Articles by Johann Hari

We found 40 results.


Portugal Cut Addiction Rates in Half by Connecting Drug Users with Communities Instead of Jailing Them
Johann Hari – YES! Magazine, 30 Apr 2018

Eighteen years ago, the Portuguese had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. So they decriminalized drugs, took money out of prisons, put it into holistic rehabilitation, and found that human connection is the antidote to addiction.

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(Português) Descoberta a Provável Causa da Adicção – E Não É o que Você Pensa
Johann Hari – Brasil Post, 10 Aug 2015

O oposto de Adicção, portanto, não é sobriedade. É conexão humana. Existe uma alternativa. Você pode criar um sistema desenhado para ajudar os adictos a se reconectar com o mundo – e, assim, deixar a adicção para trás.

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Portugal Cut Addiction Rates in Half by Connecting Drug Users with Communities Instead of Jailing Them
Johann Hari – YES! Magazine, 16 Feb 2015

Fifteen years ago, the Portuguese had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. So they decriminalized drugs, took money out of prisons, put it into holistic rehabilitation, and found that human connection is the antidote to addiction.

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The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think
Johann Hari – The Huffington Post, 26 Jan 2015

It is happening. I have seen it. Nearly fifteen years ago Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They decided something radically different: decriminalize all drugs and transfer all moneys they used on jailing drug addicts to reconnecting them — to their own feelings, and to the wider society.

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The Hidden History of Homosexuality in the US
Johann Hari – The Independent, 27 Jun 2011

The point of the gay-rights struggle is to show that homosexuality is a trivial and meaningless difference. Gay people want what straight people want. I am the same as my heterosexual siblings in all meaningful ways, so I should be treated the same under the law, and accorded all public rights and responsibilities. The ultimate goal of the gay-rights movement is to make homosexuality as uninteresting – and unworthy of comment – as left-handedness.

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Cheap Meat, MRSA and Deadly Greed
Johann Hari – The Independent, 20 Jun 2011

In the United States, Latin America, and Asia, animals being farmed for meat and milk are being automatically given antibiotics in their food all day – irrespective of whether they are healthy or sick. It’s like slathering your child’s Cornflakes with antibiotics, all year round. Some 80 per cent of all antibiotics in the US go straight into farm animals. This speeds up the race massively. It’s like taking bacteria to the gym and giving them a constant work-out – and then unleashing them on the rest of us.

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(Castellano) Los Piratas Somalíes: Pescadores en Lucha Contra el Saqueo Occidental
Johann Hari, Mohamed Abshirwaldo & Najad Abdullahi - TeleSur, 13 Jun 2011

La prensa comercial en los países del norte sólo hablan de ellos cada vez que un occidental es secuestrado. Nunca han contado le verdadera historia de los «piratas» somalíes ni las condiciones de vida de sus compatriotas. Esta gente está en lucha contra el pillaje de pesca occidental y la descarga de basura tóxica en sus aguas de los países industrializados, principalmente a cargo de las mafias europeas.

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It’s Not Just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF Itself Should Be On Trial
Johann Hari – The Independent, 6 Jun 2011

Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death. Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed. If Strauss-Kahn is guilty, I suspect I know how it happened. He must have mistaken the maid for a poor country in financial trouble. Heads of the IMF have, after all, been allowed to rape them with impunity for years.

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A Turning-Point We Miss at Our Peril
Johann Hari – The Independent, 30 May 2011

We have the choice of burning all the oil left and hacking down all the remaining rainforests – or saving humanity.

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The Religious Excuse for Barbarity
Johann Hari – The Independent, 29 Nov 2010

Why are we sitting silently while our treatment of many of our animals regresses to the standard of the sixth century? If you are engaged in an act of cruelty, there is an easy, effective way to silence your critics and snatch some space to carry on. Tell us all that your religion requires you to do it, and you are “offended” by any critical response. Erect an electric wire fence around your nastiest actions and call it “respect”.

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Obama’s Robot Wars Endanger Us All
Johann Hari – The Independent, 18 Oct 2010

The drones have killed some jihadis. But the evidence suggests they create far more jihadis than they kill – and make an attack on me or you more likely with each bomb.

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Suffocating the Poor: A Modern Parable
Johann Hari – The Independent, 20 Sep 2010

Today, I want to tell you the story of how our governments have been torturing and tormenting an island in the Caribbean – but it is a much bigger story than that. It’s a parable explaining one of the main reasons how and why, across the world, the poor are kept poor, so the rich can be kept rich. If you grasp this situation, you will see some of the ugliest forces in the world laid out before you – so we can figure out how to stop them. The rubble-strewn island of Haiti is now in the middle of an election campaign that will climax this November.

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Violence Breeds Violence. The Only Thing Drug Gangs Fear Is Legalisation
Johann Hari – The Independent, 30 Aug 2010

A chief of the Mafia Cruenza, one of the biggest drug gangs in the 1980s, was recorded expressing his gratitude for the war on drugs as ‘good for business’.

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The Management Consultancy Scam
Johann Hari – The Independent, 23 Aug 2010

“We were proud of the way we used to make things up as we went along”, he says. “It’s like robbing a bank but legal”.

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And Now For Some Good News
Johann Hari – The Independent, 9 Aug 2010

We’ll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours.

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Hopes and Prospects, By Noam Chomsky
Johann Hari – The Independent, 26 Jul 2010

For example, he uncovers the story of why Haiti is so poor, and could be shaken to pieces by an earthquake that would have killed only a handful in California. It’s a story of man-made earthquakes, one after another. The country was the first to rebel against slavery and to cast off the whip-hand – and was brutally punished by the French Empire. Every time it has begun to rise to its feet, it has been kicked back down, with the American Empire taking over to topple its elected leaders (the last was put on a plane at gunpoint in 2008) and stifle any moves towards development.

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So That’s OK Then. It’s Fine to Abuse Young Girls, As Long As You’re a Great Film Director
Johann Hari – The Independent, 19 Jul 2010

Roman Polanski admitted his crime before he ran away and, for years afterwards, he boasted from exile that every man wanted to do what he did. He chuckled to one interviewer in 1979: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? “But… fucking, you see… and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!” But this is not enough, it seems, for the Swiss government to return him to the US to face trial. They have found a legalistic loophole that enables them to let him go – while admitting “national interests” may be a factor.

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How Goldman Gambled on Starvation
Johann Hari – The Independent, 5 Jul 2010

Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

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Climategate Claptrap, II
Johann Hari – The Nation, 26 Apr 2010

At last! The controversy is over. It turns out the “scientific” claims promoted for decades by whiny self-righteous liberals were a lie, a fraud, a con–and we don’t need to change after all. The left is humiliated; the conservatives are triumphant and exultant.

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THE POPE, THE PROPHET, AND THE RELIGIOUS SUPPORT FOR EVIL
Johann Hari – The Independent, 19 Mar 2010

This enforced ‘respect’ is a creeping vine: it soon extends from ideas to institutions. What can make tens of millions of people – who are in their daily lives peaceful and compassionate and caring – suddenly want to physically dismember a man for drawing a cartoon, or make excuses for an international criminal conspiracy to […]

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THE WRONG KIND OF GREEN
Johann Hari – The Nation, 5 Mar 2010

Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big […]

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OBAMA’S SECRET PRISONS IN AFGHANISTAN ENDANGER US ALL
Johann Hari – The Independent, 12 Feb 2010

He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he’s dragging us further in.Osama bin Laden’s favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father’s cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three […]

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THERE’S REAL HOPE FROM HAITI AND IT’S NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT
Johann Hari – The Independent, 5 Feb 2010

When people live so close to the edge, even small price increases can break them. In the weeks after a disaster like the Haiti earthquake, journalists always search for an upbeat twist to the tale. You know it by now – the baby found alive after a week under wreckage. But this time, a shaft […]

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THE AGE OF THE KILLER ROBOT IS NO LONGER A SCI-FI FANTASY
Johann Hari – The Independent, 22 Jan 2010

You can’t appeal to robots for mercy or empathy – or punish them afterwards.In the dark, in the silence, in a blink, the age of the autonomous killer robot has arrived. It is happening. They are deployed. And – at their current rate of acceleration – they will become the dominant method of war for […]

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AMID DARK TIMES, MEET THE MOST INSPIRING PEOPLE OF 2009
Johann Hari – The Independent, 30 Dec 2009

Newsman Wes Nisker said if you don’t like the news, make your own. These people did.It was a dark year, 2009, sealing a dark decade. It began with the world in economic free-fall and the Gaza Strip being bombed to pieces (again). We watched the vicious crushing of a democratic uprising in Iran, a successful […]

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AFTER THE CATASTROPHE IN COPENHAGEN, IT’S UP TO US
Johann Hari – The Independent, 23 Dec 2009

Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass.Buried deep in our subconscious, there still lays the belief that our political leaders are collective Daddies and Mummies who will – in the last instance – guarantee our safety. Sure, they might screw us over when it comes to hospital waiting lists, […]

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IT’S THE PROTESTERS WHO OFFER THE BEST HOPE FOR OUR PLANET
Johann Hari – The Independent, 19 Dec 2009

They’ve ensured the corporate lobbyists punching holes in the deal are shamed.At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your […]

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GORE VIDAL’S UNITED STATES OF FURY
Johann Hari, 9 Oct 2009

At 84, the writer and activist may be confined to a wheelchair, but his rage – at his country, its leaders and citizens – burns as fiercely as ever. In Russian, the phrase "gore vidal" means "he has seen grief". As Gore Vidal is wheeled towards me across an empty London hotel lobby, it seems […]

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WE MUST STOP THE ‘VULTURE FUNDS’ THAT FEED ON THE WORLD’S POOR
Johann Hari, 19 Sep 2009

The energy that drove Jubilee 2000 needs to be summoned again.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, […]

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THE HIDDEN TRUTH BEHIND DRUG COMPANY PROFITS
Johann Hari, 5 Aug 2009

Ring-fencing medical knowledge is one of the great grotesqueries of our age. 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 […]

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WE’VE FORGOTTEN THE FORCE WHICH REALLY DRIVES POLITICAL CHANGE
Johann Hari, 28 Jul 2009

When you are just one person sitting on a warming planet – when you see economies collapsing, wars raging, and reasons for fear on every corner – how should you react? What can you do? The current cluster of crises has stirred mood-responses that you can hear in every bar and coffee shop. It’s worth […]

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THE OTHER 9/11 RETURNS TO HAUNT LATIN AMERICA
Johann Hari, 3 Jul 2009

It was inevitable that the people at the top would fight to preserve their privileges. The ghost of the other, deadlier 9/11 has returned to stalk Latin America. On Sunday morning, a battalion of soldiers rammed their way into the Presidential Palace in Honduras. They surrounded the bed where the democratically elected President, Manuel Zelaya, […]

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ALMOST EVERYWHERE IS TOUCHED BY THE STONEWALL RIOTS NOW
Johann Hari, 1 Jul 2009

Homosexuality happens everywhere, so gays fight to be themselves everywhere. It is now 40 years since the start of a riot for freedom in a small tavern in New York City – and the riot has never stopped. It is spreading slowly across the world, to every continent, to Mumbai and Shanghai and Dubai. Everywhere […]

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A FIGHT FOR THE AMAZON THAT SHOULD INSPIRE THE WORLD
Johann Hari, 26 Jun 2009

The indigenous people are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine. In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have […]

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THE ONE LESSON OF THIS CRISIS IS THE NEED FOR A MORE EQUAL SOCIETY
Johann Hari, 16 Apr 2009

In the smoking rubble of market fundamentalism, we are all being forced to rethink the principles that order our societies – and one small, shining idea is rising again from the wreckage. It is the idea of human equality. The need for us to return to this, our best and most basic instinct, is spelled […]

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WE’RE BEING LIED ABOUT PIRATES
Johann Hari – The Independent, 13 Apr 2009

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder […]

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THE PROTESTERS ARE THE ONES WE SHOULD LISTEN TO AT THIS SUMMIT
Johann Hari, 3 Apr 2009

The way out of the credit and the climate crunch is the same – a Green New Deal When this hinge-point in human history is remembered, there will be far more sympathy for the people who took to the streets and rioted than for the people who stayed silently in their homes. Two global crises […]

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WITCH HUNT: AFRICA’S HIDDEN WAR ON WOMEN
Johann Hari, in Kenya and Tanzania, 12 Mar 2009

In villages across Africa, old women suspected of witchcraft are hacked to death, while young girls are mutilated to preserve their virginity. But attitudes are changing – and thousands of lives are being saved. Across Africa, a war is being waged on women – but we are refusing to hear the screams. Over the past […]

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OBAMA’S CHANCE TO END THE FANTASY THAT IS STAR WARS
Johann Hari, 15 Nov 2008

The US has spent $160bn – only to increase the danger to itself and the rest of us. The world is still pleasurably suffering from Woah-bama whiplash. Did he really win? Are we all awake? And would anybody mind if he starts a few months early? The need for decisions is rapidly piling up – […]

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HOW WE FUEL AFRICA’S BLOODIEST WAR
Johann Hari, 9 Nov 2008

What is Rarely Mentioned is the Great Global Heist of Congo’s Resources The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of […]

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