The irony in Stephen Lendman's article "Chavez Revamps His Intelligence Services: The Corporate Media React" is so deep and obvious it's amazing that he doesn't see it. Here we go.

Mr. Lendman wrote:

He referred to the new Law on Intelligence and Counterintelligence that passed by presidential decree under the legislatively-granted enabling law. He failed to explain that the 1969 law passed the same way, and that Venezuela's Constitution then and now permit it.

Dictators rule by decree. There was a dictatorship in Venezuela before Chavez and there continues to be one under him. Mr. Lendman's own words point this out. Remember "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"? In the words of Simon Bolivar, "Huid del pais donde uno solo ejerce todo el poder: es un pais de esclavos." (Flee from the country were one man exercises all power for it is a country of slaves.)

Mr. Lendman also wrote:

New tools will be used and current personnel retrained and vetted for their Bolivarian commitment.

Would he aprove of that being implemented here? Should Bush vet people at the FBI, CIA, ad nauseum to see how Republican they are? I'll assume the answer is no. So why does he think it's OK for the Red Paratrooper to do it?

What seems strange about progressives is that they correctly see Bush as a dictator yet are blind to Chavez's dictatorial ways. They're both doing all the same things. They have much more in common than they have differences.



A better translation of the decree's title is The National System for Intelligence and Counterintelligence Act.

The most problematic aspects of this decree are to be found in chapter five:

Article 20 (Capitulo V, Articulo 20) allows the intelligence organs to operate without judicial oversight.

Article 21 of the same chapter allows the government to keep secret all "proof & indications" related to any investigation until they decide to release them. Which will most likely be never.

Article 22 states that the government can take whatever steps it deems necessary to protect informants, without judicial oversight. They can do anything to anyone by claiming to be protecting an informant.

Article 24 requires people to cooperate with the government in any investigation. This is how one creates a national snitch system.

Sounds like a dictatorship to me.

One is reminded of the last century's progressives defending the USSR. It all sounded great at the time, but when the truth came out it was pretty ugly. As we can see, so it is with Venezuela.

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6/8/08 update: After all the debate about this issue it looks like Chavez realized he went too far. Please read:

Chavez Knocked Down Again