Cancer in South America (updated)

Chávez announced in the middle of this year that he had cancer (sort of announced it). The former head of state of Brazil, Lula, announced in October that he had throat cancer. The president of Paraguay went to hospital the same month because he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Now we hear the president of Argentina has thyroid cancer.

What is it? Coincidence?

Now I get the news, with delay, that Chávez hinted the United States of America is behind it all. 

Now we know what we are going to hear in the next 10 months.

The gringos killed Bolívar! Dan Brown sucks!

Did this happen?

Venezuelan state television channel VTV had a historian (?), Mier Hoffman, stating Bolívar was killed under the orders of the US government. Mier claims to possess US declassified material from a US ship that was in the Colombian coast at the same moment Bolívar was there in 1830.

If you speak Spanish, go here. It is a long video.

Spanish Florida had declared independence from Spain in the 1818-1820 period. Bolívar sent some troops under his friend and right-hand man, British general Gregor MacGregor. The US Americans invaded Florida under pretense they wanted to end the conflict with the revolting Indians and slaves who were taking refuge there. Andrew Jackson, a military commander and later US president, invaded Florida, attacked Indian tribes, burnt down the villages. Many US American books just say "and Spain sold Florida to the US". In reality Spain was forced to sell Florida and signed the Adams-Onís Treaty, one receding empire giving place to a new one. So far, I follow it. Now...

Andrew Jackson invaded Florida.

Here is where Mier starts to get weirder and weirder. He says Andrew Jackson had a problem with Bolívar since the time Bolívar had sent those troops to help with Florida's independence. Mier says in 1830 Bolívar was going to go back to Venezuela, where Páez had declared independence from Great Colombia. He said Bolívar was going to Venezuela with 2000 soldiers. Andrew Jackson - Mier dixit - was afraid of what Bolívar could do with those troops in Venezuela if he could do what he did (?) in Florida.

Florida as mapped by the US Americans, West Florida had been taken over already

The traditional account tells us there was a US American boat in the port of Cartagena by chance and that a US American physician was said to have helped Bolívar. Mier's account is that Andrew Jackson sent that ship there on 7 September "on a special mission". According to records, Jackson had sent the boat because Great Colombia was "unstable". The boat arrived firstly to Santo Domingo. From there it went to Cartagena on the 29th. Now the incredible:

• the murder of Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar's best friend, some months earlier, was part of a bigger conspiracy to make Bolívar weak and lure him to go to the coast (cough, cough)
  

Sucre murdered in Ecuador

• Bolívar became so distressed that he fell ill and went to the coast to rest and then took a boat, instead of following his soldiers who were going to Santa Marta by an inland road (!!!)
  
• The boat Bolívar took was owned by an ancestor of Mier, member of a well-known conquistador family. The Mier ancestor was taking part in the big conspiracy
  
• the US boat gave one cannon shot that according to Mier was not to salute but to threaten
• US soldiers got into the South American ship and took Bolívar as prisoner
• Bolívar wrote a last letter in which he gave some information in "Masonic code" revealing what was really happening
• the bones at the Panteon Nacional are not really Bolívar's bones and this is something even late president Rafael Caldera thought so
  

It is a matter of semantics: understand the special symbols, read between lines!







The whole interview is very chaotic, to put it mildly. Mier says there have been many groups trying to cover up the story, that even Mossad tried now to do something about that (yeah), that Bolívar could not have died from tuberculosis because his tuberculosis was inherited from his mother, apparently making him into some sort of Superman, and that he must have been poisoned. Mier also says Bolívar did not really die in the Santa Marta hacienda as I read about when I was a child. There was a really big complot, Mier says. The documents are being handed over to the Asamblea Nacional.

Mier does not explain why on Earth Bolívar was actually planning to leave Venezuela for Europe or how this complot stretched for so long. It would be nice if we could see him discuss in front of historians such as Manuel Caballero. Oh, debates, how much we need you in Venezuela!

This was Venezuela's state TV, the only one you can watch in every village or town in Venezuela.

Who needs Dan Brown when we have Venezuelan historians?

Stay tuned.

Chavez supporters and the swine flu-Rumsfeld connection

It is such a nice distraction for the semi-literate in Venezuela. While the Chavez government is illegally taking over hospitals, schools and other installations that were under the control of municipalities and states where the opposition won in the 11.2008 elections, while the Chavez government is trying to prosecute every single known opposition politician under charges of corruption, Chavez's supporters try to call attention to a new conspiracy theory.

According to the government's Radio Mundial (also to be seen in Chavez's fan site Aporrea), and "based on news from Colectivo Periodístico in California", the cause of the current swine flu pandemic is nothing else than the Pentagon.

They say former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could earn a fortune now as he is co-owner of Gilead Sciences, Inc. a company that has the rights to produce "Tamiflu", a medicine that would cure the influenza. Well, according to Wikipedia (which refers to CNN), "Federal disclosure forms indicate that Rumsfeld owns between USD$5 million and USD$25 million in Gilead stock. The rise in Gilead's share prices from USD$35 to USD$57 per share will have added between USD$2.5 million to USD$15.5 million to Rumsfeld's net worth". From there to developing this new strand for earning some extra cash is a big shot.

What these conspiracy theorists have is a series of weak links, but they would never like to have a real discussion about their incredible statements. They just need a better smoke screen as now "Chavez quiere ser amigo de Obama". Chavez supporters are trying to divert from the fact that:

• the Chavez regime reduced the percentage of money that goes to all states and municipalities (situado constitucional) and is now diverting extra money to the local regions and state institutions not controlled by the opposition (some pseudo-legal trick to financially suffocate the opposition)
  
• the Chavez regime took over havens, airports, motorways and much more from the opposition states and with all that a huge chunk of taxes
  
• Chávez took almost all power from elected mayor Ledezma (who got over 700000 votes) and named one of his most fundamentalist pawns, Jacqueline Faría, as "head of the Capital District"
• Chávez officials are taking over more and more farmlands "in the name of reform" but only farmlands of people who do not support Chavez (the Chavez clan and several of the high "socialist revolutionaries" being big landowners themselves)
• Chávez's government has taken over hospitals and schools that were managed by opposition governments (in several cases it prefers to let hospitals and other public services collapse than to let the opposition show it can manage them)
  
• more and more students are being violently repressed by police forces
  

Expect in the coming months more land to be taken over by the Chavez regime. They firstly went for the bigger landowners (as long as they were not pro-Chavez), but they will go for the smaller ones now.

Expect more buildings and companies in the hand of Chavistas. Expect professional squatters to thrive more than they have done so far.

Expect more repression as the oil price drops make the crisis be felt in Venezuela.

And still European politicians like this person support Chávez.

Venezuela and The Guardian, Eva Golinger and CIA reports in Spanish

The Guardian, a traditionally liberal-left newspaper, published today an article about the situation in Venezuela.

As The Guardian's correspondent Rory Carroll said," President Hugo Chávez is encountering unexpectedly strong opposition to a referendum on constitutional reform which would cement his rule in Venezuela, with violent clashes between rival demonstrations and security forces feeding a mood that the country is at a turning point."

He mentions the polls predicting either a win of the No vote or a tie, but he also points out to the fact that polls have a record of underestimating his support. He mentions the possibility the supreme court may accept a petition to postpone the vote. Carroll says that although the petition was lodged by the opposition when it thought it would lose, such a ruling would now be a gift to the government. I very much doubt it: simply said, the government has shown it has gone as far (politically speaking) as the enormous revenues from oil exports can take it. Unless there is a dramatic increase in oil prices, it won't be able to keep its popularity like that. The economy is showing strain, the Venezuelan currency's devaluation is looming, basic products are scarcer by the day and criminality keeps on growing while the government keeps on denying it. Chavez has to risk it this Sunday and he will possibly use every conceivable method. Here we come to one of them:

Chavez supporters are circulating a memo they say they "intercepted" from CIA agents inside the US embassy. Curiously, the memo is in Spanish. Why did they not show it also in English? Out of respect for those who do not speak English? But why is there no sign, not a single link of such a document in English? Lack of space to add the link? Hello? Might it be the CIA uses now Spanish as a lingua franca among its agents? Have we Latinos advanced so far in the USA that they communicate among each other in Spanish at the CIA? I suspect it is a fake paper. Perhaps the Chavistas can put their act together and ask some extreme-left US citizen to translate the paper for them.

Oh...I see, Eva Golinger is translating it into the "original language" here. Well, she is translating at least the key facts.

What I think is the original (in Spanish) is here:

Aporrea (a pro-Chavez site, "Aporrea" means "hit")

But Eva writes: "The original document in English will be available in the public sphere soon for viewing and authenticating purposes. And it also contains more information than has been revealed here."

Soon? Soon? "For viewing and authenticating purposes"? What a cheek! It will be available in English soon. How credible can that be?




















More info on Eva Gollinger (in Spanish) at Tal Cuál


Update:

Hugo Chávez declared in his last official speech before the referendum that indeed, there is a "US conspiracy" called "Tenaza". In his discourse (check out a summary of it in Spanish in the very government page) he said he was going to win with AT LEAST over 15%. This is more than bluffing, if you care to read the whole Spanish link you will see the whole tone he is using.