Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: One of the little pleasures of life in revolutionary times is watching the utter discombobulation of chavista hackdom whenever Fearless Leader pulls off one of his legendary U-Turns.

Today, fate provided one of those delicious little moments, as Hugo Chávez effectively vetoed his own Intelligence Decree-Law. In one of the more bizarre moments of his decidedly dadaist presidency, the guy declared that a piece of legislation he unilaterally drafted behind closed doors, with no public discussion whatsoever, and that became law exclusively on his say so, without a parliamentary vote, invoking the special powers to legislate by decree the National Assembly had granted solely to him, was “indefensible.”

Spare a thought for poor old Stephen Lendman, who’d just penned a delirious, breathless rant explaining how utterly and completely baseless all criticism of the decree-law was, and how every last bit of it was a product of an imperialist media plot to destabilize the government.

There’s no fooling Lendman. He knew there was one reason and one reason only why the decree-law was being criticized:

CIA, NED, IRI, USAID and other US elements infest the country and are more active than ever. Subversion is their strategy, and it shows up everywhere.

(It’s worse than you thought, Stevy-lad…looks like CIANEDIRIUSAID got to old man Chávez himself.)

The furious backsliding over at Venezuelanalysis will be marginally amusing to witness, and we can all be glad that Chávez has chosen to revise at least the most prominently insane bit of the decree: apparently even he realizes that threatening regular folks with six years in jail if they refuse to rat out their neighbors is pretty vile. (Lendman, presumably, will conclude the guy’s gone soft.)

Not up for “reappraisal”, however, is the article requiring “all Justice System officials” to cooperate fully in spying operations. That’s closer to Chávez’s understanding of “defensible”, apparently.