Tainted Tuna

In remote villages of Peru, people are trying to recover from a devastating earthquake. Homes have been destroyed along with stores of food, clothing and blankets. So leave it to Hugo Chavez, the dictator in the making, to make things worse.

Hugo Chavez sent canned tuna to Peru, to be distributed to those in need, but it wasn't enough to send ordinary tins. The labels had been specially prepared, with a photo of His Despotness front and center so that the starving masses in Chincha would know who their benefactor was. And so that those same starving masses might know why they were suffering, they could read the label on their can of Venezuelan tuna.

"In the face of the natural disaster" it said on the can, "the Peruvian National party, along with our sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela" and its lord and master Hugo Chavez were handing out tinned fish because the legitimately elected government of Peru was operating in "a slow, inefficient and heartless manner, not caring about the pain of the victims and leaving them suffering from hunger, thirst and theft."

The Peruvian National Party was represented by Ollanta Humala, whom little Hugo supported in a failed presidential bid. But it's never the wrong time to campaign for office, as any politician knows, and there's no better time to stump for votes than in the midst of a humanitarian disaster.

Even so, it's a bit of an embarrassment getting caught, so Venezuela's propaganda minister was quick to shift the blame, insisting that it wasn't them what put those labels on the cans. It was them others, the enemies of the Peruvian National Party who only sought to discredit the friends of Chavez. And just because Peru's President Garcia has seen his approval ratings fall has nothing to do with any attempts to bring them down further and boost Humala's chances in the next election.

Is there anything worse than living next door to a pompous bastard, and you can't even move to a better neighborhood? The only solution is to get a new neighbor.