Product Description

Mark Curtis's latest book introduces a new concept, that of Unpeople - those whose lives have been deemed expendable, worthless, in the pursuit of British foreign policies. The book is based overwhelmingly on new revelations from declassified government documents.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32015 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Mark Curtis is a former Research Fellow of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and ex Head of Policy at Christian Aid. He is the author of four previous books, The Ambiguities of Power, The Great Deception and Trade for Life and Web of Deceit.

Customer Reviews

difficult to argue with empirical proof
Mark Curtis has relieved me of the burden of guilt I felt over my governments murderous foreign policy. He illustraites quite clearly that our military interventions are NOT under taken in the national interest but in the interest of the elites who controll our society - the corporations, the oil industry and unaccountable Foreign Office mandarins who seek to cling on to Britain's 'major power' status.

But it is the ordinary people of this nation and the West in general who will reep the consequences of their cack-handed attempts to play on the 'Grand Chessboard' (Zbigniew Brzezinski). We overthrew a popular government in Iran in 1953, instituting the venal Shah. He proved to be murderously repressive and so the Iranian people deposed him in 1979. Unfortunately they chose to replace him with the Islamists our government and media are now priming us to attack.

People not politics anyone?

British foreign policy: the shocking reality
As a British citizen living under the long shadow of the New Labour political project, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed with cynicism when pondering the motivations and goals of a set of politicians so deeply in thrall to Big Business. Increasingly, too, the poverty of ideals among the mainstream UK political parties, in essence rival factions of the same party representing the narrow interests of the ruling state-corporate elite (as in the US), makes many fearful for the future of representative democracy in the UK.

Yet, even for those disillusioned with this depressing state of affairs, modern historian Mark Curtis' disturbing new book, Unpeople, is still likely to come as a huge shock. Unstintingly and unswervingly, in case study after case study, Curtis uncovers the extraordinary levels of deception lurking beneath the squeaky-clean veneer of UK foreign policy's much-vaunted concern for human rights. At the heart of the author's portrayal of Britain as an outlaw state - one that certainly gives the US a good run for its money - lie the 'unpeople'. These are the expendable citizens of faraway countries who have suffered and died under the miseries imposed by the equally ruthless foreign policies of both Labour and Tory governments. Indeed, according to Curtis' conservative calculations, Britain may well be complicit in the deaths of in excess of 10 million 'unpeople' since World War Two.

Those who have already read Curtis' previous expose, Web of Deceit (2003), will immediately recognise the rigour of his content and the thoroughness of his research, while warming once again to his very readable writing style. In many ways, this book continues where 'WOD' left off, bringing the UK's misadventures in Iraq up to date (circa autumn 2004) while mining declassified government documents in order to lay bare Britain's malevolent influences in conflicts as far afield and removed in history as Vietnam and Biafra (during the 1960s under the Wilson government) and contemporary Colombia.

In summary, 'Unpeople' is essential - though highly unpalatable - reading for anyone seeking to understand Britain's real role in the world. Be prepared for this five-star text to disabuse you of some comforting but misplaced assumptions.

What nobody wants to know about UK Foreign Policy
By juxtaposing commentaries on contemporary action against recently released and previously secret foreign office records (some still censored), Mark Curtis confirms our worst fears.

UK foreign policy has been consistent in upholding the power of the rich, and often corrupt, to keep ransacking the world's wealth. Changes of government hardly noticable and the few sane alternative voices pretty short lived.

Who invented depriving Arab villages of their water supplies - Israel? - no UK in Aden decades back.