Lord Bell has sold soul (11/26/2008)

It is still possible, it seems, to sell one's soul to the devil.

Take, for instance, the case of one Lord Timothy Bell.

Lord Bell, a wealthy and tony Briton, is in the public relations business. His firm, Bell Pottinger Group, will spruce up the image of any number of clients.

And apparently there are no standards when it comes to who they'll work for.

The latest client is one Alexander Lukashenka, a fellow known as the last dictator in Europe.

Lukashenka is the Stalin-era throwback who rules Belarus. Elections are rigged, opposition candidates are stifled or jailed, journalists attempting to report the truth are harassed and their newspapers put out of business, and those who take to the streets to demonstrate for human rights do so at the risk of injury or arrest.

If Lord Bell had even minimal standards, his firm would have told Lukashenka thanks but no thanks. Instead, he is personally involved in pitching the Belarusian regime to the West.

This month, a group of journalists, mostly from the United Kingdom and Germany, has been taken on a PR tour by Lord Bell's outfit with the intention of selling the notion that Belarus is a happy, sunny place where everyone loves the boss and where dissent is limited to a few malcontents who should be ignored.

In other words, the truth has taken a holiday.

And someone's sold his soul. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]