As demand for downloading television programmes soars, broadcasters and ISPs are arguing over who should foot the bill for keeping the internet up to speed.

Ashley Highfield is stepping down as director of future media at the BBC to head the Kangaroo Project, the joint venture between the three main broadcasters to make their content available on demand over the internet.

When it goes live later this year, the scheme, which was first put together at the end of last year, will give viewers a single place to access programmes from Channel 4, ITV and BBC Worldwide. And although it will initially function over the internet, in the longer term it could be available on other platforms such as Freeview, BT Vision or Virgin Media.

“Kangaroo will be an important shop window for UK broadcaster content”, Michael Grade, the executive chairman of ITV, said.

Despite the warm words, the scheme is born of necessity rather than desire. All three channels already have their own web services, but they have recognised that the user-friendliness of a single portal stands a better chance of success against both internet aggregators such as Google and traditional rivals such as Sky.

Adam Daum, a media analyst at Gartner, said: “Ideally, the broadcasters want everyone to come to their own site because then they have complete control over both the user experience and, in the case of the commercial operators, over the advertising. Kangaroo is a trade-off between their interests and those of their customers.”

One of the big issues in the short term will be copyright. The implications of on-demand viewing, rather than linear broadcast, are significant – as last year’s writers’ strike in Hollywood illustrated. The channels will face sticky negotiations with third-party producers over the rights to sell content worldwide, and on-demand, rather than as a one-off, or even with repeats, within the UK.

“It will be very messy for broadcasters who don’t produce the majority of their content because they will have to renegotiate worldwide rights not just for the internet, but potentially also for IPTV, cable, even mobile devices,” Mr Daum said.

The boom in on-demand services is not only raising issues within the TV industry. It is also causing major headaches over the capacity of the internet, and the multi-billion-pound infrastructure upgrades needed to handle the exponentially larger bandwidth requirements.

But the broadcasters are not far behind. The BBC’s iPlayer, launched at Christmas, now attracts a weekly audience of 1.1 million and showed 42 million programmes in the first three months of the year, including hits such as The Apprentice. Channel 4’s 4oD service is also growing fast, with a 110 per cent rise in active users this year and a 100 million rise in viewing figures since it launched popular programmes such as Shameless. ITV.com peaked last November with around 2.2 million viewers for programmes like Bionic Woman.

There is already a row brewing between online content providers and internet service providers (ISPs) faced with costs as high as £830m over the next three years to handle the extra traffic from video services. Industry representatives say discussions are constructive. But Mr Highfield caused a storm this month by threatening to name and shame ISPs that restrict iPlayer traffic. And Simon Gunter, the head of strategy at Tiscali, is leading a call from the ISP industry for the BBC to stump up some of the costs so they do not have to be passed on to consumers.

But the ISP question – which is caused by the cost of “backhaul” to the core network – is symptomatic of a longer-term issue about the massive amounts of investment that will be required to upgrade the UK communications infrastructure.

Antony Walker, the chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, said: “Today’s services are within the capability of the existing network but as we look forward … there will be an impact on the access infrastructure.”

BT is already spending £10bn on its 21st Century Network programme, which will replace 17 ageing fixed-line networks with one internet protocol-based system by 2011. And improved broadband technology installed in local exchanges has helped push bandwidths up to current top speeds of around 20 Mbit/s, although average rates were still a measly 4.6 Mbit/s last year.

But while international rivals from France to South Korea push ahead with investments offering speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s, progress in the UK is slow. There are some minor trials under way. Some 10,000 homes in Ebbsfleet in Kent will have the option of 100 Mbit/s connections from August as part of a BT pilot. And Virgin Media, which owns the cable network spanning around half the country, is to extend its 50 Mbit/s service to 9 million homes by the end of the year. The bottleneck is the so-called “last mile” of copper telephone line that runs from individual premises to local exchanges. And it will cost an estimated £15bn over 10 years, plus untold roadworks, to upgrade it to the fibre-optic cable needed for super-high speeds.

BT, which owns the copper network, says the commercial case simply does not exist in the current regulatory climate.

Ofcom launched its consultation in December and is expected to report later this year. And a government review, led by Francesco Caio, the former group chief executive of Cable & Wireless, has begun. But there are no easy answers, not least because BT’s preferred option – to increase the amount of money it is allowed to charge other operators for access to its exchanges – is widely opposed by its rivals.

With online viewing figures shooting up, the race is on to find a workable strategy. And developments in the mobile sector are likely to add to the pressure.

Mobile phone network operators are starting to put more weight behind mobile internet services. But the impact of widespread mobile internet on the already strained communications network will be astronomical, says John Roese, the global chief technical officer at Nortel.

“There is some evidence of slowing down caused by video-on-demand, but what is more of a worry is the advent of the new 3G and 4G wireless networks because the current architecture for backhaul is configured like the old voice network,” Mr Roese said. “The existing infrastructure for mobile was just not designed with Google or iPlayer in mind.”

(The Independent)

Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence

by Seumas Milne

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces – including the British – in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.

Following recent clashes between Iraqi troops and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Basra, and threats by the Iraqi government to ban his supporters from regional elections in the autumn, anti-occupation Sadrists and Sunni parties are expected to mount strong opposition in parliament to the agreement, which the US wants to see finalised by the end of July. The UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

One well-placed Iraqi Sunni political source said yesterday: “The feeling in Baghdad is that this agreement is going to be rejected in its current form, particularly after the events of the last couple of weeks. The government is more or less happy with it as it is, but parliament is a different matter.”

It is also likely to prove controversial in Washington, where it has been criticised by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has accused the administration of seeking to tie the hands of the next president by committing to Iraq’s protection by US forces.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued in February that the planned agreement would be similar to dozens of “status of forces” pacts the US has around the world and would not commit it to defend Iraq. But Democratic Congress members, including Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior member of the armed services committee, have said it goes well beyond other such agreements and amounts to a treaty, which has to be ratified by the Senate under the constitution.

Administration officials have conceded that if the agreement were to include security guarantees to Iraq, it would have to go before Congress. But the leaked draft only states that it is “in the mutual interest of the United States and Iraq that Iraq maintain its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and that external threats to Iraq be deterred. Accordingly, the US and Iraq are to consult immediately whenever the territorial integrity or political independence of Iraq is threatened.”

Significantly – given the tension between the US and Iran, and the latter’s close relations with the Iraqi administration’s Shia parties – the draft agreement specifies that the “US does not seek to use Iraq territory as a platform for offensive operations against other states”.

General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, is to face questioning from all three presidential candidates on Capitol Hill today when he reports to the Senate on his surge strategy, which increased US forces in Iraq by about 30,000 last year.

Both Clinton and Democratic rival Barack Obama are committed to beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq. Republican senator John McCain has pledged to maintain troop levels until the country is secure.

via/ The Guardian

Ever since Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, then chancellor and finance minister, swapped notes at a conference in Birmingham on how they were going to get to the top, the two plotters have had a sneaking mutual regard for each other. Their ambition fulfilled, neither have found the job of their dreams plain sailing. If Mr Brown has stopped the leaky vessel of his government from taking in water, Mr Sarkozy’s presidency is still sinking in the polls. If either man were at the helm of a cross-channel ferry instead of a government, you would take the tunnel every time.

But of the two, it is the French president who has most to gain from his first state visit to Britain which ends today. Lampooned at home for his predilection for all that glitters (Rolex watches, gold pens and his supermodel wife) Mr Sarkozy has to sober up. His presidency urgently needs to acquire dignity, statesmanship, a sense of distance from the cut and thrust of politics, not an inextricable entanglement in them. To have appeared tanned, wealthy and happy before pale-faced countrymen struggling to pay the bills and about to undergo painful economic reforms, is a misjudgment unusual in a man who only last year was credited with being France’s most able politician.

In his speech yesterday to both houses of parliament, Mr Sarkozy called for a new era of Franco-British brotherhood. This is a part of the battle that is shaping up at home. His hardest reforms – changing work practices, pension and healthcare reform – are still to come and for this he is using Britain as a model. This may seem bizarre to Britons who have traveled to French hospitals for their operations. But as a foreign policy idea, it is not bad for Britain or for Europe. It would be a mistake to think that the Franco-German alliance, which has been at the heart of the European project, is the loser in all this. The flamboyant French president may not get on with the cerebral German chancellor Angela Merkel. But European politics is not a zero-sum game. Franco-German relations do not necessarily deteriorate if Franco-British co-operation improves.

Mr Sarkozy pledged to send more troops to Afghanistan if Nato backed the French proposals, for which he requires British help. America has called on Nato allies for more help in fighting a resurgent Taliban. An increased French presence would be a precursor to rejoining the military structures of Nato, in a way which allayed US concerns about duplicating command structures. The prize would be a military capability the European Union needs. Strip Mr Sarkozy’s words of their gushing rhetoric, and the message that both Britain and France need each other is undeniably true.

//guardian//

A senior former ally of President Pervez Musharraf claimed America and Britain’s “failure” in Afghanistan sparked a wave of violence in Pakistan.

“The West has failed in Afghanistan and so has shifted the blame to Pakistan,” Lt-Gen Orakzai, told The Daily Telegraph in his first interview since resigning earlier this year as governor of the restive North West Frontier province.

Gen Orakzai said US demands for Pakistan “to do more, more and more” had led to the military bombing its own citizens in the border tribal areas, and prompting a “war of resistance”.

He added the threat posed by al-Qa’eda in the tribal areas had been “greatly exaggerated” by the West, and the military strikes had caused many innocent deaths and a lot of collateral damage.

“There was a lot of resentment… people wanted revenge for the loss of their loved ones. It snowballed.”

Gen Orakzai, a Pushtun from the tribal areas, was reportedly asked to resign as governor after brokering a controversial peace agreement in North Waziristan.

US officials said the deal had led to a threefold increase in cross-border infiltration of militants from Pakistan to Afghanistan and allegedly leant on Mr Musharraf to remove him.

“Nobody has said don’t fight terrorism. But if the US keeps asking us to do more, Pakistan will be in a critical position,” said Gen Orakzai. “So leave us alone for some time and let us give a political solution a chance.”

His remarks came amid increasing US concerns Pakistan’s counter-terrorism co-operation may wane as the new coalition government looks set to clip the power of Washington’s ally, Mr Musharraf, or possibly oust him.

Asif Ali Zardari, the co-chairman of the senior coalition partner, the Pakistan’s People’s Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, have both stated the new government would “redefine” Pakistan’s stance on the US-led “war on terror”.

Mr Musharraf’s support for the US-led campaign has been deeply unpopular and the new government of prime minister Yusf Raza Gilani has pledged to reach a national consensus on how to deal with tribal militants.

A sullen-faced Mr Musharraf swore in Mr Gilani, an aide of the late Benazir Bhutto whom he once jailed for five years on trumped-up political charges. Supporters chanted “Long Live Bhutto” as the new prime minister repeated the oath.

//telegraph//

Antiwar protesters rolled through cities across the nation on Wednesday in a series of largely peaceful, and sometimes subdued, marches on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

While there were more than 140 arrests in San Francisco and more than 30 in Washington, attendance was lighter and the acrimony more muted than at protests in the early years of the war.

In San Francisco, where an estimated 150,000 people took to the streets in 2003, about 500 protesters roamed early Wednesday, many in costume and chanting amid the clamor of a makeshift marching band. In the evening, a larger crowd marched peacefully outside City Hall.

While the banners and bullhorn rhetoric were strident, the mood among some was pessimistic.

“The war is not going to end,” said Bob McGee, 67, from Livermore, about 50 miles east of the city. “It doesn’t matter who wins the election. The only thing that’s going to stop it is the destruction of the economy.”

Across the bay in Berkeley, the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan spoke to about 100 people in front of a Marine recruiting station, the site of a recent fight between those on both sides of the war. But there, too, protesters seemed less full-throated than in the past.

Adam Beach, 40, said he and his wife had opposed the war from the beginning, but conceded that he felt discouraged. And, he added, “those feelings are shared by a lot of people.”

In Washington, 32 people were arrested outside the I.R.S. after they crossed police barricades and tried to block an entrance. Small numbers of arrests were also reported in Syracuse, Hartford and Chicopee, Mass.

Many of the day’s protests were so calm that some people brought their children.

“I feel like there’s more and more dissent, even in Congress, but I’m not so sure that I trust them to represent the people’s will,” said Stephanie Alston, 33, who brought her 9-month-old daughter, Calliope, to the San Francisco march. “And it’s already five years too late.”

//new york times//

Manchester Police Chief Who Cleared Britain of Helping Secret CIA Flights Is Found Dead

A city police chief who led an investigation into charges that Britain cooperated with secret CIA flights to transport terrorism suspects without formal proceedings has been found dead, his deputy said Tuesday.

Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead in Snowdonia, about 240 miles northwest of London, Deputy Chief Constable Dave Whatton said. He had been missing since going out for a walk Monday during his day off.

Whatton said the body, which was found Tuesday afternoon, had not yet been formally identified but he believed it was Todd.

He said a coroner’s inquest would investigate the cause of death and did not give any further details.

Todd was elected vice president of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales in 2006, according to a biography on his Web site.

The association gave him the task of looking into accusations that Britain allowed the CIA to use the country’s airports to fly terrorism suspects to other countries without any extradition hearings, a clandestine procedure known as “extraordinary rendition.”

Todd’s investigation concluded last June that there was no evidence to back the claim. Last month, however, Britain admitted one of its remote outposts in the Indian Ocean had twice been used by the United States as a refueling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects.

//raw story//

Two planes from the United States carrying terrorism suspects refuelled on the British island of Diego Garcia in 2002, Britain said on Thursday, contradicting earlier denials.

David Miliband, the UK’s foreign minister, revealed details of the flights to the island in the Indian Ocean in a statement to parliament on Thursday.

“Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent US investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred,” he said.

US error

Previously, the British government had insisted that it was not aware of any British territory being used to transfer terrorism suspects outside normal extradition procedures prior to George Bush, the US president, taking office.

“An error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light”

Miliband said he was “very sorry indeed” to have to correct earlier government denials on the basis of new information passed to Britain by the US government on February 15.

“An error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light,” he said.
Washington has already admitted to using the practice, which is known as “rendition”.

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said he was disappointed and that it was unfortunate that US rendition flights happened without UK knowledge.

Prisoner claims
Mark Seddon, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said: “The foreign minister said they are now going trek through all records of flights just to make sure there haven’t been any other errors.

“The big question remains as to the claims that have been made, which the CIA denies, that prisoners have been held at Diego Garcia. The claim is that prisoners have been held either on land or on vessels off the coast.

“There’s a pretty easy way to find out. There’s a British magistrate on the island. There are at least fifty police and a naval patrol. If the claims are true the government could be liable to legal action in the courts here.”

British police said last year they had found no evidence to support claims that American CIA planes transporting terrorism suspects to face possible torture in secret prisons in Europe landed illegally at British airports.

via/Al Jazeera English

Mohamed Al Fayed arrives at the high court to give evidence in the inquest into the deaths of his son and Diana, Princess of Wales. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

 

Mohamed Al Fayed branded Prince Philip a “Nazi” and a “racist” in the high court today as he detailed his belief that his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales, were “murdered” in a conspiracy initiated by the royal family and carried out with the involvement of Tony Blair, the security services and others.

By the end of his day in court, Fayed’s list of participants in the alleged murder plot and cover-up encompassed Diana’s sister Sarah McCorquodale and her husband, Robert Fellowes; two former chiefs of London police; the British ambassador to France; driver Henri Paul; two French toxicologists, members of the French medical service; three bodyguards he once employed and several of the princess’s closest friends.

In a letter to the intelligence and security committee in February 2006, Fayed said that “such a momentous and horrific action would have been directly sanctioned by the prime minister”.

Parts of the letter were read aloud today. Richard Horwell QC, acting at the inquest for the Metropolitan police commissioner, asked Fayed to confirm: “The list of conspirators, those who are involved in this, we can add Tony Blair to this list?”

Fayed replied: “You can.”

The Harrods owner repeated to the court his claims that Diana was killed because she was pregnant at the time of her death, and that she and Dodi had planned to announce their engagement.

“Diana told me on the telephone that she was pregnant,” he told the inquest. “I was the only person that they told.”

The couple called him to announce their intention to marry an hour before the crash, Fayed said, but he later seemed unclear about whether he had been told his son was about to propose, or that Dodi had done so and Diana had accepted.

He said the princess’s friends, who told the inquest there was no way she could have been pregnant or contemplating remarriage, were lying, and said: “All the witnesses who have been saying this are part of the cover-up and have been told what to say.”

He said Diana told him “she knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her” a month before the crash.

Fayed named a photographer, James Andanson, as the most likely suspect to have carried out the murder on the orders of the security services.

Andanson’s body was found in a burnt out car in 2000 and he is believed to have committed suicide. The inquest already heard that Andanson had produced evidence to show he was at home in Lignieres, 177 miles south of the French capital, at the time of the crash.

“There was one paparazzi member in the pay of the security services. This is likely to have been James Andanson, who exacted the murder in his own Fiat, pushed the car and a strobe light having been used to blind Henri Paul,” Fayed said.

A “steel wall from the security services” prevented him from providing proof of all his claims, Fayed said. “I have been fighting for 10 years to be where we are,” he told the jury.

Members of the British and French security services may have been part of the ambulance crew that took Diana to hospital to ensure she bled to death, Fayed claimed. He said that a hospital which could have treated the Princess was 10 minutes away from the site of the crash in the Alma tunnel in Paris but it took more than an hour to reach another medical institution.

Fayed believes the royal family would never have accepted a marriage between the mother of the second heir to the throne and an Egyptian Muslim, and alleges the Queen’s husband worked with the security services to stage the car crash in Paris in August 1997 that killed the couple and their driver.

“It’s time to send [Philip] back to Germany from where he comes,” Fayed said. “You want to know his original name – it ends with Frankenstein.”

Ian Burnett QC, for the coroner, asked Fayed if his allegations “stem from your belief that Prince Philip is not only a racist but a Nazi as well”.

“Absolutely,” Fayed replied.

Charles participated in the hope that he would then be able to marry his long-term mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, Fayed said. Fayed dismissed suggestions that Diana’s previous relationship with a Muslim heart surgeon, Hasnat Khan, was serious, saying: “He was just a friend, maybe some relations, how can she marry someone like that, that lives in a council flat and has no money.”

Fayed said the conspiracy was coordinated for Philip from the British embassy in Paris by the Queen’s private secretary, Fellowes. Sir Michael Jay, the then British ambassador to France, was also involved, Fayed said.

Fellowes told the inquest last week that he was in Norfolk at the time.

Fayed described Parker Bowles as a “crocodile wife” and the Windsors as “that Dracula family”, according to reports of his testimony by Sky News.

He disputed evidence that Paul, the driver, was drunk. Paul was part of the plot, and in the pay of security services in Britain and France, Fayed said.

“When he was killed, they find 20,000 francs in his pocket, because he disappeared three hours before the murder being briefed on what to do.”

Fayed said it had been proved “black and white” that blood samples from Paul proving the driver was intoxicated were not his.

He claimed the withholding of a note of a meeting between Diana and her divorce lawyer Lord Mishcon recording Diana’s fears for her safety proved she had been deliberately killed.

The police kept the note at Scotland Yard but did not hand it to the royal coroner overseeing the inquest at the time until Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell produced a note from the princess detailing similar allegations in 2003.

Fayed said Diana had kept letters from Prince Philip to be revealed in the event of her death, but those letters had now gone missing.

The coroner at the inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker, announced he was seeking a copy of a video in which Burrell apparently admitted not telling “the whole truth” when he testified last month. The video was obtained by the Sun.

Burrell had alleged in his book that the Queen warned him of “powerful forces” at work in a meeting weeks before the fatal crash, but failed to give details of this when he testified, saying only that “she showed great concern” about Diana and Dodi’s relationship.

The coroner refused to allow Fayed to read the Sun’s article to the jury.

He clashed repeatedly with Horwell, who at one stage told him: “You truly do not care about the interests of other people.”

In a later outburst, Fayed declared, “I’m not going to talk to you any more,” leading Lord Justice Scott Baker to suggest a break.

Fayed’s final words to the coroner today were: “I need your help please.”

The inquest continues tomorrow, and Fayed is not scheduled to appear. Other witnesses due this week include Elizabeth Andanson, the wife of the photographer Fayed implicated.

via//The Guardian

Hands on buzzers, for 500 points: this democratic leader was overthrown in 1953 by a US-organized coup in retaliation for nationalizing oil resources previously controlled by the British.

Who is Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh?

If you’re a little rusty on the history of U.S.-Iran relations, here’s a 6-minute video review:

If more Americans knew about this history, could our leaders blather on about supporting freedom and democracy in the Middle East they way they do? Would news media take them seriously if they did so? Would American pundits be so cavalier about the idea of bombing Iran, in flagrant violation of international law? Could people make fun of Senator Barack Obama for supporting real diplomacy with Iran and get away with it?

I don’t claim that it would be impossible for U.S. politicians to talk about bombing Iran if “every schoolboy knew” what the United States did in Iran in 1953. But surely it would be more difficult.

Spread the video.

Ask Congress to support the Lee bill, which would appoint a high-level U.S. representative to Iran for the purpose of reducing tensions and establishing normal diplomatic relations.

via//Huffington Post

he archbishop of Canterbury has called for a limited application of Sharia, or Islamic, law in Britain, winning immediate praise from British Muslims, but immediate rejection from Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman.

SCOTLAND YARD’S antiterrorist squad secretly bugged a high-profile Labour Muslim MP during private meetings with one of his constituents.

Sadiq Khan, now a government whip, was recorded by an electronic listening device hidden in a table during visits to the constituent in prison.

The bugging of MPs is a breach of a government edict that has barred law agencies from eavesdropping on politicians since the bugging scandal of Harold Wilson’s government. There was no suspicion of criminal conduct by Khan to justify the operation.

A document seen by The Sunday Times shows there was internal concern about the propriety of bugging an MP, who was also a lawyer, but the operation nevertheless went ahead.

The disclosure will put further pressure on Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who will be asked to explain why his officers apparently breached government rules – and if he authorised it.

Khan discussed sensitive personal and legal matters during the recorded meeting. The MP was said to be “outraged” yesterday. “From what you have told me, this is an infringement of a citizen’s right to have a private meeting with his MP,” he said.

Last night Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said that he had ordered an immediate inquiry and added that it would be “unacceptable” for such a bugging operation to take place.

Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour colleague, said: “The bugging of Sadiq Khan is very dangerous indeed. It is totally unacceptable that MPs’ conversations with constituents are bugged by the security services or the police.

“It is an affront to democracy and has all the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime. No one is suggesting that MPs should be above the law, but when behaving as MPs and dealing with people’s liberty that must be sacrosanct as it is with lawyers.” Khan, 37, is a rising star in the Labour party and is seen as a key figure in Gordon Brown’s drive to win the hearts and minds of Britain’s Muslims. He is a former chairman of Liberty, the human rights group, and used to be a legal adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain. As a lawyer he was a thorn in the side of the Metropolitan police, taking a series of controversial malpractice cases against them.

The bugging operation recorded conversations with his constituent, Babar Ahmad, who is facing deportation to the United States under new extradition laws. Khan has been a friend of Ahmad since childhood and has been a prominent campaigner against his extradition. He met the home secretary to discuss the case and handed over a petition of 18,000 signatures calling for Ahmad’s release.

The US government has accused Ahmad of running a website that raised funds for Taliban and Chechen terrorists in the late 1990s. He faces no charges in Britain but is wanted in the United States because his website was registered there.

Khan made two visits to Ahmad in 2005 and 2006 while he was on remand at Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes. Both meetings were secretly recorded. Ahmad’s family say he arranged the meetings because he was no longer free to go Khan’s constituency office in Tooting, south London, and wanted to see his MP.

Knowing that Khan was coming, the antiterrorist squad requested the bugging. Senior officers had already granted authorisation to bug Ahmad’s guests before Khan first visited. The officers had previously recorded family members who were leading the campaign to free him.

The meetings took place in the main visitors’ hall where each inmate is allocated an identical wooden table. Underneath the tables is a solid wood partition that separates prisoners from their visitors.

However, The Sunday Times has learnt that at least six of the tables have had their panels hollowed out to hide bugging equipment. They are known as “talking tables”. Inside each panel is a microphone, a battery, an antenna and a transmitter.

Such is the secrecy surrounding these tables that even the prison officers are said to be unaware of them. They are operated and maintained by specialist detectives permanently based at the prison.

The second meeting between Khan and Ahmad took place on the Saturday morning of June 24, 2006, during a crucial period for his campaign and legal case. Khan bought cups of tea and chocolate bars and joined Ahmad who had already been seated at one of the “talking tables”.

Every word was transmitted to a receiver in the domed ceiling above them and then routed to a nearby office. The digital recording was picked up by an antiterrorist branch officer the next Monday morning.

During the conversation the two men discussed the latest developments in the campaign against extradition. Khan updated Ahmad on a meeting in the House of Commons against the 2003 Extradition Act.

The Commons gathering had drawn support from politicians of all parties who had objected to changes in the law that allowed the United States to extradite suspects without first testing the case in a British court.

The antiterrorist officers would have heard Khan and Ahmad discussing tactics for his appeal, which was due to start shortly. The two men also talked about the civil case he was taking against the police, alleging that he was physically assaulted by officers when he was first arrested in December 2003 and released without charge.

Khan noticed nothing untoward. About a month later, Ahmad claims that he was approached by MI5 officers who offered him his freedom if he agreed to become their informant. He declined.

Meanwhile, Khan was promoted to assistant government whip in the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for prisons.

The Sunday Times told him about the bugging operation last week. A friend said the disclosure might further undermine the government’s attempt to “reengage” the Muslim community. He said: “If he was not a Muslim MP would they be doing this? If it had been some ordinary white middle-class MP, would they have been bugged?” He added that this was a violation of an MP’s relationship with his constituent: “If you have not got the confidence to see your MP and know it is privileged, then that raises serious questions. It is f****** outrageous.”

The bugging is a probable breach of the Wilson doctrine that has protected politicians from eavesdropping by the security services for more than 40 years. It was introduced by Harold Wilson, then prime minister, and was reaffirmed in the Commons by Tony Blair as recently as March 2006.

Yesterday a senior Scotland Yard officer said Khan’s work as a defence lawyer had generated “ill feeling” in the Metropolitan police and questioned whether the force had legitimate grounds for the bugging. The officer said: “To do this you have to suspect the MP of being involved in some sort of conspiracy.”

He added that the operation may have breached Ahmad’s legal privilege: “The officers in charge would have known that because Khan is an MP and a lawyer there was a grave danger that the legal professional privilege would be breached.”

Ahmad remains in jail having lost his appeals in Britain and is awaiting a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. He has also lodged a civil claim against Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner. Ahmad’s wife Maryam has called for the home secretary to investigate the police bugging operation.

Last week an official report suggested that authorities, including local councils, were launching bugging operations against 1,000 people a day.

The Metropolitan police declined to comment yesterday.

via//Times Online

 Gordon Brown has begun secret talks with other world leaders on far-reaching reform of the United Nations Security Council as part of a drive to create a “new world order” and “global society”.

The Prime Minister is drawing up plans to expand the number of permanent members in a move that will provoke fears that the veto enjoyed by Britain could be diluted eventually. The United States, France, Russia and China also have a veto but the number of members could be doubled to include India, Germany, Japan, Brazil and one or two African nations.

Mr Brown has discussed a shake-up of a structure created in 1945 to reflect the world’s new challenges and power bases during his four-day trip to China and India. Last night, British sources revealed “intense discussions” on UN reform were under way and Mr Brown raised it whenever he met another world leader.

The Prime Minister believes the UN is punching below its weight. In 2003, it failed to agree on a fresh resolution giving explicit approval for military action in Iraq. George Bush then acted unilaterally, winning the support of Tony Blair.

UN reform is highly sensitive and Britain will not yet publish formal proposals for fear of uniting opponents against them. Mr Brown is trying to build a consensus for change first.

His aides are adamant that the British veto will not be negotiated away. One option is for the nations who join not to have a veto, at least initially. In a speech in Delhi today, the Prime Minister will say: “I support India’s bid for a permanent place – with others – on an expanded UN Security Council.” However, he is not backing Pakistan’s demand for a seat if India wins one.

Mr Brown will unveil a proposal for the UN to spend £100m a year on setting up a “rapid reaction force” to stop “failed states” sliding back into chaos after a peace deal has been reached. Civilians such as police, administrators, judges and lawyers would work alongside military peace-keepers. “There is limited value in military action to end fighting if law and order does not follow,” he will say. “So we must do more to ensure rapid reconstruction on the ground once conflicts are over – and combine traditional humanitarian aid and peace-keeping with stabilisation, recovery and development.”

He will call for the World Bank to lead the fight against climate change as well as poverty in the developing world, and argue that the International Monetary Fund should prevent crises like the credit crunch rather than just resolve them.

Arriving in Delhi yesterday, Mr Brown said he wanted a “partnership of equals” between Britain and India as he called for closer trade links and co-operation against terrorism. He announced £825m of aid over the next three years – £500m of which will be spent on health and education.

Mr Brown is to bring back honorary knighthoods and other awards for cricketers from Commonwealth countries. He said: “Cricket is one of the great things that bind the Commonwealth together. It used to be that great cricketers from the Commonwealth would be recognised by the British nation I would like to see some of the great players in the modern era honoured.”

Read Andrew Grice atindependent.co.uk/todayinpolitics

Security Council membership

The UN Security Council’s membership has remained virtually unchanged since it first met in 1946.

Great Britain, the United States, the then Soviet Union, China and France were designated permanent members of the UN’s most powerful body.

Initially, six other countries were elected to serve two-year spells on the council – in 1946 they were Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland.

The number of elected members, who are chosen to cover all parts of the globe, was increased to 10 in 1965. They are currently Belgium, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Libya, Panama, South Africa and Vietnam.

Decisions made by the council require nine “yes” votes out of 15. Each permanent member has a veto over resolutions.

The issue of UN reform has long been on the agenda. One suggestion is that permanent membership could be expanded to 10 with India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and South Africa taking places. Any reform requires 128 nations, two-thirds, to support it in the assembly.

via//Independent, The

LONDON (Reuters) – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped into the private sector on Thursday, joining U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase and Co Inc as a senior adviser to its board and clients.

The bank said Blair, who is working as a Middle East peace envoy for the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, would advise its chief executive and senior management team on global politics on a part-time basis.

He would also take part in company events with key clients — with his name and contact seen by some as a major draw.

Blair biographer Anthony Seldon said there would inevitably be allegations he was selling out, but that ultimately his new job was likely to come second to his global political work.

“Maybe this is a harbinger of a new Tony Blair,” he told Reuters. “But he has never struck me as someone who enjoys particularly the trappings of wealth except foreign holidays with his children.”

“I don’t think this will be nearly as important to him as his other priorities such as the inter-faith dialogue work and the Middle East,” he added.

Seldon said Blair had immersed himself in international affairs probably more than any other European politician and was therefore a very high-profile global name for such a job.

BETTER THAN BUSH?

“He is about as good as it gets,” he said, contrasting Blair with the U.S. president whom he said was seen as a less lucrative brand once he leaves office. “Most firms would rather have George W. Bush advising their competition.”

Blair said of his new job with JPMorgan: “I look forward to advising them on how they approach the huge political and economic changes that globalization brings.”

London’s Evening Standard newspaper said the role was rumored to be worth 500,000 pounds ($980,000) a year, and contrasted his wealth with the hardship of soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan — both wars begun under Blair — who have struggled for compensation.

JPMorgan refused to comment on Blair’s pay deal.

The Financial Times, which first reported the move on its Web Site, said the job was the first of a series that Blair — who stood down last year after a decade in office — intended to take in the private sector.

Blair is credited with bringing his Labor Party out of years in opposition to win a landslide election in 1997, but his popularity was damaged in Britain by the Iraq war and his staunch support for Bush.

“I have always been interested in commerce and the impact of globalization,” Blair told the Financial Times.

Former prime ministers have often relied on private sector work or lucrative public speaking fees — particularly in the United States — after leaving office, but some analysts were unfazed by Blair’s move.

“When I come to look at my earnings estimates for JPMorgan I certainly wouldn’t be making an adjustment for the Tony Blair factor,” said Richard Staite, banking analyst for Atlantic Equities in London. “It is a pretty marginal issue.”

via//Reuters

George Monbiot
Guardian

In reading reports of the trial of the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, you are struck by two things. The first, of course, is the anachronistic brutality of the country’s laws. Mr Pamuk, like scores of other writers and journalists, is being prosecuted for “denigrating Turkishness”, which means that he dared to mention the Armenian genocide in the first world war and the killing of the Kurds in the past decade. The second is its staggering, blithering stupidity. If there is one course of action that could be calculated to turn these massacres into live issues, it is the trial of the country’s foremost novelist for mentioning them.

As it prepares for accession, the Turkish government will discover that the other members of the EU have found a more effective means of suppression. Without legal coercion, without the use of baying mobs to drive writers from their homes, we have developed an almost infinite capacity to forget our own atrocities.

Atrocities? Which atrocities? When a Turkish writer uses that word, everyone in Turkey knows what he is talking about, even if they deny it vehemently. But most British people will stare at you blankly. So let me give you two examples, both of which are as well documented as the Armenian genocide.

In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, published in 2001, Mike Davis tells the story of famines that killed between 12 and 29 million Indians. These people were, he demonstrates, murdered by British state policy. When an El Niño drought destituted the farmers of the Deccan plateau in 1876 there was a net surplus of rice and wheat in India. But the viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing should prevent its export to England. In 1877 and 1878, at the height of the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve, officials were ordered “to discourage relief works in every possible way”. The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited “at the pain of imprisonment private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market fixing of grain prices”. The only relief permitted in most districts was hard labour, from which anyone in an advanced state of starvation was turned away. In the labour camps, the workers were given less food than inmates of Buchenwald. In 1877, monthly mortality in the camps equated to an annual death rate of 94%.

As millions died, the imperial government launched “a militarised campaign to collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought”. The money, which ruined those who might otherwise have survived the famine, was used by Lytton to fund his war in Afghanistan. Even in places that had produced a crop surplus, the government’s export policies, like Stalin’s in Ukraine, manufactured hunger. In the north-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, which had brought in record harvests in the preceeding three years, at least 1.25m died.

Three recent books – Britain’s Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson, and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis – show how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise – some of them violently – against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder – more than a million – were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes”. British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.” The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”. Elkins’s evidence suggests that more than 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.

These are just two examples of at least 20 such atrocities overseen and organised by the British government or British colonial settlers; they include, for example, the Tasmanian genocide, the use of collective punishment in Malaya, the bombing of villages in Oman, the dirty war in North Yemen, the evacuation of Diego Garcia. Some of them might trigger a vague, brainstem memory in a few thousand readers, but most people would have no idea what I’m talking about. Max Hastings, on the opposite page, laments our “relative lack of interest” in Stalin and Mao’s crimes. But at least we are aware that they happened.

In the Express we can read the historian Andrew Roberts arguing that for “the vast majority of its half-millennium-long history, the British empire was an exemplary force for good … the British gave up their empire largely without bloodshed, after having tried to educate their successor governments in the ways of democracy and representative institutions” (presumably by locking up their future leaders). In the Sunday Telegraph, he insists that “the British empire delivered astonishing growth rates, at least in those places fortunate enough to be coloured pink on the globe”. (Compare this to Mike Davis’s central finding, that “there was no increase in India’s per capita income from 1757 to 1947″, or to Prasannan Parthasarathi’s demonstration that “South Indian labourers had higher earnings than their British counterparts in the 18th century and lived lives of greater financial security.”) In the Daily Telegraph, John Keegan asserts that “the empire became in its last years highly benevolent and moralistic”. The Victorians “set out to bring civilisation and good government to their colonies and to leave when they were no longer welcome. In almost every country, once coloured red on the map, they stuck to their resolve”.

There is one, rightly sacred Holocaust in European history. All the others can be denied, ignored, or belittled. As Mark Curtis points out, the dominant system of thought in Britain “promotes one key concept that underpins everything else – the idea of Britain’s basic benevolence … Criticism of foreign policies is certainly possible, and normal, but within narrow limits which show ‘exceptions’ to, or ‘mistakes’ in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence”. This idea, I fear, is the true “sense of British cultural identity” whose alleged loss Max laments today. No judge or censor is required to enforce it. The men who own the papers simply commission the stories they want to read.

Turkey’s accession to the European Union, now jeopardised by the trial of Orhan Pamuk, requires not that it comes to terms with its atrocities; only that it permits its writers to rage impotently against them. If the government wants the genocide of the Armenians to be forgotten, it should drop its censorship laws and let people say what they want. It needs only allow Richard Desmond and the Barclay brothers to buy up the country’s newspapers, and the past will never trouble it again.

www.monbiot.com

via//Guardian Unlimited