Hugh O'Shaughnessy

While the US wages the 'War on Terror' in the Middle East, it is conducting a terror campaign of its own closer to home. Chemical spraying is being used in Colombia as a deterrent and to destroy 'illicit' coca crops. But most people growing coca are poor campesinos with no alternatives to make a living. Whole towns, rivers, livestock and legitimate food crops have been sprayed and livelihoods destroyed by these US-administered fumigation programmes, backed by the Colombian state. Herbicides such as Glyphosate and Cosmo Flux are being used in high concentrations and sprayed from low-flying planes. The effects of heavy exposure to these chemicals on humans is still unknown. As O'Shaughnessy reveals, fumigation doesn't just harm people - farmers' livestock are being killed, and much of the area sprayed is rainforest - a fragile environment rich in diversity that is being poisoned by chemicals. This path-breaking book of investigative journalism lifts the veil on fumigation: why is it really happening, and who benefits? O'Shaughnessy travels to the Putumayo and Bolivar departments of Colombia, where most of the spraying takes place, talking to those affected.He draws a vivid and damning picture of a futile and indiscriminate chemical war, waged largely on the poor.

Near midnight on October 16, 1998, officers of Scotland Yard entered the London hospital room of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and arrested him on charges of torturing and murdering Spanish citizens. The arrest sent shockwaves around the world, delighting his detractors and the families of his regime's victims, and dismaying his supporters, including Margaret Thatcher. It marked the first time a former head of state had been detained outside his own country on charges of crimes against humanity, and thus signaled a clear warning to former dictators and heads of abusive regimes. Through interviews, eyewitness accounts, and new sources, veteran journalist Hugh O'Shaughnessy here sifts through the General's personal life, rise to power, and arrest and internment. In clear, unforgiving prose, Pinochet: The Politics of Torture tells the riveting story of legal intrigue behind the search for justice.

Using interviews, eye-witness accounts and quotes from sources on Pinochet, this volume tracks the General's journey from his rise to power in 1973 to his unprecedented arrest and internment in Britain in October 1998. It contains revelations about the financial dealings of the Pinochet regime, and presents evidence of arms and drug-running. It details the assassination operations carried out by Chile's state security apparatus, the DINA, against three Chileans abroad which resulted in the murder of four individuals. The book highlights the consequences of his arrest in terms of international law, and tells the story of legal intrigue behind the search for justice. Moreover, it provides an analysis of Pinochet's role in building modern Chile and in the politics of torture.

In this study of piracy, Kris Lane looks at the often mixed motives behind the phenomenon and the lives of those involved. Rejecting the romantic myth of the Elizabethan swashbuckler, he reveals a world of violence, hardship and fanaticism, in which self-enrichment was the obsession.