For those of you who already know all this, you already know it. But for those – like me – who don’t know some or even all of it, it looks very useful. Jack Schofield offers his top 10 search tips in using Google. A slightly disturbing datum along the way:

Google almost certainly knows more about you than you would tell your mother.

Anthony at Black Triangle has a terrific scoop. Well, of course, I could have beaten him to it but I didn’t want to be accused of immodesty.

There’s a fight broken out across the water over whether pro-war liberals are still entitled to describe themselves as liberals. Oliver Willis has a view about that, and so do Jeff Jarvis, Michael Totten and Armed Liberal.

No prizes for guessing where my sympathies lie in this debate. It seems to me closely to mirror the discussion of the question as to whether pro-war leftists are still really on the left – on which I’ve expressed my view several times. I did so most recently in responding to Ken MacLeod; and before that, on the old normblog site, in Blog’s dreckfest (September 19), Left divided (December 2) and What’s left? (December 4).

There was every reason for liberals to support the liberation of Iraq, as there was every reason for socialist democrats to do so, and I think, as I said in the September 19 piece, that anti-war liberals and socialists who say different need (at the very least) to pronounce clearly the following statement: ‘It would be better if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq’. Or: ‘It would be better if the torture chambers and all the other paraphernalia of murder and oppression in Iraq were still in place’. Otherwise, it’s not clear why they should see support for the war as a basis for denying the relevant labels to others.

Yesterday the Guardian decided to print an excerpt from the recently released Osama bin Laden tape. Today it carries a couple of flip letters suggesting, in turn, that Bin Laden’s ‘opinions provide much-needed balance to those of the equally illiberal David Aaronovitch’, and that Bin Laden might be ‘a replacement for Julie Burchill’. Funny; two Guardian columnists who both supported the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s murderous dictatorship, and neither of whom is an apologist for Osama bin Laden – unlike a significant sector of the Guardian readership, to judge from its letters page.

Then, on the Seumas Milne page, just one turn away from these charming letters, Paul Foot tells the poignant tale of a friend of his who has left the Labour Party. Invited to renew her membership, she wrote back:

I am totally opposed to the war in Iraq and feel that the justification now being used (that we have removed an evil dictator) opens the door to other such adventures and interventions in the future. Saddam Hussein was not by any means the worst of the dictators in charge of a country in the world today. Are we to make war on them all?

Read again: ‘not by any means the worst’. For that phrase alone, if she’s willing to stand by it, any decent political party should be glad to be without Paul Foot’s ‘totally opposed’ friend.

Update at 4.05 PM: Harry discusses the same Paul Foot piece at length. Go read.

Juan Cole posts the results of a recent poll of Iraqi opinion by a Baghdad social research institute. A few of the results:

48% said that the current role of the US in Iraq is positive.

75% say that they would feel a lack of security were the American forces to decide to leave the country.

On the other hand, 75% said that the US should leave once an independent [sic] is established.

55% disagreed with the proposition that the attacks are aimed at liberating Iraq.

80% agreed that the guerrilla attacks aim at destabilizing the country.

65% have confidence in the Interim Governing Council.

Juan has more results and a brief comment. (Via Last of the famous international playboys.)

There’s a longer piece by Ian Black in the Groan this morning on the story I linked to here yesterday:

[T]here were signs last night that the dispute, as yet unresolved, is destined to be remembered as another of the gaffes or misjudgments for which the commission president [Romano Prodi] is now known.

“For the leader of the EU to go head to head with the World Jewish Congress is a very bad move,” one senior European diplomat said.

“Presidents and prime ministers don’t get offended by an op ed piece in a newspaper. Anti-semitism is a very serious matter.”

Steve Waugh has gone from Test cricket and that is a sad day for me. I watched him through two entire series – every single day, and virtually every single ball, of them – the two Ashes contests of 1997 and 2001; and I’d seen a fair amount of him before that, in 1989 and 1993. His retirement has to be marked here at normblog.

Best I can do is say what my two enduring memories of him are likely to be. One: he carried the image of an older kind of Aussie – wearing the baggy green, tough-as-nails, no bloody nonsense – into a gentler Australian era. Two: any width on the offside, and that shot of his that screamed past point to the boundary, ‘no man move’. For the whole thing, Stephen Rodger, thanks!

Check out this picture over at Michael Totten’s. It’s of Mars at ground level. It’s an image that just fills me with wonder, more so than any other kind of space pic. I’m not sure why, but it’s maybe the feeling you get that you could be standing there and seeing it for yourself. There on Mars – and it has an Earthy aspect. Whereas other interplanetary photos don’t connect up the new and the familiar in quite the same way. Or something. In any case, I stare at it in awe.

I also took the What famous leader are you? test at the same site. I didn’t get a result I would have predicted. So guess who I am – before clicking through the link to find out. Please contact me if you got the right answer. I may need to talk to you.

No, I’m not asking you to imagine the possibility that the whole history of the world is just a movie in which you and I – and A.L. Kennedy (heaven help us) – are characters. I’m telling you that I just took the What classic movie are you? test, which I discovered thanks to Anthony at Black Triangle, and what classic movie do I turn out to be? The very same one as Anthony: Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington. I’m a bit disappointed.

Just to say, also, that my faves-poll plea (see post immediately below) is working a treat. There’s been a veritable influx. Thanks evs. But… er, what about you?