Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:09 pm Post subject: JTRIG Mindbenders: Strategic Communications Bell Pottinger
Mindbenders: Strategic Communications PsyWar Bell Pottinger
Certainly permanent link must be here to the 'it's all about covert control of the media.
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=16334
Since that is the main operational target of these Strategic Communications firms. Strategic Communications is taking public relations to another level - to the level of psychological warfare.
Here's our first posting on this firm about StratComs firms - nice one Mark
PR involvement in Alexander Litvinenko's 'poisoning' story revealed
24th November 2006
As if the murky world of espionage had not already obscured the
story of the death of Alexander Litvinenko enough, it now seems that
powerful PR forces have been at work too.
The Guardian reported today that a company run by Lord Bell of
Belgravia, who as Tim Bell was behind the advertising campaigns which
helped the Tories to power in 1972, distributed the pictures of Mr
Litvinenko in hospital and handled media enquiries.
Lord Bell's Bell Pottinger Communications clients include Boris
Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, who was a friend and employer of Mr
Litvinenko.
The Evening Standard's This is London website added that Moscow has
also employed a powerful PR consultancy, to counter claims from
Berzovsky. It reports: "The Russian government has signed a
multi-million pound contract with the American PR firm, Ketchum. They
are using two heavyweights in London: Tim Allen, a former Downing
Street spin doctor, and Angus Roxburgh, a former BBC correspondent in
Moscow."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:20 pm Post subject:
Our position on the problems of human rights violations is basically legal, ethical and preventative. No healthy, solid, stable democracy can build itself upon a foundation of forgetting the most serious crimes against the right to life, integrity and freedom committed in Chilean history and within a policy of state terrorism that unleashed maximum political violence against society. We reaffirm that there is no ethical nor judicial reason why crimes of human rights violations should remain in impunity. We are asking that crimes against humanity be punished in the same way that common ones are.
http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/
(From the Statement, on 23rd July 1995, by the Group of Families of the Detained and Disappeared; quoted in Amnesty International's report, Transition at the Crossroads: Human Rights Violations under Pinochet Remain the Crux , March 1996.)
Statements by Remember-Chile on Britain's release of Pinochet:
- Did Bindman & Partners help Jack Straw to secure General Pinochet's release?
- Remember-Chile disputes the medical report on General Pinochet's fitness to plead
WHO WE ARE
This web site is by a group of Chileans and others in Britain. We have been prompted into action by the arrest in Britain, in October 1998, of Chile's former head of state, General Pinochet.
Those of us with direct experiences of Pinochet's brutal dictatorship have had painful memories brought more rawly to the surface. Others have become involved in the unfolding events because of their concern for human rights.
While Bell Pottinger Communications has been running a £200,000 public relations campaign for Pinochet, we have put together this website for less than £200.
Rather than by money, this web site has been motivated by genuine belief and real commitment. The wish to sell an image through the techniques and distortions of propaganda has not been behind this web site. It has been motivated by the desire for the truth to be known. It has been driven by the need for grief and loss to be acknowledged and to be able to follow through naturally. And it is hoped that it may be a contribution towards open, informed and balanced discourse - the precondition for a healthy society.
There are those in this country who have actively supported Pinochet and see it as wrong to have arrested the man at all. However, we would prefer to resist such tendencies to turn a blind eye to horror or - even - to justify it for ideological ends. Rather than sinking into short-sighted cynicism (usually euphemistically termed 'pragmatism', 'national interest' or 'realpolitik') we would prefer at least to try to temper the human capacity for the darkest cruelty and most degrading violence. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Wikipedia pulls Bell Pottinger-linked pages: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d13cc7e-2104-11e1-8a43-00144feabdc0.html
Wikipedia, the online user-generated encyclopedia, has suspended 10 accounts associated with Bell Pottinger, the firm at the heart of a dispute over lobbying industry ethics, on suspicion there may have been a breach of its editing rules. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, told the Financial Times that it was conducting an internal investigation into changes made to the pages of Bell Pottinger’s clients in a case which has roused controversy over the methods used by lobbying companies to influence opinion… A spokesman for Bell Pottinger, which is owned by Chime Communications, admitted that its employees had edited Wikipedia pages on behalf of clients but said that it had “never done anything illegal”. “We have never added anything that is a lie and never tried to ‘astroturf’,” Bell Pottinger said, referring to the unscrupulous practice of faking “grassroots” support online.
Quote:
I have just sent this email to Bell Pottinger:
From: Tim Ireland
To: info@bell-pottinger.co.uk
Date: Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:45 AM
Subject: Your Wikipedia edits
I have issued a public challenge for you to declare all of your Wikipedia accounts:
This is a public challenge to #BellPottinger to declare their Wikipedia accounts. Or I can ferret them out for you (eg http://j.mp/vv29KG)
http://twitter.com/#!/bloggerheads/statuses/144334898826715136
Alternatively, as I suggest in my tweet, I can ferret them out for you and name them without your permission.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:26 am Post subject:
Another occasion where strategic communications firms move in to protect a brand and crush free speech. In this case DOLE bananas.
How far will a big corporation go to protect its brand? Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten's experienced this recently. His previous film BANANAS!* (IDFA 2009) recounts the lawsuit that 12 Nicaraguan plantation workers brought against the fruit giant Dole Food Company. The film was selected for competition by the Los Angeles Film Festival. Nothing wrong so far, right? But then Gertten gets a strange message: the festival removes Bananas!* from competition. Then a scathing article appears in the Los Angeles Business Journal about the film, and Gertten subsequently receives a letter from Dole's attorney threatening him with legal action. What follows is an unparalleled thriller that has Gertten capturing the entire process - from Dole attacking the producers with a defamation lawsuit and bullying scaretactics, to media control and PR spin. This personal film reveals precisely how a multinational will stop at nothing to get its way - freedom of speech is at stake. As Dole's PR company puts it, "It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than a bad reputation".
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 12:03 am and is filed under Consume!, Old Media, Search Engine Optimisation, Teh Interwebs, Tories! Tories! Tories!.
My scanner is having some emotional problems right now (it’s never quite recovered from the mammoth task of scanning all those Page 3 girls) so formal recruitment and data distribution for The PR Transparency Project will be subject to a minor delay.
In the meantime, I thought it would be appropriate for me to acid-test the waters with what I suspect will be one of the most contentious items from this 1997 book about Tim Bell and get it out of the way. Having read the book, I can assure you that there are many more items of greater relevance to any discussion about Tim Bell’s conduct as a PR/ad executive (more), so if we can all get past this and move on, that would be a very good thing indeed.
I post the following without comment or analysis. While the following passage only refers to ‘Bell’, it is definitely about Tim Bell, Chairman of Chime Communications (holding company for a portfolio of 35 companies including the Bell Pottinger group), and it is an accurate scan and verbatim* transcript of Page 45 from The Ultimate Spin Doctor: The Life and Fast Times of Tim Bell (ISBN-10: 0340696745). I did not personally witness the incident, and being only 7 years old at the time, I would expect Tim Bell to be rather glad that I didn’t.
Quote:
EXTRACT FROM PAGE 45 OF ‘THE ULTIMATE SPIN DOCTOR: THE LIFE AND FAST TIMES OF TIM BELL’
This exhibitionism asserted itself somewhat differently in one of the most controversial incidents of his life. In the early hours of 21 October 1977, three days after his thirty-sixth birthday and close to the peak of his advertising career, Bell stood naked in the bathroom of his second-floor flat at 13c West Heath Road overlooking Hampstead Heath, and exposed himself to several women while masturbating. At 8.35 a.m. he was arrested and a month later, on 19 November 1977, appeared at Hampstead Magistrates Court. According to the official conviction certificate, he was charged with ‘wilfully, openly, lewdly and obscenely’ exposing himself ‘with intent to insult a female’ under Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. He was found guilty and fined £50 with seven days to pay. Curiously, this newsworthy case was never reported in the local newspaper, the Hampstead and Highgate Express and only his close colleagues at Saatchi’s knew of it. To his credit, Bell never flinched when the incident, which later assumed an importance of some magnitude, was raised. He admitted the conviction but denied that the event took place. He confided to a colleague that his lawyers, Butcher Brooks and Co. advised him to plead guilty to avoid a scandal.
This entry was posted by Tim Ireland on January 18, 2012 at 12:03 am
Oliver Morgan - The Observer, Sunday 11 September 2005
The first private company to provide psychological warfare services, or 'psyops', to the military, will be launched this week at a global arms fair in London.
Strategic Communication Laboratories, a UK firm that was a political communications consultancy, is to relaunch as a psyops operator at the Defence Systems and Equipment International exhibition. The firm, chaired by former Conservative defence minister Sir Geoffrey Pattie, and with working capital of more than £11m, has 20 fulltime staff and can deploy 100-strong teams.
It believes armies are prepared to buy such services from a private provider and maintains that psyops can shorten conflicts. Chief executive Nigel Oakes points to the surrender of nearly 90,000 troops in the first Gulf conflict, attributed to psyops.
He said: 'We used to be in the business of mindbending for political purposes, but now we are in the business of saving lives.'
SCL is a behavioral research and intervention agency. It offers its services to governments, militaries, political parties, and commercial companies who seek to affect behavioral change amongst key audience groups. It has been identified by the United States GAO as an advocate of behavioural research for public diplomacy.
The company conducts Target Audience Analysis (TAA) to learn the motivations, beliefs and receptivity to influence of specific groups. This methodology is meant to provide comprehensive and accurate psychosocial, socio-dynamic and communication profiles of target groups. SCL argues that this methodology lets it identify the ‘buttons’ that need to be pressed to change the behavior of any target audience.
History
SCL was established in 1990 to undertake the first field trials of a persuasion methodology developed by the Behavioural Dynamics Institute, an academic think-tank that has sought to redefine communications as behavioral science. These field trials successfully broke up a strike at a UK car transporting plant. The following year, SCL was credited with saving Lloyds of London by persuading its financially crippled investors to invest a further £1bn.
After a string of successes in the commercial sector, SCL began to offer its capability to militaries. The division SCL Defence was established and its clientele now includes both the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense.
Over the same period, SCL also offered its scientific methodology to political parties worldwide. To undertake this work, SCL Elections was established and since 1994 SCL Elections has provided the research, strategy and execution for over 30 election campaigns worldwide.
In 2005 SCL showcased an "op center" at Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi), the UK's largest showcase for military technology.
In 2009, SCL expanded into the commercial and social sectors. For this purpose, SCL Social and SCL Behavioral were established. SCL Social applies behavioral methodology to assist with programmes of social change, while SCL Behavioral provides it to the commercial worlds of advertising and marketing.
SCL Behavioral
SCL Behavioural is a behavioral communication agency. It differs from traditional advertising agencies in that it is not creative-led, nor does it base its work on attitudinal research. Instead, it conducts forensic population research across a wide spectrum of measurement variables to identify the triggers that cause a target audience to change its behavior.
SCL Behavioural has worked on campaigns for banks, financial institutions, airlines, international FMCG, auction houses, and global communication companies.
SCL Defence
SCL Defence is creates and implements target audience projects for governments and military organizations worldwide. It conducts research and analysis projects across the globe, particularly on campaigns related to counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization and counter-narcotics. SCL Defence operates on the premise that psyops can shorten conflicts.
SCL Elections
SCL Elections operates globally and since 1993, it has worked on successful campaigns in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
This division of SCL offers a variety of political campaigning services. These include advanced electoral polling and behavioural analysis, media research, opposition research, resource management, fundraising, brand advertising, and full campaign management.
SCL’s promotional material states that its use of Target Audience Analysis for developing campaign strategies is unique in the electioneering industry.
Oliver Morgan - The Observer, Sunday 11 September 2005
The first private company to provide psychological warfare services, or 'psyops', to the military, will be launched this week at a global arms fair in London.
Strategic Communication Laboratories, a UK firm that was a political communications consultancy, is to relaunch as a psyops operator at the Defence Systems and Equipment International exhibition. The firm, chaired by former Conservative defence minister Sir Geoffrey Pattie, and with working capital of more than £11m, has 20 fulltime staff and can deploy 100-strong teams.
It believes armies are prepared to buy such services from a private provider and maintains that psyops can shorten conflicts. Chief executive Nigel Oakes points to the surrender of nearly 90,000 troops in the first Gulf conflict, attributed to psyops.
He said: 'We used to be in the business of mindbending for political purposes, but now we are in the business of saving lives.'
SCL is a behavioral research and intervention agency. It offers its services to governments, militaries, political parties, and commercial companies who seek to affect behavioral change amongst key audience groups. It has been identified by the United States GAO as an advocate of behavioural research for public diplomacy.
The company conducts Target Audience Analysis (TAA) to learn the motivations, beliefs and receptivity to influence of specific groups. This methodology is meant to provide comprehensive and accurate psychosocial, socio-dynamic and communication profiles of target groups. SCL argues that this methodology lets it identify the ‘buttons’ that need to be pressed to change the behavior of any target audience.
History
SCL was established in 1990 to undertake the first field trials of a persuasion methodology developed by the Behavioural Dynamics Institute, an academic think-tank that has sought to redefine communications as behavioral science. These field trials successfully broke up a strike at a UK car transporting plant. The following year, SCL was credited with saving Lloyds of London by persuading its financially crippled investors to invest a further £1bn.
After a string of successes in the commercial sector, SCL began to offer its capability to militaries. The division SCL Defence was established and its clientele now includes both the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense.
Over the same period, SCL also offered its scientific methodology to political parties worldwide. To undertake this work, SCL Elections was established and since 1994 SCL Elections has provided the research, strategy and execution for over 30 election campaigns worldwide.
In 2005 SCL showcased an "op center" at Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi), the UK's largest showcase for military technology.
In 2009, SCL expanded into the commercial and social sectors. For this purpose, SCL Social and SCL Behavioral were established. SCL Social applies behavioral methodology to assist with programmes of social change, while SCL Behavioral provides it to the commercial worlds of advertising and marketing.
SCL Behavioral
SCL Behavioural is a behavioral communication agency. It differs from traditional advertising agencies in that it is not creative-led, nor does it base its work on attitudinal research. Instead, it conducts forensic population research across a wide spectrum of measurement variables to identify the triggers that cause a target audience to change its behavior.
SCL Behavioural has worked on campaigns for banks, financial institutions, airlines, international FMCG, auction houses, and global communication companies.
SCL Defence
SCL Defence is creates and implements target audience projects for governments and military organizations worldwide. It conducts research and analysis projects across the globe, particularly on campaigns related to counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization and counter-narcotics. SCL Defence operates on the premise that psyops can shorten conflicts.
SCL Elections
SCL Elections operates globally and since 1993, it has worked on successful campaigns in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
This division of SCL offers a variety of political campaigning services. These include advanced electoral polling and behavioural analysis, media research, opposition research, resource management, fundraising, brand advertising, and full campaign management.
SCL’s promotional material states that its use of Target Audience Analysis for developing campaign strategies is unique in the electioneering industry.
SCL Social
SCL Social boasts that its communication campaigns are successful because they are informed by the in-depth results of Target Audience Analysis. SCL argues that its approach is more effective than that of traditional communication firms because it focuses on altering behaviours instead of informing attitudes.
SCL Social runs communication campaigns in the sectors of Health, Gender, Environment, Governance, Economic Development, Education, and Security.
Its promotional materials state: “To help our clients, we conduct Target Audience Analysis and identify the key ‘drivers’ and ‘switches’ that command behavior. We then use this knowledge to develop effective communication campaigns designed to ‘press’ these buttons, thereby ensuring the desired outcome.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:54 pm Post subject:
13Jan12 Privatising military media mind control http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/57021
Credits: British Army PsyOps officers get 20 times more pay in private sector
Privatising Media Mind Control: British Army Psychological Warfare officers from 15 PsyOps (Chicksands, Beds.) headhunted by private Strategic Communications companies who pay them approximately twenty times more than the army to manipulate public perceptions. Prince Andrew’s Private Secretary working for Bell Pottinger who represent despotic regimes such as Sri-Lanka & Bahrain. Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia today. Assassination of fifth Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in Tehran. Bradley Stoke resident Lesley Cox & Martin Farmer (Lab) discuss BAe Systems’ cutting employers’ leases to drive them out, close Filton airfield and sell it off for housing, despite site’s history and future needs of employment in aerospace industry at the site.
Strategic Communications: PsyWar on politicians, press and public http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/72327
Sir John Sawers, the chief of MI6, Andrew Parker, the director general of MI5, and Sir Iain Lobban, the director of GCHQ in front of Sir Malcolm Rifkind and the Intelligence and Security Committee. Andrew 'Nosy' Parker, DG of MI5, and David Ormand, DG of GCHQ discussing how Edward Snowden's leaks have threatened national security. Psychological Warfare: Mainstream media PsyWar. Strategic Communications is killing journalism with Tim Burt and Sven Hughes, former British Army Psychological Warfare Officer, from documentary 'Big Boys Gone Bananas' film [trailer]
This is a long story which extends over fifteen years. NATO first attempted to silence those citizens who were trying to discover the truth about the attacks of 11 September 2001. Then it turned on those who contested the oficial version of the «Arab Springs» and the war against Syria. One thing leading to another, it then attacked those who denounced the coup d’état in Ukraine. Now NATO is behind the accusations by a pseudo-NGO that the people who campaigned for Donald Trump are Russian agents.
Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 5 December 2016
Logo of the NATO Centre for Strategic Communication
The attacks of 11 September 2001 were followed by a permanent state of emergency and a series of wars. As I wrote at the time, the theory that they were directed by a group of jihadists from a cave in Afghanistan does not stand up to analysis. On the contrary, everything points to the conclusion that the attack were organised by a faction of the military-industrial complex.
If this analysis is correct, the course of events could only lead to repression in the United States and the Allied states.
Fifteen years later, the wound that I opened is still not shut – in fact the opposite is true, given the events that followed. The «Arab Springs» were added to the Patriot Act and the oil wars which followed. Not only does the majority of the US population no longer believe what the government has been telling it since 9/11, but by voting for Donald Trump, it has expressed its rejection of the post-9/11 system.
It so happens that I opened the debate on 9/11 to the world, that I was part of the last government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and that I report on the war against Syria from the ground. At first, the US administration thought that they could extinguish the blaze by accusing me of writing contentious rubbish for money, hitting me where they thought it would hurt most, in other words, my wallet. And yet my ideas have never ceased to spread. In October 2004, when 100 US personalities signed a petition demanding the re-opening of the enquiry on the attacks of /9/11, Washington began to worry [1]. In 2005, in Brussels, I gathered more than 150 personalities from all over the world – including Syrian and Russian guests such as the ex-Chief of Staff for the Federation armies, General Leonid Ivashov – to denounce the neo-conservatives, and demonstrate that the problem was becoming global [2].
While during the mandate of Jacques Chirac, the Elysée worried about my safety, in 2007 the Bush administration asked newly-elected President Nicolas Sarkozy to have me physically eliminated. When I was warned by a friend, an officer of the Staff, that Sarkozy’s response had been positive, there was only one way out left to me - exile. My other friends – for thirteen years I had been the national secretary of the Parti Radical de Gauche – stared at me in disbelief, while the Press accused me of spiralling into paranoïa. No-one came publicly to my help. I found refuge in Syria, and travelled the world outside of NATO territory, escaping numerous assassination or kidnap attempts. For the last fifteen years, I have been opening debates which have become generalised. I have always been attacked when I was alone, but when my ideas have been shared, thousands of people have been persecuted for having analysed and developed them.
It was during this same period that Cass Sunstein (husband of US ambassador to the UNO, Samantha Power [3]) wrote a mémoire with Adrian Vermeule for the universities of Chicago and Harvard concerning the struggle against «conspiracy theories» - the name they gave to the movement I had initiated. In the name of the defence of «Liberty» confronted by extremism, the authors defined a programme to annihilate this opposition :
«We can easily imagine a series of possible reponses.
1. The government could forbid conspiracy theories.
2. The government could impose a sort of tax, financial or other, on those who distribute such theories.
3. The government could engage in counter-discussion to discredit conspiracy theories.
4. The government could engage credible private parties in a counter-discussion.
5. The government could engage in informal communication with third parties and encourage them» [4].
The Obama administration hesitated to publicly choose this path. But in April 2009, at the NATO summit in Strasbourg-Kehl, it proposed to create a «Strategic Communication Service». It also fired Anthony Jones from the White House in 2009, because the famous lawyer had spoken bluntly on the subject [5].
The project for NATO’s Strategic Communication Service slept in boxes until the Latvian government manifested itself. It was finally set up in Riga under the direction of Janis Karklinš – who was also an executive at the UNO World Summit on the Information Society and the Forum on the Governance of the Internet. Conceived by the British, it included participations from Germany, Estonia, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and the United Kingdom. In the beginning, it limited itself to producing an increasing number of studies.
Everything changed in 2014 when the Khodorkovsky family think tank, the Institute of Modern Russia in New York, published an analysis by journalists Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss [6]. According to their report, Russia had deployed a vast propaganda system abroad. However, rather than presenting themselves in a favourable light, as they had sone during the Cold War, Moscow had allegedly decided to inundate the West with «conspiracy theories» in order to create general confusion. And the authors also specified that these «theories» no longer concerned just 9/11, but also the coverage of the war against Syria.
By seeking to reactivate the anti-Soviet feelings of the Cold War, this report marked a turning-pont in values. Until then, the US ruling class had sought only to mask the crime of 11 September, by accusing a handful of insignificant «beards». From now on, the aim was to accuse a foreign state of being responsible for the crimes committed by Washington in Syria.
In September 2014, the British government created the 77th Brigade, a unit tasked with countering foreign propaganda. It was composed of 440 soldiers plus a thousand civilians from the Foreign Office, including MI6, and the Co-operation and Stabilisation Unit. We do not know what their targets were. This brigade worked with the 361st Civil Affairs Brigade of the US Land Army (based in Germany and Italy). The military units were used to disturb Western Internet sites which were trying to establish the truth about 11 September as well as the war against Syria.
At the start of 2015, Anne Applebaum (wife of the Polish ex-Minister for Defence, Radoslaw Sikorski), created within the Washington Center for European Policy Analysis a unit called the Information Warfare Initiative [7]. It was originally intended to counter Russian information in Central and Eastern Europe. It entrusted Peter Pomerantsev (mentioned above) with this initiative, as well as Edward Lucas, one of the chief editors of The Economist.
Even though Pomerantsev was both the co-reporter for the Institute of Modern Russia and the assistant chief executive of the Information Warfare Initiative, he no longer mentioned 9/11, and no longer considered the war against Syria to be central, but only as a recurring theme which enabled him to speculate about the actions of the Kremlin. He concentrated his attacks on the TV channel Russia Today and the Press agency Sputnik, two Russian public organisms.
In February 2015, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, think tank of the French Socialist Party and contact for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), published in its turn a Note, Conspirationism, state of play [8]. It ignored the developments concerning Russia, and picked up the debate where Cass Sunstein had left it. She recommended, purely and simply, to forbid the «conspiracy theorists» to express themselves. From his side, the Minister of Education organised workshops in schools to warn school-children against these «conspirationists ».
On 19 and 20 March 2015, the European Council asked the High Representative Federica Mogherini to prepare a plan of «strategic communication» to denounce the Russian disinformation campaigns concerning Ukraine. The Council mentioned neither 9/11 nor the war against Syria, and changed targets to concentrate exclusively on the events in Ukraine.
In April 2015, Madame Mogherini created within the European External Action Service (EEAS) a Strategic Communications Unit [9]. She was directed by an agent of the British MI6, Giles Portman. Twice a week, she distributed to a large number of European journalists arguments which were supposed to demonstrate Moscow’s bad faith - arguments which went on to supply the European media with an abundance of fodder.
On 20 August 2015, NATO’s Centre of Strategic Communication was inaugurated in Riga under the direction of Janis Sarts, and in the presence of the director of a branch of the National Endowment for Democracy, John McCain (seen here in conversation with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite).
Photo : Gatis Diezinš
From its creation, NATO’s Centre of Strategic Communication incorporated a service of the Atlantic Council, the Digital Forensics Research Lab. A Manual of Strategic Communication was drawn up by NATO. It was intended to co-ordinate and replace the old system in terms of Public Diplomacy, Public Relations (Public Affairs), Public Military Relations, Operations on Electronic Communication Systems (Information Operations) and Psychological Operations.
Inspired by NATO, on 23 November 2016, the Polish ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs and now European Deputy, Anna Fotyga, forced through the European Parliament a resolution about «Strategic Communication of the Union aimed at countering propaganda directed against her by third parties» [10]. Once again the target had been displaced - it was no longer a case of countering the dispute over 9/11 (now 15 years old), nor that of the war against Syria, but to create an amalgam between the contesting positions on the events in Ukraine, and Daesh. So we had come full circle – according to NATO, those who contested 9/11 were attempting to rehabilitate al-Qaïda, and those who were playing Russia’s game were attempting to destroy the West, like Daesh. And so what if NATO supports al-Qaïda in East Aleppo?
Launched by a resounding article in the Washington Post, on 24 Novembre 2016 [11], a mysterious group entitled Propaganda or Not? established a list of de 200 Internet sites – including Voltairenet.org – who were allegedly tasked by the Kremlin with relaying Russian propaganda and intoxicating US public opinion to the point where they elected Donald Trump.
While Propaganda or Not? does not publish the names of its directors, it does indicate that it unites four organisations - Polygraph, The Interpreter, the Center for European Policy Analysis and the Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Polygraph is one of the sites of Voice of America, the US public radio and television organisation controlled by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
The Interpreter is a magazine of the Institute of Modern Russia, now broadcast by Voice of America.
The Center for European Policy Analysis is a pseudopod of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) directed by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright.
And finally, the Digital Forensic Research Lab is a programme of the Atlantic Council.
In a document distributed by Propaganda or Not?, this pseudo-NGO, born of associations financed by the Obama administration, clearly names its enemy - Russia. It accuses Russia of having been the origin of the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Internet sites supporting Syria and Crimea.
On 2 December 2016, the United States Congress voted a law forbidding all military co-operation between Washington and Moscow. In the space of a few years, NATO has re-activated MacCarthyism.
Thierry Meyssan
The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.
7:08 PM · Dec 13, 2016
Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63
https://www.twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/808750564284702720 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
British PR firm Bell Pottinger was reportedly paid $540m (£417m) by the US to create campaign material in Iraq to portray al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathisers.
A recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) indicates that the London-headquartered company, which is known for its roster of controversial clients – such as the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's foundation – made fake terror and news-style videos, which would then be used to track those accessing them.
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Created by Margaret Thatcher's PR advisor Lord Timothy Bell in 1989, staff from the company moved to US base Camp Victory in Baghdad, where they worked alongside high-ranking military officers.
Bell, the company's former chairman, confirmed the same to The Sunday Times and said that the "covert" team reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Council.
"It was a covert military operation. It was covered by various secrecy documents. We were very proud of it. We did a lot to help resolve the situation. Not enough. We did not stop the mess which emerged, but it was part of the American propaganda machinery," Bell said.
Former video editor of Bell Pottinger, Martin Wells, who worked with the public relations house from 2006 to 2008 has appeared on video to explain the "psychological operations" conducted for the US government and his own role in Iraq.
"When I first started working, I didn't know how big a project this was. I just assumed it was news gathering. We would do the news items which would go out on the various channels locally," he said, explaining that they were most often stories about bomb blasts and attacks. "We would have people out there filming it. It would come back, we would then edit it... and we were to make it, as best we could... look as if it was Arabic... as if it was created by Arabic TV almost."
The firm's output was signed off by former General David Petraeus – then commander of the coalition forces in Iraq – and on occasion by the White House, Wells added.
He spoke about TV commercials that promoted anti al-Qaeda messages and video CDs featuring the terror group's propaganda footage. He was reportedly told by his boss that the videos were going to be tracked via Google Analytics.
A firsthand account of Bell Pottinger's top secret work in Iraq from The Bureau on Vimeo.
As part of its investigation, TBIJ, a UK-based independent and not-for-profit organisation, also interviewed former officials and contractors and traced the operations through US army contracting censuses, federal procurement transaction records and reports by the Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general, as well as Bell Pottinger's corporate filings and specialist publications on military propaganda.
"White is attributed, it says who produced it on the label," one contractor involved with the work explained of the three types of media operations carried out in Iraq. "Grey is unattributed and black is falsely attributed. These types of black ops, used for tracking who is watching a certain thing, were a pretty standard part of the industry toolkit."
According to TBIJ, "It identified transactions worth $540m between the Pentagon and Bell Pottinger for information operations and psychological operations on a series of contracts issued from May 2007 to December 2011. A similar contract at around the same annual rate – $120m – was in force in 2006."
The Pentagon has reportedly confirmed contracting Bell Pottinger for work in Iraq under the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF). The firm was expected to produce material, some of which was openly sourced to coalition forces and some which was not. They insisted that all material put out by IOTF was "truthful".
From the outside, the demise of iconic public relations firm Bell Pottinger appeared to unfold at a dramatic and surprising pace.
On Monday 4 September, the company published the findings of a report by lawyers Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) concluding that the firm’s campaign for the Gupta family’s Oakbay Capital in South Africa “was potentially racially divisive and/or potentially offensive and was created in breach of relevant ethical principles”. That same day, Bell Pottinger was kicked out of the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) for “bringing the industry into disrepute”.
Three days later, following an exodus of clients, staff were informed at a hastily arranged meeting that the firm was set to collapse into administration. By the following Tuesday, Bell Pottinger’s fate was sealed: BDO administrators had taken control and staff were gathered at another all-hands meeting where the names of those affected in the first wave of redundancies were read out to a stunned room.
Eight days between the publication of a three-page report and a collapse of this magnitude does not seem like a very long time.
But insiders spoken to by City A.M. trace the roots of Bell Pottinger’s collapse much further back – beyond the HSF report, beyond the unprecedented sanction of the PRCA, beyond the sacking of Oakbay Capital’s account executives, beyond the first “white monopoly capital” tweets sent out by Bell Pottinger on behalf of the Guptas, and even beyond former chairman Tim Bell’s trip to South Africa to visit the Gupta family.
Bell Pottinger was founded in 1987 by Lord Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s former adviser, and Piers Pottinger. The firm developed a reputation for specialising in international political affairs and working on behalf of controversial clients.
Read more: Bell Pottinger's Asian arm set to change name after nightmare week
SAFRICA-POLITICS-PARLIAMENT-OPPOSITION-DEMO
The Gupta family have sparked protests in South Africa (Source: Getty)
Shock headlines
However, in late 2011, Bell Pottinger looked set to change course after the Independent newspaper shocked the PR industry with a front-page story based on an undercover investigation. Posing as agents from the government of Uzbekistan, journalists from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism secretly recorded Bell Pottinger senior executives boasting of their access to ministers, suggesting they could “drown” out negative coverage on Google and “sort” Wikipedia entries.
Insiders say the scandal upset Bell Pottinger’s then-owner Chime, which was a listed entity at the time. Around six months later, in May 2012, Bell led a £26.5m management buyout of Bell Pottinger. Peel Hunt noted at the time that, for Chime, it was a “good price for a business that has attracted considerable adverse commentary”.
James Henderson was thought to be instrumental in the deal, although Lord Bell disputes this assessment. As well as buying a 25 per cent stake himself, Henderson also became chief executive. In addition to transforming Bell Pottinger into a limited liability partnership (LLP), with around 50 members of staff opting to become partners, Henderson also sought to reposition the firm. Insiders describe it as a shift in focus from geopolitical work, which did continue through Bell at the firm’s Mayfair office, to more traditional financial PR, run from its Holborn headquarters.
Despite a setback or two (chairman Lord Bell described bankers as “complete criminals” in a 2014 interview) Henderson’s plan to firmly establish Bell Pottinger in financial PR appeared to be heading in the right direction. In early 2013, Bell Pottinger had one FTSE 100 client, Imperial Tobacco. By 2016, before the Oakbay rot set in, this figure had risen to five, according to Adviser Rankings figures.
What, therefore, made Bell Pottinger pursue its deal with the Guptas, a family with strong links to South Africa’s controversial President, Jacob Zuma? The answer, according to numerous insiders, is money. Former employees claim the firm was setting itself high monetary targets as it sought to pay down debts. The account is believed to have been worth £100,000 a month. In comparison, according to a senior PR source, the average listed UK company would pay £5-10,000 a month.
After an introduction was made by Chris Geoghegan, the father of then-Bell Pottinger partner Victoria Geoghegan, Bell himself travelled to South Africa to meet the Guptas and help pave the way for the deal. He claims that he later strongly advised the firm against the contract, citing conflicts of interest.
Some insiders say they informally became aware that the account was in the pipeline as early as 2015, and started to raise concerns about why a campaign of this nature was being taken on by the financial practice. Their concerns later intensified as it became apparent that the work was indeed likely to conflict with Bell Pottinger’s work for other companies with South African links, such as Investec and Richemont, whose chairman Johann Rupert wrote to Lord Bell warning him against the account. These were among the first firms to sever ties with Bell Pottinger in 2016.
Read more: Rentokil non-exec director steps down amid links to Bell Pottinger scandal
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Lord Bell, left, stepped down last August (Source: Getty)
“Every chance they had to * it up they grabbed with both hands...”
The “economic emancipation campaign”, so called in the HSF account of the scandal, included a social media and press campaign that used terms such as “white monopoly capital”. The HSF report said: “Certain material that we have seen that was created for the campaign was negative or targeted towards wealthy white South African individuals or corporates and/or was potentially racially divisive and/or potentially offensive and was created in breach of relevant ethical principles.”
Soon after the campaign began in 2016, management in the firm’s financial practice, headed up by John Sunnucks, started to face questions from partners and staff about the Oakbay work. Some senior figures walked away from the company, with this work playing on their minds. “The uproar internally was phenomenal,” said one source.
Lord Bell himself also stepped down with immediate effect in August last year. He and Henderson were said to disagree on the strategy the business should be taking. Lord Bell has said he walked away due to his concerns over the Oakbay contract.
The flow of departing staff, many of whom have told City A.M. their exits were linked to concerns over the Oakbay account, continued into 2017. Meanwhile, media coverage of the Bell Pottinger scandal was growing in South Africa and spread further.
The deal ended in April 2017. Bell Pottinger said it had terminated the contract “because of increasingly strong social media attacks on our staff and our business from South Africa”, which it said were “unfair”. On 6 July, Bell Pottinger began to concede fault, sacking Victoria Geoghegan and suspending Nick Lambert, another partner on the account. It also commissioned the HSF report – “about a year and a half too late”, said one employee of the time.
Henderson said in a statement in July:
These attacks on, and criticisms of, our staff continued and were clearly the result of strong and sincere anger. Most seriously, it was said that we had supported or aided campaigns to stir up racial division in South Africa.
The chief executive has said he was not made aware of the Oakbay account until January 2016. He had said that he was assured the South African media criticism was untrue, and even hired lawyers from Schillings to defend the firm against the accusations.
At this point, many partners and employees intensified their efforts to leave Bell Pottinger. Though no one seemed to anticipate quite how dramatically and suddenly the company would collapse.
Henderson resigned as chief executive on the eve of the publication of HSF’s report, though he was in the office the next day finishing up his work. Following publication of the report, the PRCA booted Bell Pottinger out, saying the firm had “brought the PR and communications industry into disrepute with its actions, and it has received the harshest possible sanctions”. Further high-profile people at the firm departed, and it emerged that Chime had handed back its 27 per cent stake in the business. Critically, clients including the likes of St James’s Place, Carillion and Unite Group, began to distance themselves from Bell Pottinger.
Early in the week, staff were gathered for a meeting in their open-plan office, and told the firm was looking for a buyer and would be rebranding. However, they were called together again at the end of the working day on Thursday and told the game was up, and that Bell Pottinger was likely to fall into administration early the following week. Staff immediately began to fret that they might not be paid for their work in September.
To their credit, insiders say Friday was business as usual (albeit with a few calls to recruiters). Many individuals still had clients to work for at this stage.
Work continued at the beginning of the next week before Bell Pottinger officially went into administration on Tuesday afternoon (12 September).
Administrators from BDO gathered staff for another all-hands meeting, for those still around, and reeled off a list of names of those who no longer had a job.
BDO said in a statement that the firm’s “losses, compounded by the inability of the business to win new clients, was such that remaining management were left with no option but to commence the process to place all UK Bell Pottinger entities into administration”.
The great irony for insiders is how badly Bell Pottinger managed its own reputation throughout this period. They believe the account should not have been considered. Warnings from other South Africa-focused clients should have been heeded. The South African media attention should have been taken seriously. There should have been more communication on the HSF report. Henderson and Bell should not have taken part in a “public pissing match” over its findings.
“Every chance they had to * it up they grabbed with both hands,” said one departee. Another said:
No experienced PR adviser would ever have advised a client to manage the situation the way Bell Pottinger did.
Today, thanks to the actions of a few senior figures within Bell Pottinger, around 180 PR partners and employees look to be out of a job. Fairly or unfairly, they will to some extent be tarnished by their association with the firm.
Bell set up a new, international-focused PR firm, Sans Frontieres, since leaving Bell Pottinger last summer. Henderson is also understood to have had conversations about setting up a new firm, though has not made firm plans to do so as yet.
The overriding attitude of the former staff spoken to by City A.M. is of anger and frustration that a once mighty business was brought to its knees by internal disputes, poor judgement and a divisive, controversial client that should never have been taken on.
Bell Pottinger: There will be far-reaching fallout from the City’s PR scandal
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Christian May
Christian May is the editor of City A.M.
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Bell Pottinger was one of the top City PR firms (Source: Getty)
The fallout from the Bell Pottinger scandal has sent shockwaves through the City.
As clients continue to flee the embattled firm, and questions over its very survival swirl among the world of corporate and financial PR, the affair has focused attention on the darker side of an industry which constitutes a vital component of London’s professional services sector.
If money is the City’s fuel, PR and communications is the engine oil. Richard Branson said the head of PR is often the most important person in the company, and a good chairman will have them by their side. It’s not just a question of managing corporate reputations, important though that is in an age when an off-colour tweet can trigger a comms crisis.
Read more: Bell Pottinger potential CEO replacement quits
The sector also guides companies through the regulated and sensitive territory of deals, IPOs, restructuring and corporate governance, as well as broader communication strategies. Of course, alongside this lucrative work a handful of firms are also happy to engage in “special projects” for clients with tarnished or dubious reputations. And that’s putting it mildly.
Bell Pottinger was an enthusiastic proponent of this model (having worked for the dictator of Belarus, the wife of Syria’s President Assad and the government of Bahrain) but they are by no means alone in eyeing up the fees on offer from unsavoury clients.
It’s possible that Bell Pottinger’s public shaming will make firms think twice before pitching for certain kinds of work, and if nothing else it will serve as a lesson on internal governance – since the bulk of the company’s defence rests on the claim that nobody knew what was going on.
Read more: Bell Pottinger booted out of PR trade group after damning report
Though there is a rush to hoover up Bell Pottinger’s clients, PR bosses in the City have been shaken by the week’s events. Nobody’s laughing too loudly. Huge effort has been put into improving the reputation of the sector in recent years, and its honest practitioners hate to see it damaged by scandal. Indeed, the reason why Bell Pottinger was chucked out of the trade body, the PRCA, was for “bringing the industry into disrepute”.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 9:54 am Post subject:
I used to work at Bell Pottinger – so I can tell you why good people end up doing immoral things in lobbying
I’ve heard firsthand from a former lobbying industry executive of repressive Middle Eastern governments personally bribing British journalists; of ‘war rooms’ pumping out made-up blogs and social media postings spreading fake news. Spray luminol across London’s major PR houses, and you’ll see similar blood spatters
“You don’t just go and do terrible things straight away,” says my ex-Bell Pottinger colleague over drinks in a South London wine bar. We’re discussing the scandal that finally sunk the PR house after it was caught inciting racial hatred in South Africa on behalf of its clients, the Gupta family, and their investment vehicle Oakbay. Now, Bell Pottinger has collapsed into administration after being expelled from the industry regulatory body the PRCA, with hundreds losing their jobs.
“You build up to doing bad things, without even realising what you’re doing is bad,” they go on. “Your boss tells you to do something, so you do it.”
After working in the lobbying industry for three years, I left to become a journalist in 2015. During that time I worked at a number of big-name firms, including Bell Pottinger.
I learned a lot from my experiences in the industry, and on the whole I don’t regret it. I worked with smart, good people who taught me how to be hard-working and professional. I made lifelong friends. And I represented clients that I believed were doing important things – making great strides in the technology world, or lobbying the Government on behalf of those who could not, like pensioners living in fuel poverty.
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Bell Pottinger’s downfall has dominated headlines for months, but I’ll rehearse the key details here briefly. They ran a social media campaign on behalf of Oakbay, who were paying the firm £100,000 a month. In return for this pant-droppingly huge amount, Bell Pottinger ran an anti-monopoly capital campaign that was later judged by the PRCA to stir up hatred in a country where the memory of racial violence is as red-raw as a freshly inked tattoo. It was a venal, despicable thing to do. But having worked in the industry, I can understand how it happened.
People tend to think of corporate lobbying as an industry peopled by Renaissance-era courtiers plotting political intrigues over North London lasagne suppers or in the gaudy interiors of Saudi jets. This does happen. But most of the time, things are duller and more prosaic.
Understand the industry, and you’ll understand how good people overcame their scruples to do a terrible injustice to the people of South Africa.
Working in a firm like Bell Pottinger becomes more stressful the higher up you get. Partners need to bring in new business to justify their salaries, and they need to over-service their most expensive, demanding clients. In a culture where executives are constantly measured against financial targets, the pressure to keep lucrative families like the Guptas happy becomes paramount – and scruples were quietly dropped.
What have the other PR houses said of Bell Pottinger’s demise, after all? Nothing. Their silence resembles the quiet whir a cash machine makes before dispensing notes: to speak out would risk shining the spotlight on their own activities – and besides, they’re too busy wining and dining Bell Pottinger’s former clients! (It’ll be steak for supper at many PR firms this autumn.)
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Lobby Group want to know who is in every AirBnb rental
Bell Pottinger wasn't exceptional, and this probably isn’t even the worst thing they did. It’s important to remember that the only reason Bell Pottinger was undone was because of the work of the South African opposition party to expose them. Without that, Bell Pottinger would still be free to represent the Oscar Pistoriuses of this world. And they’d be in good company. Similarly reprehensible practices are widespread at firms across London.
I’ve heard firsthand from a former lobbying industry executive (at a different firm) of repressive Middle Eastern governments personally bribing British journalists to look favourably on their activities; of “war rooms” pumping out made-up blogs and social media postings spreading fake news. Spray luminol across London’s major PR houses, and you’ll see similar blood spatters.
It may seem astonishing to someone who’s never worked in the industry that good people could work on the Oakbay account and not raise objections. (From what it’s worth, my sources within the company tell me that many did, and were overruled). But it’s not to me.
You’re an inexperienced account executive, or a harried partner with a new business target and pressure from above. You’re not a savvy geopolitical operator and barely understand South African politics. You’re used to skirting close to the line and, above all, to obeying orders — the culture of deference in firms at Bell Pottinger is paramount.
Above all, you uphold the sacrosanct belief of all lobbyists: that everyone is entitled to representation, in the same way they’d be entitled to a lawyer.
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Motion of confidence against South African president Zuma falls
When you’re in the business of representing some of the worst people in the world, it’s easy to lose your head. Things that are objectively very wrong – whipping up racial hatred, for instance – become professionalised and clinical. It’s hard to recognise what you’re doing, really, as you upload a blog post from a smart London office. You detach from your actions as cleanly as a pathologist, unflinching as you peel the skin away from the dead.
In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo ran a psychological experiment to understand the implications of perceived power. Over the course of the Stanford prison experiment, the white, middle class men designated “guards” tortured, humiliated, and stripped naked their “prisoners”.
Eventually, the experiment was stopped because one woman – Christina Maslach, a graduate psychology student – questioned its morality. Out of 50 people involved, she was the only one to do so.
As a man who for many years was on an IRA assassination list and once had a letter bomb pushed through his front door, Tim Bell, Margaret Thatcher's former adviser for her three election victories, knows what it is like to feel under siege.
But yesterday, sitting behind his desk at the Mayfair office of Chime Communications, the global public relations agency of which he is chairman, he had lost some of the polish acquired over his long working life.
He likes to work behind the scenes shielded from view as his companies burnish various brands with what might be termed "reputational issues" - General Pinochet, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Belarus and many, many others. Only occasionally does he intrude visibly into the political world, as when he sealed the demise of his old friend Liam Fox by helping one of his clients pass bank account details to the Times revealing a conflict of interest in the way Dr Fox's "adviser" Adam Werritty was funded. Yesterday, he declined to comment about Fox.
For most of this week the Independent has been publishing details of an undercover sting by journalists posing as agents of another repressive government with deep pockets, Uzbekistan. The political, and indeed corporate embarrassment, was that Tim Collins, a former Tory MP, was recorded boasting of Chime subsidiary Bell Pottinger's easy access to Downing Street. As Chime's activities have been laid bare, the group's share price has tumbled.
Folded on his desk is a copy of yesterday's Independent, with a front page picture describing a "beleaguered" Lord Bell arriving at his office. Is that an accurate description of his state of mind? "Yes, I do feel beleaguered."
Most of all, he is cross at the deception, at the intrusion, and perhaps - though he will not say so - at the gullibility of his staff for falling for the sting.
Bell has recently turned 70, and this week's furore threatens to be the unwelcome cap to his long career. The Independent included a personal attack on him, reviving old charges of alleged heavy cocaine use in the 1970s. The piece, by columnist Matthew Norman, clearly shocked him, not least because he has never spoken to Norman: "He's a very unpleasant man, he has some axe to grind against me."
But most urgently he needs to protect the reputation of Chime.
"Of course I regret it, I need it like a hole in the head, all this *," he says with heavy emphasis, folding his hands.
Even as we are talking, the Independent is emailing him selected extracts of further allegations to be published in today's edition, including the recorded assertion by an official at Bell Pottinger that the company took money from the government of Belarus via an unnamed agent, in possible breach of accounting rules. Bell denies this happened.
Bell has launched an internal investigation after which the full board will decide if disciplinary action should be taken against his staff for their efforts to secure the business of Uzbekistan.
Another allegation is that the company coordinated the rewriting of Wikipedia entries on behalf of clients. Bell maintains that "on the basis of what has been reported so far, I can see no example of people behaving improperly, though perhaps behaving indiscreetly."
I ask if he and his company have been damaged this week. "Yes," he agrees, "we'll suffer limited damage. It won't last for long, but that doesn't make me complacent. Every person here is searching their souls to decide whether they did something wrong or not."
"Indiscreet" is one way to describe the boast of lobbyists of their close ties to the government. But it is hugely unhelpful to David Cameron, who famously, and now notoriously, described lobbying as the "next big scandal".
Bell is scathing of the Coalition's delayed consultations on establishing a register of lobbyists, not least because it is virtually impossible to define in law what a lobbyist is.
This confusion is reflected, Bell maintains, in the vagueness of the allegations against his company. "I don't see what we are being accused of. The only phrase they come up with is using undue influence, but what does 'undue' mean?"
He hands me a copy of the report which was prepared for the supposed Uzbek representatives, and points out that the introduction states a PR campaign would require evidence of reform and of moves towards ending child labour.
When assessing whether to lobby on behalf of a client, he claims he weighs the "direction of travel" of a government. He says he would work for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, but only if he were persuaded there was a plausible story of reform that could be marketed.
This had been the case with the group's controversial contracts with the repressive government of Belarus. "We represented Belarus on a programme of reform. At that time, the Belarus government made commitments to reform. Subsequently, after our contract ended, they ceased to reform."
When I say it is at the very least "indecorous" for a former MP to boast about his close and lucrative ties to Downing Street, he mocks me for the prissiness of the word. Then he adds: "It's true, he does know those people. What is wrong with saying the truth?"
Bell believes his company might have been singled out for the sting for political reasons because to many he is still defined by his association with Margaret Thatcher.
But he has no regrets, and his dark mood brightens when he talks of her. He keeps two framed photographs of her in his office, one from 1978 that he personally commissioned from Terence Donovan. He says he will not be seeing the new film with Meryl Streep, "because I saw the real thing - what's the point of reading the book if you were there?" He also objects to the notion that he and other advisers effected some sort of makeover of Mrs Thatcher from suburban housewife to world stateswoman. "It was not a makeover, it's just not true - it was the evolution of somebody in office."
He seems less enamoured of the current Conservative party. I ask if he is satisfied with David Cameron and there is a silence that hovers somewhere between pointed and excruciating.
Finally he says: "I've no idea how to answer that question. On different days I agree or disagree with what he says." He is sceptical of coalition governments "because by definition they are a compromise and I don't think compromise gets you anywhere".
So is Cameron the heir to Thatcher. "No," he replies. "I think he's heir to that period of British life when we entered into a world of relative morality and I'm on the receiving end of it now." It is a curious way of summing up the current state of Tory leadership.
Bell remains a true Thatcherite, unreconciled to any notions of there being a useful Third Way. Modern politics, he says, are undermined by an obsessive and misguided belief in equality. "It's just wrong to try to convince people that you can achieve that Utopian ideal."
As for this week's local difficulty, Bell has formally complained to the Press Complaints Commission, but fully expects to lose. He says he still believes journalists, like lobbyists, should be free to operate without state regulation, though that is harder to defend given the phone-hacking revelations.
He has sympathy for the family of Milly Dowler, much less for the likes of Hugh Grant because he operates in the public realm.
"He has chosen to be in the limelight and I have not chosen to be in the limelight. I am not an elected person, I'm not a public person, I don't protest, I don't seek publicity, I don't parade around the street pontificating on things. I don't invite that, but it's been done to me, so that's the nature of an intrusive press."
The case against Bell Pottinger
Its staff explained how a despotic regime could improve its international standing while keeping child labour for up to two decades.
They admitted using Wikipedia accounts to change entries about its clients.
They suggested they could manipulate Google results to drown out negative coverage of human rights violations.
Boasted about access to No 10, claiming they persuaded David Cameron to speak to the Chinese government on a client's behalf within 24 hours.
Claimed to have access to other senior figures including Foreign Secretary William Hague and No 10 adviser Steve Hilton.
Claimed the firm had close relations with foreign office minister Alistair Burt.
Claimed they could arrange meetings with the special adviser to Business Secretary Vince Cable.
Claimed they may be able to organise a royal tour and boasted of links to the royal family.
Claimed to be able to use politicians to attack Channel 4's investigative TV programme Dispatches.
Helped pick the police station former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks would be taken to for questioning; prepared her to give evidence to Parliament.
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PR companies and people have no morality except money.
They are the equivalent of the "rent a mouth" politician or a political prostitute.
And Bell Pottinger's actions are no worse or better than one would expect of a company with no moral compass except money.
Their only regret is the loss of business after being exposed.
- madasafish, Stoke on Trent UK, 08/12/2011 18:28
The carefully crafted PR image of the clever mystery man is blown wide open by members of his own company, now, belatedly and typically, he is trying to claim it's 'nuffin to do with me guv'.
Wrong on both counts, first because as Chairman of the offending company, Lord Bell owns responsibility for all and any actions made by members of his staff.
Second, because it is down to him regarding which disciplinary matters may, or may not be actioned, including how, if felt necessary, he silence's any dismissed offender. Will a future leak reveal the use of brown enveloped diplomacy? Who knows?
- Concerned Observer, Harrow, 08/12/2011 17:49
'to many he is still defined by his association with Margaret Thatcher.'
No, he's defined by his willingness to do anything, however unclean, for money. He and his like ARE the problem.
- mdj, London e10, 08/12/2011 16:28
A very unpleasant man.
When at Saatchis he would be charming if he wanted your business but never returned favours.
- Minnie, London, UK, 08/12/2011 16:07
It is highly disingenuous for Lord Bell to suggest that he is a victim of press intrusion and make the comparison to Hugh Grant. What could be more in the genuine public interest than applying commercial pressure on political influence? He of all people should know the difference between the public interest and what the public is interested in. When you have your cake and eat it for too long, one day you end up choking on it.
- Sarah Lafferty, London, 08/12/2011 15:38
So it was this clown who advised Thatcher,now we know who her adviser was as she commenced wrecking our country,this woman started the decline,and we have never recovered.
I confess I found it difficult to get worked up about the Cambridge Analytica affair. My reactions was “What awful people. But surely everybody realises that is what Facebook does?”. It seemed to me hardly news, on top of which the most likely outcome is that it will be used as yet another excuse to introduce government controls on the internet and clamp down on dissenting views like those on this website, where 85% of all traffic comes through Facebook or Twitter.
But two nights ago my interest was piqued when, at the height of Cambridge Analytica’s domination of the news cycle, the BBC gave it considerably less airtime than the alcohol abuse problems of someone named Ant. The evening before, the BBC had on Newsnight given the CEO of Cambridge Analytica the most softball interview imaginable. If the BBC is obviously downplaying something, it is usually defending a deep British Establishment interest.
It took me a minute to find out that Cambridge Analytica is owned by a British company, SCL Ltd, which in effect does exactly the same activities in the UK that Cambridge Analytica was undertaking in the US. I then looked up SCL on Bloomberg.
The name which jumped out at me of course was Lord Ivar Mountbatten, direct descendant of Queen Victoria and scion of the family closest friends with that of the UK’s unelected monarch. The only person listed by Companies House as having “significant control” – ie over 25% of the shares – is Roger Gabb, the wine merchant known for large donations to the Tory Party. I have now spoken to people who know him fairly well who, I must note in fairness, universally say he is a kind and very bright man, but with no technical input in the kind of work performed by SCL/Cambridge Analytica.
SCL is as Establishment as a company can get. The most worrying aspect of this is that SCL is paid by the British government to manipulate public opinion particularly in the fields of “Security” and “Defence”, and still more worryingly SCL – this group of ultra Tory money men seeking to refine government propaganda at the expense of you, the taxpayer – is cleared by the MOD to access classified government information.
I then did a news search on google for “Mountbatten” and “SCL” and it brought up zero results from corporate and state media. I then did a wider search not just of news sites, and found this excellent article from Liam O’Hare on Bella Caledonia. It said everything I had been planning to write, and probably says it better. Please do read it. Liam has actually done this to me before, getting there first. I suspect we may be the same person. Come to think of it, I have never seen a photo of us together.
Liam O Hare on the deep connections between Cambridge Analytica’s parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) and the Conservative Party and military establishment, ‘Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.’
The scandal around mass data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica took a new twist on Monday.
A Channel 4 news undercover investigation revealed that the company’s Eton-educated CEO Alexander Nix offered to use dirty tricks – including the use of bribery and sex workers – to entrap politicians and subvert elections.
Much of the media spotlight is now on Cambridge Analytica and their shadowy antics in elections worldwide, including that of Donald Trump.
However, Cambridge Analytica is a mere offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment.
Indeed, as the Observer article which broke the scandal said “For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.”
Like Cambridge Analytica, SCL group is behavioral research and strategic communication company.
In 2005, SCL went public with a glitzy exhibit at the DSEI conference, the UK’s largest showcase for military technology.
It’s ‘hard sell’ was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into the thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London. Genuinely.
Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.
SCL Group says on its website that it provides “data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide.”
The organisation boasts that it has conducted “behavioral change programs” in over 60 countries and its clients have included the British Ministry of Defence, the US State Department and NATO.
A freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years.
In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the “provision of external training”. Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the “procurement of target audience analysis”.
In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a ‘list X’ contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as ‘confidential’ and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises.
Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an official, this was to provide “research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas.” This was not the only work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added.
In May 2015, SCL Defense, another subsidiary of the umbrella organisation, received $1 million (CAD) to support NATO operations in Eastern Europe targeting Russia.
The company delivered a three-month course in Riga which taught “advanced counter-propaganda techniques designed to help member states assess and counter Russia’s propaganda in Eastern Europe”.
The NATO website said the “revolutionary” training would “help Ukrainians better defend themselves against the Russian threat”.
What is clear is that all of SCL’s activities were inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm.
As recently as July 2017, the website for Cambridge Analytica said its methods has been approved by the “UK Ministry of Defence, the US State Department, Sandia and NATO” and carried their logos on its website.
Mark Turnbull, who joined Alexander Nix at the secretly filmed meetings, heads up SCL Elections as well as Cambridge Analytica Political Global.
His profile at the University of Exeter Strategy and Security Institute boasts of his record in achieving “campaign success via measurable behavioural change” in “over 100 campaigns in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean”.
Turnbull previously spent 18 years at Bell Pottinger, heading up the Pentagon funded PR drive in occupied Iraq which included the production of fake al-Qaeda videos.
Turnbull’s involvement is just one sign of the sweeping links the company has with powerful Anglo-American political and military interests.
The firm is headed up by Nigel Oakes, another old Etonian, who, according to the website PowerBase has links to the British royals and was once rumoured to be an Mi5 spy.
In 1992, Oakes described his work in a trade journal as using the “same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. … We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.”
The President of SCL is Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a former Conservative MP and the Defence Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Pattie also co-founded Terrington Management which lists BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin among its clients.
One of the company’s directors’ is wine millionaire and former British special forces officer in Borneo and Kenya, Roger Gabb, who in 2006 donated £500,000 to the Conservative party.
Gabb was also fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to include his name on an advert in a number of local newspapers arguing for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum.
SCL’s links to the Conservative party continues through the company’s chairman and venture capitalist Julian Wheatland. He also happens to be chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association.
The organisation has also been funded by Jonathan Marland who is the former Conservative Party Treasurer, a trade envoy under David Cameron, and a close friend of Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby.
Property tycoon and Conservative party donor Vincent Tchenguiz was also the single largest SCL shareholder for a decade.
Meanwhile, another director is Gavin McNicoll, founder of counter-terrorism Eden Intelligence firm who ran a G8 Plus meeting on Financial Intelligence Cooperation at the behest of the British government.
Previous board members include Sir James Allen Mitchell, the former Prime Minister of the previous British colony St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mitchell has been a privy counselor on the Queen’s advisory board since 1985.
The British military and royal establishment links to SCL are further highlighted through another director Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, a former assistant director of naval warfare in the Ministry of Defence and aide de camp to the Queen.
The Queen’s third cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, was also sitting on SCL’s advisory board but it’s unclear if he still holds that role.
The above examples barely scrape the surface of just how deep the ties go between the UK defence establishment and Strategic Communication Laboratories.
Indeed, it seems evident that the organisation is a product of murky alliances formed between venture capitalists and former British military and intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be closely tied to the higher echelons of the Conservative party.
International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.
Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
British PR firm Bell Pottinger was reportedly paid $540m (£417m) by the US to create campaign material in Iraq to portray al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathisers.
A recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) indicates that the London-headquartered company, which is known for its roster of controversial clients – such as the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's foundation – made fake terror and news-style videos, which would then be used to track those accessing them.
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Created by Margaret Thatcher's PR advisor Lord Timothy Bell in 1989, staff from the company moved to US base Camp Victory in Baghdad, where they worked alongside high-ranking military officers.
Bell, the company's former chairman, confirmed the same to The Sunday Times and said that the "covert" team reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Council.
"It was a covert military operation. It was covered by various secrecy documents. We were very proud of it. We did a lot to help resolve the situation. Not enough. We did not stop the mess which emerged, but it was part of the American propaganda machinery," Bell said.
Former video editor of Bell Pottinger, Martin Wells, who worked with the public relations house from 2006 to 2008 has appeared on video to explain the "psychological operations" conducted for the US government and his own role in Iraq.
"When I first started working, I didn't know how big a project this was. I just assumed it was news gathering. We would do the news items which would go out on the various channels locally," he said, explaining that they were most often stories about bomb blasts and attacks. "We would have people out there filming it. It would come back, we would then edit it... and we were to make it, as best we could... look as if it was Arabic... as if it was created by Arabic TV almost."
The firm's output was signed off by former General David Petraeus – then commander of the coalition forces in Iraq – and on occasion by the White House, Wells added.
He spoke about TV commercials that promoted anti al-Qaeda messages and video CDs featuring the terror group's propaganda footage. He was reportedly told by his boss that the videos were going to be tracked via Google Analytics.
A firsthand account of Bell Pottinger's top secret work in Iraq from The Bureau on Vimeo.
As part of its investigation, TBIJ, a UK-based independent and not-for-profit organisation, also interviewed former officials and contractors and traced the operations through US army contracting censuses, federal procurement transaction records and reports by the Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general, as well as Bell Pottinger's corporate filings and specialist publications on military propaganda.
"White is attributed, it says who produced it on the label," one contractor involved with the work explained of the three types of media operations carried out in Iraq. "Grey is unattributed and black is falsely attributed. These types of black ops, used for tracking who is watching a certain thing, were a pretty standard part of the industry toolkit."
According to TBIJ, "It identified transactions worth $540m between the Pentagon and Bell Pottinger for information operations and psychological operations on a series of contracts issued from May 2007 to December 2011. A similar contract at around the same annual rate – $120m – was in force in 2006."
The Pentagon has reportedly confirmed contracting Bell Pottinger for work in Iraq under the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF). The firm was expected to produce material, some of which was openly sourced to coalition forces and some which was not. They insisted that all material put out by IOTF was "truthful".
Since shifting ownership in 2012, Bell Pottinger has had no connections with the unit that operated in Iraq – which was shut down in 2011. The key people who worked in the 'psychological operations' unit deny any involvement with tracking software as described by Wells.
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Future Publishing/Getty Images/WIRED
A barbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and out of a squat guard’s hut in the middle of the road. Through the hut, and under a row of floodlights, I walked towards a long line of drab, low-rise brick buildings. It was the summer of 2017, and on this military base nestled among the hills of Berkshire, I was visiting a part of the British Army unlike any other. They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain’s information wars.
“If everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking,” was written in foot-high letters across a whiteboard in one of the main atriums of the base. Over to one side, there was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software. The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics. Some may have taken the army’s course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full time jobs in marketing or consumer research.
From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating “attitude and sentiment awareness” from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content. Elsewhere, teams of intelligence specialists were closely analysing how messages were being received and discussing how to make them more resonant.
Explaining their work, the soldiers used phrases I had heard countless times from digital marketers: “key influencers", “reach", “traction". You normally hear such words at viral advertising studios and digital research labs. But the skinny jeans and wax moustaches were here replaced by the crisply ironed shirts and light patterned camouflage of the British Army. Their surroundings were equally incongruous – the 77th’s headquarters were a mix of linoleum flooring, long corridors and swinging fire doors. More Grange Hill than Menlo Park. Next to a digital design studio, soldiers were having a tea break, a packet of digestives lying open on top of a green metallic ammo box. Another sign on the wall declared, “Behavioural change is our USP [unique selling point]”. What on Earth was happening?
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“If you track where UK manpower is deployed, you can take a good guess at where this kind of ‘influence’ activity happens,” an information warfare officer (not affiliated with the 77th) told me later, under condition of anonymity. “A document will come from the Ministry of Defence that will have broad guidance and themes to follow.” He explains that each military campaign now also has – or rather is – a marketing campaign too.
Ever since Nato troops were deployed to the Baltics in 2017, Russian propaganda has been deployed too, alleging that Nato soldiers there are rapists, looters, little different from a hostile occupation. One of the goals of Nato information warfare was to counter this kind of threat: sharply rebutting damaging rumours, and producing videos of Nato troops happily working with Baltic hosts.
Information campaigns such as these are “white”: openly, avowedly the voice of the British military. But to narrower audiences, in conflict situations, and when it was understood to be proportionate and necessary to do so, messaging campaigns could become, the officer said, “grey” and “black” too. “Counter-piracy, counter-insurgencies and counter-terrorism,” he explained. There, the messaging doesn't have to look like it came from the military and doesn't have to necessarily tell the truth.
I saw no evidence that the 77th do these kinds of operations themselves, but this more aggressive use of information is nothing new. GCHQ, for instance, also has a unit dedicated to fighting wars with information. It is called the “Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group” – or JTRIG – an utterly unrevealing name, as it is common in the world of intelligence. Almost all we know about it comes from a series of slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Those documents give us a glimpse of what these kinds of covert information campaigns could look like.
According to the slides, JTRIG was in the business of discrediting companies, by passing “confidential information to the press through blogs etc.”, and by posting negative information on internet forums. They could change someone’s social media photos (“can take ‘paranoia’ to a whole new level”, a slide read.) They could use masquerade-type techniques – that is: placing “secret” information on a compromised computer. They could bombard someone’s phone with text messages or calls.
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JTRIG also boasted an arsenal of 200 info-weapons, ranging from in-development to fully operational. A tool dubbed “Badger” allowed the mass delivery of email. Another, called “Burlesque”, spoofed SMS messages. “Clean Sweep” would impersonate Facebook wall posts for individuals or entire countries. “Gateway” gave the ability to “artificially increase traffic to a website”. “Underpass” was a way to change the outcome of online polls.
They had operational targets across the globe: Iran, Africa, North Korea, Russia and the UK. Sometimes the operations focused on specific individuals and groups, sometimes the wider regimes or even general populations. Operation Quito was a campaign, running some time after 2009, to prevent Argentina from taking over the Falkland Islands. A slide explained “this will hopefully lead to a long-running, large-scale, pioneering effects operation”. Running from March 2011, another operation aimed for regime change in Zimbabwe by discrediting the Zanu PF party.
Walking through the headquarters of the 77th, the strange new reality of warfare was on display. We’ve all heard a lot about “cyberwarfare” – about how states could attack their enemies through computer networks, damaging their infrastructure or stealing their secrets. But that wasn’t what was going on here. Emerging here in the 77th Brigade was a warfare of storyboards and narratives, videos and social media. An engagement now doesn’t just happen on the battlefield, but also in the media and online. A victory is won as much in the eyes of the watching public as between opposing armies on the battlefield. Warfare in the information age is a warfare over information itself.
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Over a decade ago, and a world away from the 77th Brigade, there were people who already knew that the internet was a potent new tool of influence. They didn’t call what they did “information warfare”, media operations, influence activities, online action, or any of the military vernacular that it would become. Members of the simmering online subcultures that clustered around hacker forums, in IRCs, and on imageboards like 4chan, they might have called it “attention hacking”. Or simply lulz.
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In 2008, Oprah Winfrey warned her millions of viewers that a known paedophile network “has over 9,000 penises and they’re all raping children.” That was a 4chan Dragon Ball-themed in-joke someone had posted on the show’s messageboard. One year later, Time magazine ran an online poll for its readers to vote on the world’s 100 most influential people, and 4chan used scripts to rig the vote so that its founder – then-21-year-old Christopher Poole, commonly known as “moot” – came first. They built bots and “sockpuppets” – fake social media accounts to make topics trend and appear more popular than they were – and swarmed together to overwhelm their targets. They started to reach through computers to change what people saw, and perhaps even what people thought. They celebrated each of their victories with a deluge of memes.
The lulz were quickly seized upon by others for the money. Throughout the 2000s, small PR firms, political communications consultancies, and darknet markets all began to peddle the tactics and techniques pioneered on 4chan. “Digital media-savvy merchants are weaponising their knowledge of commercial social media manipulation services,” a cybersecurity researcher who tracks this kind of illicit commercial activity tells me on condition of anonymity.
“It’s like an assembly line,” he continues. “They prepare the campaign, penetrate the target audience, maintain the operation, and then they strategically disengage. It is only going to get bigger.”
A range of websites started selling fake accounts, described, categorised and priced almost like wine: from cheap plonk all the way to seasoned vintages. The “HUGE MEGA BOT PACK”, available for just $3 on the darknet, allowed you to build your own bot army across hundreds of social media platforms. There were services for manipulating search engine results. You could buy Wikipedia edits. You could rent fake IP addresses to make it look like your accounts came from all over the world. And at the top of the market were “legend farms”, firms running tens of thousands of unique identities, each one with multiple accounts on social media, a unique IP address, its own internet address, even its own personality, interests and writing style. The lulz had transmogrified into a business model.
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Inside the base of the 77th, everything was in motion. Flooring was being laid, work units installed; desks – empty of possessions – formed neat lines in offices still covered in plastic, tape and sawdust. The unit was formed in a hurry in 2015 from various older parts of the British Army – a Media Operations Group, a Military Stabilisation Support Group, a Psychological Operations Group. It has been rapidly expanding ever since.
In 2014, a year before the 77th was established, a memo entitled “Warfare in the Information Age” flashed across the British military. “We are now in the foothills of the Information Age” the memo announced. It argued that the British Army needed to fight a new kind of war, one that “will have information at its core”. The Army needed to be out on social media, on the internet, and in the press, engaged, as the memo put it, “in the reciprocal, real-time business of being first with the truth, countering the narratives of others, and if necessary manipulating the opinion of thousands concurrently in support of combat operations.”
Then the business of lulz turned into geopolitics. Around the world, militaries had come to exactly the same realisation as the British, and often more quickly. “There is an increased reliance on, and desire for, information,” Nato’s Allied Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, published in 2009, began. And it reached the same conclusion as the British military memo: wars needed to have an “increased attention on Info Ops”. Simply put, information operations should be used to target an enemy’s will. “For example, by questioning the legitimacy of leadership and cause, information activities may undermine their moral power base, separating leadership from supporters, political, military and public, thus weakening their desire to continue and affecting their actions,” the document explains.
Russia, too, was in on the act. The Arab Spring, the revolutions in several post-Soviet states, Nato’s enlargement – each of those had chipped away at the crumbling edifice of Russian power. Russia had a large conventional army but that seemed to matter less than in the past. The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, began to rethink what a military needed to do. Warfare, he argued in an article for Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kurier (The Military Industry Journal), was now “hybrid” – blurring the lines between war and peace, civilian and military, state and non-state. And there was another blurring too: between force and ideas. “Moral-psychological-cognitive-informational struggle”, as Gerasimov put it, was now central to how conflicts should be fought.
We now know what Russian information warfare looks like. Moscow has built an apparatus that stretches from mainstream media to the backwaters of the blogosphere, from the President of the Russian Federation to the humble bot. Just like the early attention hackers, their techniques are a mixture of the very visible and very secret – but at a vastly greater scale.
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Far less visible to Western eyes, however, were the outbreak of other theatres of information warfare outside of the English language. Gerasimov was right: each was a case of blurred boundaries. It was information warfare, but not always just carried out by militaries. It came from the state, but sometimes included plenty of non-state actors too. Primarily, it was done by autocracies, and was often directed internally, at the country’s own inhabitants.
A Harvard paper published in 2017 estimated that the Chinese government employs two million people to write 448 million social media posts a year. Their primary purpose is to keep online discussion away from sensitive political topics. Marc Owen Jones, a researcher at Exeter University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, exposed thousands of fake Twitter accounts in Saudi Arabia, “lionising the Saudi government or Saudi foreign policy”. In Bahrain, evidence emerged of spam-like operations, aiming to stop dissidents finding each other or debating politically dangerous topics online. In Mexico, an estimated 75,000 automated accounts are known locally as Peñabots, after President Enrique Peña Nieto, flooding protest hashtags with irrelevant, annoying noise burying any useful information.
Disinformation and deception have been a part of warfare for thousands of years, but across the world, something new was starting to happen. Information has long been used to support combat operations, but now combat was seen to taking place primarily, sometimes exclusively, through it. From being a tool of warfare, each military began to realise that the struggle with, over and through information was what war itself actually was about. And it wasn’t confined to Russia, China or anyone else. A global informational struggle has broken out. Dozens of countries are already doing it. And these are just the campaigns that we know about.
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On their shoulders, the soldiers of the 77th Brigade wear a small, round patch of blue encircling a snarling golden creature that looks like a lion. Called an A Chinthe, it’s a mythical Burmese beast first worn by the the Chindits, a British and Indian guerrilla force created during the Second World War to protect Burma against the advancing Japanese Army. An army of irregulars, the Chindits infiltrated deep behind enemy lines in unpredictable sorties, destroying supply depots and severing transport links, aiming to spread confusion as much as destruction.
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It’s no accident that the 77th wear the Chinthe on their shoulder. Like the Chindits, they are a new kind of force. An unorthodox one, but in the eyes of the British Army also a necessary innovation; simply reflecting the world in which we all now live and the new kind of warfare that happens within it.
This new warfare poses a problem that neither the 77th Brigade, the military, or any democratic state has come close to answering yet. It is easy to work out how to deceive foreign publics, but far, far harder to know how to protect our own. Whether it is Russia’s involvement in the US elections, over Brexit, during the novichok poisoning or the dozens of other instances that we already know about, the cases are piling up. In information warfare, offence beats defence almost by design. It’s far easier to put out lies than convince everyone that they’re lies. Disinformation is cheap; debunking it is expensive and difficult.
Even worse, this kind of warfare benefits authoritarian states more than liberal democratic ones. For states and militaries, manipulating the internet is trivially cheap and easy to do. The limiting factor isn’t technical, it’s legal. And whatever the overreaches of Western intelligence, they still do operate in legal environments that tend to more greatly constrain where, and how widely, information warfare can be deployed. China and Russia have no such legal hindrances.
Equipping us all with the skills to protect ourselves from information warfare is, perhaps, the only true solution to the problem. But it takes time. And what could be taught would never keep up with what can be done. Technological possibility, as things stand, easily outpaces public understanding.
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