Die Neue Zeit
28th December 2010, 03:11
Real austerity? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-poll-t146936/index.html?p=1968566#post1968566)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/world/americas/28venez.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
CARACAS, Venezuela — The golfers still argue over handicaps. The waiters still serve flutes of Moët & Chandon. Sunlight still kisses the grounds laid out in the 1920s by Olmsted Brothers, the esteemed American landscape architects.
The idyll of the Caracas Country Club, a bastion of opulence for Venezuela’s elite, still seems intact.
But perhaps not for much longer.
Beneath the veneer of tranquillity, a feeling of dread prevails. A state newspaper published a study this month saying that if the government expropriated the land of the Caracas Country Club and that of another club in the city, housing for 4,000 poor families could be built on the parcels.
The idea is hardly far-fetched. After all, the government has seized hundreds of businesses this year alone, and thousands of people are homeless because of heavy rains, accentuating a severe housing shortage. At the behest of President Hugo Chávez, flood victims have already moved into hotels, museums, the Foreign Ministry and even his own office. (Mr. Chávez says he will stay in a tent given him by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.)
[...]
The reaction to the club’s predicament reflects that of the polarized country itself. José Bejarano, 34, a motorbike courier who works in a neighborhood on the club’s southern fringe, said it was hard to shed any tears for such an island of privilege.
But later in the article:
Some members contend that Mr. Chávez’s rise had already changed life within the club forever, reflecting a chasm between members who have openly clashed with the president and others who have discreetly opted to profit from contracts with his government.
[...]
“You see the government apparatchiks paying private homage to the oligarchy they publicly ridicule, and vice versa,” Ms. Neumann said of the atmosphere at the club that day. “The former out of a desire to belong, the latter out of a desire to survive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/world/americas/28venez.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
CARACAS, Venezuela — The golfers still argue over handicaps. The waiters still serve flutes of Moët & Chandon. Sunlight still kisses the grounds laid out in the 1920s by Olmsted Brothers, the esteemed American landscape architects.
The idyll of the Caracas Country Club, a bastion of opulence for Venezuela’s elite, still seems intact.
But perhaps not for much longer.
Beneath the veneer of tranquillity, a feeling of dread prevails. A state newspaper published a study this month saying that if the government expropriated the land of the Caracas Country Club and that of another club in the city, housing for 4,000 poor families could be built on the parcels.
The idea is hardly far-fetched. After all, the government has seized hundreds of businesses this year alone, and thousands of people are homeless because of heavy rains, accentuating a severe housing shortage. At the behest of President Hugo Chávez, flood victims have already moved into hotels, museums, the Foreign Ministry and even his own office. (Mr. Chávez says he will stay in a tent given him by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.)
[...]
The reaction to the club’s predicament reflects that of the polarized country itself. José Bejarano, 34, a motorbike courier who works in a neighborhood on the club’s southern fringe, said it was hard to shed any tears for such an island of privilege.
But later in the article:
Some members contend that Mr. Chávez’s rise had already changed life within the club forever, reflecting a chasm between members who have openly clashed with the president and others who have discreetly opted to profit from contracts with his government.
[...]
“You see the government apparatchiks paying private homage to the oligarchy they publicly ridicule, and vice versa,” Ms. Neumann said of the atmosphere at the club that day. “The former out of a desire to belong, the latter out of a desire to survive.”