2008-09-21 Ozzie's Cocaine Breast Milk

The comedian and political activist takes on the gun trade in this book and shows how a good mind for Cluedo, a knowledge of legal loopholes and a telephone is all he needs to sell arms to Zimbabwe or any other dispicable regime. It's so easy in fact that as part of his experiment a bunch of school kids and a Catholic Nun also set themselves up as arms dealers and can ship mines and grenades across the world.

As one of the reviews on the back of the book says this is "John Pilger with jokes" and the book is laugh out loud funny, though it is laughter tinged with despair given the seriousness of the topic at hand and murky grey morals of the world Thomas manages to infiltrate.

In between chaining himself to buses or embarrasing politicians he manages to trick Indonesian generals into admitting to war crimes on camera or flog torture equipment and manacles with the tagline "As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela". His righteous anger is suffused throughout and yet to his own surprise he grows fond of the minder sent to keep an eye on him at an Arms Fair, feels doubt about shopping a dealer (who lives in Brockley!) to the authorities as he believes the dealer has a young daughter and whilst out in Western Sahara he finds his own expectations confounded when he thinks he's supporting a noble and just cause against imperialism and foreign occupation but see's also that the rebels glorify in the deaths of their enemies and hoard trinkets taken from the dead bodies of Moroccan troops.

Thought provoking and eye opening. I look forward to, especially as someone with Colombian heritage, the next one in which he turns his gaze towards the Cola industry