BOLD like a Leopard

 As I'm writing this it is the week after the 19th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the event that defined my generation just as Vietnam defined the generation of baby boomers. It is a bitter day for many reasons. On the one hand there is the largely held sentiment that the almost three thousand victims of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Another reason compounding it is the lack of transparency by the US government and various other governments regarding the events leading up to the tragic attacks. And yet on top of that is the fact that opportunistic hoaxers have taken it upon themselves to take advantage of that lack of transparency and use the available information to concoct lies and canards in order to fit their worldview. In 2019 I debated one such person, Ryan Dawson of ANC Report. Typically I have the urge to find something redeeming in one of my opponents, but with respect to him the longer the exposure to his material the easier it is to see th

Those that behave illogically cannot use logic to convince their adversaries, so instead they resort to moral finger whagging. Readers of the Times of Israel  Blogs (TOI Blogs) probably are aware of one of the more successful non-Israeli writers on the platform, the Lebanese Canadian Fred Maroun. For many years his posts have often been successful and shared in explosive bursts. At one point I was a fan of Fred's and would correspond with him both in comment threads and by private message. I even interviewed him in 2018 on my YouTube channel. He used to pretend to care what people of different viewpoints have to contribute to discussions of the Middle East, and probably would insist to this day that he hasn't changed but rather he's recognized some flaws that previously he ignored. In other words, he was never wrong, but everyone he disagreed with was and he was too nice to point it out. Fred's latest article is called " Right-wing Zionist attacks o

Dan Rather and CBS retracted two reports regarding bombings on 9-11, but for whatever reason Dawson believes that only one of them actually occurred. (FAIR) This article is part of a series concerning my debate with AntiNeocon Report founder Ryan Dawson. See part 1 here . 4. Sins of the Cousin At one point in the debate Dawson attempted to deflect toward the issue of United 93 hijacking pilot Ziad Jarrah and the purported spying activities of his cousins Ali and Yusuf al-Jarrah on behalf of Israel. The implication being made, with no further explanation, is that since his cousin had been a deep operative for the Israelis how could they have not known that Ziad Jarrah was involved in the biggest terror plot in American history? I attacked this logic by citing the fact that the immediate families of many of the hijackers had expressed  surprise at their role in the attack, including Ziad Jarrah's uncle Jamal who claimed to the  Boston Globe  that he was even told by hi