Johann Hari

Click here and scroll down to Sunday's edition of the show (November 29th). The interview starts twenty minutes in.

Over the past few years, there has been a drip-drip of artists defending old men who abuse their power over young boys and girls for sexual pleasure. It ranges from Alan Bennett's claim that a teacher who gropes his pupils can be the real child or true innocent, to the widespread assertion in Hollywood that when a 44 year old man drugs and anally rapes a 13 year-old girl, it is not "rape-rape". Indeed, Gore Vidal says the victim is "a young hooker".

Yet there is, largely, silence in response – and I realise I too have held off from writing this column several times. Why? Talking about this requires me to criticise some artists whose work I love, and it forces me to remember a period of my life I've tried hard to forget. But when I saw Alan Bennett's new play The Habit of Art at the National Theatre, I felt somebody had to say this.

I have no problem with artists sympathetically depicting the inner lives of paedophiles and pederasts; indeed, it can be a good thing. Every human being should be understood, and to understand is not to excuse. We should, for example, know that 70 per cent of child abusers have themselves been abused as children: it tempers the paedophile-bashing lynch mob, and forces us to look for humane solutions. It also helps avoid bad legislation like Megan's Law, which – by driving released offenders away from their families and friends and sending them into isolation – actually increases the number of children who are abused.

What I object to is not the compassionate depiction of these men, but the claim that the victims are unharmed, or even enjoy it. This suggestion has featured in the work of several writers I normally admire. In Bennett's previous play The History Boys, a 50-something teacher called Hector routinely gropes his 17-year-old pupils' genitals – and they react either with flattered amusement, or by longing to be the next to be groped. The headmaster who objects is depicted as a prejudiced buffoon. The most sympathetic boy in the class – Posner – also grows up to be a pederast himself, who finds it hard to resist groping his pupils.

In interviews, Bennett makes it clear he is on Hector's side, saying: "I've been criticised for not taking this seriously enough. I'm afraid I don't take that very seriously if they're 17 or 18. I think they are actually much wiser than Hector. Hector is the child, not them." He added that good teaching is inherently "erotic".

In his new play, Bennett takes this analysis further. Benjamin Britten, the composer, is one of the main characters. He was sexually attracted to young boys – 13 was his perfect age – and throughout his life he picked out choirboys, gave them a special role in performing his music, and lavished adoration on them. According to the book Britten's Children, he appeared naked before them, snuggled with them in bed, although he didn't actually have sex with them. As with Michael Jackson, the parents seemed to know what was going on, and acquiesce.

Yet Bennett, in his introduction to the play, expresses only one problem with this. "A boy whose voice suddenly broke could find himself no longer invited ... which would seem potentially far more damaging to a child's psychology than too much attention." He also spares a thought for the "fat boys and ugly boys" who were never admitted to this sanctum.

This analysis also underpins Stephen Fry's play Latin!, which was published in 1992. It is set in a prep school where the central character, Dominic Clarke, is a teacher who "carnally violates" a 13-year-old orphan in ways one character says are "too vile, too diverse, for the sane mind to grasp."

Fry distills the tragic psychology of paedophiles with his usual brilliance. Dominic says: "When I was a boy, I thought, slept and played like a boy. Then nature began to drop hints about a change in status: a cracking voice, hairs about the buttocks, acne ... I never asked to be a man. I never wanted to be man. I want to be a boy. If when nature starts thrusting pimples and hairs through the skin, a boy could be kept from school and the world of men and just carry on behaving as a boy, then perhaps nature would give up and the pimples and hairs would recede. The permanent boy could be found."

This is precisely how the paedophiles I have interviewed in prison viewed themselves. And isn't it a description of what Michael Jackson tried to do? When seclusion didn't work, he turned to the surgeons to create the permanent boy.

But the play has a nasty sting. Dominic runs away with the 13 year old to live in Morocco. They write back to explain that there, young boys and men can live together as sexual partners. The school's pupils, en masse, demand to be allowed to live in Morocco. The plain implication is that these 13-year-olds were also longing to be abused by older men.

I know Bennett and Fry are wrong, because when I was a teenager, I was subjected to the persistent sexual advances of an older man in a position of authority over me. I managed to escape the situation without being abused, but I know other boys did not. There can indeed be an initial element of being flattered, or even excited – but it is also married to feelings of fear and revulsion that somebody who is supposed to have offered safety is offering danger. The adolescent is not in a position to make an informed choice. It is healthy for adolescents to explore their sexualities among themselves – but when an adult intrudes into this process, it can damage their sexual development with consequences for the rest of their lives.

I'm not interested in launching a hysterical attack on Bennett and Fry. I would like to appeal to their empathy – a quality they have demonstrated in so much of their work – and urge them to direct it not just towards Hector and Dominic, but also to their victims.

This can be a difficult topic to raise because the vilest slur against gay people has long been that we are closet paedophiles. The defence of Polanski showed there are plenty of straight people prepared to make excuses for abusing young girls, just as there are – alas – some gay people prepared to make excuses for abusing young boys. Yet this prejudice still crops up: recently, Richard Littlejohn accused Peter Mandelson of wanting to live on "the Rue Des Jeunes Garcons". It is, of course, nonsense: Mandelson is no more likely to want to have sex with a young boy than Littlejohn to have sex with a young girl.

But let's look back towards Britten. Or indeed to Oscar Wilde, who would (rightly) still be imprisoned today for having paying to have sex with very poor underage teenagers. Did the violent suppression of homosexuality perhaps have a deforming effect on their sexualities? When they were 12 or 13, they had a fleeting moment when they could explore their sexualities with other boys without shame – but it quickly slammed shut as they realised this behaviour was deemed immoral. Is this why they seemed to keep returning to 13 year olds in their fantasies as representing an idealised time of sexual freedom?

The taboos protecting young people from sexual abuse took a long time to build up. They have to be protected from erosion, because Alan Bennett is terribly wrong – the "real children" are never old men who want to cop a feel of adolescents.

Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has been morally bankrupt all along. The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsular is one of the great lies of our time. Yes, it has Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath these accoutrements, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.

If you go there with your eyes open – as I did earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view. The tour books and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh Mohammed, the country's hereditary ruler.

It is untrue. The people who really built the city can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes. They were conned into coming, and trapped into staying.

In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.

They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt. They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage. They have no way to go home. And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police.

I met so many men in this position I stopped counting, just as the embassies were told to stop counting how many workers die in these conditions every year after they figured it topped more than 1,000 among the Indians alone.

Human Rights Watch calls this system "slavery." Yet the Westerners who have flocked to Dubai brag that they "love" the city, because they don't have to pay any taxes, and they have domestic slaves to do all the hard work. They train themselves not to see the pain.

But Dubai's bankruptcy does not end there: it is ecologically bust. This is a city built in the burning desert, where everything shrivels up and blows away if it is not kept artificially cold all the time. That's why it has the highest per capita carbon emissions on earth – some 250 percent higher even than America's. The city has to ship in desalinated water – which is more costly than oil. When it runs out of cash, it will run out of water.

Today Dubai will be bailed out by the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich country of which it is only one state. But the oil will not last forever. More importantly, there is no Bank of Morality that could provide a bailout for this sinister mirage in the desert.

You can read the interview here. You can also read the full text of the interview here.

Et år efter hans valgsejr er mange Obama-tilhængere kommet i tvivl. Vel er hans sygesikringsreform en forbedring, men den dækker stadig ikke alle amerikanere og bliver næppe et troværdigt alternativ til de private forsikringsselskaber og deres ågertakster - hvis den vedtages. Hans miljøhold vandaliserer den vigtige konference i København ved udmeldinger om, at USA - verdens største CO2-udleder af opvarmninsgasser - ikke underskriver en klimaaftale med juridisk bindende restriktioner. Han har sat nogle af de afreguleringsfanatikere, som var med til at fremkalde Den Nye Depression - Lawrence Summers m.fl. - i spidsen for økonomisk genopretning. Og trods klare fremskridt i forhold til Bush - ophør for tortur, genoptagelse af stamcelleforskning, ingen støtte til Honduras’ kupmagere - spørger stadig flere: Hvorfor leverer han så lidt og så langsomt?



To små historier om de kræfter, som driver deres spil i amerikansk politik, belyser hvorfor. Ved første øjekast ligner de uhyrlige karikaturer, men kendsgerningerne er enkle: De instanser, som blokerer for fremskridt - Republikanerne i Senatet og den enorme koncernlobbymaskine, der finansierer begge partier - er i de seneste måneder gået sammen om at forsvare to sager, som har ringe folkelig støtte: voldtægt og slaveri.



Den første begynder i Irak i 2003. De private vagtværn, som Bush-regeringen sendte for at bevogte olierørledningerne, ville ikke rodes ud i dyre og besværlige retssager, hvis noget gik galt. Følgelig fritog Bush-holdet dem fra at være underlagt irakisk lov - et skridt så vidtgående, at en senator kaldte det ‘licens til at dræbe’. Og hvis firmaernes medarbejdere angreb hinanden? De private selskaber insisterede på, at de kontrakter, som deres ansatte skrev under på, skulle fastslå, at uanset hvad der måtte ske, så ville det blive ordnet internt ved ‘voldgift’? Hvorfor? Advokatbistand i en retssag kunne koste firmaerne hundredtusindvis af dollar, mens et voldgiftspanel kunne fås for nogle få tusind.



Der var andre omkostninger: Ifølge hendes vidneforklaring festede 20-årige Jamie Leigh Jones, der var ansat af firmaet Halliburton, med nogle arbejdskammerater en aften i Irak, da hun fik en drink med bedøvelsesmiddel. Da hun vågnede, blødte hun fra sin vagina og anus. Hendes brystimplantater var flået af. Skaderne var så alvorlige, at hun måtte gennemgå rekonstruktiv kirurgi på sine kønsdele. Hun var blevet massevoldtaget af de syv mænd, hun drak med. Da hun klagede, blev hun låst inde i en container uden mad og drikke i 24 timer. En læge tilså hendes sår og udtog DNA-prøver, som senere ‘bortkom’. En vagt forbarmede sig og lånte hende sin mobiltelefon, hvorpå hun ringede til sin far, som ringede til Amerikas ambassade - først da blev hun løsladt.



I et Irak i opløsning var der ingen hjælp fra irakisk politi. Halliburton insisterede på, at hun var kontraktligt forpligtet til at lade et voldgiftspanel se på sagen, og at det var udelukket at rejse tiltale i USA. Da Leigh Jones gik i offentligheden, stod også mange andre amerikanske kvinder frem og berettede om lignende erfaringer under deres arbejde i Irak.



Den demokratiske senator Al Franken krævede nu en lovændring, der slog fast, at intet firma, som hindrer voldtægtsofre i at gå rettens vej, må betales med amerikanske skatteyderpenge. Men Senatets republikanske flertal stemte imod. Hvorfor? Fordi de private sikkerhedsfirmaer er stordonorer til Republikanernes partikasse.



En gruppe demokratiske senatorer forsøger at få indføjet en ændring i den seneste toldlov, der sikrer, at ingen varer produceret af slaver kan sælges i USA. Forslaget lyder ukontroversielt - så ukontroversielt som at straffe voldtægtsforbrydere. Men koncernlobbyisterne modarbejder det ihærdigt bag kulisserne. Som nyhedsbrevet Inside US Trade rapporterer: »Dele af erhvervslivet et dybt bekymrede over de potentielle følger. En kilde fortæller, at lobbyister tæt på finansudvalget vil indlede en modoffensiv. Amerikanske industrigrupper og udenlandske regeringer (i lande, der bruger slavearbejdskraft, red.) vil danne ad hoc-koalitioner, som kan sende et klart budskab.«



Nok er disse eksempler ekstreme, men de afslører en magtfuld understrøm i alle politiske spørgsmål (og i begge partier) i USA. For at forstå hvorfor skal man holde sig to ting for øje: For det første at koncerner er indrettet på en eneste ting: at skabe afkast til sine aktionærer. Holdes profitbegæret ikke i ave af love og fagforeninger, vil det brede sig uhæmmet - fra miljøødelæggelser til voldtægt og slaveri, som disse sager er os en påmindelse om.



Den anden faktor har at gøre med den måde, politiske processer fungerer i Amerika. Hvis man som politiker vil vælges, må man være stjernerig eller rejse en formue af bidrag fra koncerner, der kan betale ens tv-reklamer. Før man kan appellere til vælgerne må man først appellere til koncernerne. Det gør man ved at forsikre dem om, at man vil tjene deres interesser. Og så snart man er valgt, må man please dem skridt for skridt, ellers betaler de ikke til ens genvalgskampagne. Dette er det vilkår, som selv nok så fornuftige og velmenende politikere er oppe imod - og det trækker den amerikanske regering længere væk fra folkets vilje.



Obama måtte bane sig vej op igennem dette system. Nu er han dets fange. Dette forklarer hans relative fiasko. Sygesikring er så vanskelig, fordi forsikringsselskaberne betaler Republikanere og højre-Demokrater i Senatet for at forpurre alle skridt i retning af universel dækning. Jo, måske ville 17.000 uforsikrede amerikanere hvert år blive reddet fra at dø, men deres indtjening ville blive svækket. Tilsvarende er det svært at få reduceret CO2-udledningerne, fordi olie-, gas- og kulselskaber betaler senatorer over hele det politiske spektrum for at modarbejde skridt, der skal reducere afhængighed af fossilt brændsel.



Indtil videre har Obama forsøgt at få koncernerne med på sin agenda ved at forsikre dem om, at forandringerne også kan gavn dem. Men dette udvander uundgåeligt hans forslag, ofte til det værdiløse.



Afgørende progressive forandringer kan han først gennemføre, i det øjeblik han får reformeret hele det politiske system, så det først står til ansvar for det amerikanske folk og ikke for koncerner. Han er nødt til at ændre spillets regler, forbyde big business at yde politiske kampagnebidrag og erstatte dem med statsfinansiering. Lobbyindustrien må lukkes. Obama bør holde en stor populistisk tale, der fordriver pengemændene fra demokratiets tempel. Alternativet er at blive hurtigt viklet ind i et system, hvor forsvar for voldtægt og slaveri ses som endnu en dags arbejde i Washington D.C.

You can watch an hour-long debate between me and a representative of the racist, misogynistic, homophobic party Hizb ut Tahrir on the Islam Channel by clicking here. (I was not gentle with them.)