Appeal for Redress: Astroturfing (Important: exposing the leftist active duty anti-war scumbags)

Mudville Gazette ^ | 1/16/07 | Greyhawk

[pissant]

This post originally appeared at MilBlogs in October, 2006. While some of the information uncovered herein has since made it's way into smaller media outlets, most major mainstream media sources are still reporting this effort as a "grass roots" campaign. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Astroturfing (via wikipedia):

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.

The goal of such campaign is to disguise the agenda of a political client as an independent public reaction to some political entity —a politician, political group, product, service, event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach," "awareness," etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing their own personal agenda through to highly organised professional groups with financial backing from large corporations.

And that's what's occurring with the "Appeal for Redress" web site.

The missing piece of the puzzle was actually available from the start:

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.

That's from the October 26 New York Sun - kudos to the only reporters in the crowd who had the guts to tell the truth about this. As of this writing, over 200 newspapers have carried the story; The Boston Globe, al-Jazeera, The Washington Post, ABC News, Reuters, The (UK) Guardian... but none of the stories acknowledge the orchestration of the event by Fenton Communications. Instead, virtually all of them detail the "grass roots" effort of the troops. Even without the Sun story, the mere fact that this appeared simultaneously in multiple "big media" outlets is evidence enough of such a campaign. In the pre-internet days this wouldn't be so obvious, but in these days of instant global communication the life cycle of such a story should hardly exceed 24 hours (and wouldn't have in the past without active media participation). But if you're among the few tech savvy and information hungry people interested in not taking such slickly-packaged information at face value, here are the facts about "Appeal for Redress" in order of discovery here.

The site is registered to J.E. Glick, of 803 North Main Street, Goshen, Indiana. A quick check of online white pages reveals that's the address of The Fourth Freedom Forum. (You can also read about the group here). This would seem to confirm the point in the Sun story quoted above:

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 Jennifer Glick (J.E. Glick), actual "owner" of the Appeal for Redress web site, is listed in the Fourth Freedom Forum contact page as Director, Information Services.

The Fourth Freedom Forum's opposition to war pre-dates Iraq and Afghanistan. They are a well funded, very professional organization. But the group is not listed among the sponsoring organizations on the Appeal for Redress web page. (Those groups are Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace.)

It would seem the Fourth Freedom Forum wants to hide it's activities behind some groups and individuals seen as more credible to this particular cause. (I think "front groups" is the usual term.) But it was easy to find the real owners of the "Redress" web page (I originally noted the failure to do so on the part of one of the reporters who carried this propaganda to "the next level" - but have since come to believe that among journalists this was actually common knowledge that they saw fit not to include in their stories), so the "staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity" (ironically, given the breathless press accounts, the only actual whistleblower in this story) may or may not have needed to be so concerned about being revealed.

(Update: registration of the site has been changed. Fourth Freedom is working quickly to camoflage their involvement in this project.)

[pissant]

Once again, the blogosphere exposes what the MSM hides and lies about

[pissant]

Read more here...

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/

[Thrownatbirth]

"Appeal for Redress" was launched by a bored Norfolk sailor who used to work for, HELLO!, Amnesty International.

This clown had a bone to pick with the military before he ever took the oath.

[pissant]

And he needs to be drummed out immediately.

[Thrownatbirth]

Cool link, btw....

[aflaak]

great info

[dirtboy]

ping - you'll probably find this interesting.

[Doctor Raoul]

Sehr Gutt. Great G2.

[pissant]

Once again, it shows the MSM in cahoots with the forces undermining this war. They are as vile as the terrorists.

[kristinn]

Thanks.

[aculeus]

Astroturfing, a great new term.


http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/02/astroturfing_cbs_and_the_wapo.html

[pissant]

I've heard that. It's a great and acurrate term