Tag: Fenton Communications

Exposing the GI Fifth Column, Again

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the NY Times has now joined the astroturfing campaign to create a perception that there is a “growing” movement in the military to oppose the war in Iraq. If you haven’t read about the astroturfing campaign then you really need to read my prior posting on Exposing the GI Fifth Column, before reading any further because you probably won’t understand half the things I’m about to talk about.

In this NY Times column they continue the media campaign to create an image of this “growing” anti-war movement in the military:

In a small but growing sign of dissent, a group of active-duty military personnel and reservists, including many who have served in Iraq, is denouncing the war and asking Congress for the prompt withdrawal of troops.

The service members, who number more than 1,600, have sent an Appeal for Redress to their Congressional representatives, a form of protest permitted by military rules. Most of those who signed the appeal, at www.appealforredress.org, are enlisted soldiers in the Army, from the lowest to the highest ranks.

(…)

The protest, which was started in October by two active-duty service members and is sponsored by three antiwar groups, initially drew 65 signatures, growing to more than 1,300 by February. This week, after the CBS News program 60 Minutes reported on the appeal, about 300 more active-duty soldiers joined the campaign, said Petty Officer Third Class Jonathan Hutto of the Navy, a co-founder of the group behind the appeal.

Look who has popped up again our man Jonathan Hutto. Notice no mention in the NY Times column about Hutto’s past Amnesty International and anti-war activities prior to enlisting. Also notice no mention was made of the fact that a real grassroots effort to counter the Appeal for Redress fifth column by the milblogs, Appeal for Courage, has nearly equaled their petition. Appeal for Courage has only been active for two weeks and does not have access to big money, the largest liberal public relations firm, 200 newspapers, CBS, Yahoo, and now the NY Times backing it like Appeal for Redress has. Plus Appeal for Redress has been active since last October. The real “growing” movement is Appeal for Courage which is something that will never grace the pages of the NY Times.

Now let’s take a look at who else is mentioned in the article:

There is a sense of betrayal, said Specialist Linsay Burnett, 26, who recently returned from Iraq with the First Brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. The division is readying for its third deployment.

These soldiers stand up to fight, to protect their country, but we are now on the fifth reason as to why it is we are in Iraq, added Specialist Burnett, who has served as a public affairs specialist and as a military journalist focusing primarily on the infantry. How many reasons are we going to come up with for keeping us over there?

A new name, Specialist Linsay Burnett, so who exactly is this person that is able to get quoted in the NY Times? Via great work from Blackfive we now know exactly who Linsay Burnett really is:

With the exception of this year’s freshman class, odds are good that everyone else on campus has already met or at least seen senior Linsay Rousseau Burnett. Between her role as Student Assembly president, her numerous on-campus activities and her various off-campus responsibilities, Linsay has become one of the College’s most recognizable students.

Linsay has worked with the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and the Student Environmental Activist Coalition since her freshman year and credits part of her devotion to these causes to the influence of her parents.

“I’ve always been a feminist. My parents raised me that way, and women’s issues have always been important to me,” Linsay said. “[In addition,] my parents are both environmentalists. They work for the National Park Service. Environmental issues are something we can’t ignore, although we try to, especially when there are so many things around here we could change.”

The Tidewater Labor Support Committee is another organization that Linsay has been involved in since her freshman year. She has involved herself extensively with the Living Wage campaign, although the William and Mary Union has lately taken on many of the students’ former duties.

“We’ve accomplished a lot, but we’re not done,” Linsay said. “Now we serve as a voice for the campus.”

Last year Linsay co-founded and co-directed the College branch of Amnesty International, an organization for which she has worked in the past.

“We still have a ways to go [with the organization], but there are some really good people who have taken over leadership this year who will make sure the organization grows and makes a name for itself on campus,” Linsay said.

Imagine that, another Amnesty International member suddenly enlisting into the military after the war in Iraq was already launched. Then both of them just happened to be part of the same “growing” anti-war movement in the military and coincidentally just happened to be quoted together in a NY Times column.

Let’s look further into SPC Burnett’s past like what she was doing right after 9/11:

A group of over 10 students from the College of William and Mary will fast for 56 hours beginning Nov. 7 at 9 a.m. to protest U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. Their protest is part of the “Fast for Peace,” an event taking place simultaneously at colleges nationwide.

Sophomore Amy Smith and junior Derek Bishop, the campus coordinators for the event, along with fellow protesters, will be wearing white armbands to symbolize their solidarity as they begin their liquid-only fast.

“I am outraged by the travesty that occurred on Sept. 11, and my thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims’ families,” Smith said. “However, to respond by killing people, we are committing the same crime that we abhor. As a nation, we seek peace and security, and acts of violence will never be capable of restoring security.”

During the fast, the protesters will be willing to answer questions and explain their actions and beliefs, according to Smith. Smith and Bishop heard about the fast from friends at other colleges and began researching how to involve the College.

“There are currently 10 people that will definitely be fasting, but the list is progressively growing as we get the word out,” junior Linsay Burnett, a participant of the fast, said.

Interesting, let’s dig even deeper into SPC Burnett’s past. Here you can see how on January 24, 2003, less than two months before the beginning of the Iraq War she suddenly resigns as the student assembly president and withdraws from college due to “medical circumstances”:

“Due to medical circumstances, I am withdrawing from school and cannot continue to serve as your president. However, our school needs a strong student voice now more than ever. The cabinet is completely capable of continuing its work in my absence, and this is what I hope they will be able to do. Due to our rather elusive constitution (a new one will take effect next year), it is possible that a new election will be held, a new cabinet picked and all the work from this year wasted. With this unfortunate timing, the work of the newly elected administration could not even take off before the elections in April.

Her “medical circumstances” were serious enough for her to drop out of college, but she is suddenly miraculously healed and wants to serve her country when just a few years prior after 9/11 she was protesting and fasting in response to the US bombings in Afghanistan. I guess anything is possible.

So what did she have to say while deployed in Iraq you might wonder? Well this is what she had to say in December 2005:

Ralph Nader voters are not as scarce in the Army as you might think. I’ve actually met two in previous trips to Iraq. Spc. Linsay Burnett was the third. But that was just the beginning. Burnett, a 2003 graduate of the College of William & Mary, is probably the least likely soldier I have ever met. What caught my attention was that she was reading Johnny Got His Gun, a classic antiwar novel of World War I. Then it turned out that she was a Nader supporter, vegetarian, labor organizer, founder of an Amnesty International chapter, and former war protester. Not the typical model of a modern soldier.

At the time of the initial invasion, Burnett thought it was a mistake.

“When it first happened,” she says, “I was on the streets protesting with everyone else.” She says she was supportive of the effort to remove Saddam Hussein but skeptical about how America went about it.

Today, she supports the military’s efforts to help create a democracy in Iraq. She says she believes the United States is trying to teach the Iraqis useful things, trying to improve their organization–something near and dear to her heart. But she still wonders how feasible it will be to help make Iraq into a functioning democracy.

So how does she go from “she supports the military’s efforts to help create a democracy in Iraq” to “There is a sense of betrayal” now? Could it be she didn’t want to blow her cover in December 2005 and waited until becoming political active against the military when the Appeal for Redress was launched in October 2006?

Clearly since the leftist groups cannot get an anti-war movement within the ranks of the military started, they have instead decided to create the perception of one by using these plants from Amnesty International. I’m curious to how many more Amnesty International members are within the ranks? Some may wonder why someone would be willing to enlist if they fundamentally dislike the military.

Think about it, by enlisting like they have, it gives them for lack of a better word, “creditability”. So when they exit the military and begin to attack the military like they did prior to enlisting, it makes it more difficult for their opponents to criticize them when they served in the military. Granted they have picked the least dangerous jobs available, but they can still play the veteran card, which makes their opponents have to say every time “I respect your service to your country, but….”, just like critics of Murtha and Kerry have to do. This isn’t the first time that Burnett has been willing to go undercover for a cause she believes in:

Although all her unpaid activities might seem to be enough for any one person to handle, Linsay also has a job. She works as a bartender and a waitress at an exotic dance club; however, her job is part of the research that she is doing in order to write a Sociology Honors Thesis on the effects of globalization on sex workers.

“I’m researching how the economy effects how much they make, why they do what they do, and how seeing all that drips to this one little club,” Linsay said.

Like I have said before I don’t care if they want to speak out on something they believe in, what I don’t like is the dishonesty of the way they are doing it. I wouldn’t have a problem if they came clean and told everyone of their past and current affiliations like SPC Burnett did in the US News article. Why is SPC Burnett not coming clean on her past now in the NY Times article? Also the fundraising Appeal for Redress is doing is quasi illegal. Compare that to the Appeal for Courage site where there is no fundraising effort. I also have a problem with the financial and public relations backing the Appeal for Redress crew is getting through Fenton Communications.

If my website was being backed and promoted by Fox News, wouldn’t I have the moral responsibility to tell everyone that and put a logo or something on my site saying I’m a Fox News contributor? Why doesn’t Appeal for Redress put logos on their site of the people that are really behind them instead of using front groups? Because it goes against the carefully crafted image of a “grassroots” effort that Fenton Communications is trying to create. They are not a “grassroots” movement and are in fact part of a cleverly crafted campaign by Fenton Communications to create an image of “growing” dissent within the military.

The big question I am wondering is who came up with the idea to encourage these people to enlist? Was it Amnesty International’s idea of was it Fenton Communications’? Either way it is amazing to me the efforts these people are willing to go to in order to attack the military and in turn the Bush Administration. I wish Amnesty International would show this much dedication and resolve in combating human rights offensives and sexual slavery happening in China right now. How come they can’t get anyone to go undercover into China and speak out against them? Obviously because America is the easy target. Nothing is going to happen to these frauds that enlisted and if anything this enhances their career aspects within the liberal establishment.

Compare that to if they went undercover in China to report on human rights abuses there and were caught, they would end up in jail. That is why I have no respect for these people because the real human rights abusers they have no courage to confront while they gleefully go after the easy target, America.

Is it the same reason cowardly politicians, like Congressman Mike Honda attack Japan with their holier than thou campaigns and make excuses for China, because Japan is also an easy target. I would like to see Hutto, Burnett, and the rest of their crew try and do their undercover work in let’s say Chechnya or North Korea. I would then have some respect for them and Amnesty International. However, countries like China & North Korea Amnesty International will only continue to send naughty letters to, while the US military they will continue to send their undercover plants to back by a huge and elaborate media campaign. I could go on and on about the hypocrisy of these frauds, but just exposing their dishonesty should be enough for people to realize what their true agendas are.

You can read more over at Milblogs.

Exposing the GI Fifth Column

Just when I think the American media couldn’t get any worse it does. I’m not sure if there has been a bigger piece of propaganda under the cover of investigative journalism than this week’s 60 Minutes piece on the Appeal for Redress frauds. If you have the stomach you can download the video here. Let me get everyone up to speed on what Appeal for Redress really is.

Appeal for Redress operates a website where US military personnel can sign a petition to end the war in Iraq. Appeal for Redress has tried to cultivate an image of being a “grassroots” campaign by US military personnel to end the war in Iraq. If you watch the 60 Minutes piece that is exactly what they say that they are a “grassroots” effort with no external financing. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Appeal for Redress was founded by Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto. No where in the 60 Minutes interview did they bother mentioning Mr. Hutto’s past activities before joining the Navy. Fortunately others have:

Then there is the issue of the spokeman for “Appeals for Redress” featured in the media reports. Jonathan Hutto is described as a Navy seaman based in Norfolk VA who set up the website a month ago. But the media failed to report on Mr. Hutto’s less than pro-American background.

According to his own writings, Hutto “enlisted in the United States Navy in January of 2004” after “working at non-profit organizations and an unsuccessful stint at teaching 5th grade post graduating from Howard University in 1999.” The non-profit organization Hutto worked for was Amnesty International – not your typical volunteer organization. In 2002, Hutto was Membership Program Coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Region of Amnesty International.

In 2001, Hutto was a speaker at The Fight against Police Violence: from Cincinnati to PG County, Maryland. Hutto’s co-speaker at the event was Glova Scott of the Socialist Workers Party. The speech was posted on The Militant website.

Mr. Hutto was also involved in anti-war demonstrations before the Iraq War as well:

When Hutto graduated from Howard, he worked for the ACLU and then for Amnesty International. Hutto has expressed disdain for President Bush, stating “[Bush’s] agenda is not only anti African/African American, but anti-labor, anti-woman, anti-environment and anti-human rights”, has called the Iraq war “illegal” and the United States “imperialist”.

Here is a picture of Mr. Hutto protesting in his prior life before suddenly joining the Navy:

Here is Hutto now:

So what are the odds that a member of a number of liberal, leftists groups opposed to the war in Iraq suddenly has the urge to go serve his country during war time? Not very good, unless he joined as a plant by the anti-war groups opposed to President Bush and the war in Iraq. Now this is a scenario that has a lot of evidence backing it courtesy of some of the best blogging ever by Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette.

Mr. Hutto joined the Navy in 2004 and suddenly in October of 2006 he launches his website just before the 2006 Congressional elections. Even more interesting is that he has a slew of media available to promote his website when he launched it in 2006. His “grassroots” effort against the war was instantly covered in over 200 newspapers across the country. If you are in the military and are against the war and started a website do you think you could get over 200 newspapers to cover the launch of your website? Probably not, but Hutto did. How did he do it you may ask?

Well this is how; out of all these newspapers only one exposed Hutto’s website for what it really is:

Yesterday, a company that does public relations for the liberal activist political action committee MoveOn.org, Fenton Communications, organized a conference call for reporters and three active-duty soldiers to unveil the soldiers’ anti-war group Appeal for Redress.
<…>
A staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity said his company was approached last week by a longtime peace activist and former director of the anti-nuclear proliferation front known as SANE/Freeze, David Cortright, to publicize Appeal for Redress. Mr. Cortright is now president of an Indiana-based nonprofit group, the Fourth Freedom Forum, and his biography on the organization’s Web site says he helped raise “more than $300,000 for the Win Without War coalition to avert a preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002–03.”

So who is Fenton Communications exactly you may ask. They are the public relations firm for just about every liberal activist group you can imagine. Here is a list of all the groups that Fenton Communications provides PR services for. I’ll highlight a few of them below:

Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Turner Foundation (Ted Turner connection), Heinz Family Foundation (John Kerry connection), Amnesty International (Hutto connection), every liberal activist group from San Francisco that you can imagine, every gay rights group you can think of, Air America Radio, Al Gore, Salon.com, AFL-CIO, UAW, Arianna Huffington, Moveon.org (George Soros connection), Fourth Freedom and the list goes on and on.

Fenton Communications is obviously a huge media company with massive political power and money behind it. Now we know there is big money behind Hutto’s “grassroots” movement and now who exactly setup his webpage and organized Hutto’s group you may ask? If you look on the Appeal for Redress sponsors page you see three organizations listed as being behind the Appeal for Redress site, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace. None of these groups are listed as being promoted by Fenton Communications. These three groups are actually front groups for the real power behind Appeal for Redress.

The Appeal for Redress webpage as Greyhawk first reported was registered to J.E. Glick, of 803 North Main Street, Goshen, Indiana. So who is J.E. Glick? This person is actually Jennifer Glick, the director of Information Services, for the Fourth Freedom Forum one of the clients of Fenton Communications which proves the NY Sun’s article about the group fronting for the Appeal for Redress group. After Greyhawk uncovered evidence of Fourth Freedom’s involvement and emailed Ms. Glick for an explanation, which she never provided, the organization moved quickly to cover their tracks by re-registering the Appeal for Redress site under a different site owner from Veterans from Peace.

Since Fenton Communications is behind the promoting of this website they have cleverly tried to create a “grassroots” image of Iraq veterans against the war and they are doing this by using what appears to be “grassroots” front groups to do it. This is called Astroturfing:

In politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations (PR) campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the “AstroTurf” (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate “fake grassroots” support.

So now you know Appeal for Redress has big money behind it from shadow sponsors and is being promoted by the biggest liberal public relations firm in the United States that works for billionaire liberal activists like George Soros and Ted Turner. So now is it any wonder why Appeal for Redress is suddenly formed right before the 2006 Congressional elections? Is it also no wonder why now during the debate over President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq a feature story on CBS’s 60 Minutes program is aired? Could it be that Fenton Communications is behind this current media blitz?

If you are still not convinced behind the Fenton Communications involvement in the 60 Minutes program than read what Lara Logan the CBS reporter who put the 60 Minutes feature together had to say about the piece:

“It’s basically a grass roots movement amongst active duty, serving members of the U.S. military.” And “We were very careful to look thoroughly at the group, and to look into their military backgrounds, and to make sure that this wasn’t… people with something hidden in their past or some reason that wasn’t the stated reason to be involved in this.”

She could not find any evidence of “people with something hidden in their past”? WTF? All Ms. Logan had to do was do a Google Search on Jonathan Hutto and all his anti-war and liberal activism before joining the Navy pops right up. Additionally Ms. Logan describes Mr. Hutto like this:

“I’m not anti-war. I’m not a pacifist. I’m not opposed to protecting our country and defending our principles,” says Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, an Iraq war veteran who, along with another veteran, initiated the petition.

However, Mr. Hutto never served in Iraq, but hey that is a small lie compared to the big lie that Ms. Logan is legitimizing as hard news on 60 Minutes.

I think it is important to note that Ms. Logan is well known for running anti-military pieces including when she tried to pass off Al Qaida propaganda footage as hard news without telling viewers it was an Al Qaida propaganda video:

She would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for bloggers exposing the story and forcing CBS news to not air the segment. Do a Google search on Lara Logan and read her articles or go to her fan site and read or watch her reports there. Just about every single one from both Iraq and Afghanistan is negative and yet we should trust her reports when she couldn’t even uncover Jonathan Hutto’s past activities when Ms. Logan said in her own words she was being “very careful to look thoroughly at the group” before airing the 60 Minutes report?

I think clearly 60 Minutes and Ms. Logan are both working in concert with Fenton Communications marketing campaign involving Appeal for Redress.

Also notice once again that word “grassroots” that Ms. Logan was using. To paraphrase the infamous words of Joseph Goebbels, if you keep telling a lie over and over again, eventually people begin to believe it. That is exactly the image Fenton Communications is trying to cultivate with Appeal for Redress and Ms. Logan and her ilk are aiding them in that effort. Their ilk now includes Yahoo with the webpage promoting the Appeal for Redress 60 Minutes segment on their site:

The reason the anti-war and liberal activist groups have had to go this route an implement a well organized astroturfing campaign is because of the all volunteer military. It is tougher to create discontent in the ranks when everyone volunteered to serve, especially now that their argument of soldiers being duped into the military and forced to go to war has been proven wrong. It has been over 5 years since the nation went to war on September 11, 2001, which means all the young soldiers, junior sergeants, and officers that make up the vast majority of the soldiers in the US military enlisted knowing full well they were going to war.

So next these groups tried to create a perception of poor troop morale, which failed, along with their efforts to stop military recruiting by attacking and banning recruiters or going after ROTC programs. Remember all the stories of the military not meeting their recruiting numbers a couple years ago? That was because the military was in the midst of expanding the overall force numbers, which meant more people had to be recruited. Now that the force has completed the expansion it is easier to maintain recruiting numbers which the military has been able to do for well over a year during a time of war. Then the media tried to create an image of US soldiers with higher than normal suicide rates, which once again that was quickly debunked. Another parallel effort was to paint soldiers as uneducated low lives that are committing crimes all over Iraq. That hasn’t worked yet either. Is it possible Fenton Communications had any involvement in any of these media campaigns? You be the judge.

Now the latest effort is to create an image of a “grassroots” campaign within the military against the war in Iraq. Hutto’s group is one branch of this effort along with the 1LT Ehren Watada’s refusal to deploy. Just like Mr. Hutto, 1LT Watada joined the military after the war in Iraq had already started. Did he not know the nation was at war? Why join the military if you are against the war in Iraq? It is because he has other motives just like Hutto. 1LT Watada’s dad is a known peace activist who refused to deploy to Vietnam and is a political insider in Hawaii who is known to compare President Bush to Hitler. So who is backing Watada you ask? Well, none other than Iraq Veteran’s Against the War and Veterans for Peace, the same groups backing Hutto’s Appeal for Redress group, which are as I have shown front groups for the Fourth Freedom Forum, which is promoted by Fenton Communications. So when you connect the dots it is easy to see how the groups behind Hutto and Watada receive so much publicity when their groups only represent .04% of the US military. How come the other 99.6% of US soldiers cannot get the same amount of air time on 60 Minutes as Appeal for Redress?

What I have found interesting watching this whole astroturfing campaign unfold is how similar it is to the South Korean spy scandal. In the spy scandal North Korean spies within the Korean political party the Democratic Labor Party planted agents within South Korean activist groups to act as front groups to promote anti-US activities within South Korea. So who taught who? Did Fenton Communications learn this astroturfing scheme from the North Koreans or did the North Koreans learn it from Fenton Communications?

In order to counter the large and elaborate astroturfing campaign members of various milblogs have begun our own real grassroots effort by creating an online petition on February 12th of this year called an Appeal for Courage. In just two weeks 1,197 people have already signed the petition compared to the 1,584 people who have signed the Appeal for Redress petition which has been online since last October and is backed by shadow groups that are using the largest liberal media company Fenton Communications to promote the website in over 200 US newspapers, 60 Minutes, and Yahoo. Despite all this publicity and money behind Hutto’s group, the Appeal for Courage petition is on pace to blow by the Appeal for Redress astroturfers. If you are active duty, reserve, or National Guard it is perfectly legal to sign the petition. You can read the DOD directives and the petition here. Let your voice be heard instead of drowned out by the .04% on 60 Minutes that are backed by an elaborate, well funded liberal marketing campaign.

People, groups, and media like Hutto, Watada, Fourth Freedom forum, CBS News, Fenton Communications, and the rest of their ilk don’t support the troops, and this is nothing new. They are just really damn good at hiding it.

Read more at: Milblogs, Flopping Aces, Malkin, Blackfive, LGF, Ms. Underestimated, Op-For