Customer Reviews
Startling yet flawed - By: DaveW, 16 Jan 2010 
Mark Thomas is, without question, the right man for the job. This book gives a startlingly clear insight into exactly what is wrong with the rules governing the arms trade, & it is pitched with the frankness we have come to know & love from Mr T (no, not that one, fool!).
So why the less-than-glowing score? Well, to be blunt, this book is not very well written. Yes, it gets the point across but the style is distractingly clumsy & Mark tries to shoe-horn numerous gags into the text which may sometimes work on stage but just look wrong on the page. The best (or rather worst) example I found was on page 62 of the 2006 edition: "They even quoted an approximate air freight charge to get [guns] to Harare (it's only $3,500 for the 200 guns - one way of course)." Did nobody read that during the editing process & think, "Is that supposed to be funny? In what context would guns getting a return ticket get a laugh?" This may seem like nit-picking but when you encounter many such comic misfires, it starts to get tiresome.
The drawback with this is that I am less inclined to get his other books, so my advice to potential purchasers is to get the "Serious Organised Criminal" DVD or one of the live recordings on CD instead. They truly show how funny this man can bein his natural habitat (in front of an audience).
Mark Thomas vs The Arms Trade - By: S Wood, 19 Sep 2009 
I've never seen any of the Mark Thomas's television shows, I noticed his bookin the local bookshop but it never really caught my eye - just some plump bloke, Klashnikovin hand, name checking Nelson Mandela. I don't think I even picked it up. In the library the other day I did- there was nothing much else around that I hadn't read already.
What a total surprise. Marks writing is extremely funnyin a totally self depreciating way with a constant stream of surgical strikes on my laughter spot. One anecdote relating to Australian campaigners against the arms trade is painfully funny & worth the purchase fee alone. I wont spoil it by giving anything away.
Fantastic as the quality of the writing is, its also heartening to see the range of people that Mark is involved with while campaigning against the arm trade: Irish Nuns, school kids, some army bloke called Angus ("Mod pass, official escort, this is Mark Thomas, writing a book, permission to film!") as well as the motley crew of colourful protestors. Mark forms a variety of arms dealerships with the Nuns, the school kids (but not Angus), chains himself to a bus, gives evidence to a select committeein parliament & becomes HumInt for customs & excise. The arms dealerships he forms with the kids & the Nuns manage to tradein a variety of arms from AK-47's to thumb restraints & leg manacles. Some mad Israeli bloke with a stone throwing machine turns up at one point. His writing is more than funny, it is also sharply observes the people he meets & the places he finds himself in.
Totally recommended reading - should be a few copiesin every schoolin the land.
Money Where His Mouth Is! - By: Mr. George Johnson, 23 Apr 2009 Fantastic book! We see news stories about genecidein some far flung corner of the globe thinking it has nothing to do with us, only to find out that it's most likley "us" that sold them the weapons & probably still paying the debt that financed the sales.
The book concentrates on describing the scale off the arms trade. It's not just some shady world populated by nameless corps & back street dealers with large mansionsin some far off Caribbean island. Covering the how we as UK tax payers are funding a large portion of the world's arms trade. The book describes MT's activitiesin exposing the people or earn their livingin the arms trade, the ease with which MT is able to form fake companies & contact various delears & expose their international law breaking activities.
It will have to laughing out loud at MT's antics, next you will be bursting with rage at how morally twisted people can be over small bits of green paper.
Only recently got into MT & I am truly ashamed that I am not out there doing more to help the world other than my measly charity donations. The world is better place with people like MT about, helping us to see outside our quiet little 9-5 lives, see the bigger picture as they say!
I will recommend this book to anyone who listens - By: Melon Dubes, 11 Dec 2008 A stand-up comedian writes about the arms trade. It sounds an oxymoronin itself doesn't it? Well it manages to be funny & shocking at the same time.
Mark Thomas clearly has the ability & the nerve to open doors that perhaps the typical arms trade protestor couldn't. He also has TV involved which serves to get his message to a wider audience than most & gives him the budget necessary to arrange the set ups that he needs to, to get the information for this book.
He has an incredible talent for investigative journalism & a creativityin setting up criminals & arms traffickers for a fall that knows no bounds.
He is also clever enough to realise that by being funny at the same time, his message will come across with more impact. Let's face it, most of us prefer laughing to human rights atrocities.
He makes no bones about this. In fact, it is why one of his chapters is named "Ozzie's cocaine breastmilk".
I could go on for ages about how great this book is. I read itin two days. Something I couldn't say for any other book about the arms trade although I don't think I've read any others.
Every chapter manages to combine shocking & laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
Mark Thomas uses the power of comedy to get across a really serious message.
Everyone should read this book.
Ozzie's Cocaine Breast Milk - By: Jamie Beckwith, 21 Sep 2008 The comedian & political activist takes on the gun tradein this book & shows how a good mind for Cluedo, a knowledge of legal loopholes & a telephone is all he needs to sell arms to Zimbabwe or any other dispicable regime. It's so easyin fact that as part of his experiment a bunch of school kids & a Catholic Nun also set themselves up as arms dealers & can ship mines & grenades across the world.
As one of the reviews on the back of the book says this is "John Pilger with jokes" & the book is laugh out loud funny, though it is laughter tinged with despair given the seriousness of the topic at hand & 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 & manacles with the tagline "As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela". His righteous anger is suffused throughout & 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 livesin Brockley!) to the authorities as he believes the dealer has a young daughter & whilst outin Western Sahara he finds his own expectations confounded when he thinks he's supporting a noble & just cause against imperialism & foreign occupation but see's also that the rebels glorifyin the deaths of their enemies & hoard trinkets taken from the dead bodies of Moroccan troops.
Thought provoking & eye opening. I look forward to, especially as someone with Colombian heritage, the next onein which he turns his gaze towards the Cola industry
