At a roadside produce stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, business is brisk for Latifa Khalaf Hamid. Iraqi drivers pull up and snap up fresh bunches of parsley, mint leaves, dill, and onion stalks.

But Ms. Hamid's stand is just four paces away from a burnt-out Iraqi tank, destroyed by - and contaminated with - controversial American depleted-uranium (DU) bullets. Local children play "throughout the day" on the tank, Hamid says, and on another one across the road.

No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout.

The Monitor visited four sites in the city - including two randomly chosen destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles, a clutch of burned American ammunition trucks, and the downtown planning ministry - and found significant levels of radioactive contamination from the US battle for Baghdad.

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.

You could almost say that the definition of community is a place where there's gift giving.

The converse of that would be that if you want to destroy community, a good way of doing it is to turn all gift giving into commercial exchanges.

We want to find out what it is like for us, an urban American family – accustomed to 24-hour supermarkets, multiplex theaters, top quality medical care, freeways, high-rises, thousands of restaurants in a 20-mile radius, and a daily barrage of media – to slow down. So we moved to the South Pacific. Our first stop is Rarotonga, a tiny island in the South Pacific.

It's a big change for us. We'll be staying on a land mass that’s 99.9993 percent smaller than the United States. It means living among wild dogs, pigs and roosters (which run freely on the island), instead of screaming car alarms, smog-belching Hummers, and random incidents of road rage. It means spending long, sultry afternoons wandering through the rainforest as an after-school activity, rather than sitting in traffic on the 30-minute drive home from school, only to rush through computer games and indoor 'playdates' with other friends. It means picking mangos and breadfruit, buying taro root and coconuts from the front porches of people’s houses, and fishing for supper, rather than zapping a frozen gardenburger in the microwave the moment hunger strikes. It means experiencing life’s moments, rather than breathlessly trying to keep up with our schedules.

"American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe's elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week, everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous "weapons of mass destruction". Most of Europe's elite do not believe American promises that Iraq's oil will "benefit the Iraqi people". They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will "benefit" Western Europe.

Europe's elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing "facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control. This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of national liberation."

TK = CFe + ZPE - SD - E+

The Washington Post Style Invitational Contest asked readers to rewrite some banal instructions in the style of some famous writer. The winning entry was "The Hokey Pokey" song as if written by W. Shakespeare.

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

-- by William Shakespeare
(Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls)

No one can tell a story better than the people who participated in events. Whether you witnessed a crime, suffered a catastrophe or sat through a performance, you've got something to say about that experience. That's the essence of journalism. Our experience is that, tempered by editorial hands, those stories are the meat of existence from which we can all learn and in which we can share, no matter what the background and beliefs of the people involved might be. Sharing our stories makes life matter. Keeping to ourselves, accepting the stream of commercial messages into our homes and lives is only one way to live in a connected world, and Correspondences.org wants to give voice to the other, egalitarian way. Read and listen, watch, think and comment. Act through your intelligence, not just your choice in the supermarket.

We're supporting text, photographic, audio and video submissions -- all you have to do is send a message to have your account established and you'll be on "staff." We won't be able to pay you, but we will vouch that you have an outlet to publish through in order to qualify as "press" whenever possible. We make no warranties and will act to remove libelous material, but virtually anything goes as long as it is your honest reporting or opinion about what is happening in our world -- remember that you own your own words, with all the responsibilities that go with that power to speak, to publish, to broadcast.

"Opsound is in part an attempt to apply some aspects of open source software's example in the context of music. Like software hackers, musicians are very often motivated by the pleasures of making, and the desire to share their work with others. The way the music industry operates does offer the possibility for a small number of musicians to make a great deal of money, but it doesn't function well for the vast majority of people who are making music. The current situation of the music industry begs for alternative structures to be invented and created."

This book will explore the use of power in the 21st century from a variety of perspectives. Emergentism, which seeks to gather together the lessons of the streets in densely connected societies with the organizational ideas developed as the Internet became the predominant system for global communication in government and business. It will consider the role of the citizen, what is required of the citizen and how the existing states and new entities can organize to provide for the needs of a citizen who participates both directly and indirectly in the social decisions of their world. Business and economics' place in the emergent world will be incorporated into a worldview that seeks to address the power of individual or collective generosity and greed. The role of technology and power in diplomacy and war, as well as in addressing large-scale human and environmental crises, will provide a possibly disturbing insight into the future of the nation-state.

Consider for a moment that virtually all political ideas in their current form today are fewer than 400 years old. In 1650, the Prince and state were one, literally all power was endowed in one person, though the Prince struggled mightily to manage the intrigue that accompanied that power. Nationalism is a phenomenon of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Capitalism, socialism, conservatism and liberalism are all creations of the period since the Prince and the state parted ways, and power began to devolve first to a few and now to many people. Society is a constant flow of change and the state is idea among theses ideas that is the least bound to individual interests. Few today identify with their government, "the state," instead they passionately believe in their neighbors, their culture and the identity they associate with a territory, their nation. Many commentators have predicted the end of the nation and the reemergence of the tribe or village as the central organizing institution in society.

The theory behind this book is that the state, the mercantile-industrial kludge invented to separate the people and the prince from the levers of power, is the most transient organizational artifacts of the modern era. Along with the state will go all the accepted ideas about the meaning of a company regulated by a state and property ownership guaranteed by the state. At the same time, the corporation is an awesome organizational force and private property isn't going anywhere, as most humans are only now getting their first taste of ownership or they are still peering in over the gates at the propertied world wanting at least part of the security in ownership that they see--even collectives perceive themselves as entitled to access to resources, so a traditional village that shares land considers itself as stewards of resources that is analogous to ownership.

Most importantly, with no monolithic state to guarantee their rights and enforce responsibilities, the individual will experience a profound change, one with all the risks and rewards of Pandora's Box. Everything will be possible and permission will come through collaboration with others. With the state fading, but national and local identity still an important component of human identity, a vacuum will open into which someone will step. My bet, the one I hope fervently will succeed, is that no one institution will emerge, but that an emergent community of communities will take pieces of the power of the state, and these communities will begin to interact together with the remaining institutions of the state, international non-governmental organizations, religions, private business and what will surely become a freelance, stateless security "industry" formerly known as the military. Handled deftly, this could turn out very well. If it is bungled, history will turn out very badly indeed.

Having seen first-hand, many times, the power of networked groups, I hold out not hope, but a task, to organize and act, no matter who you are and no matter what it takes.

Tim Jarrett summarizes what I said two days ago about why Google search results are often thickened with blogs, and why the situtation could quickly be corrected by full exposure of print journal archives on the Web:

In other words, if you choose not to participate on the public, freely linkable, not for pay Web, don¹t complain when others who do participate by the rules of the game are easier to find.

Dave agrees:

Anyway, Doc Searls, the happy blogger (always!) finds a glass-half-full solution. The print journalists should walk down the hall to their publishers' office and request that they make their archive publicly available so it can be indexed by the search engines. Google is just indexing what's on the Web. If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web. It's pretty simple.

Another option is LiquidDemocracy . In LiquidDemocracy , everyone does indeed get to vote on every issue. But you can give your vote to a proxy. AND, they can give your vote to their proxy. So, say you don't know much about the space program -- you give your votes on things relating to the space program to someone who has similar political views to you but who knows more about the space program (and they can pass the vote on if they choose).

It seems to me that LiquidDemocracy solves the "ordinary people have no time to learn about every issue" problem.

One way to look at LiquidDemocracy is as representative democracy, but much more fine-grained; you don't have to elect just one guy to represent you on every issue, you can have different specialists for different issues. Second, there is no GerryMandering (at least, not in the process of choosing representatives); your single vote empowers your chosen representative a little bit; you don't have to get more than 50% of the people in your area to vote for the same guy before there is any effect.

More on the idea here (these pages are a bit murky, though; but there are some good "scenarios" in LiquidDemocracyVotingSystem ):

[link] [link]

A project of PRWatch.org, Disinfopedia was started in last January - almost exactly 2 years after Wikipedia, after which it is modelled. It describes itself as

"a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. We are already working on 1015 articles.

Anyone, including you, can edit any article right now. See the Disinfopedia FAQ for more background information about the project. Read the help page and experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can use and contribute to the Disinfopedia.

The content of Disinfopedia is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it is free and will remain so forever. See Disinfopedia:Copyrights for the details and open content and free content for background."

This could turn into a highly useful resource for making sense of much of what we read and hear, complementary to things like Who owns what. I'm kind of worried about the possibility of edit wars, though, should that wiki become very popular - is it possible to write neutrally or objectively about such a topic?

"What's incredibly exciting to me is that a confluence of factors e.g. ubiquitous computing, networking, web and RAD technologies, the state of the job market - in essence, loosely coupled systems and loosely coupled minds - have created what amounts to a petri dish for experimentation in systems for social network formation, management and interpersonal interaction. An exciting time to be exploring what may happen to social structures, to organizations and to society when the friction between our minds can be reduced to zero ... to the point where we can truly have superconductive relationships."

"Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world. Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities. One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not. Their views are warped and often radical. While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views. Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.

When I was last in Korea, a close friend of mine told me he was thinking about sending his six-year old daughter to schools in the US. I was shocked. How could he think this way? He said he initially thought the idea ridiculous, but he changed his mind after talking with people he knew, people who are just as well-to-do as his family. Apparently, they are all thinking the same thing and this warped his common sense."

Ohmynews's influence was highlighted after an American military armored vehicle ran down and killed two South Korean schoolgirls last June.

While the accident attracted relatively little attention in the mainstream press initially, Ohmynews was aggressive in its coverage. The stories prompted one "citizen reporter" to call for protests.

The idea snowballed and South Korea experienced some of its largest anti-U.S. demonstrations in years and calls for a review of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance.

Mainstream newspapers later criticized Ohmynews, questioning whether it was ethical for a so-called reporter to incite demonstrations.

The fast rise in popularity of Ohmynews, and other online news services, is partly attributable to South Korea's high Internet use. About 70 percent of homes have high-speed broadband Internet access connections -- more than anywhere else in the world.

Paik Hak-soon, a political analyst at the Sejong Institute research center, said "the mainstream press still has the ear of the majority of the public. But things are changing."

"Twenty- and 30-year-olds are getting their news from the Internet," he said.