That is to say, the British state.

John Vidal on the revival of crop circles.

I guess most readers are aware Craigslist have dropped their erotic services section. In fact, that's not quite true. They haven't dropped this section from the London (UK) list. All is explained here. Readers may remember that the Puritans left England for Massachusetts. Of course, some stayed behind.

Alexander Cockburn on the King of the Hate Business and his outfit the Southern Poverty Law Center that runs programs like Teaching Tolerance.

"Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate like the arms manufacturers inventing new threats and for the same reason: it's their staple."

Cockburn recommends his readers send their checks to the Southern Center for Human Rights that"is basically dedicated to two things: prison litigation and the death penalty. [President and senior counsel Stephen Bright] fights the system, case by case. Not the phony targets mostly tilted at by Dees but the effective, bipartisan, functional system of oppression, far more deadly and determined than the SPLC's tin-pot hate groups."

Liberty & Power readers will appreciate Frederick Douglass' justly celebrated quotation that is prominently displayed on the home page of the website of Bright's organization.

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."

Roy Greenslade asks why does the Washington Post refuse to label waterboarding as torture.

That said, the Washington Post has always been rather selective in its reporting of the news.

Last Thursday Jagadeesh Gokhale, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, had a letter published in the Financial Times under the headline"Higher inflation may be essential for pulling the economy out of recession."

Readers should pay particular attention to his concluding paragraph that read as follows:

"Recent massive injections of bank reserves by the Fed are probably intended to reverse expectations of price declines. Under current conditions, slightly higher inflation and inflationary expectations could be the very balm essential for pulling the economy out of recession. Of course, it remains true that the Fed must later ensure that demand-driven inflation does not spin out of control. But that's a balancing act for the future, the need for which would not arise unless the economy recovers. Currently, price increase expectations appear to be a precondition rather than a hindrance to achieving an economic recovery."

I guess some of the folks over at the Mises Institute were apoplectic when they read this letter. Indeed, for my part I'm more than a little perturbed by this policy recommendation. And although it's not as awful as the prescriptions of a Paul Krugman or a Brad DeLong, it's a disturbing reminder of how so many self-identified free market economists have long advocated managed money.

Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The Times who now writes for the Guardian, is not a libertarian but he does have a strong libertarian streak on many important issues. Today he explains why the apologists of the War on Terror are far more dangerous than deranged fanatics who commit atrocities.

You can read an extract from Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young's new book here on HNN.

I wish libertarians were both more cognizant of, and more interested in, these events. However, so often I find libertarians exhibit ignorance of, and apathy towards, these aspects of American history. In the past, libertarians didn't leave these matters to Freda Kirchwey and her ilk. Now, sadly, it seems people of every persuasion are as likely to support aerial bombing as oppose it.

"There are few more startling illustrations of this impotence of might than the pirates, or the country they come from. A hundred years ago, any one of half a dozen imperial powers could have conquered Somalia in a matter of weeks with a couple of gunboats and a few battalions.

"Today Somalia has been a collapsed state for nearly 20 years, in lawless confusion that no outside power can or will subdue. It harbours bands of men in light craft armed with rifles who can seize 50,000-tonne tankers flying the flags of western states. And there is almost nothing anyone can do, despite Sunday's escapade."

Geoffrey Wheatcroft explains why the Age of Might is over.