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.
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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
