A NUMBER OF Y’ALL have emailed me (and I presume the other guest bloggers) about the various claims that Qana was a hoax, based either on the time stamps on the rescue photos, or the fact that the building seems to have fallen down hours after the airstrike.

As I wrote to several people, having spent a year working at Ground Zero, I have a very high level of scepticism about these sorts of conspiracy theories. The photo conspiracy seems to be based on the ignorance of how wire services work; its author has confused the dateline, which indicates when the wire service loaded the photos into their system, with a digital timestamp. And the claims that the building couldn’t have collapsed after so much time sound remarkably like the WTC Building 7 conspiracy theories, which were based on the fact that 7WTC, the farthest from the twin towers, inexplicably collapsed nine hours after the planes hit, even though it suffered no apparent structural damage.

In the “fog of war” all sorts of rumors get started–remember how tens of thousands were thought killed in the WTC, or the various reports of impending terror attacks in the days that followed? And when something bad happens, it’s normal to look for reasons it’s not your fault, especially if it was an accident. But I need a pretty high standard of evidence to accuse the victims of a tragedy of staging it to make us look bad. Meanwhile, it’s not exactly helpful that many of the people arguing against the conspiracy theories are making remarks that sound like borderline anti-semitism, trending into grand Zionist conspiracy theories.

I’ve never managed to convince anyone of anything on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and perhaps it’s impossible (though perhaps I’m just a lacklustre debater). But I think there are helpful and less helpful ways to express the deep rifts that divide us, and looking for grand plots in the chaos strikes me as among the least productive.

A PLEA at Publius Pundit: Save Lebanon, Save Arab Democracy.

DOH!

TIMES SURE HAVE CHANGED. Greg Mankiw points out that it wasn’t all that long ago that the New York Times was editorialising against the minimum wage.

My position on the minimum wage is like that of many economists: I’m agin it. It does a lousy job of targeting poverty, because most of the people who get it aren’t poor, and most of the people who are poor don’t get it. To the extent that it does help the poor, it often does so by transferring money from other poor people–those who lose jobs due to the higher minimum wage, and those who shop at places that pay the minimum wage. Instead, I favour the Earned Income Tax Credit.

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NO JOB, DON’T CARE: I found this story, from yesterday’s NYT, profoundly disturbing. These guys are unemployed, not looking for work (like Clark Griswold’s cousin-in-law Eddie they all seem to be “holding out for a management position”) making their wives work to support them at crummy jobs they won’t take , and laying waste to their savings. What happens, I wonder, when the savings runs out? And who are these super tolerant women? When I was practicing law, I used to beg my wife to let me quit and go work at a bookstore. She laughed. “Why should you get to quit your job?” We compromised; we both quit . . . .

SORRY FOR THE GLOOM: I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but Brett Stephens, Ralph Peters, and National Review think Israel is losing the war in Lebanon. That also means Lebanon and its rising democracy, as opposed to Hezbollah, are losing the war.

(Two months ago I wrote that Israel should relatiate against Syria or Iran instead of Lebanon if they wanted to see good results.)

SEND IN THE STANDARD “RICH AND FAMOUS” CONTRACT: Ever since Sonny Mehta awarded Yale law professor Stephen Carter a multi-million dollar contract to produce two novels, law professors cum novelists everywhere have seem to have emerged. Kim Roosevelt, Paul Goldstein and Jed Rubenfeld have followed Professor Carter in writing very interesting novels. This summer, I read Roosevelt’s, In the Shadow of the Law and Goldstein’s Errors and Omissions. Rubenfeld’s novel, The Interpretation of Murder, will be released in September. So have the publishers received value for the product? I can say that both are excellent books. What follows are a couple of mini-reviews of both.

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ANYONE WHO’S EVER worked from home will sympathise with Fat Doctor’s discovery that quarantine is not as much fun as it looks.

APPARENTLY, the guy who shot up the synagogue in Seattle had recently converted to Christianity.

ON BLOGGINGHEADS, Robert Wright explains why homosexuality is a purer expression of male sexuality: it’s not compromised by having to accommodate to women. “You’re dealing with somebody who agrees to your rules.” This is part of a discussion of whether it’s bigoted to say — as Ann Coulter did — that male homosexuals are more promiscuous than male heterosexuals. But go watch the whole thing. There’s a texture to the whole brilliant conversation that I’m not even going to try to reproduce here: Mickey Kaus wields an Ann Coulter doll on camera and has some juicy things to say about narcissism and “fruity” gestures, there’s plenty of analysis of Bill Clinton as a gay man, and much, much more. Meanwhile, over on Kausfiles there’s a supplemental transcript with Peter Beinart badgering Coulter about bigotry and Kaus’s opinion that Beinart “comes off as a posturing fool.” (To get in on a conversation about this, come over to my home blog, where we’ve got comments.)

MORE ON HUNGER: Catallarchy’s Matt McIntosh directs me to a post on Cindy Sheehan’s hunger strike:

After all, if Sheehan is on a “hunger strike” there must be a sliding scale of increasing food intake. The first five ranks:

(100) The UN Food Aid Recipient :: You eat nothing, at least nothing resembling food. You may stave off hunger using sand or copious amounts of brackish, untreated water. No one notices you but a few missionaries but, sadly, the Bible proves to not be a source of nutrition. Too bad the rest of this list is probably pushing for policies that place you in unbreakable poverty and protests the removal of regimes that divert your food to their armies and cronies.

(90) The Devil Eats Nada :: You eat nothing, but what a fashionable nothing it is! You’ve got a t-shirt designed by a hot fashion house that declares your allegiance to saving pandas/the rainforest/face/whatever and unlike your deprived brethren awaiting UN food aid, you’ve got a high dollar bottle of purified water at all times. Far from donating the savings from foregone meals, you’ve invested in a high definition plasma display. Unfortunately, you’re going to need every protestor buck and then some to pay back society, you consumer whore.

Which reminded me of the time, way back in March of 2002, I threatened to go on a hunger strike to protest the fact that Jonathan Last hadn’t mentioned me in one of his articles:

Well, I’ll show Last. I’m going on a fast until I’m mentioned in his column. But since it might be a long fast, and I don’t want to contribute to the perpetuation of the White Male Power Structure with my early demise, I’ll still be eating enough calories to maintain life. At a healthy weight, I mean. In fact, some people who haven’t been radically empowered might call it more of a reducing diet. Or just “eating right”. But you can bet your copy of The Feminist’s Guide to Saving the Earth that not one piece of Auntie Em’s Organic Coffee Cake will pass these lips until this weblog appears at the Weekly Standard Online.

Hey! Do you think this means Cindy Sheehan reads my blog?

“DON’T TOUCH IT.” Indeed. (Via Metafilter.)

SOME GOOD NEWS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST Daniel Drezner reports that “despite the turmoil in the Middle East — and the blame that many place on the United States for what’s happening — the Security Council still voted 14-1 to threaten Iran with economic sanctions unless that country suspended its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities.”

I’M A HUGE FAN of clean, green nuclear power. And while I understand Senator Harry Reid’s quixotic crusade against Yucca mountain, I haven’t found it very convincing. But as Bruce Webster says, he does rather have a point when he says that we don’t want Yucca mountain to be built by the same folks who brought you the Big Dig.

THE NYT IS COVERING THE KEVIN BARRETT STORY that is dogging my university.

Mr. Barrett and Chancellor Wiley both said the controversy might actually be helping provide Mr. Barrett with a larger platform to voice his ideas.

Oh, really? Just maybe? If only everyone could have kept quiet and let him teach his course in peace. In fact, all of you people, look away, pay no attention to what goes on inside the university. If you see something you don’t like and criticize it, you’ll only be amplifying it. So, go, scrutinize something else. But please, send us your kids and your money.

I SURE HOPE HE’S WRONG, but I fear he might not be: Lebanon.Profile at the Lebanese Political Journal says Hezbollah effectively mounted a coup using Israel to assassinate the government. There are a few signs it won’t turn out this way in the end, and I’ll get to them shortly.

CASTRO IS STEPPING DOWN TEMPORARILY due to illness, and handing the reins of power over to his brother. From what I know about Castro, I’d guess he must be really damn sick. Not that I wish anyone (even Castro) dead, but it will be interesting to see what follows his demise. I doubt the communist regime will long survive its founder.

FIDEL CASTRO (temporarily) handed power over to his brother Raul.

PROTEST LITE: 1/3 less hunger in your hunger strikes:

Was a time when fasting at the very least meant eating less. But while our soldiers are sacrificing their lives for freedom, their detractors don’t seem to be to keen on sacrificing anything at all. Thus we have the Cindy Sheehan “hunger strike,” which allows smoothies, coffee with vanilla ice cream, and Jamba Juice. . .

Now the peacenik group CodePink, according to the Washington Post, “has issued a nationwide call for people to go on at least a partial hunger strike, if only for a few hours, to show their opposition to the war in Iraq.” Partial? For a few hours? Does that mean if you were planning on having two Twinkies and a bag of chips between lunch and dinner you should cut out one of the Twinkies? The life of a war protestor is a harsh one indeed!

I have a friend who is both a peacenik, and an observant Jew; she has made fun of me more than once in the past about the wimpy Catholic notion of what a fast entails. But this makes the official RC “one meal and one snack” look positively spartan. I’ll finally be able to hold my head high again . . .

LEBANON’S FOREIGN MINISTER Tareq Mitri proposes the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south and the disarmament of all non-state militias. No word yet on whether or not Hezbollah finds this acceptable.

MICHAEL YOUNG interviews Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who is now being threatened by Hezbollah as well as Syria.

HOW TO AVOID A BLOGOSPHERE SCANDAL: The title of a helpful series from LaShawn Barber. [Is she trying to tell you something?–Ed.] Don’t be snarky just because Glenn didn’t take you on his trip!

HEZBOLLAH’S NEXT MOVE? “Ali” from Hezbollah says Lebanese politicians are “next” after Israel withdraws:

And even when the battle with the Israelis is over, he adds menacingly, Hizbullah will have other battles to fight. “The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis and then we will settle scores later.”

REAL SIMPLE: George Jonas explains what ought to be obvious:

I’ve stumbled upon the secret of the countries Israel has never bombed or invaded. Different as they may be from one another, they have one thing in common. These countries have never bombed or invaded Israel…No matter how much you detest Israelites in particular, or Jews in general, as long as you can content yourself with calling on God’s wrath to rain down on the Jewish State, and refrain from reinforcing your prayer by supplying missiles to Hezbollah, you can exercise your religious freedom of loathing with no other consequence than perhaps being loathed in return.

HEZBOLLAH lauds Mel Gibson. (This is a joke, by the way. Sort of…)