Chewing qat, defecting to South Yemen

This is my favorite symbol of the Southern Secessionist Movement in Yemen and a totem picture of mine:  young secessionists sitting under a graffiti of the South Yemen flag, chewing qat.

Lebanon’s Daily Star today kindly sent me two more images, showing Yemeni soldiers defecting to the South, in similar poses, chewing qat.  

Would it be a better world if all the world chewed qat?  

We wouldn’t get much done, and Aldous Huxley correctly pointed out that those who do nothing at least do no harm: a message that 20th Century million-killers -- doers, one and all -- and those they burned, maimed, twisted on racks ’til sinews gave way, split all ends up, buried alive, did all manner of evil to,  

could have profited from.

And se

 Chewing qat; plotting secession in  South Yemen

For Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have do Dominion, 

from which fragments are taken. . .

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

BY DYLAN THOMAS

And death shall have no dominion.   

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,   

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;   

Though they go mad they shall be sane,   

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;   

Though lovers be lost love shall not;   

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.   

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;   

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,   

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,   

And the unicorn evils run them through;   

Split all ends up they shan’t crack;   

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.   

No more may gulls cry at their ears   

Or waves break loud on the seashores;   

Where blew a flower may a flower no more   

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;   

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,   

And death shall have no dominion.