Chavez Vows Inquiry Into 200-year-old Conspiracy, Cover-up, In Bolivar "Murder"

History records that Simón Bolívar, the great liberator whose memory Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has usurped and transformed into a fetish, died of tuberculosis in 1830. Now, Chavez has decreed that Bolivar was the victim of a murder conspiracy so nefarious that in the two centuries since Bolívar's death, nobody's even noticed.

Chavez provides no evidence, but insists that that his own private investigation has concluded that there was both a conspiracy and cover-up, and he vows to "move heaven and earth" to win this grand historical revision. He's calling on scientists and historians to open an inquiry. To which he might invite some Klansmen, say, to participate, following the example of his good friend Mad Mahmoud, that great defender of scientific inquiry, champion of Holocaust revisionism, and doubter of the "official story" about what happened on a certain September morning a few years back.

Of course, to get away with this kind of oil-fuelled jackboot craziness and conspiracy-mongering he'll want to carry through with his campaign to crush what little remains of a free press in Venezuela, in which Ahmedinejad has also developed much expertise. Recent developments there:

Amnesty International today issued an urgent appeal for Maryam Hosseinkhah, a journalist and women's rights defender, who was arrested on 18 November in Iran. She has reportedly been accused of "disturbing public opinion", "propaganda against the system" and "publication of lies" in connection with articles posted on websites she edits. Meanwhile, Adnan Hassanpours’s death sentence has been upheld by Iran's Supreme Court.

What is it with these guys? Why would the "socialist" Bolivarians cozy up to Iran, one of the world's most repressive regimes, where "workers have no right to set up trade unions, to go on strike or elect their genuine representatives; women are second class citizens with half the legal rights of men; young people are forced to abide by a medieval ideology down to the smallest details of their lives; national minorities are deprived of their most basic rights; the whole population is robbed of genuine democratic rights and free elections."

Before anyone starts raving about "right-wing propaganda," note that the previous paragraph is drawn straight from an appeal to Venezuelan socialists issued by the Iranian Revolutionary Socialists League. And if you think Venezuela is about to become a some kind of socialist paradise if the upcoming referendum succeeds, think again. Go ask Stalin.

In the newly revised history that arises from this sort of thing, there always seems to be one easy answer to newly-posed questions, like Who killed Bolivar? Who's behind all this holocaust business? Who was behind 9-11?

Starts with J.

UPDATE: Well, this astonishing. Turns out Chavez was already implicating Jews in connection with his Bolivar-Was-Murdered fantasy almost two years ago. So life imitates art, or something.

Thanks to Graeme for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATE II: A subtle pattern begins to emerge. Hugo says "those towers could have been dynamited. . .A building never collapses like that, unless it’s with an implosion. . . The hypothesis that is gaining strength. . . is that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack."

Crikey.