And speaking of Mr T, here’s how he can afford to give away the advance/royalties for his book. Apparently, a lot of his time as a licensed searcher for peace in the Middle East has been spent lobbying on behalf of a Palestinian mobile phone network whose owner is a client of his employer, JP Morgan.
The company, Wataniya, is also connected to the family of Mahmoud Abbas. Its problem is that Israel refuses to release the frequencies the company needs to operate. Of course, if Mr Abbas proves sufficiently cooperative in the current round of negotiations this need not be a problem. And that would make Mr Tony happy, too. Via the Arabist, which notes that Wataniya is also part owned by the Kuwaiti government, with whom Blair also consults.
Strangely enough, subscribers to Telco 2.0 would have been aware of this a good 12 months ago.
The Israelis have basically reneged on the original licence agreement - I'm not even aware that they're using the band for anything, just pursuing their general principle of Being A Cunt About It at every possible opportunity.
Posted by: Alex | September 15, 2010 at 10:21 AM
Except with Mr Israel and his Twitter account.
Posted by: ejh | September 15, 2010 at 10:32 AM