thepoliticalnotebook:

The last US troops have crossed from Iraq into Kuwait… making this war at which we’ve spent a decade officially over. There’s a lot not to be optimistic about when it comes to post-war reconstruction Iraq, but right now, having the last soldiers off Iraqi soil is an amazing moment to take stock of.
Overnight, MRAP vehicles carried the last 500 soldiers into Kuwait. The last convoy left Iraq at daybreak, to cheering.
NBC’s Richard Engel was there, and tweeted:

His Twitter timeline at the moment is an amazing record of the last moments of our troop presence in Iraq.
[Photo Credit: Mario Tama/Pool via EPA]

thedailyfeed:

This is Earth, on Nov. 24. All of it.
According to NASA, it’s a complete global image of a single day, taken from 512 miles up (The Arctic is too dark to photograph during the winter).

newshour:

“Thirty percent of children are so chronically malnourished that they are stunted” in North Korea, according to David Austin, North Korea Program Director for Mercy Corps.
Aid Groups: Children in North Korea at Risk for Starvation this Winter
This acutely malnourished child in critical condition was being treated in the pediatric ward of Kumchon County Hospital in North Hwanghae, North Korea. The mouth sores are a result of malnutrition. September 5, 2011. PHOTO courtesy visiting U.S. NGOs

inothernews:

“…In the city of Chongjin, for example, electricity became intermittent. This not only effected people’s ability to cook and stay warm, but it also stunted agricultural and manufacturing operations. Running water was rare, too. Fabrics arrived late to the factories, and soon the fabrics didn’t arrive at all. Workers began scouring for scrap metal, and took to menial tasks like sweeping the empty factory floors in hopes of remaining employed. The paychecks eventually stopped though. Many continued their duty to work though it was now without pay, while others no longer bothered to show up. This was a brave new world for North Korean people, because employment had been the only way to get state-issued tickets for food, but by this time in the mid-1990s, the government rationing had basically stopped for most of the population. It wasn’t just internal agony varying from person to person. Soon, the larger infrastructure began to collapse. Public trams rarely arrived and often broke down. Ambulances eventually ran out of gas. The hospitals, lacking electricity for procedures and medicine for recovery, became a pointless destination for the ill and malnourished. People were dying now, and the children were the most susceptible. What was a minor cold or cough could lead a child to death within days. Mothers were too deficient to produce breast milk for the babies and rice was too expensive a substitute for most. The Worker’s Party members, located mostly in Pyongyang, fared a little bit better during this national catastrophe, but even that status was no longer a guarantee of relative comfort.
“It was life in agonizing slow motion for the average North Korean; an endless search to consume anything the earth provided that wouldn’t poison the body. ‘Mrs. Song didn’t feel hungry so much as depleted… After she finished eating, the spoon would drop from her hand with a clang into the metal dish. She would collapse into a heap on the floor without bothering to change clothes, falling into a deep sleep until somehow her instinct for survival told her that, although it was still dark, she had to resume the search for food…she had the sensation that she was already dead, floating above the empty receptacle of what once had been her body.’ Throughout the city streets, it was becoming more and more common to have to step over dead bodies.”

From The Broken Telegraph, “Inside North Korea Pt. II: The Creep of Famine”

inothernews:

SHADOWDANCER Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, is seen with the planet’s rings behind it in an image snapped by the Cassini spacecraft from about 145,000 miles away. (Photo: NASA via the Telegraph)

Gays and Lesbians have more of a Voice in America than Christians do……

Why is that? I thought we were all equal here…

Please tell me you’re kidding.

concare:

studying so much about the brain my own might explode…

atlastwearefree:

Occupy Wall Street (by Tess Mayer)