DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: “Did the Government Know in Advance About 9/11?”
VS. 
YES: Sander Hicks, founder of Soft Skull Press, Vox Pop, and Drench Kiss Media and author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle-Blowers, and the Cover-Up.
NO: Karol Sheinin, blogger at AlarmingNews.com (at one point guest blogger for Michelle Malkin) and founder of the counter-protest group Actual Truth About 9/11.
This contentious issue will be broached next week on Wednesday, November 7 (at 8pm) on the basement level of Lolita Bar (266 Broome St. at Allen St., one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side) — with Michel Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting.
In just-barely-related news, constitutionalists and conspiracists alike may enjoy tonight’s (Oct. 30) Tonight show appearance by my favorite presidential candidate, Ron Paul, as noted in yesterday’s entry, not that some Truther support for Paul makes him a Truther-endorser (or militia man, or Bircher, etc.) — but he probably wouldn’t put such chicanery past the government, either. In the interests of hostal neutrality, I will say no more until after next week’s debate, though.
How did I come to know two people with such opposing takes on this issue? Well, Karol co-hosts the monthly Manhattan Project non-leftist media gatherings with me and Mark Cunningham, while Sander (who, despite his being a Marxist and onetime pursuer of the NY Green Party nomination for Senate, I met through libertarian novelist Katherine Taylor of all people) is technically responsible for me hosting all of these Debates at Lolita Bar, since it was his invitation to see him debate the pros and cons of globalization that led, in 2002, to me first encountering the Jinx Society, then the hosts of the debates. (As it happens, I recall that the cover of National Review on stands the week of 9/11/01 depicted a scary-looking antiglobalization protester with the slogan “Back to the Barricades!” though that antiglobalization protester with his black mask and his fist in the air looked like a well-mannered piker after the Trade Center came down.)
One constant since those early debating days: Michel Evanchik was the moderator then, as Sander faced off against globalist L.B. Deyo (a tenant in the building where Sander was a super), and Michel will be the moderator next week, lo these five years later — during which time L.B. has moved to Austin, TX (whence came the Raspberry Boys comedy troupe, including L.B.’s friend Jerm Pollet, who I saw host and joke their way through a screening of the Halloween-ish 1987 film The Lost Boys last week, with a young Kiefer Sutherland playing a teenage vampire instead of a tough agent and sometime reluctant torturer with exactly 24 hours to save America, over and over again); Sander has married, become a father, divorced, developed an interest in Gandhi instead of violent revolution, and founded a socialism-themed cafe (in Karol’s Brooklyn neighborhood); and Karol has gone from Nader voter (!) to a war-on-terror hawk.
But then, look at me: rooting for Bush then and for Paul now, though I haven’t changed all that much. Come help us sort it all out next week, on Nov. 7. (No chants, shouted interruptions, or rioting, please — your enthusiasm is appreciated, but we’re there to hear both debaters do their thing.)
Of course. Science doesn’t lie. Steel frame buildings CANNOT crumble down into the path of greastest resistance at free fall speed absent controlled demolition. It is simply physically impossible. The whole point of controlled demo is to use gravity to bring down the structure by blowing out all the support collums in a controlled sequence. This is what i don’t understand about the resistance to questioning the official 9/11 story. The speed of the collapses, along with their perfect symmetry into their own footprints, the presence of high temp explosives all points to controlled demo. The gvt must have been involved to wire WTC7….it was a seriously high security govt bldg.
Rbrand | 2:11 pm on the 30th of October, 2007
I plan on being there as Sheinin smacks down…
www.forgotten-ny.com
Kevin Walsh | 12:01 am on the 31st of October, 2007
Oh god.
I cant imagine this being a particularly civil affair.
Science doesn’t lie. Steel frame buildings CANNOT crumble down into the path of greastest resistance at free fall speed absent controlled demolition
The trade centers were supported largely by their exoskeleton. The interior frames were not designed to be smashed to bits and superheated. There are reams of scientific analysis of how it happened. Frontline did a whole hour on it. The answers to the obvious are out there, its a matter of actually reading it.
To buy your whole premise you have to assume there is some benefit to blowing up the world trade center by the government, which is an even harder pill to sell anyone with critical capacity
GILMORE | 4:48 pm on the 31st of October, 2007
I can’t be there. Are their plans to film and You Tube it?
Thanks.
Joe | 9:16 pm on the 3rd of November, 2007
I don’t think so.
Todd Seavey | 10:10 pm on the 3rd of November, 2007
Rbrand, perhaps science doesn’t “lie” but I think you have the science *wrong* in this case. The towers were not supported primarily by interior “support columns” but by a combination of vertical steel trusses in their outer shells and their central elevator cores.
I would recommend the PBS documentary by Ric Burns called “The Center of the World” to get a full history of the towers, including their unique structural features.
Koli | 6:35 pm on the 4th of November, 2007
Civility is still possible. I am personally committed to a clean, sincere, formal debate. It will follow its own rules. The moderators can be counted on to keep it free of interruptions, rudeness, or insanity. It must. The issue here is too important.
I’m also committed to be like the Apostle Paul, and “fight the good fight” in a rigorous, erudite, competitive struggle this Wednesday. In fact, I feel empathy for Karol, to have to defend such an untenable position, to have to stand with the globally-hated Bush and Cheney and Kissinger, war-mongerers with blood on their hands. Ah, but I digress. See you THERE, Wednesday, 8 PM, Nolita Bar!
Sander Hicks | 10:56 am on the 5th of November, 2007
Rudy,
Where are those flight recorders buried?
LC
Louis Charles | 11:40 am on the 5th of November, 2007
Kissinger? Jeeeeeeez.
Karol | 11:06 am on the 6th of November, 2007
70% percent of family members questions were UNANSWERED during the 9/11 commission.
Whoever feels that the govt. told us the complete and correct story is turning blind eyes and ears to murder. And how on Earth can anyone believe what we’ve been told about 9/11 by a complicit govt. when this criminal administration has lied to us almost every day since …
http://www.ae911truth.org
http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org
http://www.patriotsquestion911.org
http://www.stj911.org
WeAreChange.org | 4:43 pm on the 6th of November, 2007
Hmm, Kissinger, yes … as in, the first Bush appointee to Chair the INDEPENDENT 9/11 Commission… you know, the one who had to resign before the Commission got underway because he wouldn’t come clean on his conflicts of interest. The one who was then replaced by ‘independent’ commissioners, each of whom had close ties to either the airline industry or the oil industry. I’m interested in how someone who defends the government’s tale of what happened on 9/11 answers the simple question, “Why can’t we have an independent investigation into the questions surrounding 9/11?” Particularly if we’re going to spend trillions of dollars, kill millions of people, and destroy the very basis of our country’s governance and our way of life based on what a commission tells us is truth… seems like a simple thing to ask, eh? One that, say, 51% of Americans want to see happen…
Janice Matthews | 4:40 pm on the 7th of November, 2007
Unfortunately, the question for debate was “Did the Government Know in Advance About 9/11?” In order to come to any conclusion, we would first have to debate all of the many anomalies that occurred on that day. In my opinion, after tirelessly looking into as many of those anomalies as I could for the past six years, the strongest evidence in support of an inside job is in the building collapses.
The White House has stonewalled most requests for evidence in support of their own conspiracy theory, but the physical attributes of the collapses are available for all of us to analyze. Dust is available to analyze. Photographs of melted box columns are available. Physics textbooks are available.
I think we should have debated whether explosives were physically necessary to bring the three WTC towers down in the manner that they fell. After coming to a conclusion on that single topic, it will be much easier to debate “Did the Government Know in Advance About 9/11?”
Michael Muset | 9:52 pm on the 8th of November, 2007
www.LooseChangeTheFinalCut.com
www.RonPaul2008.com
chucksheen | 10:35 pm on the 12th of November, 2007