Dear lord, what is it with progressive LatAm leaders getting the fucking C-word? First it was Dilma, then Lugo, then Chavecito, then Lula, and now Cristina?
President Cristina Kirchner is suffering from a papillary cancer in the right lobe of her thyroid gland, according to an official statement from the Casa Rosada [presidential palace of Argentina].
According to her public-communications secretary, Alfredo Scoccimaro, “tests show no existing metastases”, and an operation has been scheduled at the Austral Hospital for January 4.
“A papillary cancer of the right lobe of the thyroid gland has been detected. Today it was confirmed that there was no involvement of the lymph nodes, and no metastasis. The localization of the disease is limited to the gland.”
According to Scoccimaro, Pedro Saco, the chief of the Department of surgery at the hospital, will be in charge of the operation, to be performed by his medical team.
“The probable time of hospitalization will be 72 hours,” Scoccimaro said.
After the surgery, the president will be off work until the 24th of the same month, as per Article 88 of the Argentine constitution, which allows for a 20-day leave of absence. Her duties in the meantime will be taken over by her vice-president, Amado Boudou.
Translation mine.
And as I told a friend on Facebook this morning when he posted the above link, if I were conspiracy-minded, I’d be tempted to say this was a purpose-built epidemic of carcinomas. Right-wing LatAm leaders are strangely untouched. Unless Piñochetera comes down with it in the coming year to lend some balance to the ledger, this sure smells iffy to me. Of course, it’s quite possible that this is just a strange coincidence…
And yeah, how about that Chavecito, daring to utter the words no one else can bring themselves to say? As much as the paranoid anticommunist/antisocialist idiot brigade at Jezebel may be tempted to make fun of him for that, there’s always this inconvenient little documentary, which came out in 2003 and has a disturbing ring of truth to it:
So yeah, smartasses, there IS a vaccine that can give you cancer, and it WAS developed long ago, in the USA, by the CIA. How long ago? Well, it dates back to before the JFK assassination, so do your math, kids.
Quite the fucking coincidence, eh? And we all know how much they have it in for Latin American leaders (or, hell, US presidents!) who don’t toe the hard-anticommunist Washington line. Fidel was supposed to get it, but Hurricane Flora put the quash to that. So they gave it to Jack Ruby instead.
Mr. Ruby, you may recall, died rather quickly of lung cancer, even though he was well known to be a health-conscious non-smoker. (And no, I don’t think just hanging around in smoky boîtes de nuit would be enough to do it, even for a mob-connected small-time nightclub owner like Ruby.)
Just a coincidence, you say? Yeah, a sinister coincidence when you consider his famous last press conference:
He hinted that there was a lot more that could come to light. Surely not anything to do with CIA assassination programs, in collusion with the Mafia…in which he was, rather conveniently, also a cog?
Oh yeah, and there’s also the salient fact that Jack Ruby himself claimed to have been injected with cancer-inducing vaccines while in prison. But of course he lied! Just another paranoid loony, eh?
Yeah. Sure. He and all those other disappearing witnesses. One of them, by another sinister coinkydink, was Dr. Mary Sherman, mentioned in the documentary as one of those working on that ha-ha-ha-so-nonexistent cancer vaccine.
But hey, Jezzies, keep tarring Chavecito with that ol’ crazyman brush. Good crapaganda doggies — here ya go, have a Milk-Bone! Just know that you’re insulting the intelligence of 6 out of 10 Venezuelans — who, unlike the average US citizen, aren’t fooled anymore by the lies of the right-wing corporate media. And who, unlike the average US citizen, aren’t afraid to vote for a truly progressive leader. That’s a disturbing little trend that’s catching on in Latin America. And it’s not totally insane to propose that the US would resort to sneaky measures to stop it. Including an injectable, discreet, plausibly deniable method of assassination.
After all, just look at how many times and ways you guys tried to kill Fidel. Which makes you kind of the world-record holder for assassination ineptitude, when you think about it.
Your record for character assassination sucks, too.
Great investigative reporting Sabina.
Chavecito said that he was just thinking outloud. I think I would think the same outloud.
As for Cristina’s thyroid cancer, I am hoping that it is nipped in the bud.
I had what they thought was a growth many years ago and at that time my specialist informed me that there were two types of thyroid cancer: one that was highly treatable and one that would kill you before you even saw a specialist. I’m hoping her’s is the first kind.
I also hope that all the other latin american leaders with cancer find full recovery.
My thoughts exactly.
I think hers will prove to be the treatable kind, since she’s been caught early and it’s not metastasized, and her lymph nodes seem to be clear. She may need to take Synthroid or some other thyroid-hormone replacement once that tumor’s out, though, because probably half of the gland is gonna come out with it.
And, luckily, so far all the LatAm leaders who’ve done battle with cancer are doing fine. Dilma and Lugo’s lymphomas are in remission with no signs of relapse, Chavecito’s done chemo and resuming normal activities, and Lula’s prognosis is good; he’s only getting chemo, not surgery, for his laryngeal tumor. I’m sure Cristina is heartened to know that she’s in such good company, even if it IS awfully weird that no rightard counterparts of theirs have fallen ill.
I’m hoping Evo and Rafael Correa are both hypervigilant, too. If the CIA had the power to inject Jack Ruby with “galloping” lung cancer before I was even born, it’s not a stretch to say that all progressive LatAm leaders are at risk of getting a death jab now. Chavecito is right to be thinking out loud like that. He’s letting them know he’s aware of their past, and that can only be a good thing!