Oh goodness. Chavez is a proto-fascist and the PUK are democrats? Compare and contrast the labour laws in V and Iraq. Look at what's been happening to the oil workers in Basra over the last fortnight. Ask yourself why the Baathist Labor Code of 1987 is still on the books. Have a look at the ILO's complaints about the 2004 decree that freezes the assets of Iraqi unions. Consider the repeated arrests of Kurdish members of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq by peshmerga loyal to the PUK and the KDP. Consider why the women's refuges set up by the party and the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq have repeatedly been attacked. Look at Venezuela, where both the old, declining CTV federation representing the labor aristcoracy and the new National Organsiation of Workers (UNT) exist independently of the state. There is nothing on the books in V that compared with the Labor Code that iraq's government has carried over from Saddam. As for Venezuela's revolution being top-down: how about the occupied factories movement, the land occupations movement, and the urban land committees? Socialism from below in action. Do you know why the enabling law was created in 2001, and what it was used for? Do you think that the revolutionary Land Law it ushered in has benefited or hurt ordinary Venezuelans? Do you think Lula has been more progressive than Chavez by siding with the latifundia against the landless peasans' movement, rather than facilitating the break-up of blocks of idle land? If the Enabling Law was a step to dictatorship, why did it expire on time in 2002? Would the UK or US have been as tolerant of Chavez's government of a TV station that facilitated a coup that abolished democracy and the constitution for 48 hours, and continued to call for the murder of the President even after the failure of the coup? Of course there are important criticisms of the Bolivarian revolution that can be made, and Chavez's praise for Iran should be criticised (as indeed it has been, by the UNT) but let's have some analysis rather than this shrill silliness. Trotsky would be embarrassed by this level of discussion. A good resource on Veenzuela is the clearing house at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com