EXCLUSIVE: Cambridge Analytics Scandal linked to BLAIRITE'S and NEW LABOUR

PR COMPANY BELL POTTINGER IS LINKED WITH THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICS SCANDAL WHICH LINKS IT TO NEW LABOUR AND BLAIRITES.

Bell Pottinger Private (legally BPP Communications Ltd.; informally Bell Pottinger) was a British multinational public relations, reputation management and marketing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. On 12 September 2017 it went into administration (bankruptcy) as a consequence of a scandal caused by some of its activities in South Africa.

Bell Pottinger offered services such as lobbying, speech writing, reputation management, and search engine optimisationto clients including companies, governments and rich individuals. It was the largest UK-based public relations consultancy measured by 2010 fee income Lord Bell, who advised Margaret Thatcher on media matters, was a co-founder of Bell Pottinger, which, until July 2012, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime Communications plc. In June 2012, Lord Bell and Bell Pottinger CEO James Henderson completed a £19.6m management buyout from Chime, with Chime retaining a 25% stake in the business.

The firm has been described as having "the most controversial client list" in the PR industry. It has been criticised numerous times for conflict-of-interest edits that the company has made on Wikipedia pages that involve or are about their clients. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the company was hired by the Pentagon to work in Iraq, making fake terror and news-style videos, targeting al-Qaeda, for the reported sum of $540m.

During 2016 and 2017, a sustained 'dirty campaign' by the firm came to light, in which it played on racial animosity in South Africa, including the creation of fake news, in order to benefit its client Oakbay Investments, which is controlled by the controversial and influential Gupta family in South Africa and had strong ties to President Zuma's government. In 2017, the resulting scandal saw the firm disgraced and expelled from its professional body. Chief executive and largest shareholder James Henderson departed, lead partner Victoria Geoghegan was fired, and Chime, its second-largest shareholder, wrote off its investment and departed.There was an exodus of major clients and other senior staff, with the result that many onlookers thought the UK firm was highly likely to close,  while operations in the Middle and Far East could be sold to new owners. On 12 September 2017, it was announced that Bell Pottinger had entered administration, with some staff immediately being made redundant.

A September 2017 review by law firm Herbert Smith Freehills concluded that the firm had breached ethical standards, lacked appropriate policies for managing controversial accounts, and had brought the PR industry into disrepute, and the Public Relations and Communications Association(PRCA) said the firm had received a "damning indictment", having breached four of its conduct charter clauses. The firm had previously claimed that the allegations were purely a smear campaign having no truth to them.

Now it has come to light that this same corrupt company has links to the Cambridge Analytics scandal.

Cambridge Analytica, the UK company at the heart of the privacy breach that has wiped almost $40bn off the value of Facebook, has been characterised as a high-tech business that transformed data into a tool to wage “psychological warfare”.

Alexander Nix, chief executive, was suspended on Tuesday night after the company known for operating in the background was thrown into the spotlight following allegations that it had received and exploited data harvested from 50m Facebook users during the campaign to elect Donald Trump as US president.

Cambridge Analytica acted after Mr Nix was recorded by the UK’s Channel 4 News, suggesting that the company used bribery, covert operatives and honeytraps, allegations it denies. The company, founded in 2016, boasts on its website that data “drives all we do”, telling potential clients that it will “find your voters and move them to action”. Its political division says that it has “redefined the relationship between data and campaigns”, declaring proudly: “Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections.” It is that success, however, that has put the company at the centre of a scandal and drawn the attention of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, raising questions about Facebook’s management of its users’ data. Cambridge Analytica denies that it has used Facebook data in its modelling.

The Channel 4 report also featured Mark Turnbull, managing director of its political division, and a former executive at Bell Pottinger, the public relations firm that collapsed last year following accusations that it stoked racial tension in South Africa. Tim Bell, the former adviser to Margaret Thatcher who co-founded Bell Pottinger before leaving in 2016, confirmed Mr Turnbull had played a leading role in his former company’s geopolitical work. This involved advising on overseas election campaigns, including in Kenya and Ukraine, and managing the reputations of international political leaders.

Now you may be asking how does this link to Blairites and Neo Liberal "New Labour"..

As you see in this Guardian piece New Labours and Tony Blair's "Spin Doctor" Alastair Campbell used to be Bell Pottinger's director of communications. 

New Labour, Blair and Alastair Campbell used the company Bell Pottinger to promote the Iraq war that was based on lies.

They also did work for Bush to help push Blair and Bush's lies for war in Iraq after 9/11.

PR week reported in 2016

Bell Pottinger created propaganda videos in Iraq on behalf of the US Government in a contract worth more than half a billion dollars over several years, according to revelations unearthed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The work included creating short news segments made to look like Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos, The Sunday Times, which worked with the Bureau on the investigation, and other news outlets reported over the weekend.

The scale of Bell Pottinger’s operation in Iraq was significant; costing, on average, more than a hundred million dollars per year, with the agency at one point employing almost 300 British and Iraqi staff.

Bell Pottinger made about £15m a year in fees from the work, agency founder Lord Bell told The Sunday Times, with the bulk of the money going on costs such as production and distribution.

The agency’s work started in Iraq in March 2004 when it was tasked with "promotion of democratic elections", but the Bureau said it has identified transactions worth $540m (£420m) between the Pentagon and Bell Pottinger relating to contracts issued from May 2007 to December 2011, with a contract worth a similar annual rate ($120m, £93m) reportedly in force in 2006 too.

Quoted widely in the media, former Bell Pottinger employee Martin Wells said his work consisted of three types of products: TV ads portraying al Qaeda in a negative light; news items made to look as if they had been "created by Arabic TV" and with the origins sometimes hidden; and the production of fake al Qaeda propaganda films.

The latter would be put on CDs and dropped into areas that were raided. The CDs had a code embedded in them that gave the location of where they had been played.

The Pentagon has confirmed that Bell Pottinger did work for it as a contractor in Iraq under the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF), producing some material that was openly sourced to coalition forces, and some which was not. It insisted all material put out by IOTF was "truthful".

Wells said Bell Pottinger also carried out some work under the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force, which a US defence official confirmed but declined to give details of.

Wells said Bell Pottinger’s work was signed off by the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, General Petraeus, although some of it went higher up the command chaion and was approved by the White House.

Bell, who in August announced his departure from the agency to form a new venture Sans Frontières, told The Sunday Times he was "proud" of Bell Pottinger’s work in Iraq, saying: "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.

"I mean if you look at the situation now, it wouldn’t appear to have worked. But at the time, who knows, if it saved one life it [was] a good thing to do."

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism traced Bell Pottinger's activities through US army contracting censuses, reports by the Defense Department's Inspector General and federal procurement transaction records, plus the agency’s own corporate filings and specialist publications on military propaganda.

Bell Pottinger is no more but the people who worked there like Blairite Alastair Campbell are very much still around and pushing out Anti Corbyn propaganda.

Will they ever learn? 

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