The West likes to think that 'civilisation' will defeat Isis, but history suggests otherwise

Robert Fisk in The Independent

Hitler set a bad example. He was evil. His regime was evil. His Reich was destroyed, the Nazis vanquished, the Fuhrer dying by his own hand in the ashes of the European nightmare. Bad guys lose. Good guys win. Morality, human rights, law, democracy – though with the latter, we should perhaps speak carefully – will always prevail over wickedness. That’s what the Second World War taught us.


We have grown up in a Western society that believes in such simple, dodgy, history lessons. The world’s major religions teach us about goodness, humility, family, love, faith. So why should we not – however liberal, agnostic, cynical – cling on to our fundamental belief that violence and torture and cruelty will never outlast the power and courage of the righteous?


Isis is evil. It massacres its opponents, slaughters civilians, beheads the innocent, rapes children and enslaves women. It is “apocalyptic”, according to the Americans, and therefore it is doomed. Better still, Ash Carter – the US Secretary of Defence who accused the Iraqis of running away from Isis – lectured the Iraqi Prime Minister last week. His message – I could hardly believe this naivety – was Hollywood-clear. “Civilisation always wins over barbarism.”

But does it? We only have to go back to the lie about the Second World War in my first sentence. Sure, Hitler lost. But our ally Stalin won. The 1917 Russian Revolution gave rise to one of the Gorgons of our age: Soviet dictatorship, the mass starvation leading the to death of millions, barbarism – on an Ash Carter scale – and evil incarnate ruled in Russia and Eastern Europe for more than 70 years, 40 of them after the Second World War.

The Romans kept “barbarism” at bay for almost a thousand years, but in the end the Goths, Ostrogoths and Visigoths – the Isis of their time – won. Unless you were opposed to Rome, in which case Roman barbarism – crucifixion, slavery, torture, massacre (the whole Isis gamut minus the videotapes) – was victorious for almost a thousand years.

Attila the Hun, the Scourge of God, destroyed almost everything between Persia and the Mediterranean. Ghengis Khan, an inevitable actor in this sordid drama, kept going until his death in 1227 – 30 years longer than Isis has so far ruled. His grandson Hulagu was invoked by General Angus Maude when he “liberated” Baghdad in 1917 and brought “civilisation” to Mesopotamia. Ash Carter should read Maude’s proclamation to the people of Baghdad: “Since the days of Hulagu, your citizens have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunken in desolation and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage.” Pretty much like Isis, in other words. But, by Maude’s count, this “tyranny” lasted for around 700 years.

Now let’s go forward to the years immediately after we brought “civilisation” – again – to Baghdad, by illegally invading Iraq in 2003. Between daily trips to the city mortuary and visits to tents of mourning, angry families would tell us that the “freedom” we brought had given them anarchy. They hated the dictator Saddam who slaughtered his opponents – and who imposed 24 years of “barbarism” on his people – but at least he gave them security. If you have children, these people would tell us, you want them to come home from school. You do not want them to be murdered. So which do we prefer, they asked us? Freedom or security? Democracy or Saddam?

Fearful of the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, whose militias slaughtered them, and the corrupt Arab dictatorships, who suppressed them, many hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims appear to have found security under Isis. Not the Shias, nor the Christians, nor the Yazidis. There is no “freedom”, as we would call it. But Sunni Iraqi men in Beirut, for example, regularly travel to and from the Isis Syrian capital Raqqa and report that – provided they don’t smoke or drink alcohol, their women are covered, and they do not oppose Isis – they are left alone: to do business, to visit families, to travel in safety. (Much the same applied under the Taliban in Afghanistan.)

ID cards are issued in Isis-land, the river police have newly-painted boats, taxes are raised, and yes, punishment is barbarous. But that does not mean the “Islamic Caliphate” is going to be conquered by “civilisation”.

And how can we believe that it will, when our own public-relations boss raves on about “British values” – and at the same time worships the venal, hypocritical, immensely wealthy and dangerous men who have helped to inspire Isis. I refer, of course, to those Saudis whose crazed Sunni Wahhabist cult has encouraged Isis, whose grotesque puritanism has led them to adopt a head-chopping extremism, which lies at the heart of Isis’s own “barbarism”. Sure, the Saudi state arrests Isis cells. But these same Saudis are now killing thousands of Shia Houthis in Yemen in a bombing campaign supported by our Western nations. And what does David Cameron do when the desiccated old king of this weird state dies? Money talks louder than “civilisation”. So he orders that British flags should be flown at half-mast. Now that’s what I call British values!

Poor old Dave. He loathes Isis but adores one of its elderly “facilitators”. Yet fear not. “Civilisation” may yet win over “barbarism”. My own suspicion is that Ash, Dave and the rest will try to buy up Isis, split them into factions and choose the “moderates” among them. Then we’ll have a new, liberal Isis – people we can do business with, the sort of chaps we can get along with, sins forgotten – and we can then establish relations with them as cosy as those the Americans maintained with Hitler’s murderous rocket scientists after “civilisation” conquered “barbarism” in the Second World War.

So much for “civilisation”.

Jeremy Corbyn: The Jose Mourinho of politics is playing in the Premier League at last

Simon Kelner in The Independent


When he narrows his eyes and stares into the camera, there is something of Jose Mourhino about Jeremy Corbyn. “The Special One” of Labour’s left wing may be a bit older and have less of a confident swagger, but he has the tousled grey hair, the deep-set eyes and the craggy, unshaven look of the all-conquering Chelsea manager.


There the similarity may end, because Corbyn is not a natural born winner. It is true that he has lived much of his political life on the fringes of the Labour Party, the vocal champion of special interest groups like the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

He’s never played in the Premier League of politics, and the sense is that he rather enjoyed his position as something of a provocateur, a man who, when the occasion demanded, could act as Labour’s conscience, reminding his colleagues that this is the party that should look after the poor and the disadvantaged, not the rich and the privileged.

He’s “a romantic idiot who wants high taxes”, according to Labour peer Lord Sewel, although the opinion of a 69-year-old man wearing an orange brassiere while snorting coke off a prostitute’s bosom might be considered inadmissible.

Nevertheless, it’s true that Mr Corbyn is a romantic, and not just because the thrice-married MP seems to find it quite easy to fall in love. He’s a conviction politician, a man who has the rather old-fashioned notion that his ideals shouldn’t be compromised in the pursuit of power. And now he stands, almost accidentally, on the brink of the leadership of the Labour Party and people are suddenly asking: How the hell did that happen?

For the past few weeks, Labour stalwarts have been trying to discredit Mr Corbyn and his wild, left-wing views, like his wanting the railways to be renationalised or saying the wealthiest in society should pay higher taxes or campaigning against tuition fees. Tony Blair has warned that the election of Mr Corbyn as leader would be a gift to the Tories, while others have said that moving the party to the left would make it unelectable (they seem to have forgotten that there is recent evidence that Labour is pretty unelectable as it is).

Now, however, a new narrative is getting traction. Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in the race because he believes in something, and is consistent in those beliefs. Andy Burnham, one of his rivals, has acknowledged this by saying that Labour “has become a purveyor of retail politics, trading in the devalued currency of policy gimmicks designed to grab a quick headline”. He added: “It is in this context that we need to judge the current leadership race and ask why Jeremy Corbyn is having such an impact.”

Mr Corbyn, like Nigel Farage, is unafraid to say the unpopular, and both are brave enough to eschew middle-ground politics because it’s not where their heart is. Tony Blair gives the game away somewhat when he talks about politics in terms of winning and losing. “Personally, I prefer winning,” Blair said.

The irony is that because Jeremy Corbyn is a principled man (a legendary paltry expenses claimer) and is true to his values and beliefs, he might – in this election, at least – end up being a winner, too.

Abolishing Annual Performance Appraisal

Lillian Cunningham in The Independent

As of September, one of the largest companies in the world will do all of its employees and managers an enormous favor: It will get rid of the annual performance review.

Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme told The Washington Post that the professional services firm, which employs hundreds of thousands of workers in cities around the globe, has been quietly preparing for this “massive revolution” in its internal operations.

“Imagine, for a company of 330,000 people, changing the performance management process—it’s huge,” Nanterme said. “We’re going to get rid of probably 90 percent of what we did in the past.”

The firm will disband rankings and the once-a-year evaluation process starting in fiscal year 2016, which for Accenture begins this September. It will implement a more fluid system, in which employees receive timely feedback from their managers on an ongoing basis following assignments.

Accenture is joining a small but prominent list of major corporations that have had enough with the forced rankings, the time-consuming paperwork and the frustration engendered among managers and employees alike. Six percent of Fortune 500 companies have gotten rid of rankings, according to management research firm CEB.

These companies say their own research, as well as outside studies, ultimately convinced them that all the time, money and effort spent didn't ultimately accomplish their main goal — to drive better performance among employees.

In March, the consulting and accounting giant Deloitte announced that it was piloting a new program in which, like at Accenture, rankings would disappear and the evaluation process would unfold incrementally throughout the year. Deloitte is also experimenting with using only four simple questions in its reviews, two of which simply require yes or no answers.

Microsoft did away with its rankings nearly two years ago, attracting particular attention since it had long evangelized about the merits of its system that judged employees against each other. Adobe, Gap and Medtronic have also transformed their performance-review process.

“All this terminology of rankings—forcing rankings along some distribution curve or whatever—we’re done with that,” Nanterme said of Accenture's decision. “We’re going to evaluate you in your role, not vis à vis someone else who might work in Washington, who might work in Bangalore. It’s irrelevant. It should be about you.”

Though many major companies still haven’t taken the leap, most are aware that their current systems are flawed. CEB found that 95 percent of managers are dissatisfied with the way their companies conduct performance reviews, and nearly 90 percent of HR leaders say the process doesn’t even yield accurate information.

“Employees that do best in performance management systems tend to be the employees that are the most narcissistic and self-promoting,” said Brian Kropp, the HR practice leader for CEB. “Those aren’t necessarily the employees you need to be the best organization going forward.”

Brain research has shown that even employees who get positive reviews experience negative effects from the process. It often triggers disengagement, and constricts our openness to creativity and growth.

CEB also found that the average manager spends more than 200 hours a year on activities related to performance reviews—things like sitting in training sessions, filling out forms and delivering evaluations to employees. When you add up those hours, plus the cost of the performance-management technology itself, CEB estimates that a company of about 10,000 employees spends roughly $35 million a year to conduct reviews.

“The process is too heavy, too costly for the outcome,” Nanterme said. “And the outcome is not great.”

Interestingly, though, the decision to roll out an updated approach usually has little to do with reining in those numbers. Kropp said companies aren’t likely to save much time or money by transitioning away from their old ratings systems to a new evaluation process. Where they stand to benefit is, instead, the return on those investments. “The smartest companies are asking, how do we get the best value out of the time and money we are spending?” Kropp said.

That’s the question Accenture posed to itself. And its answer was that performance management had to change from trying to measure the value of employees’ contribution after the fact. It needed instead to regularly support and position workers to perform better in the future.

“The art of leadership is not to spend your time measuring, evaluating,” Nanterme said. “It’s all about selecting the person. And if you believe you selected the right person, then you give that person the freedom, the authority, the delegation to innovate and to lead with some very simple measure.”

Greek debt crisis: A tale of ritual humiliation

Mark Steel in The Independent

What a relief that the Greeks have finally seen sense, and agreed to Angela Merkel’s demand that their Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must scrub Berlin with a dishcloth, and crawl along the banks of the Rhine in a thong barking like a dog.

The week before he’d agreed to dress as a fairy and sing “The Good Ship Lollipop” while German children poked him with stinging nettles, but now that isn’t enough. So he has to accept even more measures essential to stabilising the Greek economy, such as being hosed down with kebab fat while naming the German squad that won the 1954 World Cup.

Otherwise, as EU leaders made clear, there would be no way Greece could stay inside the solar system; they’d have to orbit a different star in a faraway galaxy, which could be extremely damaging to the Greek tourist industry.

Instead of inviting further chaos by leaving Greece in the hands of the Greeks, their finances have been handed over entirely to the only people we can trust to behave responsibly at all times: the banks. Thank the Lord we’ve got at least one institution that has never behaved irresponsibly or recklessly in any way.

Perhaps the Greeks should have gone to Brussels and said they were rebranding Greece, so it’s no longer a country, but a bank. They’d have been bailed out by lunch and given a free set of steak knives as an extra gift. Instead they’ve got to sell off their entire country. By Christmas you’ll be able to buy a family ticket for 300 quid to visit the Domino’s Parthenon, where you can watch a parade of philosophers dressed as your favourite pizzas, with Pythagoras pepperoni proving a particular favourite, then scream your way down the Acropolis on a log flume.

One of the main demands in the final deal is that the Greek state must sell off €50bn-worth of its assets, which amounts to everything it has. This is part of the drive to make the economy stable and efficient. This works as long as you assume privatisation unarguably makes an industry more efficient. Obviously there are examples such as the railways in Britain, where privatisation has resulted in cheap reliable trains on which you can always get a seat, it’s easy to buy tickets across different rail networks, and customers are even offered delightful unscheduled 40-minute stops outside London Bridge station to give you the opportunity to paint the view of a gasworks in Bermondsey.

The demands placed on Greece are so extreme that even the International Monetary Fund has declared them “unsustainable”. The IMF is the body that has spent 50 years forcing countries such as Tanzania and Haiti to cut wages and sell off its possessions, in return for loans it needs so it can pay off the interest on the last lot of money it borrowed (from the IMF). So when it says the demands on Greece are too harsh, it’s like making the leader of Isis say, “Steady on, that’s a bit too Islamic”.

Still, someone has to tell the Greeks they can’t expect to carry on getting something for nothing. And the European Central Bank and national central banks – who, according to the Jubilee Debt Campaign, “stand to make between €10bn and €22bn out of Greek repayments” – are exactly the right people to deliver that stern but fair message.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, is paid a salary of €550,000 a year, and by special arrangement pays no tax on that whatsoever. So she’s certainly the right person to lecture the Greeks, because she’s never been behind on her tax payments once. Every month she dutifully pays her nothing bang on time; she understands the importance of behaving responsibly with public money.

The most perplexing part of this story is that, a few days ago, it seemed as if Alexis Tsipras and his party, Syriza, were set to resist the orders being thrown at them, especially as they’d gone to the trouble of winning a referendum on whether to accept the EU demands. I suppose Tsipras thought that when the majority of Greeks voted against, it was because they felt those demands weren’t harsh enough, and they deserved to be punished much more severely as they’d all been very naughty.

Because Tsipras went into negotiations making it clear he was desperate to keep Greece in the eurozone, the EU could demand whatever it liked, knowing he’d accept anything rather than abandon the euro.

That sounds like going into a car showroom and saying, “I desperately need a car right now and I’ll have anything rather than leave without one”. A salesman could say, “We’ve only got this one, it’s got no engine and the windscreen’s made of wood and it pongs as a family of weasels live on the back seat and the bonnet’s on fire, it’s £10,000”, and you’d have no choice but to take it.

But maybe he did have a choice, to tell the banks they’ve made plenty out of Greece as it is and so, on balance, the elected government had decided to go along with what the Greeks voted for twice in a few months – wasting their money on schools and old people in villages, rather than do the sensible thing and hand over every coin as interest payments to institutions such as Goldman Sachs.

They’d have been kicked out of the eurozone, and probably out of Uefa and the Eurovision Song Contest, and scratched off the Inter-rail map too. But they’d have been a little beacon for everyone across Europe who feels the banks aren’t acting entirely in our interests, probably enough people to worry Angela Merkel just a bit.