Nexus Between Entities Influencing India

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-25-2010, 06:55 PM by Husky.)

Don't know where this could go, so dumping it here.

Tony Blair is an arch-catholic. A bit hazy, but he is moreover IIRC a born-again catholic who decided he was going to do stuff to promote his disease (and make a lot of money doing it, so that he can peddle it even better).

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/Tony-Blair-joins-Indian-born-billionaires-US-firm-/articleshow/5972287.cms

Quote:Tony Blair joins Indian-born billionaire's US firm

IANS, May 25, 2010, 01.15pm IST

LONDON: Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has landed a job as adviser to Indian-born billionaire Vinod Khosla's US-based venture capital firm, says he shares a "clear vision" with the tycoon, "one of the earliest leaders in cleantech investment.Ã¢â¬Â

Blair is to lend his expertise and "global relationships" to the California-based Khosla Ventures, which specialises in promoting environmentally friendly technology.

Vinod Khosla is one of the founders of the computer firm Sun Microsystems. The 55-year-old tycoon has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.1 billion. He says that the world should look for technological breakthroughs to find "clean" alternatives to oil, coal, cement and steel.

Blair said, "Solving the climate crisis is more than just a political agenda item, it's an urgent priority that requires innovation, creativity and ambition."

"I share a clear vision with Vinod, one of the earliest leaders in cleantech investment, that entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and beyond will have a tremendous impact on our environmental future," a statement quoted Blair as saying.

His appointment to the Silicon Valley firm was announced Monday at a summit for the firm's investors in Sausalito, near San Francisco, the media report said.

[color="#0000FF"]Blair told that the job was "not a pro bono" role.[/color]

Khosla said the arrangement would allow him to "ask Tony for advice" further adding, "Tony's going to help us in many areas that techie nerds like us in Silicon Valley don't understand."

[color="#800080"](Help them to more than they bargained for: Tony Blair will use them get more people onto jeebus=christianism, catholic flavour - the "area that these techie nerds don't understand".)[/color]

Consider above in light of this earlier posted item:

Quote:http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/50281...-lecturer/

[color="#800080"](Copy at http://currentaffairs.ninemsn.com.au/wor...e-lecturer )[/color]

The link to the page had said "Blair lectures Yale uni students on religion"

QUOTE

Blair back at school as Yale lecturer

September 20, 2008, 1:55 pm

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, describing himself a terrible student, has gone back to school as a religion lecturer at top US university Yale.

[color="#FF0000"]Blair, who converted to Catholicism after leaving office in 2007 and talked increasingly openly of his Christian faith while prime minister[/color], delivered his inaugural lecture at the prestigious college in the state of Connecticut.

An enthusiastic audience of more than 2,000 students later thronged ornate Woolsey Hall to hear a talk by Blair, who stepped down after a decade in power, under fire for his strong support of the US-led war in Iraq .

[color="#0000FF"]The part-time job - he will deliver five lectures a year for three years to a class of 25 - comes on top of work as a Middle East peace envoy and lucrative business consultancies.[/color]

But the focus on faith and globalisation as Yale's Howland Distinguished Fellow dovetails with the former Labour Party leader's long interest in religion and the work of his Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Blair, who wore a blue suit and came with a Scotland Yard security detail, is already familiar with Yale's picturesque campus in the quiet town of New Haven - his elder son Euan graduated from there this year.

He described his students at their first lecture as "really clever."

The ex-premier, who jokingly recalled his own teachers thinking him "a complete pain the backside" and being an habitual absentee at lectures, is unlikely to do join the carousing for which US college life is famous.

The lectures Blair is delivering will last only one-and-a-half hours and he will not conduct seminars, meaning only brief spells on campus, university spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said.

However, he will at least spend a few nights at the university where his former close ally in Iraq , US President George W Bush , once studied.

"This time he slept here last night, but he is leaving later this evening," Klasky said.

[color="#0000FF"]Yale is donating $US200,000 ($A248,900) to his foundation, in addition to paying a "nominal fee," Klasky said.[/color]

Britons, unlike Americans, [color="#0000FF"]discourage[/color] public displays of faith by politicians.

[color="#0000FF"]Blair once admitted to the BBC that he toned down religious talk for fear of being considered a "nutter." His famously pugnacious spokesman Alastair Campbell stated: "We don't do God."

Yet Blair openly flirted with Catholicism while in office and converted soon after, a break with tradition in a nation where the monarch heads the Anglican Church of England.

By chance, students waiting for Blair to arrive at Woolsey Hall were treated to a church-like recital on the hall's magnificent organ.[/color]

However, Blair was in no mood to repent for his most controversial act: supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq on what proved to be the untrue justification that Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass destruction.

He described the Iraq conflict, deeply unpopular in Britain, as part of a broader struggle against extreme Islam and enemies of Muslims "trying to be part of the modern world."

"They are the same forces we are fighting everywhere," Blair said.

Referring to the guerrilla wars bogging down Western armies both in Iraq and Afghanistan , Blair said there was "a deeper and more fundamental struggle than we anticipated."

There is "no alternative but to follow it through."

Other than his Mideast envoy duties and now teaching, Blair has a range of lucrative part-time work, including consultancies for investment bank JPMorgan and Swiss insurer Zurich.

He is reported to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars (euros, pounds) for speaking appearances.

Amila Golic, an English literature student who attended the talk, found Yale's newest lecturer "charming but not convincing."

"A lot of it was wishy washy. The questions about Iraq and so on should have been extended. I think that's more relevant to us," said Golic, 20.

Certainly the once invincible master of 10 Downing Street still has charm.

He drew laughs on recalling the double-speak among senior advisers. "When they thought you were doing something really, really stupid, they'd say: 'That's a very courageous thought, prime minister.'"

But the loudest cheer came when he was quizzed about how as a student he'd sided in the great debate over who was best: the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

Blair looked flummoxed. "I always used to say the Rolling Stones," he answered finally, "because if you didn't say the Stones, the girlfriends just..." - and Blair waved his hands to indicate them disappearing.

"The truth is," he continued to a roar of approval, "that it really is the Beatles."

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