Web of Deceit
Mark Curtis

“No? Really? Did you know...I can't believe it. They couldn't...they wouldn't...they did! And they did this, and this, and then..What happened? Why did no-one tell anyone? What about the press? Why didn't they say anything? Well, I think I'm going to have to pack up and go and live in New Zealand. Except they're probably exactly like that over there too...”

“I can't see what the fuss is about. Of course the British government, with the collusion of the press, have always conspired to assassinate world leaders, commit genocide, exploit other nations' resources and then proceed to lie through their smiles to all and sundry. Well, they would, wouldn't they? Really, old chap, it's a question of doing it to others before they do it to you first...”

Whichever angle you come from, Mark Curtis' new book, which explores Britain's role in the world since 1945, and focusses intently on the Blair government, should be mandatory reading. Excellently written and expertly researched, it zings like a moral bullet through the corridors of power and straight into the heart of the establishment. No-one, I'd guess, will be quite the same after it.

It's not just that Web of Deceit confirms the worst about the people who are supposedly our “elected representatives” - the “political elite” as Curtis refers to them. Or the fact that it rather obviates the need for exotic conspiracy theories, when real, cold-blooded horror like this lurks beneath the surface of our system of government, accessible, in records, to anyone, like Curtis, who can be bothered to look. It is more the fact that, as page after damning page indites everyone from Guardian columnists to civil servants, Labour Prime Ministers to Conservative stooges, you realise that this is a very brave book indeed.

So rotten is the system, so riddled with the callous brutality which passes for pragmatism, that Curtis has left himself nowhere to hide. At the time of going to press he has, with the exception of a brief review in the Guardian (well done, that paper!) been largely ignored. Even then, the Guardian review failed to mention any hint of the paper's own short-comings. Curtis, you see, believes in “the public” - that great mass of us who simply wouldn't kill people for profit, or not often. Unfortunately, we don't often get to write the book reviews, either. All we can hope is that, as with Stupid White Men, Web of Deceit gets an unexpected run of popularity. It will make people angry, it will shake them out of complacency, it will, perhaps, shame them into even more entrenched defensive positions, but the more who read it, the better.
Web of Deceit is published by Vintage, price £7.99

One No, Many Yeses
A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement
Paul Kingsnorth

One No, Many Yeses is, in many ways, a very good book; the kind of book your parents should read. “Here, mum, this explains everything, And it’s got a plot!”. Admittedly the plot is one with which devotees of PJ O’Rourke will be familiar – hack embarks on chronological jaunt around the world’s problem areas – but it works. As Kingsnorth hops from Mexico to West Papua, Soweto to California, finding resistance to multinational corporations and corrupt governments, you start to build up a picture of what, as they say “is really going on”.

And, of course, the picture isn’t pretty. Even your mum should know that, and, if she doesn’t, this book will certainly educate her. In West Papua, people who object to their land being pillaged for other people’s profit are raped, tortured, strafed, and occasionally thrown to sharks, for heaven’s sake. Try reading that and still supporting the government's “Arms to Indonesia” policy.

Even for world weary activists, who have long accepted the iniquities of the neo-liberal agenda, One No Many Yeses is still worth reading. Kingsnorth’s vivid descriptions and engaging interview technique are his main strengths. The voices of the people on the sharp end of the corporate/political bayonet come over loud and clear, while the uniqueness of the lands and cultures they are struggling to save is portrayed with a slightly misty-eyed, but nevertheless compelling, beauty.

Using first-hand narrative, Kingsnorth also manages to pack large amounts of information into easily digestible chunks. His experiences in South Africa, for example, leave you not only clued up about the protestors, but, thanks to an extraordinary interview with an ANC representative, in no doubt about the helplessness of governments when faced with WTO/IMF/TRIPS and other acronym pressure. Hooked, kippered, fried and stitched into the “Golden Straitjacket” of the new world economy, the ANC rep confesses there is just about nothing they can do, even if they wanted to. In the meantime, their betrayed voters suffer, starve and occasionally, uselessly, riot.

But Kingsnorth is in search of heroes, not hopelessness, and part of the cheerfulness of this book is that he finds them; from Mexico’s ur-revolutionaries, the Zapatistas, to the electricity-reconnectors of Soweto. Activist readers will note the refreshing absence of the Western, guilt-ridden “Forgive me! I shopped at Asda!” mentality from people who are really up against the system (the guerillas of West Papua are prepared to shop just about anywhere for guns, while, to Kingsnorth’s disappointment, the Zapatistas turn out to drink coke, apparently with enjoyment).

One of the book’s least successful aspects is, sad to say, the character of Kingsnorth himself. Unlike PJ O’Rourke – mean enough and tough enough to stifle his critics with a single puff of cigar smoke – Kingsnorth is, you feel, rather too worried about what people will think of him. His apprehensiveness is fairly understandable – there are many hacktivists out there who would have loved an all-expenses paid assignment like this one (and who, unlike Kingsnorth, would never stoop to drinking a Starbucks). Unfortunately, Kingsnorth hasn’t quite got enough front to see them off. Instead he wavers between presenting himself as a naïve know-nothing and a battle-hardened protestor, when he seems, in fact, to be just a decent bloke (former deputy editor of the Ecologist) who wants to make a difference. Because of the book’s accessibility (it could be happily serialised on Radio Four) and because, at bottom, it’s a generous and human adventure, he might well succeed, at that.

One No, Many Yeses is published by The Free Press, which is owned by Simon & Schuster who are owned by Viacom, one of America’s largest and most rapacious media multi-nationals. The system carrying the seeds of its own destruction? Or what?