The WHO has argued that this recent swine flu can "no longer be contained". Perhaps. But is it not more a question that the current capitalist system - which is heavily reliant on aviation - did not want restrictive measures? Consider this option - had a limit or ban on flights to and from Mexico (even Mexico City) been implemented, and enforced, for a fortnight, until the full import of the virus could be determined, none of the cases currently in Europe, including Scotland, would have occurred. And, it is possible the life of the child who has sadly just died, because on the same plane with some other British-bound tourists, could have been saved. I understand that European tourists want to get home, but transporting them back in small tubes with recycled air for nine hours is a form of slow-motion homicide (potentially). As aviation is seen to be increasingly dangerous, to our health, why is it still allowed to thrive?
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?
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I thought this only happened in Portugal, but around the world the Social Alarm is frequently
I see