Hugo Chavez is Doomed

I need to show some support here for Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who was in London on a private visit this week. He has been on the receiving end of American and British criticism for the stance he has taken against Western economic hegemony and has already survived a US-backed coup attempt. He has been called an autocrat and a tyrant despite the fact that he has acheived three landslide victories in UN-monitored elections. Chavez renationalised the Venezuelan oil industry at the expense of US energy giants and has been using the proceeds to fund an unprecedented health and education program that has changed the lives of the vast majority of Venezuelans who live in poverty. He has proved that socialism beats capitalism hands down when it comes to providing a better quality of life to the people who need it most. Because of all this, it is only a matter of time before he is assassinated.
Chavez's policies are extremely similar to those of Jaime Roldos in Equador and Omar Torrijos in Panama. Both were populist leaders who successfully regained control of their country's resources and used them to help the poor-oil in Equador and the canal in Panama. Both rejected the IMF's insidious loans that would have made them personally rich but left their nations hopelessly in debt to the United States-a policy the US uses not to regain its investment (the loans are funnelled back to US corporations anyway in the form of payments for construction projects) but to influence its debtor's voting power at the UN. In short, both leaders successfully challenged US economic dominion in Latin America and cost the US political power. And both had predicted that they would be assassinated by the CIA.
Jaime Roldos died in a plane crash on May 24th 1981 and Omar Torrijos died in a plane crash on July 31st 1981. They were replaced by leaders who did not have their courage and determination-Equador's oil is now back in corporate hands and the US still controls the Panama canal. Make what you will of that.