Overall, a Great Year!

Osama bin Laden, check.

Moammar Gaddafi, check.

Kim Jong Il, check.

Speaking of, here’s some inspiring “mandatory public crying,” as The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch aptly describes it.

Then, enjoy the cheerfulness of this great photo essay with images from North Korea:
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-korea/100119/. Those dreary apartment buildings are only a tad more depressing than what you could see in Romanian cities, especially in Bucharest. Which you can see at
http://www.vice.com/read/everyday-life-in-communist-romania-0000001-v18n9.

Oh, and this other report from VICE, via CNN:
http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/12/20/natpkg-vice-inside-north-korea.cnn.html

Hopefully, these long-overdue deaths will mark the end of the respective eras created by their distorted heroes. Or at least the beginning of the end, although, considering that in Romania things are still far from normal 20 years after communism fell and, in some respects, have got worse, I can’t be too optimistic.