it's the court of public opinion. and in my opinion, knowing what I know about the history and development of the movement, the case against AJ and LC begins with an examination of the information they present and their general behavior.

Alex Jones turns a lot of people off with his abrasive and cocky attitude. I have never (and I know I'm not alone) recommended that anyone seeking the truth about 9/11 seek out Alex Jones' site or videos. He is a businessman first and foremost in my opinion, regardless of how many of his fans place him on a pedestal. He routinely reports incorrect information and frequently jumps to conclusions that are then not born out by the facts, after which he rarely seems to issue retractions. He serves, willingly or not, to lump 9/11 with a host of other more dubious claims in particular about the so-called New World Order cult and its satanic rituals. Simply put, he comes across as a buffoon. There is an aura of fishiness about him--for one, he claims to have predicted 9/11 before it happened and for this released a video that he claims he made before 9/11. However this video seems to have surfaced relatively recently which makes me wonder if it wasn't concocted after the fact. Finally, he seems overly keen to downplay Israeli agency, preferring to portray Israel as the tool of American hegemons. This is true with 9/11 as well as with his views on the JFK assassination and the USS Liberty.

The Loose Change kids pretty much speak for themselves--in other words, when they speak, anyone who has researched 9/11 thoroughly (as I feel I have) realizes that they don't actually know that much about the subject. they also seem extraordinarily ignorant about history generally, for example saying during the debate with Popular Mechanics on Democracy Now that they thought Cheney had been defense secretary under Reagan. They invariably perform very poorly in debates and are nonetheless (or in my view for that reason) promoted in the mainstream media as representative of the broader truth movement. Their film, they have admitted, contained flaws and errors which they explained they consciously left in so as to "spark debate". Sure. They respond to all criticism defensively and all too often invoke the "jealousy defense" noting that those who criticize them are jealous of their success. We are expected to believe that these kids, who seem to have led particularly unremarkable lives until getting into the 9/11 truth movement (Dylan was rejected from a small film school twice, and none of them seem to have attended college), are in fact remarkably sage and prescient individuals with fairly impressive skills. Other than their movie, though, which could have been made by someone else for all we know, they have no work--written or otherwise that indicates any kind of excellence.

From my observation of the truth movement from its early days, I have noticed several patterns, into which AJ and the Loose Change boys fit quite well. There is the tendency, for one, for early entrants into the truth movement to "go off the rails" at some point--in other words luring people in in order to gain credibility with relatively interesting work or revelations only to proceed to discredit themselves later so as to ridicule and demoralize anyone who believes in them. Looking at Hufschmid and Fetzer we can see that this process is timed differently in each case--this ostensible diversity serves to mask the actual uniformity, and people assume that all these people could not be working to thwart the movement. Since most people have until now been unaware of any real serious issues with the official story, it makes sense that the shills would, in the beginning, outnumber the honest folk. This means that the earlier a person's entry into the movement as a well-known figure, the more likely they are to be dishonest.

Another pattern is that of peer pressure and appeals to authority. Oh, you haven't made a popular documentary? How dare you criticize Loose Change then? Oh, YOU don't have a radio show that reaches thousands, or produced a film like Terrorstorm? How dare you criticize Alex Jones. In both cases these appeals are made to deflect well-earned criticism and produce a club-like atmosphere. Oh, you've MET the Loose Change guys? Wow! You were at ground zero with them and Alex Jones? Cooool. So Hollywood, so Madison Ave., so... suspiciously fake!

Both AJ and LC boys now make their living off of the turth movement. This means they are professional truthers, which flies in the face of most truthers' identification with a grassroots movement of citizens. AJ and LC seem always to be promoting something for sale, whetehr it be the latest version of their films, or the crap advertised on their radio shows.

In summary, Alex Jones and Loose Change are suspicious because their quality does not correspond to their popularity. They make perfect targets in various ways for those who wish to discredit the 9/11 truth movement or at least discourage regular folks from looking into it or wanting to be associated with it, and they take advantage of any opportunity given them by the mainstream media (and there have been many) to put themselves in front of big audiences, giving the impression that they are somehow worthy of all that attention, when we know that when the mainstream media promotes people it is because they consider them useful, not dangerous.

Over to you, Bruce!