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Johann Hari: The harsh truth about Tory policies

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The most common complaint against David Cameron is unfair and untrue. Critics keep charging that he has no policies – but in truth, now he has dropped his early attempt at kum-bay-ya Conservatism, Cameron is offering a fairly detailed prospectus. Unfortunately, it is of policies that will harm Britain.

Johann Hari: Violence against gay people can – and must – be stopped

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The fight to win legal equality for gay people is almost won in Britain – yet the taste of champagne has been tainted by an unexpected dash of blood. In the past few years, gay people have finally begun to exercise the same rights as their straight siblings, yet there has been a sharp surge in violence against us.

Johann Hari: Celebrity is like sugar - a little is fun, too much is deadly

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The great cliché of our age is that we are sinking into a lobotomised celebrity culture where we worship the worthless. We jabber on about Katie and Peter while carbon emissions soar; we yammer about the X Factor while Afghanistan burns. The a new headline-snatching documentary Starsuckers, released today, expresses this view at great length: the West has been drugged by fame into a brain-coma, where our eyes can only follow the neon lights of Hollywood and the Big Brother house.

Johann Hari: Don't dismiss celebrity culture. It contains deeper truths

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Johann Hari: The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

Johann Hari: From North Carolina, a model of how to transform education

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The chief executive of Tesco, Britain's largest private employer, has issued a warning: are kids dont no nuffink. Terry Leahy said this week that our educational standards are "woefully low", and that young recruits to Tesco often have to be taught basic literacy, numeracy and communication skills before they can be unleashed on the aisles or stockrooms.

Johann Hari: The looming threat of terror that comes from the far right

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Britain is facing the real risk today of a bombing campaign that targets random civilians for death – but it is being virtually ignored. When its supporters step closer every day to mass murder, nobody notices. When its perpetrators are caught, there is (at best) a little flick of information in News in Brief, before everyone goes back to talking about the Strictly Come Dancing race row. This silence suggests something dark about us – and requires us to change our behaviour, fast.

Johann Hari: Britain's not bust. So don't use it as an excuse to impose cuts

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

We thought the fever of this autumn was going to be swine flu, but we were wrong. It has turned out to be National Debt Hysteria. Our entire political class has taken to their beds with this fever, crying for nurse to bring cuts, cuts, cuts. The symptoms are simple: the sufferer becomes convinced that debt levels lower than almost all other wealthy nations, and lower than almost all of modern British history, are "a disaster", and so we must immediately slash our spending. They keep up this wail even though the most qualified doctors, like the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Economics, Professor Paul Krugman, stand by their beds and tell them this will bring our real sickness, the recession, back with a vengeance.

Johann Hari: If we care about the BBC, we must fight to defend it

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

There is a scandal in British politics that is passing almost unnoticed in the night. It will alter the ecology of our politics – and our culture – in ways that will damage us for decades to come.

Can one woman save Africa?

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When does planting a tree become a revolutionary act – and unleash an army of gunmen who want to shoot you dead? The answer to this question lies in the unlikely story of Wangari Maathai.

Johann Hari: Gin, servants and bloodlines for royalty's Alf Garnett in a tiara

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It must be exhausting to be a monarchist, forever finding ways to pretend a family of cold, talentless snobs are better than the rest of us. They have to make gold out of mud. The system of monarchy – selecting a head of state solely because of the womb they passed through, and surrounding them with sycophants from the moment they emerge – produces warped and dim people and demands that we scrape before them. What's a poor monarchist to do? They can only lavish a thick cream of adjectives – "dignity", "charm", "majesty" – over the Windsor family in the hope that some of us are fooled.

Johann Hari: Collapse or survive: the stark choice facing our species

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

We are – at the same time – thrillingly close and sickeningly far from solving our planetary fever. The world's leaders huddled in New York City yesterday to discuss man-made global warming, in a United Nations building that will soon be underwater if they fail. They all know what has to happen: their scientists have told them, plainly and urgently.

Johann Hari: We must stop the 'vulture funds' that feed on the world's poor

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Would you ever march up to a destitute African who is shivering with Aids and demand he "pay back" tens of thousands of pounds he didn't borrow – with interest? I only ask because this is in effect happening, here, in British and American courts, time after time. Some of the richest people in the world are making profit margins of 500 per cent by shaking money out of the poorest people in the world – for debt they did not incur.

Johann Hari: Vultures that compound the misery of nations in debt

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Johann Hari: The fashion industry imposes a cruel burden on women

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When did it die? When did our collective disgust at the sickness and sicked-up stomach juices that fuel the fashion industry get replaced by an oh-so-ironic appreciation? When did even most liberals and feminists stop snubbing it and start wrestling their way to the rope-line in search of a goody bag? London Fashion Week starts later this week, a parade of the Emperor's Designer Clothes, made of tinfoil or feathers or rubber. A few years ago, I was sent backstage to cover this event - and it took more than a few London Un-Fashion Weeks of my own to recover from what I saw. I was forced to peer for the first time into the industry that is making so many of my female friends ill.

Johann Hari: Our heat is turning the Arctic into an alien landscape

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The symptoms of our planetary fever are becoming more obvious with each passing year. Now a place that has been locked in solid ice since our ancestors were swinging from the trees is turning to liquid, way ahead of previous scientific predictions. Robert Corell, one of America's leading climate scientists, warns: "If you want to see what will happen to the rest of the world, look to the Arctic. It happens there first."

Johann Hari: Lies, damned lies... and the double-speak I would expunge

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The English language needs periodically to be given a spring-clean, where we scrape off the phrases that have become stuck to the floor and toss out the rotting metaphors that have fallen down the back of the settee. George Orwell warned that language will inevitably become cluttered with phrases that have lost their meaning – or, worse, are actually "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". He advised: "If one gets rid of these bad habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration."

Johann Hari: This is an idiot's version of her masterpiece

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important political books of the past decade. She takes the central myth of the right, "that since the fall of Soviet tyranny, free elections and free markets have skipped hand in hand together towards the shimmering sunset of history", and shows that it is a lie. It is a major revisionist history of the world that Milton Friedman and the market fundamentalists have built.

Johann Hari: The tragedy of Tarantino: he has proved his critics right

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Quentin Tarantino sauntered onto celluloid in the mid-1990s as a Natural Born Thriller, the boy-man who was going to stab adrenaline straight into the heart of American cinema. The movies he wrote and directed were highly stylized ballet dances of torture, haemorraghing internal organs, and rat-a-tat-tat pop culture monologues about Madonna’s vagina, the Brady Bunch, and what they call a Big Mac in France. (It’s Le Big Mac). He showed extreme cruelty in extreme close-up and – somehow – made the audience laugh with him through the screams. But there were always dark questions underneath the guffaws and applause – and his new film, ‘Inglorious Basterds’, sucks them to the surface.

Johann Hari: Republicans, religion and the triumph of unreason

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarised by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

Johann Hari: Cruel and out of control: the new face of debt collecting

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Sometimes it takes a casual phrase to really reveal the gap between a slice of our ruling class and the rest of us.

Johann Hari: The forgotten war that could kill millions of children

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

On the border between Thailand and Cambodia, a mighty battle is taking place – and the outcome will determine whether millions of people live or die.

Johann Hari: So we can't afford not to cut. But can we afford deprivation?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The reigning political cliché of the day is that Britain has to cut its public spending fast – and it should start today. This sentiment is intoned by David Cameron with his best lip-biting impersonation of Diana Spencer, and is parroted by political commentators who wave frightening national debt figures in our faces. There's just one problem – it defies everything we have learned about economics since the 1930s recession was unnecessarily turned into a Great Depression. Oh, and as an ugly little coda, we are already starting to see in subtle ways what "cuts" look like – and who pays the price for them.

Johann Hari: The hidden truth behind drug company profits

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations – but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents – and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it.

Johann Hari: The dark side of Andrew Roberts

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

What does it say about Britain that today we merrily laud a historian who celebrates the most murderous acts of the British Empire – and even says women and children who died in our concentration camps were killed by their own stupidity?