Mortgage foreclosure mediation program terminated by Florida Supreme Court.

3.5 Million Homeless and 18.5 Million Vacant Homes in the US

occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com

In the last few days, the U.S. government census figures have revealed that 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty or are struggling to live on low incomes. And we know that the financial hardships faced by our neighbors, colleagues, and others in our communities will be all the more acutely fel...

Europe Resigns Itself to Recession, Continues Austerity | FDL News Desk

news.firedoglake.com

Speaking of the economy, it shouldn’t comfort anyone that most European policymakers agree that 2012 will prove tougher than 2011.

Hypocritical NYPD Continues Racist Pot Arrest Crusade | Drugs

www.alternet.org

Since the police commissioner told the NYPD to follow the books on marijuana arrests, all that's changed are the court proceedings that unfairly criminalize thousands.

N.Y.P.D. Leaves Offenses Unrecorded to Keep Crime Rates Down

www.nytimes.com

Some New Yorkers have expressed frustration in trying to persuade officers to take crime reports.

newsletter was sent by Big Think, 126 5th Ave., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10011

How Will the World Really End?

From asteroids to nuclear terrorism to worldwide hydrogen sulfide poisoning, a diverse menu of scenarios for humanity’s demise.
The Seas Could Turn to Sulfur
A Supernova Could Nuke Us
Climate Catastrophe and "Chaos Wars"
An Astroid Could Smash Us All
A Quick Painless Black Hole
Escape to the Parallel Universe
The Milky Way Will Be It
The Nuclear Threat to Our Cities
We're Headed For a Hothouse World
The Sun Will Swallow Us
Check Out the Entire Series!

	Why You Broke Your New Year’s Resolution Gretchen Rubin The “Happiness Project” author describes two frequent mistakes people make in setting goals for themselves. Watch »
	Writing About the Apocalypse Margaret Atwood Books about the end of the world become popular when people suddenly realize that basic assumptions they took to be true may no longer hold. Watch »
	The Downsides of Dying in a Hospital Ira Byock The downsides of dying in a hospital. Watch »
	Tim O’Brien Tells a True War Story Tim O'Brien For Tim O’Brien, “true war stories” can be lies, or take place years before or after a war. Here he shares one that made him want to cry—and reminds him why he writes for a living. Watch »

	Design for Good This Awesome Urn Will Turn You into a Tree After You Die Teodora Zareva You don't find many designers working in the funeral business thinking about more creative ways for you to leave this world (and maybe they should ... Watch »
	Dangerous Ideas #5: Stephen Hawking's Warning: Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction Andrew Dermont Let's face it: The planet is heating up, Earth's population is expanding at an exponential rate, and the the natural resources vital to our survival ... Watch »
	IdeaFeed How to Stop the Asteroid Apocalypse Big Think Editors What's the Latest Development? Chinese and European researchers have put forward two different proposals to deflect potential asteroids on a ... Watch »
	Strange Maps 187 - A Map of the Apocalypse Frank Jacobs Scientists predict the Earth will end 5 billion years from now, when the Sun becomes a red giant. Certain religious people are more alarmist ... Watch »

Orangutans to Skype between zoos with iPads

So far their favorite iPad pastimes have been games like Doodle Buddy and Flick Flick Football, and watching videos. One of the orangutans, a 31-year-old called MJ, is apparently a big fan of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries. “The orangutans loved seeing videos of themselves – so there is a little vanity going on – and they like seeing videos of the orangutans who are in the other end of the enclosure,” Richard Zimmerman of Orangutan Outreach said. “So if we incorporate cameras, they can watch each other.” And thus the idea of WiFi video chat between orangutans — and eventually between zoos — was born.

Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China

Jon Austin

Im surprised you don't bring up Japans discovery this year...the entire Sea of Japan is covered in rare earth elements and its even easier to obtain. All you have to do is suck it off the sea floor and use commonly solvents for extraction. There already investing in the ships to do such..problem solved. The United States of America has rare earth mines...that were bought up by China and shut down.

IceTrey

Energy production does not require any drastic new technology. The tech for all of the energy the world needs for the next thousand years was developed in the 60's, it's called Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. It's also a happy coincidence that thorium is a by product of rare earth mining. Basically if you mine rare earths you get the thorium for free. LFTR's can also be used to produce liquid fuels from cracked water hydrogen and carbon from atmospheric CO2.

The REAL Reason the U.S. Wants to Attack Iran

Your Weekly Blogging News Round-Up

The Daily:

Op Ed: News You Can Use

"Which is why we need to treat news as if it were no different than booze, with moderate consumption being as good for the head as moderate drinking is for the heart. Too much, however, and you become a menace to yourself and the world, constantly fretting about imaginary threats and all encompassing conspiracies."

Mack Collier:

A No-Nonsense Guide to SEO and Content Creation for Bloggers

What are the 3-5 topic buckets for your blog?

The Next Web:

The Infographic Plague is Actually a Plague of Lazy Journalists and Bloggers

“The infographics are being used to get unwitting bloggers to drive up their google search rankings. When they get a link from [big, respectable sites], Google thinks they must be providing valuable information.

Steve Buttry:

10 Ways to Think Like a Digital First Journalist

A digital-first journalist thinks of the community as collaborators.

Jeremiah Owyang:

End of an Era: Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over

Corporate acquisition and talent turnover are reasons 1 and 2.

The Next Web:

The Complete Guide to Twitter's Epic 2011

How are you adapting to the changes?

Poynter:

3 Trends From 2011 That Will Reshape Digital News in 2012

Storify and Facebook's Subscribe feature expected to have a major impact.

Shareaholic's posts: Subscribe to Shareaholic's Blog

5 Reasons You Want Conversation on Your Blog (And How to Get It)

Viral Content Lessons From Facebook's Most Shared Content of 2011

Disqus Blog: Most Disqussed 2011

Most Disqussed 2011

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 08:52 AM PST

That’s right…another end-of-year list! You know you love them.
Here at Disqus, we took our own spin at sifting through the top news stories of 2011 by looking at those that sparked the most comment discussion vs. just those that received the most views, searches or other traffic measure.
Combing more than a million communities from all over the world on the Disqus network, we found that three of the largest news organizations consistently appeared in the list of most commented threads: Al Jazeera

, CNN

and Fox News

. The Telegraph

also featured regularly as well as more vertically-oriented and niche communities like Engadget

, IGN

, The Frisky

and Allkpop

. However, the top 11 topics of ‘11 on Disqus — (our very own Zeitgeist) — all centered around politics, economics or high profile crime stories:

Arab Spring
US Debt Ceiling
Occupy Movement
US Budget
Wisconsin Budget
US Payroll Tax
Obama Jobs Plan
Arizona Shooting
Obama Birth Certificate
Casey Anthony Trial
Bin Laden Dead

Not surprisingly, civil unrest and fiscal policy issues dominated the conversation this year.
Compared to other lists, like AOL’s 11 Days That Shaped 2011

, about of half the topics on our list are similar, whereas others that were considered big news events in 2011 such as the Japan Earthquake, the Royal Wedding, and the passing of Steve Jobs didn’t quite elicit the same level of response from engaged readers looking to share their thoughts or react to others’. For similar insights within your own communities, check out your Disqus Analytics

add-on

or the Disqus API

. Which news stories did you talk about most this past year on your own sites and across the web?

1 January - Talk to Action Digest

Minister in Chief

freethoughtblogs.com

Religion Dispatches has a great article about Bryan Fisher and how he thinks that the President’s first responsibility is to be a Minister of the holy gospels. Go read it here. Fischer uses this passage, along with verse 6, to prove that “One who holds public office is serving in a divinely...

Jim Hightower | Declare independence from corporate power!

www.jimhightower.com

A year from now, Americans will be caught in an unprecedented blizzard of campaign ads. Most of this ad blizzard will not come from the candidates, but from ads secretly-funded by huge corporations. This is because a five-man cabal on the Supreme Court

Real Coastal Warriors

Ottawa - A new report by a Canadian nongovernmental organization reveals the relationship between the climate and oil crises, corporate power, and new technologies could turn the quest for biomass control and the green economy into a “Greed Economy.” Among the examples listed in the report is Butamax, a joint venture between DuPont (Pioneer) and oil giant BP, which is attempting to commercialize fuels derived from seaweed. In early 2011, DuPont purchased Danisco, a company producing enzymes and specialty food ingredients, even as the two companies had a pre-existing agreement to produce cellulosic ethanol.

Green economy to be determined by corporate control, report

www.digitaljournal.com

A new report by a Canadian nongovernmental organization reveals the relationship between the climate and oil crises, corporate power, and new technologies could turn the quest for biomass control and the green economy into a “Greed Economy.”

BP joins Google, G.E. in CoolPlanet Biofuels’ Series C - Ethanol - Ecoseed Information Network

www.ecoseed.org

Oil-and-gas giant BP P.L.C., through financing arm BP Technology Ventures, invested an undisclosed amount in biofuel startup Cool Planet BioFuels, Inc. through the latter’s third funding round. According Cool Planet BioFuels’ statement, the Series C round

NEW DELHI: With bureaucratic hurdles delaying its plans to boost output from flagging KG-D6 block, UK's BP plc CEO Bob Dudley has written to Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy seeking immediate approvals so as that the block's potential can be fully exploited.

British Petroleum CEO Bob Dudley writes to Oil Minister on KG-D6 approval hurdles - The Economic Tim

economictimes.indiatimes.com

BP is keen to undertake sea-bed surveys this winter to acess potential of satellite discoveries in the block and draw blue-print of their development.

Who Benefits From The Resurgent Deep Gulf Drilling? - Seeking Alpha

seekingalpha.com

Raise your hand if you realized that by early 2012 there will be more deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico than when the BP spill occurred. According to ODS-Petrodata, 40 deepwater rigs will be in the Gulf compared to 37 before the spill. As an investor and especially one that has invested in the se...

For those of us who have watched with dismay as the Obama administration moves forward with approval after approval of Shell’s oil drilling permits for the Arctic Ocean, there’s a logical disconnect: Why would the administration allow drilling in the Arctic Ocean when there’s a reasonable likelihood of a disaster in the making?

Alaskans Express Serious Concerns About Arctic Offshore Drilling

gcaptain.com

In an article in the Anchorage Daily News, Lois Epstein, Arctic Program director for The Wilderness Society, and member of the Offshore Energy Safety Advisory Committee for the DOI’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). expressed major concerns about Alaskan arctic drilling plans c...

This has been a huge year in the fight against extreme poverty. There's no other way to put it.

Here are some big, big things that we accomplished together:

We helped persuade world leaders to commit $4.3 billion to vaccinate some of the world’s most vulnerable children against deadly diseases - saving an estimated 4 million lives in the next 5 years.
G20 leaders heard your voice and more than 400,000 other ONE members who backed our Hungry No More campaign, and committed to a number of agricultural solutions to break the cycle of famine in the Horn of Africa.
Last month governments took a giant step forward towards making sure aid money is more transparent and has the greatest possible impact on reducing poverty.
We celebrated the amazing progress being made in Africa towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals with the ONE Africa Award. The winner of this year’s award, a wonderful organization from Togo, have had an incredible impact in empowering women that is truly inspirational.

Phew! That's a lot. On behalf of ONE thank you. Very, very much. Without your help, and the help of millions of ONE members around the world, none of this would have been possible.
But our work doesn’t stop here. Next year will be another critical year for ONE and we will need to be stronger than ever.
So please check out our great new video celebrating our successes in the fight against extreme poverty:
http://act.one.org/go/268?akid=2798.1817610.eoa5fv&t=3
And let me ask one more thing. Over the holiday period, tell your family and friends about ONE and ask them to join you. The bigger our movement becomes, the greater the change we can make for the better.

( Maybe I shouldn`t mention my negative info on vaccines and Monsanto`s `Green Revolution.`)

Lower classes quicker to show compassion in the face of suffering

newscenter.berkeley.edu

Emotional differences between the rich and poor, as depicted in such Charles Dickens classics as “A Christmas Carol” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” may have a scientific basis. Researchers at UC Berkeley have found that people in the lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to suff...

Liam Byrne's Dead Meat Puppet Show

www.tenpercent.org.uk

The frame for the neoliberal discourse on welfare and benefits is that unemployment, disability and sickness are caused by benefits rather than the business cycle, social disablement and ill health. It is a consumerist political marketing campaign to fraudulently locate the blame for structural problems onto the individual and to assign these failures to personal shortcomings. This becomes bile filled blame originating in DWP briefings and echoed in populist corporate media whose parent cong ...

CommonDreams.org

Jonathan Turley writes: "Most Democratic members joined their Republican colleagues in voting for this un-American measure. Some Montana citizens are moving to force the removal of these members who, they insist, betrayed their oaths of office and their constituents. Most citizens, however, are continuing to treat the matter as a distraction from the holiday cheer. For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks."

The NDAA's Historic Assault on American Liberty

www.commondreams.org

President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in t...

Intern at the SOA Watch DC Office

www.soaw.org

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and media work to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that institutions like the SOA...

Can Undercover Investigators Legally Be Indefinitely Detained or Assassinated? | Disinformation

www.disinfo.com

Now that the Presidency has dictatorial powers, will civil disobedience and investigative journalism become capital offenses? Dean Kuipers writes in the Los

Occupy Tokyo: Mass demonstrations go unreported by Japanese media -- Sott.net

www.sott.net

You've heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Los Angeles, London, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv and elsewhere around the world. But did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn't until...

Bahrain: Shouting in the dark

www.aljazeera.com

The story of the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.

Citizens United Loses in Montana

readersupportednews.org

The Montana Supreme Court is apparently much wiser than the U.S. Supreme Court. The Montana judges have ruled in favor of a 100-year-old ban on direct corporate spending on political candidates in their state.

30 Major Corporations Paid No Income Taxes In The Last Three Years, While Making $160 Billion

thinkprogress.org

One of the driving forces behind the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests is the fact that corporations have not been paying their fair share in taxes. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice will no nothing to alleviate the protesters’ frustration. CTJ looked at 280 companies, all of them members...

'Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be 'they' who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains to power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process.

FOCUS: Naomi Wolf | NDAA: Congress Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants

www.readersupportednews.org

There is no exception to this rule.' Naomi Wolf, NaomiWolf.org

Australia to Recruit Foreign Troops

www.migrationexpert.com

the australian defence force (adf) is looking to recruit foreign personnel from new zealand, canada, the united states and britain.

The Tyee – BC's Five Looniest Liquor Laws

thetyee.ca

The year is 1949. British reporter Noel Monks walks into the Hotel Vancouver and orders a pint. The barman turns him away -- not because he's intoxicated or even poorly dressed -- Monks was bounced for standing on two feet.

Canada, Don't Slam Health Clinic Doors on the Poor! - The Petition Site

www.thepetitionsite.com

At a time when sexually-transmitted infections are on the rise in British Columbia, Canada is closing five clinics that (33 signatures on petition)

Zambian Christians March for Theocracy

freethoughtblogs.com

America is hardly the only country in the world where Christian reactionaries demand that the country be officially dedicated to their religion and to punishing gay people to the fullest extent possible. Zambia has the same problem. And wait till you see the name of the group pushing for it:...

#JAN1: Occupy Wall Street finds no right to generally assemble

www.youtube.com

Wasting no time in setting the tone for 2012, the NYPD prevented Occupy Wall Street from assembling for our nightly General Assembly meeting using space lega...

Undercutting Vow of Softer Stance, Egypt Again Defends Office Raids

www.truth-out.org

Cairo — Egypt’s military-led government on Sunday justified its recent crackdown on human rights and democracy-building organizations as a defense against foreign interference in its politics, defying international pressure and contradicting reports from senior officials in Washington that Egypt’s m...

Vilifying dissent

freethoughtblogs.com

A fifteen year old girl posts a picture of herself on Reddit r/atheism holding a copy of Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World, which she took to post to Facebook originally. She didn’t know she was evidently transgressing unwritten and sexist-by-design social rules by posting her picture, and thus...

Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake? - Ezili Danto - Open Salon

open.salon.com

Since the earthquake, I've had occasion to ponder, like many others, about what may have caused this heretofore-unknown natural disaster in Haiti? Was it a natural occurrence or man-made? Port-au-Prince, Haiti has not had an earthquake in 239 years. Why now? The nation of Haiti is only 206 years old...

Real Coastal Warriors

First, the good: A few weeks ago, the State of Colorado passed the strongest rules in the United States for publicly disclosing what cancer-causing and other types chemicals are used in oil and gas fracking. In a ground-breaking and intense set of negotiations between oil and gas companies and environmentalists, frackers are now forced to publicly disclose when they are fracking and what chemicals they use in fracking.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Colorado's New Fracking Rules

www.huffingtonpost.com

Colorado made a good start with its new fracking rules, but has a long way to go to stop our health, our economy, and our state from really getting ugly.

Real Coastal Warriors

Scientists say in a new study that the return of gray wolves has dramatically altered the landscape in portions of Yellowstone National Park by curbing foraging elk herds that prevented new aspen, willow and cottonwood trees from taking root.

Study: Yellowstone Wolves Help Trees Rebound

www.salon.com

Study: Yellowstone Wolves Help Trees Rebound

20 tons of dead fish wash up on Norway beaches- cause of massive fishkill unknown

theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com

January 2, 2012 – NORWAY - The inhabitants of Troms could hardly believe their eyes on the morning of New Year's Eve, a very large amount, an estimated 10 to 20 tons of dead herring washed up on ...

Real Coastal Warriors

‎20 Tons of Dead Fish in Norway: "The city is warmer than most other places located on the same latitude, due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream which originates at the tip of Florida."

( So - have the deep ocean currents continued )

Mongabay.com

Ecuador makes $116 million to not drill for oil in Amazon

A possibly ground-breaking idea has been kept on life support after Ecuador revealed its Yasuni-ITT Initiative had raked in $116 million before the end of the year, breaking the $100 million mark that Ecuador said it needed to keep the program alive.

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0102-hance_yasuni_donations.html

McDonald’s closes all restaurants forever in Bolivia | EUTimes.net

www.eutimes.net

McDonald's leaves Bolivia healthier forever! After 14 years of presence in the country, and despite all the existing campaigns and having a network, the

Strange particles in the air

www.youtube.com

this shoot was filmed in germany in a rural area on february 10th 2011 at 4:34am. What the heck is that? The day before they sprayed a lot of chemtrails in t...

I suppose we could refer to chemtrails as "mixing vessels" considering that samples of them have shown viruses and biowarfare toxins... flu shot for chemtrails on the market this year?

Farm workers urged to get flu shot: Swine are ‘mixing vessels’ for flu DNA | Vancouver Sun

blogs.vancouversun.com

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is urging farmers and farm workers to get this year’s seasonal flu shot to reduce the risk of transmission of influenza viruses between livestock and humans. Even people planning to visit a swine farm should get the shot, the agency said.

( And are farms using antibiotics for humans )

Center for Media and Democracy

Recently, a group of farmers and neighbors in Salmon Valley, near Prince George, British Columbia, successfully blockaded Wright Creek Road and turned back a truck full of sewage sludge headed for a 117 acre parcel of farm land contracted as a dump site by the City of Prince George. One neighbor brought a snow mobile towing a portable fire pit on a sled so that they were able to keep warm while they blocked the road. As of this writing, the trucks have not returned.

Neighbors Occupy Road, Blockade Sludge Trucks | Center for Media and Democracy

www.prwatch.org

Recently, a group of farmers and neighbors in Salmon Valley, near Prince George, British Columbia, successfully blockaded Wright Creek Road and turned back a truck full of sewage sludge headed for a 117 acre parcel of farm land contracted as a dump site by the City of Prince George. One neighbor bro...

The town of Ayun, home to 16,000 people in the Chitral district of Pakistan, has been rocked by large-scale protests and mass arrests over the issue of corruption and deforestation in recent days.

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0102-hance_pakistan_protests.html