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A Song of Defeat
G. K. Chesterton
The line breaks and the guns go under,
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,
And the whole of my heart grows young again.
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,
As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;
I have found my youth in the lost battle,
I have found my heart on the battlefield.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We are not easy in victory:
We have known each other too long, my brother,
And fought each other, the world and we.
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
For so they conquered and so we scattered,
When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,
And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;
When I was twenty and odd years old.
When the mongrel men that the market classes
Had slimy hands upon England's rod,
And sword in hand upon Afric's passes
Her last Republic cried to God.
For the men no lords can buy or sell,
They sit not easy when all goes well,
They have said to each other what naught can smother,
They have seen each other, our souls and hell.
It is all as of old, the empty clangour,
The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.
And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,
And the pride of the rich is all for sale,
And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal
Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,
And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,
And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,
So while the City of Toil is gutted,
I sit in the saddle and sing my song.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We have no comfort in victory;
We have read each other as Cain his brother,
We know each other, these slaves and we.
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News
I'm sure this was in the works long before Kim Jung-il's death, but I'm surprised that it still happened.
US news agency opens North Korean bureau
The US-based Associated Press (AP) news agency has opened a news bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
It is the first major Western news organisation to do so, although agencies such as China's Xinhua also have a presence there.
I can't believe the Communist Party made such a concession.
Wukan protest leader is made village's Communist party secretary
A protest leader in Wukan, the southern Chinese village that drove out the authorities in a row over land grabs, has been appointed as its new Communist party secretary.
Residents applauded Lin Zuluan's new role as another positive step in their struggle with local officials.
Unrest prompted by the seizure of farmland and accusations of electoral fraud by village heads escalated in December after Xue Jinbo, who had been negotiating with local authorities, died in custody. Provincial leaders stepped in and offered concessions 10 days after police and party officials fled the village in Guangdong province.
Apparently, good infrastructure is socialist or something.
Plans for high-speed rail are slowing down
Critics began panning the first leg of California’s futuristic high-speed rail network as a “train to nowhere” soon after officials decided to build it not in the major population centers of Los Angeles or San Francisco, but through the state’s Central Valley farming belt.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. Spiraling cost estimates and eroding political and public support now threaten a project crucial to a 21st-century vision of train travel that President Obama promised would transform U.S. transportation much as interstate highways did more than a half-century ago.
A national high-speed rail network would not only support tens of thousands of construction and manufacturing jobs, but it would get Americans out of their cars, revitalize struggling downtowns, and spare the environment millions of tons of carbon emissions and travelers untold hours wasted in traffic or in airport terminals waiting out delays.
Could the tea party be more irrelevant when one of their biggest 2010 successes--Nikki Haley--endorses Mittens?
Is South Carolina the Last Gasp for Tea Party in GOP Nomination?
With the South Carolina primary five days away, the tea party movement has accelerated its efforts to leverage what is likely its last opportunity to influence the Republican nomination process.
The movement has thus far struggled to coalesce behind one candidate. Despite Mitt Romney’s victories in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire and endorsements from the likes of conservative South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, he has yet to win the support of the elusive tea party.
Many in the grassroots movement vehemently oppose the former Massachusetts governor, who they deem to be no different than President Obama, politically and ideologically. In a poll conducted by Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, 40 percent of tea partiers said they would not vote for Romney in the general election.
What would MLK say about where we are today?
Economic equality a part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream
The state of poverty was first officially recognized by the U.S. government in July 1963 -- one month before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his soaring "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In the years that followed, need annexed itself to the national census like some malignant 51st state.
Devised by an economist at the Social Security Administration, the poverty threshold became a way of reckoning the "economic justice" for which King would campaign before he died in 1968. Though his leadership of the civil rights movement is the most memorable aspect of his legacy, King was in Memphis trying to help propel black sanitation workers into the middle class when he was assassinated.
But 44 years later, economic justice remains elusive for many Americans. While poverty gradually declined in the decades since King's death -- 32.4 million Americans lived below the threshold in 1986, the year the King holiday was first celebrated -- the numbers have climbed in recent years as the economy soured. Today, as the nation celebrates MLK Day for the 27th time, 46.2 million of its people have slid into the misery that King spent his final years fighting, with blacks experiencing the highest rate of any group: 27 percent.
Ah, Aaron Rodgers has a sad...
Giants Knock Out the Champs
In the back of the end zone, Mario Manningham danced and shimmied. On the sideline, Tom Coughlin pumped his fist. In the middle of the field, Eli Manning raised his hands.
There were still just under seven minutes remaining Sunday, but the Giants knew. So did Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who looked nauseated near the Green Bay bench. The Packers’ fans at Lambeau Field, so many of them wearing down hunting jackets in the icy air, knew too: they had just seen the kill shot. Again.
Four years after the Giants beat the Packers here in the N.F.C. championship game on their way to a Super Bowl title, they did it again Sunday in a divisional game in far more convincing fashion. Manning’s 4-yard touchdown pass to Manningham was his third scoring toss of the day as the Giants upset top-seeded Green Bay, 37-20.
No bacon? Is life worth living without bacon???
Processed meat 'linked to pancreatic cancer'
A link between eating processed meat, such as bacon or sausages, and pancreatic cancer has been suggested by researchers in Sweden.
They said eating an extra 50g of processed meat, approximately one sausage, every day would increase a person's risk by 19%.
But the chance of developing the rare cancer remains low.
Now you know what to same to those who claim that cold, snowy winters are evidence against climate change.
Cold winters tied to Arctic summers, study says
Remember New York City's 2011 blizzard? Or Florida's 2010 hard freeze? Blame them on the summer.
According to a new study, those are the type of extreme cold events in the northern hemisphere's winter that appear tied to warmer Arctic summers.
It's certainly counterintuitive, the authors acknowledge, and that could be why climate models haven't picked up on the trend identified in the study: The warmer Arctic, along with melting sea ice, create more moisture in the Arctic and that typically leads to more snowfall across northern Eurasia in October -- a key factor in this entire dynamic. That extra snowfall, in turn, alters what's known as the Arctic Oscillation, sending cold blasts down south.