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“Kazakhstan said Monday it has hired Britain’s ex-prime minister Tony Blair as a consultant to attract new investment to the Central Asian state, on a contract reportedly worth millions of dollars. The hire marks a major coup for strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s bid to promote Kazakhstan as an economic powerhouse despite complaints from critics that the country pays little heed to Western democratic standards. The Daily Telegraph earlier said Blair had signed a one-year contract worth eight million pounds ($12.7 million) with the government of Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since even before the Soviet collapse. The foreign ministry refused to confirm the figure but said Blair was one of several foreign officials contracted by the Kazakh state…….. Nazarbayev’s top advisor Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said Blair would probably deal with “the question of social-economic modernization of Kazakhstan.” “He has extensive ties. He himself worked on modernisation of such a well developed country as the United Kingdom”……”

It also markes a great coup for Blair: almost makes me jealous.
They forgot to mention how Blair worked on the moderation of WMD in Iraq, the stalling of the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Libyan-JP Morgan-Migrahi-Lockerbie deal, Central-Asian gas and oil deals, among others. Oh, I forgot his most memorable deal: killing the investigation by the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO) into the BPP 1 billion (US$ 2 billion) bribe by BAE Systems to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for a huge weapons deal (generally known as the al0Yamama scandal). For which he has been and still is richly rewarded. Tony also famously opined in February something to the effect that “We must manage the Egyptian uprising“.
Some people claim that all these deals Tony is making are like his own revenge, the Poodle’s Revenge.
Cheers
mhg


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