I am so committed to getting my book finished I really don’t have time or energy to blog at the moment, and realise it has been very desultory the last few weeks. I am well and happy, it is just that writing a properly researched history is incredibly intensive. I realise there is much of great interest happening in the world, but I must sometimes cut myself off from it.
This is why I don’t ask for donations for the blog…
Bit more detail on that:
The former Prime Minister is in Freetown on a brief visit as part of the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative development agenda for the country.
http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/2015/05/sierra-leone-ebola-blair-visit/
IOW leeching some positive image points by association with UN effort while assisting his clients to exploit SL’s resources. In a safe office. This will be reported somewhere along the line as ‘Blair Joins Fight Against Ebola’. Wait, it already has.
In passing, live news on Blair seems to be under a total embargo from the Orifice of Tony Blair. Announcements regarding his whereabouts only appear after he’s gone. But a few future engagements appear from time to time on Arrest Blair:
http://www.arrestblair.org/blairs-schedule
Tip of the hat to George Monbiot. The Spirit of Hope gig is organised by the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation, and Blair has still not resigned as the Quartet’s Envoy….
http://awoko.org/2015/05/14/sierra-leone-newshuman-rights-officer-hospitalised-in-kenema/
Last seen in Rwanda in February, but in the company of Paul Kagame several times before and since at conferences of globalising resource-strippers, it may be that Mr Tony will drop in on his old mate again. Meanwhile I see the US Congress is just a tad uneasy about Rwanda’s human rights record.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-congress-to-hold-hearing-on-rwandas-troubling-human-rights-record-300083560.html
Wonder if Tony will be a witness?
The question of whose interests other than his own, Blair is promoting by propping up the revolting Kagame, remains now, as then, open.
http://rt.com/uk/227819-tony-blair-rwanda-kagame/
Looks as if Tony won’t be opening any more methanol plants in Azerbaijan…
http://en.apa.az/xeber_criminal_case_launched_against_nizami_pi_227016.html
Background:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/azerbaijan/6728429/Tony-Blair-funded-by-obscure-oligarch.html
Question is, if Tony, who is still advising Aliyev in addition to having a contract to silence Italian opposition to the new TAP pipeline from Baku to Puglia…and all that…if Tony were to write a testimonial like he did for convicted fraudster Ehud Olmert a couple of weeks ago, would that get Piriyev out of jail? Or would it lose Tony the very lucrative association with Aliyev? Questions…
More background:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/02/tony-blair-gas-pipeline-italy
And more:
http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/135822/tony-blair-vouches-convict-ehud-olmert-corruption-case
Quick synopsis of the Blair Africa Blair Governance Blair Initiative Blair…
A politician who has done as much harm as Tony Blair should not be allowed to play on Western ignorance of Africa in order to launder his reputation.
http://africasacountry.com/tony-blair-saves-the-children-of-africa/
Also asks the embarrassing question: what exactly is he doing there?-
By contrast with other global advisers, such as the economist Joseph Stiglitz who works on tailoring resource contracts to prevent poor nations being ripped off by predatory investors, AGI’s exact function is opaque. The neoliberal rhetoric of “good governance” and “leadership” changes very little — where we’ve seen major social-democratic movements gaining traction in recent years (such as Burkina Faso last month, Occupy Nigeria or the 2011 Egyptian revolution), Blair’s initiative has been nowhere to be found. In February 2011, Blair defended Hosni Mubarak as “immensely courageous and a force for good.” Just a week later, Mubarak was forced to step down.
In Rwanda, AGI is supporting Paul Kagame at a time when the notion of the Rwandan president as a progressive “reformer” seems more and more implausible in light of his autocratic style and his destructive role in DR Congo. Blair appears to be committed to the failed idea that Africa should be “saved” by a combination of foreign investment and international development agencies — a model that will continue to fail ordinary people.
Corrosive analysis of Blair’s deregulation of the banks, leading to the well-known consequences:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/05/the-fsas-defense-against-blairs-attack-on-it-shows-why-the-fsa-failed.html#more-9436
Yes, the largest, most fraudulent banks always preferred UK financial anti-regulation. That was an indictment of the City and the FSA, but McCarthy was so clueless that he treated it as a compliment – and knew that Blair would do the same.
Note to Blair, Brown, and McCarthy: if your teenage daughter’s friends always want to have the big parties at your house it is not a compliment to your parenting skills. It means that they know you fail to supervise their parties and drugs and alcohol abound. When the SDIs said, and showed by their actions, that they all preferred the City of London as the locus for their slimiest transactions it was not a compliment to your financial regulation. It was the sincerest insult.
And Labour needs to be Blairite? RIP Labour.
See also:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/05/new-labour-leaders-want-to-go-back-to-blairs-policies-that-blew-up-the-uk.html
Tony Blair will be returning to Nigeria (he may not actually have left, beyond an uneasy night laundering his charitable credentials in a Freetown hotel) this week, to issue some verbiage concerned with delivery units, globalisation and what we wanna do with your, y’know, resources:
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/183215-apc-to-unveil-buhari-governments-policy-direction-wednesday.html
He’s in very deep with Buhari, who has form for mass murder and is probably no more principled than the average Nigerian politician, or Blair himself. No doubt the involvement of UAE’s Mubadala will emerge in due course.
Same old, asme old.
Some Nigerian opinion on Blair’s involvement with APC (which has been shamelessly partisan throughout the Nigerian election)
http://www.nairaland.com/2322108/apc-unveil-buhari-governments-policy/1
9.25 pm post is a fair summary.
Mrs Blair didn’t accompany Tony in his attempt last week to be associated with ebola…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFR78JXW0AAmcX9.jpg:large
Tony didn’t make it to that APC conference. Ebola? Too much to hope for, I suppose.
The platitudes were instead delivered by Mandelson. Something’s definitely going on between New Cheap Labour’s wealthy apologists and the new Nigerian president Buhari, whom Blair was greasing even before the election.
http://jide-salu.com/2015/05/20/must-read-tony-blairs-tough-talk-to-buhari/
A refreshing approach to ending corruption, from our envoy to Kazakhstan, Burma, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi and most importantly Abu Dhabi, not forgetting being Paul Kagame’s bestest Western friend. Bit low on the old practicalities, though.
Odd one. Mandelson generally doesn’t overlap with Blair’s little earners. And as Blair probably hasn’t been in Nigeria for a week, the question arises of where he is instead. Let’s see if he pops up in retrospect (less and less does he get advertised in advance) at the World Economic Forum’s MidEast globalthon in Jordan, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Blair Inc’s spinoff PR company, Portland (Alastair Campbell, Tim Allen, works for Nazarbayev, Putin*) ran into a tiny spot of bother setting up a PR puff for Qatar’s regime:
What the BBC should only have seen:
http://www.adweek.com/prnewser/portland-comms-arranged-qatar-tour-that-led-to-bbc-reporters-arrests/114367
What the BBC was so unwise as to have actually seen:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32775563
*Sorry, worked for Putin –
https://www.publicaffairsnews.com/articles/news/portland-swaps-russia-qatar
In which we are led to suspect that the merry Blairites of Portland will be massaging Qatar’s clandestine support for the jihadis tearing the region apart…
The reason Blair couldn’t deliver his patronising, ill-informed and superfluous advice to Buhari was apparently not because he, Blair, snuffed it on Tuesday:
http://en.mediamass.net/people/tony-blair/deathhoax.html
Bugger. But he hasn’t been spotted for a week, either. And letting Mandelson in on a paying gig is well out of character. They don’t usually scam together.
Blair Associates (Windrush Ventures No.3 LP) to coordinate Romanian government delivery unit*, as unanimously denied by all parties for last two years…
http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-politic-20181391-pnl-scrie-programul-guvernare-firma-consultanta-lui-tony-blair-coordoneaza-strucura-guvernului-ponta.htm
*Blairspeak for bunch of revolving-door businessmen trained to bypass democratic process to facilitate sale of national assets to hedge funds.
*Prolonged silence from fount of all wisdom*…
However, this emerged from the Telegraph’s rumour mill recently:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/11628601/Tony-Blair-to-campaign-to-keep-Britain-in-the-EU.html
Like the Financial Times’ report that Blair would be standing down as Quartet envoy, no attribution is given to the assertion that Blair will be ‘intervening’ in the referendum, should one happen. Another similarity is that it has been copied-and-pasted widely, but without any additional evidence for its truth appearing. Was it a leak from Blair Virtual Industries Inc.? Or was it a cunning ploy by the Barclay Bros to associate a personality even more toxic than their own with the pro-EU argument?
Whatever the truth of the matter, His Excellency (as some fawning Nigerian media call him, without a trace of irony) is uncharacteristically silent at the moment. And material concerning him is routinely removed from Google UK for legal reasons. Can he be working on his response to Chilcot, with his many learned friends?
Lest anyone accuse me of chauvinism, here’s Mrs Blair last week, in the chair at the Asian Women’s University, nodding enthusiastically as speaker after speaker utters the mantra empower women. Or so I imagine. That’s entrepreneurial, dynamic, thrusting and above all greedy women. Not the poor sodettes in a Dacca sweatshop, obviously. Her views on cleaners on the minimum wage – of either gender – or zero-hours contracts, having to work in London but unable to afford the rent on minimal accommodation there…those views are unknown.
http://bssnews.net/newsDetails.php?cat=0&id=493633&date=2015-05-21
The sheer versatility of the woman commands admiration.
http://uksif.org/events/ri-europe-2015/
UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association. Very worthy, but what does it do?
We are willing to endorse or approve good practice standards in transparency, governance, management processes and similar. We focus on the positive – we will “name and fame” but not “name and shame”.
Also against regulation to enforce these good practice standards. Astroturf.
Here’s Tony on investing in Africa a couple of years ago. His wholly* impartial approach is implicit in be seen from his continuing employment by JP Morgan, Whose greedfest this is:
http://article.wn.com/view/2015/05/21/JPMorgan_Chase_releases_Skills_Gap_Report_in_DFW_JPMorgan_Ch/
*Maybe ‘holy?’
(Reminder) Tony Blair is to appear here tomorrow:
https://secure.fswc.ca/KeynoteSOH-2015.aspx#sthash.OEZksIV2.dpuf
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is famous for chasing down, prosecuting and if possible getting executed, elderly WW2 German veterans complicit, sometimes tangentially, in the holocaust. Mr. Blair was responsible for giving Greville Janner a peerage.
I guess they’ll be hearing what a good idea it would be to bomb Iran.
A clue as to the Blair Inc finances;
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/26/bill-clinton-used-personal-llc-as-pass-through-for-payments-sources-say/
Blair’s corporate mazes rely on an opaque LLP at the center of the web. This is a vehicle for trapping money and hiding it from scrutiny. An LLC has a similar function, with different partnership rules.
Clinton was, long time since, by way of being Blair’s mentor. Blair still attaches himself to the Clinton celebrity speaker bandwagon, and frequently attends the same events. It may be that if the Clinton financial riddle is ever solved, the Blair Inc network will follow.
Another clue:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-25/goldman-veteran-berlinski-raising-1-billion-debut-buyout-fund
The Reverence Capital Opportunities fund (prop, Milton Berlinski) is registered in the Cayman Islands. It funds financial service companies. It offered securities to Firerush Ventures no.3 LP in 2014:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1621531/000095010314007047/0000950103-14-007047.txt
Which adds support to the notion that the Firerush side of Blair Inc is effectively a hedge fund. It would be good to know how much money changed hands against those securities, and indeed what they were, but the opacity of Firerush Ventures (1 Ltd, 2 LP, 3 LLP, two nominee cutouts and a probable entity in Gibraltar, makes this a forlorn hope.
Today Tony Blair confirmed his intention to step down as the Madrid Quartet’s Middle East Envoy – persistently but in every respect wrongly named by the media ‘Peace Envoy’. An AP report from Jerusalem, where else, alleges that his resignation letter to Ban Ki-Moon (the envoyship is UN – managed) has been written. It will be effective next month.
Hooray.
And the whoopee cushions sounded for him on the other side. A suitable epitaph for the waste of time, money and space that was Tony Blair, Quartet Envoy:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/tony-blair-steps-down-as-quarter-middle-east-envoy-but-no-one-cares/2015/05/28/
The Quartet consisting of Britain, the United States, the United Nations and Russia, has been paying $3 million a year for the privilege of letting Blair pretend he is busy.
He has been under constant criticism for doing little except occupying his office one week a month, and his knowledge of the Middle East does not go much beyond the fact that his wife’s half-sister Sarah Jane Booth converted to Islam after a “spiritual” experience in Iran.
+1.
Not dead, then, but made it to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal bash in Toronto yesterday:
https://twitter.com/kusman786/status/604088452385095680/photo/1
Pictured in his true colours, too. Not reported, even by Toronto media, and the verbiage sold to the gathering for a no doubt healthy chunk of dollars is presumably copyright; redacted flatteringly, it might appear on one of several Blair websites one day. It doesn’t at the moment, nor does it on his *official* Twitter feed.
Bet it wasn’t critical of Israel, though.
Death of a story?:
In full:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/581161/Tony-Blair-wanted-330-000-hunger-talk
(The original report seems to have been in the Sunday Times, however.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1563063.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2015_05_30
This gives a 404. Have Mr. Tony’s learned friends been active on his behalf?)
Tony Blair ‘in £330,000 demand for hunger talk’
A SPEECH by Tony Blair at a world hunger conference was dropped after the former Prime Minister allegedly demanded a massive £330,000 fee, it has emerged.
By Peter Henn
PUBLISHED: 09:34, Sun, May 31, 2015 | UPDATED: 11:07, Sun, May 31, 2015
Mr Blair was asked to speak at the Eat food forum in Stockholm, Sweden, which starts tomorrow.
The event, which last year featured a talk by former American president Bill Clinton, claims to be a forum where ‘science politics and business can share insight and ideas to achieve our common goal of sustainably feeding a healthy world population.
Kruger Cowne talent agency, which represents Mr Blair, asked for a £250,000 fee plus £80,000 expenses for a twenty minute speech, according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Clinton got a total of £327,000 for his half-hour talk last year.
Eat offered Mr Blair, who stepped down from his role as Middle East peace envoy last week, £215,000, but after months of talks, an agreement was not reached.
A source said: “Blair is just not Clinton, and even his star peer is fast diminishing.
“So for his talent reps to think Eat was going to pay massive bucks for him shows they overestimated his worth.”
Tony BlairPA
It is reported that Tony Blair wanted the money for his wife’s foundation
Since leaving Downing Street in 2007 after 10 years as Prime Minister, Mr Blair has made a substantial amount of money giving speeches.
It was reported that, shortly after he left office, he was paid more than £327 by Chinese property developer Dongguan Guangda to speak for 20 minutes to bankers, businessmen and Communist Party officials, while it is believed he made £400,000 for giving two half-hour talks in the Philippines.
Kruger Crowne asked Eat to pay Mr Blair’s fee to the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which campaigns for equal opportunities.
Mr Blair’s office issued a statement saying that while he had been asked to speak at Eat in return for a donation to his wife’s foundation, he was ‘unable to do so’.
It said: “Prior commitments meant it would be logically impossible.
“His office at no point negotiated ‘the amount of money he would be earning’ because if he had been able to do the event, he would not have earned anything.”
Deconstructing that last nugget indicates that Mr. Tony’s charitable receipts are now handed to the wife for safe keeping. Or the housekeeping…the CBFW acts quite as effectively as the TBF as a point of contact between the Blairs and rich people. It rather vaguely promotes the creation of female enterpreneurs in countries in which insufficient growth and globalisation occur and is a registered charity.
The clear message is that Mr Tony won’t get out of bed, even for a worthy cause (not to mention his wife’s), for £330K or less.
Perhaps it’s just another rumour.
Here we are again!
http://patch.com/california/brentwood/former-uk-prime-minister-tony-blair-visits-brentwood-school-0
No, not the Brit Brentwood. The very, very comfortable Los Angeles Brentwood…and not strictly that, but Bel-Air. A private Jewish school, under the aegis of the Milken Institute*, whose annual bash Tony attended this year. With Cherie. ‘Creating global prosperity’, for Tony BLair…
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/conferences/global-conference/global-conference-2015/panel-detail/5825
Tony is of course fascinated by private schooling, but it’s hard to see how he can monetise it for the masses. He also does work for Laureate Universities (hon. chancellor W. Clinton) which generates a cash stream from the non-disadvantaged in a number of countries including Malaysia, which Blair has visited in that connection.
He still had five days after this visit as Quartet Envoy to Potential Cashcows before he would have spoken at the EAT conference in Stockholm yesterday. It remains to be seen what business was more pressing than £330K – or even the £80K in expenses. Research is ongoing.
*Founder here – http://www.biography.com/people/michael-milken-234612
Lovely guy.
So, that’s the LA Milken School – exclusively Jewish – on the 27th. The Spirit of Hope bash in Toronto on the 28th. Organised by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal, not a Gentile outfit, apparently. And before all that, the LA Museum of Tolerance on the 26th, in wholly kosher company, including a Simon Wiesenthal trustee, as is only natural: the Museum of Tolerance is the educational arm of the SWC. Mr. Blair is apparently inspecting one of Herr Hitler’s missives, incidentally. Don’t get any ideas, now, Tone!
https://www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter?fref=nf
But it’s good to see the man so immersed in his new role as ‘unofficial liaison between Israel and selected rich Arabs for the purposes of mutual profit’. UAE soon? Mubadala must be missing him.
Pause for thought….
Tony Blair reminds me of a budgie.
It’s really nothing personal at all.
Just that, clinging to his perch,
With his head bowed, as in church,
He resembles pride preparing for a fall.
Tony Blair reminds me of a budgie.
This isn’t said with animus or glee.
His opinions seem swell
When he clocks his little bell
But you don’t feel bound to tell him ‘I agree’.
Tony Blair reminds me of a budgie.
He can look into a mirror with delight.
He will never have his fill
Of a daily dose of Trill,
And there are some who think he’s very, very bright.
Tony Blair reminds me of a budgie,
And my aunt considers budgies very sage.
When he gives a little chirrup
It can melt the heart to syrup,
But I wouldn’t fancy cleaning out his cage.
Bill Greenwell