The Liar's Quartet by Mark Thomas

Author:Mark Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781910463703
Publisher: September Publishing

NOTES

1 BAE Systems employ 82,500 people across forty countries with sales of nearly £18bn and profits of £1.5bn. In 2010, BAE systems was fined $400 million in the US after it admitted to defrauding the USA in ‘one of the largest criminal fines ever levied in the United States against a company for business related violations’ and reached a £30 million settlement with the Serious Fraud Office here.

2 The video shows tanks, submarines, missiles being fired and planes roaring overhead accompanied by shit generic rock music as the soundtrack. I used this footage without seeking permission from BAE Systems or paying any license fee. I figured they have had enough off of me.

3 Someone asked me why I decided to tell this story on stage given the passage of time and that I’d written a Guardian article about the issue in December 2007. There are several reasons. The first was that I thought it was important to show the widespread use of police and corporate surveillance on activists. I had (and still have at the time of publication) a court case going on over the Met Police collecting information about me under the ‘domestic extremist’ classification and then I found out I was also on the Construction Blacklist for my political activities. I wanted to show the emotional damage of these operations, to tell a tale of love, betrayal and uncertainty. And for me, the place to set the record straight has always been on stage. It’s where I feel I can be most honest and have my say.

4 DSEI – Defence and Security Equipment International. It’s the world’s largest arms fair and had its debut on the morning of 11 September 2001. As the attacks on the Twin Towers unfolded and the scale of the violence became apparent, the police appealed to the peace activists outside the arms fair to cancel their demonstration as a mark of respect for the dead and suffering. The protestors replied they would be happy to just as soon as the arms fair observed the same mark of respect and shut down for the day. It is not known if the police made this request to the arms dealers.

Two years later, at this next fair in 2003, it was reported that the organisers had to be asked if they would mind not displaying cluster bombs at the fair as it was considered ‘inappropriate for the UK market’, even though the UK had been using them in Iraq. Clearly it’s one thing using them and another showing them off …

5 In the New York production of the show, this was changed to ‘Kentucky Derby’.

6 Including a chemical factory – Fallujah 2. The very same factory identified by Colin Powell as a chemical weapons factory in his dossier to the UN Security Council.

7 This is where I first really remember meeting Laura. Menwith Hill is nominally an RAF base but is operated and controlled by the National Security Agency, an intelligence arm of the US government, and run as an American enclave in total secrecy.

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