in for price fixing which simply means everything goes on the black market and I don’t think changing the constitution to end term limits was a good move either. He should have groomed another Bolivarian to succeed him. The Bolivarian revolution should be greater than one man. It desperately needs to diversify the economy and move beyond the personality of Chavez.
@Robert: I totally share your frustration. Some of the stuff my friends tell me is really embarrassing: basic food shortages, corruption, crime, and even electricity cuts! They also say that Chavez is using his party as an unelected “parallel state”. And these friends of mine are not NED-fanboys, but hard left-anarchists who moved to Venezuela because they supported the revolution. Now they are going to emigrate to Quebec in total disgust.
To be honest, I have no idea how such a promising movement could have ended in such a debacle. My friends blame Chavez himself. They even say that there is a popular slogan in Venezuela “Chavismo sin Chavez” or Chavism without Chavez.
The REALLY scary thing is that (again, according to my friends) the opposition is not only hopelessly stupid and corrupt, it is also on the CIA payroll so we all know what “regime change” is going to bring to Venezuela if these guys come to power.
Lastly, there is a well-armed Leftist semi-clandestine guerrilla which has so far not confronted Chavez, but which has openly threatened an insurrection if the pro-US bourgeois elites attempt to seize power.
This all starts reeking of a possible civil war, does it not?
Yes it does and it could end up in a similar guerilla war to the one that Colombia suffered from for so long.
There is an appalling level of violence in Venezuela already with police killings that according to figures released by Venezuela’s own authorities and published in official reports add up to 6377 killings by cops and state security between 2000 and 2005.
Defenders of Chavez say that he is not personally behind the killings and is not in control of some sections of state security which may be true but he’s been in power for over a decade and has totally failed to clean up the police force.
There’s also massive corruption in the country. A British Labour politician who visited Venezuela said that “the thing that above all shocked me was the incompetence with which the country was being run. You’d see a room labelled library in an indigenous area for tribal peoples and there would be no books or computers. The explanation was that the funds had been essentially siphoned off by party members who had taken their cut.”
All very depressing to me since the Bolivarian revolution seemed to be one of the few hopeful things happening in the world. I was overjoyed when the coup against Chavez failed. We are now in a situation where many of the things the corrupt CIA funded opposition accuse him of a true.
I think the slogan Chavismo without Chavez has it about right. The best thing that could happen would be for a left challenger to appear in the next election and defeat him, preferably another Bolivarian who is committed to the welfare state but gets rid of price controls and gets serious about cracking down on corruption and abuse in the police force. I fear this is an illusion however; not only is Chavez grip on the party too strong but a left challenge would risk splitting the vote and letting the CIA oligarchs back in.
The only good thing in Chavez’ statement is that he made clear it was purely speculation. But there are quite some points that made it extremely unlikely, in fact impossible. First: Rousseff had cancer before she was even candidate, and Lula has after his presidency finished – so what is the point poisoning them? Second: lots of people have cancer nowadays and die of it, it has become the most common cause of death: so that 5 (among ex, present and future) South American leaders had or have this disease is not a statistical aberration. Third: all of them had completely different types of cancer, so it is hard to find a common cause. Fifth: Lula, Lugo, Roussef and Fernandez, though leftists and some times at odds with the US, don’t threaten its vital direct interests, so it is hard to imagine a reason to kill them. Apart from Chavez, the only two others who could represent some of a threat to the US are Correa in Ecuador and Morales in Bolivia – but these haven’t been diagnosed with cancer. I fully agree with all the points you showed, Saker, they are undeniable. But I can’t help but thinking that Chavez made a senseless accusation that plays very well in the hands of those against him.
@Carlo: all your points are rock solid and indisputable and I agree that this hypothesis is highly unlikely. My point was only that making this claim did not prove that Chavez was going crazy. Cheers!
Palestinians made the same type of claim when Arafat feel ill and that the Mossad using a laser transmitted radiation of a toxin directed at Arafat.
There was no actual evidence to support this claim though.
I remember a few years ago where it was claimed the CIA had a weapon where they could target an individual with a weapon that disrupts an indivisuals brain chemistry where they act irrationally but was not a death weapon.
“The Russians have openly admitted that they killed the notorious Wahabi terrorist Ibn Al-Khattab by using a special poisoned letter whose toxic agent was specifically coded to harm only somebody with Khattab’s DNA.”
Amazing. I thought Khattab died because he burnt the letter and that caused a chemical reaction that killed him.
If Russians have such a weapon that is pretty impressive.
“To be honest, I have no idea how such a promising movement could have ended in such a debacle.”
Or, look up a history of every revolution ever made on this planet.
This is always how it pans out.