Why Virat Kohli has to rid Indian cricket of bad habits

Suresh Menon on BBC website

In cricket, as in any sport, there are two kinds of mistakes.

The bad mistake arises out of confused thinking, lack of focus and a poor understanding of tactics. The good mistake, on the other hand, implies a well-thought out plan gone wrong or an attempt to force the issue backfiring.

Increasingly as his captaincy progressed, India's most experienced and successful Test captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni kept making bad mistakes. Giving his bowlers one-over spells, for instance. Or wasting a fielder at leg gully.

Good fortune and hunches can take you only so far - every captain in the game's history has taken chances with an inexplicable bowling change or an illogical batting line-up and surprised everybody by winning. But that cannot be the basis for captaincy.

Positive attitude

Virat Kohli, at 26, younger than Dhoni by seven years, is not yet tactically sound but has two important things going for him: a positive attitude and enormous self-belief.

Not since Tiger Pataudi has an Indian captain been willing to risk defeat in the pursuit of victory like Kohli in the December 2014 Adelaide Test against Australia.

The essential difference between the past and future of Indian cricket is that while Dhoni was clearly on his way down, Kohli can only improve.

He will face many of the problems Dhoni did - a poor bowling attack, especially abroad, the pressures of being on the field for beyond 50 overs or a single day, the hope that victories in the shorter format will make up for their absence in Tests.

India had caved in without a fight in 13 of 17 Tests abroad before the last Australian tour. They lost the 14th in Adelaide, where Kohli led for the first time, but the texture of the defeat was different. The Anna Karenina Principle applied. "All happy families are alike," wrote Tolstoy in his novel, "each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Similarly, all victories are alike but defeats are wildly different.

Kohli is younger than Dhoni by seven years

India went down in a blaze of glory, attempting to make 364 runs in a day and coming startlingly close.

Playing for a draw was never an option, said Kohli, perhaps aware that India had the batting to win the Test, but not to draw it. Still, there was promise of a change in the standard narrative. Optimism is infectious, and it is easy to catch it off a captain who is full of it.

Kohli projected that optimism and spirit right from the days when he led India to the Under-19 World Cup win. He was marked out as future captain.

The IPL has a lot to answer for. But in Kohli's case, it actually helped.

Finding a balance

After initially tasting its many enticements, Kohli settled down. In his corner was his team Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Ray Jennings, who told him that the Under-19 triumph would soon be forgotten, and that he would be judged as an adult cricketer. Anil Kumble helped to channelise and focus all that energy. And he was made captain in anticipation of the bigger job to come.

While Kohli's captaincy in the one-day format has been aggressive and focused on winning, in Tests he will have to learn - as his bowlers too will - the virtues of patience and long-term planning.

Indian cricket will have to find a balance between Dhoni's tendency to let things drift and Kohli's impatience with uneventful overs and sessions. There is an element of fishing in the longer format. You put out your bait and wait. Kohli will have to learn the waiting game.

Whether it is a reflection of the times, a consequence of playing too many matches in the shorter formats of the game or a question of temperament, India's cricket is currently characterised by an impatience that makes them perform well below potential.

Bowlers are in a hurry to take wickets or simply run through their overs, batsmen seem to have forgotten how to play session-to-session. Kohli will have to rid the team of bad habits.

While many believe that a captain is only as good as his team, the best ones have inspired their teams to play above themselves. Pataudi for one, Mike Brearley or another.

Kohli's advantage is that he is the best batsman in the side, and there are no immediate candidates for his job. In other words, he will be left alone to develop his full potential as captain, unhampered by the need to constantly watch his back - an occupational hazard with Indian captains of the past.

He has it in him to stamp his name on an era.

How to cohabit (and live to tell the tale): 10 essential commandments

Emma Jane Unsworth in The Guardian

Cohabiting is about accepting each other as human beings with human bodies. As the bumper sticker almost says: “Stuff Happens.” Illustration: Anna Parini

Moving in with someone can do many things for a relationship. It’s a way of ramping up the commitment and lowering living costs. It means you get to enjoy more time in each other’s company while simultaneously doubling your daily shirt-and-sock options. It’s also that thing you often do when you reach a certain point, and, while I’m generally against things we do simply because we feel we should, I can’t deny that sooner or later, in any relationship, I find myself wondering about living together.

I’ve just moved in with a man for the fourth time in 15 years (different men), and there’s a lot I’m going to do differently this time, because there’s a lot I’ve learned. So in the spirit of sharing, I’ve developed the following set of handy rules. Behold, my Ten Commandments for Cohabitation.

1 Thou Shalt Start With A Blank Canvas

As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste. That may be true, but it’s important that you both have an equal chance to inflict your aesthetics upon a place. Fair’s fair. It’s not good for your psychology, or the power dynamics of your relationship, to slot yourself around someone else’s stuff and, by proxy, their past. So even if you’re moving into your paramour’s place, gut it, decor-wise, and start from scratch – together. From then on, it’s about negotiation, tolerance and compromise.

Example: my boyfriend likes crows. One time I walked into the bedroom to find a crow cushion on the pillow so realistic that it looked like an actual dead crow. I took a photo to put on Instagram, and then reacted with an almighty shriek.

Compromise: the crow cushion doesn’t go on the bed any more, and we continue to have sex.

2 Thou Shalt Divvy Up The Chores, Somehow

An ex told me that he found tidiness as oppressive as messiness. Nice try, huh. But it’s all too easy to forget whose turn it is to clean the hob and, unless you’ve got a dusting fetish, there’s nothing erotic about Mr Muscle.

If you can possibly afford to, splash out on a cleaner. I’d go so far as to say it’s worth two bottles of wine a fortnight, and that’s not something I would say lightly. The main peril of this, if you’re working class, is guilt – and guilt is even less erotic than Mr Muscle.

3 Thou Shalt Neither Repress Nor Celebrate Thy Bodily Functions

I’m sorry to include this – I know there are recipes in here and you’re halfway through your brunch, but this is a crucial one. Catherine Zeta-Jones once cited the secret to a long-term relationship as “separate bathrooms” (I know, they split – but they’re back together!). Not an option for the non-Hollywood stars among us, alas. But maybe it’s also about accepting each other as human beings with human bodies. As the bumper sticker almost says: “Stuff Happens”.

A friend of mine overshot it when she took her boyfriend of nine months to stay in a luxury shepherd’s hut for a weekend, as a “living together practice run”. I think we can all see where this one is going. The toilet was a funnel, a metre or so from the bed, behind a curtain. They split soon after. Another friend went to the doctor’s with chronic stomachache a few weeks after moving in with her man, only to be told it was because she was repressing wind.

I’m not saying you have to let it all hang and fly loose, but try to relax. Your body, your home, your air space.

4 Thou Shalt Not Steal… Food

My first experience of living with people that I wasn’t related to (and therefore didn’t expect to fight me at the dinner table) was at university. And it was there, within the walls of my student halls in Liverpool, that I learned one of the harshest lessons about non-familial domesticity. One evening, when I returned to the communal kitchen to retrieve my dinner, I found that someone had stolen my jacket potato from the oven. Then I remembered Susan, scurrying past me in the corridor, looking distinctly uncomfortable as she gripped her hoodie around her midriff, looter-like. Of course she denied it. But I knew she was lying.

And yet, after I’d angrily eaten a neat tin of tuna, I found I could let it go. Furthermore, I felt a deep need to go forth and perform the exact opposite of my natural instinct at that point, which was meanness. These days, I fill the fridge and I don’t count my teabags. I expect anything I leave in the freezer to go, and I don’t care. It actually feels nice. Because meanness doesn’t even make you that much less skint, but what it does make you is miserable.

So I’m grateful to that girl now, for what she taught me. No, really. Get in touch, Susan. Or at least send me a potato

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Emma Jane Unsworth: ‘Tell your partner about their bad habits. The ones they don’t know about. Do it tactfully, but for God’s sake, do it soon.’ Photograph: Michael Thomas Jones for the Guardian

5 Thou Shalt Be Open To New Experiences

In a pressure-cooker space with someone, you can discover life-changing things that make you wonder how you survived without them. My former housemate Eden brought RuPaul’s Drag Race into my life, for which I am truly thankful. I introduced my best friend Alison to pesto with pasta when we lived together at university in the late 90s. As she destroyed the entire bowl, she looked and sounded as if she was having an orgasm – maybe she was. We now look on it as a foundation stone of our friendship, and given the fact she eats it at least once a week now, it’s a source of much pride to me that I was able to give her the gift that keeps on giving. We’ll always have pesto.

6 Thou Shalt Allow Each Other A Few Ludicrous Idiosyncrasies

This again boils down to compromise. My mum vigilantly turns off every single plug socket every night before she goes to bed. I think she once saw an episode of Corrie where a dodgy toaster burned down Sally Webster’s kitchen, and it stayed in her mind. She also unplugs the microwave because someone told her the clock uses up a lot of electricity overnight. I’ve tried to explain that this is simply not true, but not even Google can convince her otherwise.

My dad doesn’t seem to mind her frenzied routine. Nor should he. Because you know what? Everyone’s allowed their minor idiosyncrasies. Everyone is allowed to be ludicrous about one thing, once a day. Even the girl I lived with in my early 20s, who couldn’t find her keys one evening and decided to “lock” the front door by pushing it to and wedging the Henry vacuum cleaner behind it. When I came home, I thought we’d been robbed. Then I saw the vacuum cleaner, and realised I just lived with an idiot. But, you know, so did she, some nights.

7 Thou Shalt Not Inflict Animals Upon Your Beloved

Animals can be a deal-breaker. Allergies aside, some people don’t like the idea of furry creatures around things like food and furniture. I love cats. To me, a house without cats in it feels resonantly sad, but not everyone’s the same. I’m still half-convinced my last attempt at romantic cohabitation ended when I got a cat and it took to urinating on the duvet, generally square on the crotch of whoever was in bed. Morning! It materialised that as well as an unpleasant experience, this triggered bad memories for my then boyfriend, who had once lived with a cat called Moon, who’d systematically terrorised him.

But really: never live with anyone who doesn’t like cats. Those people are suspect and, at the very least, social perverts.


My mother turns off every plug socket before she goes to bed, and the microwave. My dad doesn’t mind – and nor should he

8 Thou Shalt Have A TV

And the internet. My most recent housemate and I tried to do without both for a year, in a bid to “be more productive”. We lasted a month, then we got online (mainly for RuPaul’s Drag Race). Books, I hear you cry! What about books? Well, books are all well and good, until you have a hangover. Then you just need something to look at while you sweat and cry for pizza. Entertainment options other than each other are the key to a happy home on those evenings, or days, when you just want to flop. I also recommend a karaoke machine.

9 Thou Shalt Not Assimilate Resentment

The assimilation of resentment is the death of love. Tell your partner about their bad habits. The ones they don’t know about, I mean. Do it tactfully, but for God’s sake, do it soon.

I have a terrible habit of leaving dirty mugs everywhere; something I only discovered after a man I’d been living with moved out and the mugs began to accumulate on the sink, the toilet, cistern, all of the windowsills – until I ran out of mugs and looked around and saw my awful truth. I called my ex and asked whether he thought I had a mug problem. “Oh, that,” he said. “I guess I just got used to picking them up every day.” “You must have hated me a bit for it, though?” I asked. To which he replied: “Well, I guess I sort of got used to the resentment, too.” (Insert Blaring Relationship Countdown Siren, set at T-minus two months.)

10 Thou Shalt Revolutionise The Meaning Of Romance

Cohabitation brings new meaning to what constitutes romantic behaviour, and you must embrace this, because we’re not getting any younger, and life is short, and love is the greatest, wherever you can find it. You’re not dating any more, and some of the more superficial magic might be gone – but there’s a wealth of possibilities by which you can demonstrate passion and kindness within the confines of your new situation.

Before we said we’d move in together, my boyfriend was staying at my flat and I gave him my keys for the day while I went out to work. My keys were a daily source of woe – identical Yales for a two-lock door; the great Law of Sod meaning I invariably tried the wrong key first, and would stand there, jangling and cursing and disturbing the neighbours. When he returned the keys, he had bought two coloured fobs from the hardware shop on the high street, and put them on. He even gave me an easy way to remember which was which: Blue for Bottom; Gold (yellow) for Top. Now when I open my door it’s a breeze. My everyday is that bit easier. If that’s not true romance, then I don’t know what is .

Please, FBI, investigate the 1966 World Cup – if only to shut up Greg Dyke

Marina Hyde in The Guardian


 

‘There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why.’ Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

You know when World Cups started being corrupt? 1970. And anything up to and including 1962. Between those dates, there was a brief and ineffably beautiful interregnum in the chicanery, which thereafter was never allowed to happen again. Why? Well, there was a global sense, really, that the sainted custodians of both tournament and trophy during that time were simply too exquisitely mannered, too morally faultless, too humble, too generous-spirited, too brilliant at football ever to be permitted to shame the rest of the world in this manner again.

Did you enjoy that story? If so, you may be Greg Dyke, or have suffered a recent head trauma. Either way, please seek help immediately.

The Fifa scandal erupted a mere 10 days ago, and it took barely two of those for England to make it all about itself. Ooh, you’ve no idea how they treated us during the bid process. Ooh, the main thing about this is that we should be given one of the disputed World Cups. The scale of the FBI takedown of Fifa is vast. England is like a diner in one of the ground-floor restaurants of the Towering Inferno building, wondering how what’s going on upstairs is going to affect its drinks order. Odd how they underplay the fact that England’s bid team gave the wives of the executive committee – their wives! – Mulberry handbags. This isn’t being “above” bribery. It’s being unable to get out of the group stages of bribery.

Already, culture secretary John Whittingdale has announced that England is ready to host the 2022 World Cup, should Qatar be stripped of it. Newsflash, buddy: at their current rate of acquisition of English landmarks, Qatar will already own all our major stadiums and half our infrastructure by 2022, so that’ll be just the sort of pyrrhic two-fingers in which we specialise. Yes, Qatar, you’ll know we’ve really beaten you when England lose to Paraguay in the opening match of the tournament at Liverpool’s Qatar Airways stadium (when you go down the tunnel on to the pitch there’s a spine-tingling sign that reads “THIS IS DOHA”.)

I say “we”, but there is no longer a “we” as far as the Fifa exposé goes. We had a good innings, being all in it together. People who don’t even care for football were remarking how watchable footballing arrests were. The utter insufferability of Sepp Blatter was something we could all get behind, while his victory last Friday was an election result on which we could all agree, so soon after our own one, on which we couldn’t.

But the point-missing parochialism was always in the post, and its arrival marks the end of the cross-party, cross-club, cross-everything love-in that has characterised the Fifa story.

From phone-ins to frontbenches, you now cannot move for Little Englanders telescoping world football down to their concerns. At their notional helm is FA chairman Greg Dyke, who did such a bang-up job dealing with the Hutton inquiry that he’s decided to come and bring that same grasp of nuance to what he presumably imagines to be his moment on the global stage. I suppose the best you can say is that there’s less left to damage with English football than there was with the BBC. But really, there hasn’t been a managerial double whammy like it since André Villas-Boas swept from Chelsea to Tottenham.

Historically, there have been few statements less guaranteed to fill you with confidence than “this is a matter for the FA”. Unless you count something like “this is a matter for the Jockey Club”, whose two-legged overlords were traditionally intellectually outclassed by their four-legged underlings. The competition to be the worst-run British sporting body is always hard fought, but the FA has won the title more than any of the others.

And they look to have another in the bag with their reflexive prejudging of corruption allegations, ill-advised speculation about the FBI investigation, and jingoistic bleats about how unfair it all is. It’s just a marginally more self-regarding version of throwing cafeteria furniture across a city square in a Sun-issue Tommy hat. They are naturally supported by said newspaper, whose Pooterish idea that Sepp Blatter was paying attention to what was in their leader column saw it declare in 2010: “Today the Sun makes this plea to Mr Blatter and Fifa. Don’t be put off by the BBC rehashing ancient history. Despite BBC muck-raking, the Sun trusts Fifa to put football first.”

Even our football-loving prime minister is just another Englishman whose criticism of Fifa is based solely on self-interest, as opposed to principle, and whose pettiness only serves to underscore the global perception that our position on everything is based on sour grapes. Back in 2010, he too criticised the British media for daring to investigate Fifa, while the bid team called it “unpatriotic”. Cameron has spent the past week falsifying his anti-Blatter history while failing to disguise his belief that nicking the 2018 World Cup hosting rights would be the perfect money-shot to his prime ministership.

England ready to host 2022 World Cup in place of Qatar, culture secretary says



Consider these powers the perfect spiritual leaders for a tribe whose analogue is probably those Americans who genuinely hadn’t a clue they were even disliked before 9/11. There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why. And no interest in getting one.

Ideally, each and every one of them would be forced to attend a six-week residential course in which a series of instructors prepared detailed presentations on the matter, which concluded with the rhetorical inquiry: “Do you now understand why everyone thinks we’re just absolutely massive arses?”

Unfortunately, I am told that given the numbers involved this is not a scaleable solution. In which case, just for the merriment, please, please let the FBI open an investigation into how hosting rights for the 1966 World Cup were won. I don’t even care about international law any more, or the increasingly bonkers mission creep which has seen the US announce additional probes into the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, as well the 2018 and 2022 vote, and which will now clearly end in this being the US’s legal equivalent of Nam. I just want someone – anyone – to bring home the realisation that we really are the Ukip of international football. And, increasingly, of international life.

Imran Khan and his defamatory 35 Punctures (Penti Penture) story

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

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The Theory of “Penti Pentures” (35 punctures) was supposed to explode with a bang. Instead it has evaporated into thin air without a whimper.

There was no secret tape recording of mine informing Nawaz Sharif that I, as caretaker CM Punjab, had applied “Penti Pentures” (ie rigged 35 seats) to the elections in 2013. Indeed, not one word of “Penti Pentures” was even whispered by the great Hafeez Pirzada (with Imran Khan breathing down his neck) when I was cross-examined before the Judicial Commission last week. What was produced was a clip from my TV show of 7th July 2013 in which I had said that about fifteen days before the end of my tenure as caretaker chief minister Punjab on June 6th 2013, (ie, ten days after the election results were announced on May 11) I had become powerless and the Punjab bureaucracy was already looking to the designated new chief minister. So what was so strange about that, the CJP seemed to imply, when he asked Mr Pirzada to move on.

----Also watch

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Imran Khan’s unending harangue about Nawaz Sharif “rewarding” me for applying “penti pentures” by appointing me chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board also fell flat. Indeed, it never went to the point of explicating the substance of the so-called “reward”. How could it? I have not drawn a penny in salary for two years. I have not even taken a luxury vehicle for my personal use. In fact, I have abolished all undue “perks and privileges” that previous chairmen enjoyed, like free First Class International Travel with spouse, a posse of hangers-on, a fleet of expensive rented cars, millions of rupees of free tickets for family, friends and cronies during international cricket events abroad, unlimited entertainment allowances, BoG meetings in holiday resorts, and a score-full of jobs in PCB for sifarishis and family.

The “Penti Penture Theory” was based on idle talk cunningly fabricated by a maverick named Ejaz Hussain who was desperate to worm his way into the top echelons of Khan’s party. A gullible Imran bought into it readily because it suited his political ploy. How could he manufacture a conspiracy theory of Nawaz Sharif stealing the election without challenging the results of the elections in the Punjab that contributed to Mr Sharif”s thumping victory? Hence it was critical to damn my administration. Fourteen months ago, I sued him in court to prove his allegations or pay damages for defaming me. He hasn’t appeared in court once, nor filed a word in response to my complaint. Much the same may be said of his lackeys like Naeem ul Haque and Shirin Mazari who have parroted the same lie ad nauseum, and “journalists” like Dr Shahid Masood who are constantly creeping out of the woodwork. The amusing fact is that only days after the fiasco in the Supreme Court, Naeem blatantly named the source of the “penti penture” story as Agha Murtaza Poya, the veteran politician and ex-owner of The Muslim newspaper, only to be rebuffed by a stout public denial by Mr Poya hours later.

The fact is that I was the caretaker CM nominee of the PPP and its allies. The fact is that the PMLN had fielded two candidates of its own but only acceded in my favour half an hour before the three-day deadline because it realized its nominees would most certainly be adjudged unsuitable by the ECP. The fact is that Imran Khan publicly welcomed my nomination as a consensus caretaker CM in March. The fact is that I refused to accept the nominee of the ECP, Qamaruzaman Chaudhry, as my Chief Secretary because Imran Khan publicly asked me not to appoint him. The fact is that I shunted 15 senior bureaucrats from the Punjab to Islamabad because they were allegedly close to the Sharifs. The fact is that I shuffled the bureaucracy from Patwari to Chief Secretary and SHO to IGP so that none could complain I was biased. The fact is that I retained two senior secretaries whose close relatives were contesting on PTI tickets. The fact is that my Home Minister was on the PTI’s Task Force on Terrorism. The fact is that I even leaned on the Advocate General appointed by Shahbaz Sharif to resign his constitutional position in order to be neutral. The fact is that the only favour I ever did anyone was to Imran Khan when I allowed him to hold rallies in the centre of the small towns on his campaign trail in Southern Punjab, which was contrary to the SOPs of the elections. The PTI accepted the results as free and fair, a fact corroborated by FAFEN and over 100 international observers.

Imran Khan didn’t have the courage to accuse ex-CJP Iftikhar Chaudhy, ex-Justice Khalil Ramday, and GEO/Jang Group in the JC, all co-accused with me in public. Now that his short-cut-to-power bid has failed and been exposed, he should have the courage to apologise to me and stop tarnishing my reputation.

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

Seumas Milne in The Guardian

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

How a corporate cult captures and destroys our best graduates

George Monbiot in The Guardian

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People who had spent the preceding years laying out exultant visions of a better world were suddenly sucked into the mouths of corporations dangling money like angler fish.’ Photograph: Daniel Pudles

To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved; to create and to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here.

Those who graduate from the leading universities have more opportunity than most to find such purpose. So why do so many end up in pointless and destructive jobs? Finance, management consultancy, advertising, public relations, lobbying: these and other useless occupations consume thousands of the brightest students. To take such jobs at graduation, as many will in the next few weeks, is to amputate life close to its base.

I watched it happen to my peers. People who had spent the preceding years laying out exultant visions of a better world, of the grand creative projects they planned, of adventure and discovery, were suddenly sucked into the mouths of corporations dangling money like angler fish.

At first they said they would do it for a year or two, “until I pay off my debts”. Soon afterwards they added: “and my mortgage”. Then it became, “I just want to make enough not to worry any more”. A few years later, “I’m doing it for my family”. Now, in middle age, they reply, “What, that? That was just a student fantasy.”

Why did they not escape, when they perceived that they were being dragged away from their dreams? I have come to see the obscene hours some new recruits must work – sometimes 15 or 16 a day – as a form of reorientation, of brainwashing. You are deprived of the time, sleep and energy you need to see past the place into which you have been plunged. You lose your bearings, your attachments to the world you inhabited before, and become immersed in the culture that surrounds you. Two years of this and many are lost for life.

Employment by the City has declined since the financial crash. Among the universities I surveyed with the excellent researcher John Sheil, the proportion of graduates taking jobs in finance and management consultancy ranges from 5% at Edinburgh to 13% at Oxford, 16% at Cambridge, 28% at the London School of Economics and 60% at the London Business School. But to judge by the number of applications and the rigour of the selection process, these businesses still harvest many of the smartest graduates.

Recruitment begins with lovebombing of the kind that cults use. They sponsor sports teams and debating societies, throw parties, offer meals and drinks, send handwritten letters, use student ambassadors to offer friendship and support. They persuade undergraduates that even if they don’t see themselves as consultants or bankers (few do), these jobs are stepping stones to the careers they really want. They make the initial application easy, and respond immediately and enthusiastically to signs of interest. They offer security and recognition when people are most uncertain and fearful about their future. And there’s the flash of the king’s shilling: the paid internships, the golden hellos, the promise of stupendous salaries within a couple of years. Entrapment is a refined science.

We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back. As far as self-direction, autonomy and social utility are concerned, many of those who enter these industries and never re-emerge might as well have locked themselves in a cell at graduation. They lost it all with one false step, taken at a unique moment of freedom

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We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back.

John Sheil and I sent questions to eight of the universities with the highest average graduate salaries: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, the London Business School, Warwick, Sheffield and Edinburgh. We asked whether they seek to counter these lavish recruitment drives and defend students from the love blitz. With one remarkable exception, their responses ranged from feeble to dismal. Most offered no evidence of any prior interest in these questions. Where we expected deep deliberation to have taken place, we found instead an intellectual vacuum.

They cited their duty of impartiality, which, they believe, prevents them from seeking to influence students’ choices, and explained that there were plenty of other careers on offer. But they appear to have confused impartiality with passivity. Passivity in the face of unequal forces is anything but impartial. Impartiality demands an active attempt to create balance, to resist power, to tell the dark side of the celestial tale being pummelled into the minds of undergraduates by the richest City cults.

Oxford University asked us, “isn’t it preferable that [the City] recruits bright, critical thinkers and socially engaged graduates who are smart enough to hold their employers to account when possible?”. Oh blimey. This is a version ofthe most desperate excuse my college friends attempted: “I’ll reform them from within.” This magical thinking betrays a profound misconception about the nature and purpose of such employers.

They respond to profit, the regulatory environment, the demands of shareholders, not to the consciences of their staff. We all know how they treat whistleblowers. Why should “bright, critical thinkers and socially engaged graduates” be dispatched on this kamikaze mission? I believe these universities are failing in their duty of care.
 

The hero of this story is Gordon Chesterman, head of the careers service at Cambridge, and the only person we spoke to who appears to have given some thought to these questions. He told me his service tries to counter the influence of the richest employers.

It sends out regular emails telling students “if you don’t want to become a banker, you’re not a failure”, and runs an event called “But I don’t want to work in the City”. It imposes a fee on rich recruiters and uses the money to pay the train fares of nonprofits. He expressed anger about being forced by the government to provide data on graduate starting salaries.

“I think it’s a very blunt and inappropriate means [of comparison], that rings alarm bells in my mind.”

Elsewhere, at this vulnerable, mutable, pivotal moment, undergraduates must rely on their own wavering resolve to resist peer pressure, the herd instinct, the allure of money, flattery, prestige and security.

Students, rebel against these soul-suckers! Follow your dreams, however hard it may be, however uncertain success might seem.

If you cheat on your partner, it’s probably about more than just sex

Phillipa Perry in The Guardian

According to a study published this week, the likelihood of people cheating on their partners rises if they are financially dependent on them – and especially if they are male. From the research carried out by a Connecticut sociology professor, Christin Munsch, it seems that men still expect to be breadwinners in the family, and that they can still feel emasculated when their female partners make more money. Old scripts die hard, it seems.

Babies and toddlers, as anyone who has lived in close proximity to one will know, are not always terribly good at articulating what they feel, but they are very good at acting out their emotions: they bite, they scream, they lie on the floor and beat their fists and generally try to squirm out of situations that don’t appeal to them. We adults do our best to put into words how they are feeling so that they will eventually learn to talk about their emotions, which in therapy-speak we would call “processing feelings”. If you don’t learn how to process feelings, you tend to carry on “acting out”. We don’t dispute that when a baby throws his toys out of the pram, he is actually doing his best to show how he feels.

A man or woman who has an extramarital fling is also very possibly doing their best to manage their feelings by acting out and having an affair. It can be hard to start a conversation with a spouse who is doing their best to provide for the family about how dissatisfied you are with the lack of meaning in your life, about your envy, or your boredom. You don’t want to appear ungrateful. You don’t want to rock the boat.

When unpicking the fallout of affairs in couples counselling, quite often the person who has had the affair says things like, “it just happened”, “it didn’t mean anything”, “it wasn’t anything to do with you”, “I was drunk”, or “it was just a one-night stand”. The financially dependent party might wish they didn’t feel how they feel, and try very hard to push what seem like ungrateful feelings away. But even if they do try to process how they are feeling with their partner, that partner might find it understandably hard to listen to and easy to dismiss. Feelings don’t go away just because we want them to, and unconsciously we look for a way to deal with them.

So when a distraught couple is in the counselling room and the so-called guilty party is saying “it didn’t mean anything”, the counsellor might try to help them find out what it really did mean. It’s probably true that the straying partner does not prefer their one-night stand to their long-term lover, but it might mean that they do have unresolved issues with their partner, that they could not find a way to articulate or have heard. And the so-called innocent party may have even contributed to the event by not being sufficiently open and sympathetic to their partner’s feelings. Too often people in a relationship do not want to listen to their partner’s woes because they feel that means they are to blame, or that they have to fix them, but actually, being heard non-defensively and sympathetically goes a long way to restoring equilibrium.

 An affair is often an enactment of some deep, pushed away resentment. The fling can seem to temporarily cure feelings of an imbalance or a lack of meaning. This is but one explanation for something complicated that probably has many determining factors. It may be that the stay-at-home wife or husband is someone with attachment issues. For example there are people who seem to always need to have a lover as well as a partner because they dare not rely on just one person in case that person abandons them. This situation may be heightened if they are financially reliant on their partner. Such a situation can arise from early attachment issues with their first primary caregiver. Likewise some people feel they need secrets, otherwise they fear merging with their spouse. This feeling may be heightened when their spouse seems to have a stronger identity than they do.

There are probably as many reasons for why people act out in the form of an affair as there are people, but Munsch’s research does show us that inequality between partners can be a problem, and it’s something worth considering in any relationship.