http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/722/fullThis is from "standpoint," apparently a British site.
It looks as if conservative-leaning stuff, including culture, is featured on it, but judging from the reader responses, there must be a lot of primitives in England.
Chávez's Secret Fan Club
VANESSA NEUMANN FROM CARACAS
January 2009
And there it was: my grandfather's house, empty and decaying. I had lived there while doing summer jobs. It was here that my grandfather had entertained Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez and former US Secretary of State James Baker. Sitting outside the rusting gates, I tried to recapture my past for my new husband, and in doing so to explain what has happened to my homeland, Venezuela, in the 10 years under President Hugo Chávez. Today, more people die violently every week in Caracas than in Baghdad.
"You see," I said, "this is what has happened all over, this decay. Once, it was not like this." "Yes," he replied, "I see." But I wondered if he did, as he craned his neck forward to peer through the windscreen to read the words Perros Furibundos ("rabidly fierce dogs"). He watched me as I pleaded at the gate, pressing the buzzer beneath a smashed lamp, the electronic eye of the surveillance camera too exhausted to register me. No guard opened the security window; no one spoke over the intercom. The only response was the tired bark of a lone dog, more jaded than fierce, and I wondered when was the last time he ate, or even saw a human being.....
It's a long article, but it's well worth reading in its entirety at the link above, and then the English primitive responses that follow.
