Voodoo Histories [antikvár]

introduction: blame kevinIThis is the age of conspiracy, the age of connections, secret links, secret relationships.Don DeLillo, Running Dog, 1978This book is the fault of a fellow called Kevin Jarvis. Kevin was - is, though I haven't seen him since February 2002 - a tall, youngish man with a wicked grin and a shaved head. We had been sent by the BBC to Tunisia to make a short film for a programme on holiday destinations in places that, away from the beaches and tourist sights, abused their citizens. Kevin was the cameraman-producer and I was what used to be called the lips'.All the fQming had to be done secretly, as Kevin and 1 moved between the mosaics of Carthage and the homes of tortured dissidents, otherwise we would have been arrested and quite possibly roughed up and deported. Several times we caught sight of the ubiquitous Tunisian secret police in their leather jackets and shades as - terribly bored -they staked out the lives of opponents of the government.It was, I think, in a hire car on the road down from Tunis to the Roman amphitheatre at El-Jem (where I was to deliver one of those 'behind this attractive facade' pieces to camera) that Kevin told me about how the 1969 Apollo moon landings had been faked by NASA and the American government. This was a shock for me; unlike Kevin 1 was old enough to have watched the One Small Step For Man on the television, and it was part of my personal history, like England's 1966 World Cup win. I wasn't anxious to lose it.Kevin's argument rested on one essential proposition: all the picture coverage of the landing, moving and stiU, was demonstrably fraudulent. There were things happening in the pictures that were impossible,