OhmyNews International

A penny for your thoughts–but these are free.

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ (George Lakey, Common Dreams)

Debate Club: Did the US Withdraw from Iraq Too Soon? (Phyllis Bennis, Common Dreams)

Students Step Up Tucson Walkouts (Jeff Biggers, Common Dreams)

Here are a few headlines and reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union speech.

Obama defends clean power, embraces offshore oil (GigaOM)

Obama: America Should Support The Next Steve Jobs (TechCrunch)

Obama Makes ‘Spilled Milk’ Joke During 2012 State Of The Union (VIDEO)(Huff Post)

Obama Proposes Steps To Keep Tuition Down (Huff Post)

And this was an amusing time waster.

State of the Union: The 44 top tweets (Current)

Here’s a video project that is more ambitious than what many of us will do this year. Maggie Padlewska will go around the world, visiting a different country each week for a year. This 52-country trek will not go to touristy stops but is more sociological. She will explore the lives of people who “lack the resources to share them with the world.”

I wish her the best of luck.

Video: One Year, One World and 52 Different Stories (Global Voices)

Here are some editorials from CJ sources.

Amy Goodman: The SOPA Blackout Protest Makes History (Common Dreams)

Here are some headlines from CJ sources that you may have overlooked.

New trial for pregnant woman convicted of killing boyfriend in abortion dispute (Global Reporter)

Cocaine conspiracy trial underway (Global Reporter)

Feds. aware of fabricated Rwandan genocide evidence: Mugesera lawyers (Global Reporter)

NAMM Media Day 2012: Mike Huckabee Challenges Bill Clinton To Jam In A Band! (CNN iReport)

Women found dead in alley due to police mistake! (CNN iReport)

Los Angeles to porn industry: Use condoms or else (Digital Journal News)

AP source: ABC interviewed Gingrich ex-wife (Newsvine)

Protests Continues in Maldives (CNN iReport)

A note to CNN iReport: Citizen journalism is not uploading vacation pics or giving birth announcements.

I had to do a double-take on that one. At first I thought I had read WikiLeaks. Yet it’s actually Wikipedia that will go offline for 24 hours to protest SOPA. This will start  at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18. So you better get all your research for your book reports done by then.

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout (Wikimedia)

This article about police in Decatur, Alabama, shooting two dogs brings up a string of questions about the tendency for police to cross the line in recent years. Some call them “adrenaline junkies,” and, in my opinion, shows like COPS glorified sometimes over-the-top behavior of people who took their jobs a little too seriously. And this incident occurred over an arrest for public intoxication and having an open container–a law I find even more surreal and backward the longer I live outside the U.S. As always, the brave men in blue defended their actions against unanimous witness accounts.

Police Brutality against innocent dogs (CNN iReport)

Here are other examples that have brought this pattern to mind.

Photo: Dylan Singleton via Washington Post

Police fatally shoot dog at Adams Morgan festival (Washington Post)

Cop Kills Dog, Tries To Buy Owner’s Silence!   (KFOR via YouTube)

Police Brutality & Killing Dogs – Columbia Mo SWAT Raid 2/11/2010 (Totally-useless.com)

Family Says Police Killed Their Dogs and Slammed Grandmother to Ground (WHO TV Des Moines)

Cop shoots, kills family dog (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Local Officers Kill Dog, Then Use Taser On Dog’s Deaf Elderly Owner (KWTX)

Maryland SWAT Team Raids Home on Hunch, Hits Husband in Face, Handcuffs Couple, and Shoots Family Dog — and Finds No Evidence of a Crime (via Jonathan Turley)

Answering alarm, Oakland police kill family dog (SF Gate)

Justin Ellis at Nieman Journalism Lab brings up Google’s latest experiment, “Search Plus Your World.” It’s a more personalized social search, something that had been predicted from Google for a while. Ellis takes it a step further to predict what would happen to Google News, which is how many people get their news these days.

What would a Google News Plus Your World look like? (Nieman Journalism Lab)

The ongoing saga of the the drastic cuts in foreign English teachers in Seoul has again gotten politicians and reporters to say odd things. Thankfully, Gusts of Popular Feeling breaks it down for us.

Joongang Daily article on SMOE NSET cuts (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

Maybe it’s an author who really knows Korea, or it’s someone from the Korea Tourism Organization (since most all the photos are credited to them), but get ready to lose a good thirty minutes of your day gawking at the 50 beautiful places to visit in Korea.

50 beautiful places to visit in Korea (CNN Go)