The Origin of Jihadism

Eric Zuesse

The origin of jihadism is prohibited from being reported truthfully — this truth is prohibited by all of the Establishment ‘press,'  including almost all ‘alternative news' sites — in the West, because it challenges all of the “sensitive” buttons (all of the bigotries, to put the matter in plain terms); and, though this fact (the Establishment's bigotries, and its hypocrisy to preserve and protect their bigotries even while condemning those of other people) will prevent almost all of the news-media that I send this to from publishing it, nothing prevents me from writing it; so, here it is (in whatever media are gutsy enough to publish this Western cultural and political samizdat): 

First, here's what the origin of jihadism isn't:  It's not  the “Arab-Israeli conflict,” nor is jihadism a response to the West's support of the barbarous way that Israel's apartheid government (and the vast majority of Israel's Jews) treat, and historically have treated, Palestinians. (And it's not a result of America's donating to Israel over $3B annually from U.S. taxpayers to do that, as the illegal ‘settlements' of Jews into Palestine continues.) Even without that Israeli-Jewish barbarism and its support by Western countries, jihadism would exist, not much different than it today is. Jihadists are no response to, nor result of, the West's barbarisms supporting the apartheid nation of Israel.

In order to understand where jihadism really comes from, what's necessary first is to understand the relationship that the Sauds, who are the royal family of Saudi Arabia, have with their clergy, who are the Wahhabist Islamic preachers, a relationship between the aristocracy and clergy in that area, which began in 1744, and which was subsequently combined with the oil-for-weapons trade and an alliance with the United States, that began in 1945, and that then was ignited by the petrodollar after Richard Nixon's de-dollarization of gold in 1973. That's what laid the ground for today's jihadism. (Here is a brilliant 22-minute documentary on the key role that the replacement of the gold-based dollar by the oil-based dollar played in the rise of jihadism; but the chief focus in the present article will be on the history of Islam before 1945, which is essential to know in order to be able to understand why that change in the value-base of the dollar ended up producing the jihadist explosion we're all seeing today.)

And, then, U.S. President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a born Polish nobleman whose family hailed from the most anti-Russian part of Poland, and who was also a protégée of the oil-and-banking baron David Rockefeller, advised Carter in 1978 to import pro-Saudi fighters or “mujahideen” (later called “Taliban”) into the then-Soviet-allied Afghanistan, in order to create there a wave of terrorism that would drain Soviet resources necessary to preserve the Soviets' Afghan ally, and thus help to bring down the Soviet Union. 

It is, in short, an anti-Soviet operation that the West subsequently continued as an anti-Russian operation (especially in Chechnia but also in other predominantly Muslim parts of Russia), but which got out of control, and now bites the hands that fed and that continue to feed it. 

Here is a video of Brzezinski, in 1979, in Pakistan, telling the Wahhabist Taliban encamped there, who had recently been driven out from Afghanistan by the new secular and Soviet-allied government there, to go back into Afghanistan, this time with U.S. weapons and support, to fight again as mujahideen there, because “God is on your side.”

Here is Brzezinski, in 1998, bragging that he had done that, and saying: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border [into Afghanistan, to defend the new secular government in that land], I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” The interview continued:

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! 

 

It wouldn't exist without the ideology, which is distinctly Wahhabist, known as “Salafist” outside of Saudi Arabia. But whatever it's called, this Sunni branch of Islam is the religion that is held by all jihadists. The U.S. built upon that Saudi base (and the very term “Al Qaeda” means “the base”). And so, this ideology must be understood, because it is significant not only within Saudi Arabia, but wherever jihadists carry out their war against “the infidels” — against anyone who fails to adhere to all of the rituals and commands of this very severe faith. (The petrodollar has simply ignited that particular religious ideology.) 

Here is from the U.S. Library of Congress's 1992 book Saudi Arabia: A Country Study, by Helen Chapin Metz:

The Saud Family and Wahhabi Islam

The Al Saud [dynasty] originated in Ad Diriyah, in the center of Najd, close to the modern capital of Riyadh. Around 1500 ancestors of Saud ibn Muhammad took over some date groves, one of the few forms of agriculture the region could support, and settled there. Over time the area developed into a small town, and the clan that would become the Al Saud came to be recognized as its leaders.

The rise of Al Saud is closely linked with Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (died 1792), a Muslim scholar whose ideas form the basis of the Wahhabi movement. He grew up in Uyaynah, an oasis in southern Najd, where he studied with his grandfather Hanbali Islamic law, one of the strictest Muslim legal schools. While still a young man, he left Uyaynah to study with other teachers, the usual way to pursue higher education in the Islamic world. He studied in Medina and then went to Iraq and to Iran.

To understand the significance of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's ideas, they must be considered in the context of Islamic practice. There was a difference between the established rituals clearly defined in religious texts that all Muslims perform and popular Islam. The latter refers to local practice that is not universal.

The Shia practice of visiting shrines is an example of a popular practice. The Shia continued to revere the Imams even after their death and so visited their graves to ask favors of the Imams buried there. Over time, Shia scholars rationalized the practice and it became established.

Some of the Arabian tribes came to attribute the same sort of power that the Shia recognized in the tomb of an Imam to natural objects such as trees and rocks. Such beliefs were particularly disturbing to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab. In the late 1730s he returned to the Najdi town of Huraymila and began to write and preach against both Shia and local popular practices. He focused on the Muslim principle that there is only one God, and that God does not share his power with anyone—not Imams, and certainly not trees or rocks. From this unitarian principle, his students began to refer to themselves as muwahhidun (unitarians). Their detractors referred to them as “Wahhabis”—or followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab," which had a pejorative connotation.

The idea of a unitary god was not new. Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, however, attached political importance to it. He directed his attack against the Shia. He also sought out local leaders, trying to convince them that this was an Islamic issue. He expanded his message to include strict adherence to the principles of Islamic law. He referred to himself as a "reformer" and looked for a political figure who might give his ideas a wider audience.

Lacking political support in Huraymila, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab returned to Uyaynah where he won over some local leaders. Uyaynah, however, was close to Al Hufuf, one of the Twelver Shia centers in eastern Arabia, and its leaders were understandably alarmed at the anti-Shia tone of the Wahhabi message. Partly as a result of their influence, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab was obliged to leave Uyaynah, and headed for Ad Diriyah. He had earlier made contact with Muhammad ibn Saud, the leader in Ad Diriyah at the time, and two of Muhammad's brothers had accompanied him when he destroyed tomb shrines around Uyaynah.

Accordingly, when Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab arrived in Ad Diriyah, the Al Saud was ready to support him. In 1744 Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab swore a traditional Muslim oath in which they promised to work together to establish a state run according to Islamic principles. Until that time the Al Saud had been accepted as conventional tribal leaders whose rule was based on longstanding but vaguely defined authority.

Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab offered the Al Saud a clearly defined religious mission to which to contribute their leadership and upon which they might base their political authority. This sense of religious purpose remained evident in the political ideology of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.

Muhammad ibn Saud began by leading armies into Najdi towns and villages to eradicate various popular and Shia practices. The movement helped to rally the towns and tribes of Najd to the Al Saud-Wahhabi standard. By 1765 Muhammad ibn Saud's forces had established Wahhabism—and with it the Al Saud political authority--over most of Najd.

After Muhammad ibn Saud died in 1765, his son, Abd al Aziz, continued the Wahhabi advance. In 1801 the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies attacked and sacked Karbala, the Shia shrine in eastern Iraq that commemorates the death of Husayn. In 1803 they moved to take control of Sunni towns in the Hijaz. Although the Wahhabis spared Mecca and Medina the destruction they visited upon Karbala, they destroyed monuments and grave markers that were being used for prayer to Muslim saints and for votive rituals, which the Wahhabis consider acts of polytheism. In destroying the objects that were the focus of these rituals, the Wahhabis sought to imitate Muhammad's destruction of pagan idols when he reentered Mecca in 628.

If the Al Saud had remained in Najd, the world would have paid them scant attention. But capturing the Hijaz brought the Al Saud empire into conflict with the rest of the Islamic world. The popular and Shia practices to which the Wahhabis objected were important to other Muslims, the majority of whom were alarmed that shrines were destroyed and access to the holy cities restricted.

Moreover, rule over the Hijaz was an important symbol. The Ottoman Turks, the most important political force in the Islamic world at the time, refused to concede rule over the Hijaz to local leaders. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Ottomans were not in a position to recover the Hijaz, because the empire had been in decline for more than two centuries, and its forces were weak and overextended. Accordingly, the Ottomans delegated the recapture of the Hijaz to their most ambitious client, Muhammad Ali, the semi-independent commander of their garrison in Egypt. Muhammad Ali, in turn, handed the job to his son Tursun, who led a force to the Hijaz in 1816; Muhammad Ali later joined his son to command the force in person.

Meanwhile, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab had died in 1792, and Abd al Aziz died shortly before the capture of Mecca. The movement had continued, however, to recognize the leadership of the Al Saud and so followed Abd al Aziz's son, Saud, until 1814; after Saud died in 1814, his son, Abd Allah, ruled. Accordingly, it was Abd Allah ibn Saud ibn Abd al Aziz who faced the invading Egyptian army [on behalf of Turkey's Muslim ruler].

Tursun's forces took Mecca and Medina almost immediately. Abd Allah chose this time to retreat to the family's strongholds in Najd. Muhammad Ali decided to pursue him there, sending out another army under the command of his other son, Ibrahim. The Wahhabis made their stand at the traditional Al Saud capital of Ad Diriyah, where they managed to hold out for two years against superior Egyptian forces and weaponry. In the end, however, the Wahhabis proved no match for a modern army, and Ad Diriyah—and Abd Allah with it—fell in 1818.

So: “the Wahhabis,” who were a Muslim version or mirror-image of Christianity's Medieval Crusades against Muslims and Jews, were defeated by the Ottoman Turks, which were a liberal branch of Islam. Here is the instruction that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman I, gave to his son; and it could hardly have been farther away from the harsh teachings of Wahhab:

Last Testament

In directing his son to continue the administrative policies set forth by Sheik Edebali, Osman stated:

Son! Be careful about the religious issues before all other duties. The religious precepts build a strong state. Do not give religious duties to careless, faithless and sinful men or to dissipated, indifferent or inexperienced people. And also do not leave the state administrations to such people. Because the one with fear of God the Creator, has no fear of the created. One who commits a great sin and continues to sin can not be loyal. Scholars, virtuous men, artists and literary men are the power of the state structure. Treat them with kindness and honour. Build close relationship when you hear about a virtuous man and give wealth and grant him...Put order the political and religious duties. Take lesson from me so I came to these places as a weak leader and I reached to the help of God although I did not deserve. You follow my way and protect Din-i-Muhammadi and the believers and also your followers. Respect the right of God and His servants. Do not hesitate to advise your successors in this way. Depend on God's help in the esteem of justice and fairness, to remove the cruelty, attempt this in every duty. Protect your public from enemy's invasion and from the cruelty. Do not behave any person in an unsuitable way with unfairness. Gratify the public and save all of their sake.[9]

That emphasis upon “kindness,” and upon “God” providing “help” to individuals who “did not deserve” and “to remove the cruelty,” etc., isn't at all similar to Wahhab's teachings, but far closer instead to St. Paul's preachment of the otherwise harsh God's mercy (e.g., Galatians 2:21: “I refuse to reject God's mercy. If a person is put right with God by adhering to the [harsh] laws of God, then Christ died for nothing!”) as the very foundation of Christianity. That's what softened the harshness of the Jewish God, the God in the Torah, the first five books of the Christian Bible. Unfortunately, Paul and his followers who wrote and assembled the New Testament also introduced anti-Semitism, a condemnation of the Jews and not of their horrible Scripture: e.g., Paul's own 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15 — “The Jews killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and persecuted us. They displease God and are everyone's enemies.” The Paulinists' accusation that Jews killed God was basic to pogroms and other discriminations against Jews, which only served to increase Jews' own tribalism. All religions encourage bigotry; and, in our still highly religous world (believing even the crackpot biblical ‘history' that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, which is scientifically ridiculous but part of the disproven creation-myth), aristocracy and religion remain, even today, as Mankind's curses, but especially in fundamentalist Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, which is the ultimate model of a nation that's both aristocratic and theocratic — the most dangerous of all possible combinations for a nation. 

As wikipedia further says:

The alliance between followers of [Muhammad] ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud's successors (the House of Saud) proved to be a rather durable alliance. The house of bin Saud continued to maintain its politico-religious alliance with the Wahhabi sect through the waxing and waning of its own political fortunes over the next 150 years [but actually more like 300 years, inasmuch as it started in 1744, when Saud and Wahhab swore their oaths to each other, right up to the present, and so will be 300 years old in 2044], through to its eventual proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and then afterwards, on into modern times. Today Mohammed bin Abd Al-Wahhab's teachings are state-sponsored and are the official form of Sunni Islam[3][22] in 21st century Saudi Arabia.[23] ...

With the help of funding from petroleum exports[25] (and other factors[26]), the movement underwent "explosive growth" beginning in the 1970s and now has worldwide influence.[3]

Today's jihadism is simply oil-and-gas-funded Wahhabism that got out of control in non-Wahhabist-Salafist-led countries. During 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon de-dollarized gold, and quickly petroleum became dollarized (the global commodity-basis for currencies). Saudi Arabia had more of the new gold than any other country did. And, already, the entire Muslim world was bowing to the Sauds' Mecca; so, they had both Mecca and oil. And the Sauds, as the most oil-rich people, now became the emperors of Arabia, having under them the kings of the other major Arabic Sunni oil sheikhdoms — or, as I have noted before: The controlling entities behind American foreign policies since at least the late 1970s have been the Saud family and the Sauds' subordinate Arabic aristocracies, which are the ones in Qatar (the al-Thanis), Kuwait (the al-Sabahs), Turkey (the Turkish Erdogans, a new royalty), and UAE (its six royal families: the main one, the al-Nahyans in Abu Dhabi; the other five: the al-Maktoums in Dubai, al-Qasimis in Sharjah, al-Nuaimis in Ajman, al-Mualla Ums in Quwain, and al-Sharqis in Fujairah). Other Saudi-dominated nations — though they're not oil-rich (more like Turkey in this regard) — are Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Turkey is a special case: a member not only of America's 28-nation NATO alliance, but also of Saudi Arabia's new 34-nation+ Sunni-Islamic global military alliance. In 1922, Turkey's non-sectarian General Kemal Attaturk had ended the liberal Islamic dominance that had earlier been imposed under Osman I, and he established instead the non-religious nation of Turkey, which has terminated in recent decades with the increasing penetration into Turkey of Salafist or jihadist (i.e., Wahhabist-Salafist) Islam: aiming for the Caliphate or fundamentalist-Islamic empire, not as pre-1922 — not as the liberal-Islamic Ottoman Empire — but instead as a Caliphate (fundamentalist-Islamic empire).

The “Caliphate” is supposed to be imposed by a descendant of Muhammad himself, the founder of Islam. Only such a descendant may found or start the Caliphate — go beyond being only a God-authorized national ruler, to become the God-authorized ruler of the world. For example, the founder of ISIS (also called IS, ISIL, and Daesh), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be a descendant of Muhammad. (However, there is uncertainty as to whether he actually even exists.)

This can be accurately understood only within the context of understanding the tribalism of all African, including of all Arabic, cultures (as well as of Jewish, and other tribal religions). Tribalism is the same as aristocracy, except it's the other side of the phenomenon: the mass-side, instead of the elite (i.e., aristocratic) side. Both sides are the belief that ancestors — or, in Arabic, “salafis” — determine a person's status or degree of authority. Aristocracy and tribalism go together, just like heads-and-tails on the opposite sides of a coin do.

When Muhammad Ibn Saud and Muhammad Ibn Wahhab created in 1744 what would become Saudi Arabia, it was upon the basis of two things that are at the root of all conservatism: tribalism and religion. The leaders of a tribe are its aristocracy, and the leaders of a religion are its clergy. Consequently, Saudi Arabia might appear to be a perfect conservative nation: the aristocracy (the descendants of Muhammad Ibn Saud), and the clergy (the clerics of Wahhabism), are united to control the nation. However, there is a flaw in the Saudi-Wahhabist nation: the aristocratic element in it, the Saud family, are not descended from Muhammad. The Sunni ideal is very much the unification of church-and-state; but, in Shiite Islam, such unification between the two isn't necessary.

Consequently, only the psychopathy of Saudi Arabia's aristocracy and clergy can sustain their rule in a tribal-religious culture that violates the basic conservative principle of descent from the Prophet, who was himself a conqueror. (Muhammad, as both the head-of-state and the head-of-church; is the Sunni ideal. Shiia Islam broke somewhat away from that ideal of God's anointment of the leaders via their descent, so isn't quite as strongly wedded to it.)

Because Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (or whomever pretends to be him) claims to be both head-of-state and head-of-sect, ISIS presents a threat to the Sauds that even Al Qaeda (from which ISIS itself descended) avoids: Osama bin Laden didn't claim to be descended from Muhammad. The Saudi religion didn't demand he be, any more than it had demanded Muhammad Ibn Saud to be. But, the 100% fundamentalists do  demand it — and ISIS is  100%. (In fact, the Wahhabist “Hanbali” system of legislation demands everything fundamentalist but  anointment-by-descent-from-the-prophet.) So: ISIS is a direct threat to the Sauds: it labels them “impostors” and “infidels.”

Therefore, the Islamic State (ISIS by any name, such as ISIL and Daesh) endangers the Sauds in a way that even al-Qaeda did not (and Osama bin Laden had, indeed, turned away from the Sauds, but on account of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, and not because the Sauds were “impostors” as heads-of-state). IS is even more fundamentalist than Wahhabism-Salafism. It's unadulterated Islam, like Muhammad's legendary (and probablly also historical) own original.

Other than that major distinction between Wahhabism and ISIS, the Sauds' Kingdom is Islamic.

For example, just like the Bible — both its Old and New Testament — all fundamentalist Islam authorizes slavery (as, indeed, does fundamentalist Judaism, and fundamentalist Christianity); and here is how that plays out in the Quranic nation of Saudi Arabia:

The official Saudi Information Agency issued, on 7 November 2003, a news-report, "Author of Saudi Curriculums Advocates Slavery,” which said: "The main author of the Saudi religious curriculum expressed his unequivocal support for the legalization of slavery in one of his lectures recorded on a cassette and obtained exclusively by SIA news. Leading government cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan is the author of the religious books currently used to teach 5 million Saudi students. … Al-Fawzan is member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia's highest religious body. … According to Saudi liberal writer and scholar Sheikh Hassan Al-Maliki, Al-Fawzan threatened him with beheading if he continued in his criticism of the extremist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.” 

That's remarkably honest reporting, because it's about their own country. But, in the less-fundamentalist Western world, the presumption that slavery is to be enforced instead of overthrown, isn't generally accepted. If there is a “cultural war,” it's ancient versus modern: it is religious-aristocratic on the one side, versus secular-democratic on the other. 

The Saudi Arab News headlined on 27 March 2006, "Why Is There So Much Hate Inside Us?” and a columnist, Abdullah Al-Mutairi, wondered, "why young Saudis hate foreign workers, particularly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.” He even wondered: "Do we adult Saudis who sponsor and employ foreigners fulfill the conditions of their contracts — which both we and they have signed? How many housemaids never get a day off? I remember a worker in the school where I work who was on the job every day and who had not been paid for six months. I remember another unpaid worker who asked humbly and politely for his dues and received nothing but curses and insults.” Basically, treating the dependent like filth is considered okay. Obligations are only one-way, and that's the basic principle in any aristocratic culture. 

The Saudi Gazette headlined on 29 November 2013, “What will happen when you allow your employee to keep his identity papers,” and reported that, "Sireen Jamal, owner of a beauty salon, said her driver [a slave] had escaped ... with her car,” because he had identity papers and could therefore get out of the country. "Dr. Suhaila Zain Al-Abideen, a human rights activist and a member of the Shoura Council, opposed the idea of giving expatriate workers their identity papers. “Whenever the expat worker has his papers with him, he may not hesitate to escape whenever he has the chance,” she said.” And the speaker, Dr. Al-Abideen, was “a human rights activist.”

And, of course, the Sauds don't pay only to ISIS head-choppers, but also to their own. These are America's allies, but these ones are Wahhabist-Salafists. The U.S. can be allied with them, but not with Russia. The U.S. aristocracy insists upon taking control over Russia's natural resources.

So: although those oil-kingdoms buy more weapons from the United States than any other country (and Saudi Arabia is America's biggest-of-all foreign purchaser of weapons), their ethical system is locked back in the years when Muhammad lived. It was basically the same ethical system that existed when Jesus did, and even when Moses did (if Moses even existed at all). But whereas the United States and other Western countries are embarrassed by the barbarism in their ‘holy Scriptures,' Saudi Arabia and the other fundamentalist-Sunni countries simply take for granted this barbarism, as the way things ought to be, and even (such as in ISIS) as the way things must become.

And the United States aristocracy and government is allied with it, but puts on the best pretense they can that they oppose it. This also means that the United States is backing the jihadists to overthrow the secular Shiite Bashar al-Assad in Syria. America is truly extremism's friend. It's not as important to jihadism as the Sauds are, but almost. The U.S.-Saudi alliance is somewhat like the aristocratic-theocratic alliance. Each side of the alliance depends on the other.

And both of them want to cripple and take control over the world's second-largest oil-power, Russia, which means first overthrowing Russia-friendly leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad.  

So: that's the origin of jihadism. Al Qaeda's version might be called ‘moderate' extremism; ISIS's would be ‘extreme' extremism (sort of like Barry Goldwater's “Extremism in defense of … is no vice”; and, if that's “liberty,” then breakouts from prison constitute no vice). After all, how else could the aristocracy and the clergy fool the public, in a ‘democracy'? The public need to think that the system works for them, and that their enemies are mainly foreign, not mainly members of the same nation, and maybe even of the same religion, as themselves.

Many people who are born Muslims are aware of the threat that their religion is posing. But escaping from it is exceptionally difficult, especially because the world's most oil-rich country happens to be also the font of it: the biggest promoter, and source of funding, for jihadism.

There is nothing unique about Islam in its providing a basis for ‘holy war': look, for example, at Christianity's Crusades, and at the Thirty-Years War in Europe. What's unique is the Saudi-U.S. petrodollar alliance, which is spawning wars for both god and greed, which now have blowback that compels both nations' aristocracies to pump their respective bigotries even harder, the Saudi aristocrats against “infidels,” and the American aristocrats against Russians. On both sides of the Saudi-U.S. alliance, it's an aristocracy deceiving and fooling its own public: brainwashing them on the basis of their particular culture's bigotries.

When a nation's aristocracy and its clergy are supporting one-another, it's like the flame that ignites the fuel. That's what's igniting the world.

Lifetime council tenancies in UK to be scrapped

Dennis Moore

The recent amendment tabled by the Conservative government to the Housing and Planning Bill will end lifetime tenancies for those living in council properties who have a secure tenancy agreement.

Secure tenancies are granted by local authorities and offer a tenant a lifelong home that can, in some cases, be inherited by next of kin. The new legislation will force councils to offer all new tenants contracts of between two and five years.

The amendment will not affect those with existing secure tenancies and will not apply to housing associations, which at present are able to offer assured tenancies either for a fixed term or for life.

At the end of the fixed term, councils will have to carry out a review of the tenant’s particular circumstances, and decide whether to grant a new tenancy, move the tenant into more appropriate rented social accommodation or terminate the tenancy.

At the point of a tenancy being terminated, councils will be obliged to assist the tenant to look at options of home ownership, or accessing other housing options. A spokesman for the Department for Communities said, “We want to support households to make the transition to home ownership where they can.”

The Conservatives have long sought to end lifelong tenancies. In 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron claimed this measure would help increase “social mobility.” Local councils have had the powers to offer fixed-term tenancies for some time within current legislation. However, the government has decided to legislate because councils have not chosen to utilise these powers.

The claim that this move will provide “social mobility” or enable an evicted council tenant to buy a home is nonsense. Home ownership is well beyond the means of many people. In 2014, Shelter, the homeless charity, reported that more than 80 percent of the homes on the market were unaffordable for first-time buyers.

As there is a dire shortage of decent local authority housing, it is likely that those seeking accommodation will have to look to the private sector, which is notorious for high rents and poor housing stock.

Secure Tenancy was introduced in 1979, following campaigns that highlighted the poor housing conditions that existed in crumbling tower blocks and housing estates across the UK in the 1970s. At the time, most council tenants did not have any more rights than tenants in private sector housing. Campaigns led by tenants’ organisations forced the Labour government of James Callaghan to include “security of tenure” in the Housing Bill 1979. This was subsequently included in the incoming Conservative government’s Housing Act 1980.

The abolition of secure tenancy and the offer of fixed-term tenancies will leave many people living in a state of insecurity.

Private sector housing is already characterised by insecurity of tenure, with many tenants forced to live in poor and substandard accommodation, plagued with damp and disrepair issues. Shelter reported in October that almost half a million privately rented homes suffered from vermin infestations, including mice and cockroaches, in the last year.

A report by the Citizens A dvice Bureau issued this year found there are 740,000 privately rented homes in England that are considered unsafe to live in and fail to meet minimum legal housing standards.

It is estimated by Shelter that a third of all private sector homes do not meet the government’s Decent Homes Standard, with many tenants not complaining for fear of revenge evictions by landlords.

Prior to World War II, many people still lived in slum conditions with few rights legally. During the war, an estimated one quarter of Britain’s 12.5 million houses were damaged.

In the post-war period, with the development of the welfare state, an unprecedented turn was made in confronting the issue of poor housing. There was a massive house-building programme under the Labour government of Clement Atlee, with more than a million homes constructed, 80 percent of them council dwellings. Into the 1960s, 360,000 houses were still being built each year.

The last 30 years have seen a dramatic reduction in the construction of social housing, spearheaded by the Thatcher government and continued under successive Tory and Labour governments. As well as introducing secure tenancies for council accommodation, the Housing Act 1980 also extended the right to buy council homes at generous discounts. In the following decade, more than a million council homes were sold at an estimated cost in today’s money of more than £60 billion. The majority of these homes were not replaced, and since 1990 a further 500,000 council homes were sold off at less generous discounts.

Three years ago, the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition extended Thatcher’s “Right to Buy” initiative to Housing Associations. These were the very organisations that sprang up due to the largest-ever privatisation of public assets, as councils were encouraged to either flog their estates to Registered Social Landlords, Housing Corporations and Associations, or privatise their management.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps claimed that there would be no drop in the overall number of houses available. In the last three years, a further 35,000 council properties have been sold off. Only 4,000 local authority homes were built to replace them. In the last year, 12,329 council homes were sold and just 1,863 were to be built or acquired to replace them—a ratio of 8 to 1.

US: Mississippi River flooding threatens millions

Tom Eley

The National Weather Service (NWS) currently estimates that there are 17 million Americans—over 5 percent of the population—living in areas under flood warning, with worse to come. Flood waters are not expected to crest until late Wednesday in St. Louis, to be followed by record water levels and floods this week and next stretching down the length of the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

Federal officials have announced that 19 levees on the Mississippi River and its tributaries are currently in danger of being breached. The levee in West Alton, Missouri, has already been overtopped, forcing the evacuation of the St. Louis suburb’s 520 residents.

The death toll from storms and flooding in the Midwest, Great Plains, and South has risen to 53. Thirteen people have died so far in Missouri, among them five international soldiers, stationed in St. Louis, whose vehicle was carried away in a torrent on Sunday. The same day, a family of five from Kentucky was killed while attempting to drive across a bridge in southern Illinois.

In the past four days, a massive swath of the Midwest has experienced rainfalls of between six inches and one foot. There have been at least 69 tornadoes this month, about three times the normal number.

The massive rain fall has driven flooding in at least 400 rivers, of which 30 are in “major flood stage,” a category that includes “extensive inundation of structures and roads” necessitating “significant evacuations of people and/or transfer of property to higher elevations,” according to the NWS.

The NWS and local officials are calling for evacuations in several cities, including for parts of St. Louis, which, with a population of over 2.8 million, ranks as the 19th largest US metropolitan area. The Mississippi River is expected to crest in St. Louis late on Wednesday at 43 feet.

Governor Jay Nixon has imposed a state of emergency in Missouri, which the NWS anticipates will suffer “major to historic river flooding through early next week.” Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has declared seven counties to be disaster areas.

On Wednesday officials from West Alton posted an announcement on Twitter at 11:55 a.m. telling residents to move out, but offered no further assistance: “Flooding alert: Due to the overtop of CNC levee on MS River in West Alton officials direct residents of West Alton to evacuate immediately.”

Across the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois, water levels were rapidly rising against a hastily-built sandbag barrier. An evacuation order has also been placed on portions of the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park, Missouri, where the Meramec River, at 30 feet above flood level, threatened another levee.

Flooding is also creating a catastrophe in the Ozarks, the rugged uplands of lower Missouri and upper Arkansas. “It is devastating,” Rockaway Beach, Missouri mayor Don Smith told CNN. “We are begging for help.” Smith said his town is “demolished.”

The Mississippi will not crest in Chester, Illinois, until Friday, when it is expected to rise to 49.7 feet, barely surpassing the levels reached in the disastrous flood of 1993. Downstream in Thebes, the river is expected to surpass the record by two feet on Saturday.

From southern Illinois and Missouri, the record water volume of the Mississippi will roll southward where, in the coming days, it will meet up with heavy runoff coming from the river’s southern tributaries, bringing major flooding to the cities of Memphis, Tennessee; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and New Orleans.

Infrastructure is failing, including levees, roads, bridges, the Interstate Highway System, sewerage, and electrical grids—along with the government mechanisms ostensibly in place to protect the population: emergency and medical services.

So far, 19 levees on the Mississippi River and its tributaries are in danger of overtopping or breaching, said Robert T. Anderson of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Once a river overtops, as has happened in West Alton, its flood waters can rapidly erode a levee, forcing a total collapse.

“If a levee was to give way, the entire Mississippi would flood out,” Kevin Roth, Weather Channel meteorologist told NBC News. “It would flood fields, homes and anything else in its path.”

Interstate 44 and Interstate 70 have been shut down in several locations, blocking the main transportation arteries into St. Louis and creating chaos in regional transportation. Hundreds of other roads, highways, and bridges have been closed in Missouri and Illinois.

With interstate roadways blocked, truck drivers “paid by the mile, were stuck with few alternatives, or were forced to travel on back roads, on hilly sections, and on roads with no shoulder, and limited passing lanes,” according to one press account.

Power outages are being reported across the region. Tonight’s temperatures in St. Louis are expected to drop to 23 degrees Fahrenheit (-5 Celsius), threatening residents with exposure and deadly icy conditions.

Raw sewage is flowing directly into rivers and streams south of St. Louis after the Monday failure of the Fenton wastewater treatment plant, which normally handles 6.75 million gallons of wastewater per day. A second sewage plant in Springfield, Missouri, also failed, sending untreated water into a nearby river.

That the flood is expected to surpass what is known as “The Great Flood of 1993” must be taken as a warning that a major social catastrophe is now unfolding. According to the National Weather Service, that event was “one of the most significant and damaging natural disasters ever to hit the United States. … Damages totaled $15 billion, 50 people died, hundreds of levees failed, and thousands of people were evacuated, some for months.”

IMF head warns of slow growth and economic “shocks” in 2016

Barry Grey

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde offered a bleak economic forecast for 2016 and beyond in a guest column published Wednesday in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt .

The IMF head wrote that global economic growth next year would be “disappointing” and the outlook for the medium term had also deteriorated. Lagarde pointed to the continuing slowdown in China and the prospect of rising interest rates in the US as major factors leading to a continued slowdown in world growth rates and the potential for financial shocks.

Lagarde also noted the substantial decline in the growth of world trade, the ongoing fall in oil and other commodity prices, and the worsening economic and financial crisis in so-called “emerging market” and “developing” countries whose economies are heavily dependent on commodity exports and expanding trade.

“All of that means global growth will be disappointing and uneven in 2016,” Lagarde said. She warned, in particular, of “spillover effects” resulting from the decision of the US Federal Reserve Board earlier this month to begin raising its benchmark interest rate from near zero, the first Fed rate increase in over nine years.

Lagarde and the IMF had lobbied against the Fed move, warning that it could spark a panic outflow of capital from emerging market countries with high levels of dollar-denominated corporate debt such as Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

In the Handelsblatt article, Lagarde said that she was concerned about the ability of such countries to absorb “shocks,” citing in particular an increase in financing costs for corporations that sold large volumes of dollar-denominated bonds during the emerging market and oil boom that followed the financial crisis of 2008. The rise in the dollar means the real cost of debt repayment for these companies, whose revenues are in sinking local currencies, increases.

Lagarde hinted that the crisis could spread more broadly across the financial system, suggesting that emerging market and energy sector companies defaulting on their payments could “infect” banks and state treasuries.

On Wednesday, oil prices resumed their slide to their lowest levels in eleven years after the Saudi oil minister said the kingdom had no intention of scaling back petroleum production in 2016. Since the middle of 2014, oil prices have plummeted by two-thirds. In 2015 alone they have dropped by 35 percent.

But the oil price fall is only part of a broader collapse in industrial commodity prices. Nickel has dropped by more than 40 percent. Zinc, which was widely expected to rise in price this year because of the signaled closure of large mines in Australia and Ireland, has fallen 28 percent. Iron ore has also plummeted.

The new drop in oil prices and Lagarde’s pessimistic forecast combined to push down global stock prices Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 117 points (0.66 percent), in line with other major indexes in the US and Europe.

The continuing decline in commodity prices is a sharp expression of a deepening crisis in the real economy internationally. The slowdown in China is the most prominent factor in the fall in these prices, as its previously voracious appetite for industrial commodities propped up global demand.

But China’s slowdown is itself an expression of more fundamental processes and contradictions in the world capitalist economy. An indication of the systemic nature of the current malaise is the forecast released this week by OPEC that petroleum prices will not return to the $100-per-barrel levels of 2013 and early 2014 until 2040 at the earliest.

In October, the IMF released a report predicting world economic growth of 3.5 percent for 2016, the slowest rate since the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 financial meltdown. Last April, it warned that the global economy would remain locked in a pattern of slow growth, high unemployment and high debt for a prolonged period, acknowledging that there was little prospect of a return to the growth rates that prevailed prior to the 2008 crash.

In the April report, the IMF focused on a sharp decline in business investment during the so-called “recovery” that officially began in June of 2009. It noted that business investment in North America and Europe had declined by 20 percent, twice the fall that followed previous recessions.

While the IMF chose not to make the connection, this figure points to a basic feature of the global capitalist crisis—the enormous growth of speculation and parasitism. The same tendencies that triggered the 2008 crash—the reckless and largely criminal speculative activities of the financial elite that have come to dominate economic life—have only intensified in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Far from reining in the banks and hedge funds, the IMF, the major central banks and governments in the US, Europe and Japan have bailed them out to the tune of trillions of dollars and subsidized a further orgy of speculation. By means of ultra-low interest rates and central bank money-printing operations, known as “quantitative easing,” finance capital has been encouraged to inflate new financial bubbles—from the stock market to the oil sector, junk bonds and emerging market economies—which have further enriched the wealthy and the super-wealthy while diverting resources from the productive forces and impoverishing the working class.

While the real economy has remained depressed, stock prices have soared. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index in the US has risen by more than 200 percent since 2009.

Corporations and banks have starved the real economy of productive investment, instead seeking higher profits from risky investments that are entirely parasitic. These include speculation in high-yield, high-risk “junk bonds” linked to the oil and commodities industries. After the implosion of the subprime mortgage market in 2007-2008, money has flooded into this area of speculation. High-yield assets at US mutual funds hit $305 billion in June 2014, triple their level in 2009. Outstanding debt in the US junk bond market has soared to more than $1.2 trillion from less than $700 billion in 2007—an increase of 71 percent.

Now, under the impact of the collapse in industrial commodity prices, the ratings agencies are warning that 50 percent of energy junk bonds could default, along with 72 percent of bonds in the metals, mining and steel industries.

The mounting crisis of the emerging market economies is similarly bound up with massive inflows of hot money seeking high rates of return during the oil boom and China’s post-Wall Street crisis rapid economic expansion. Between 2004 and 2014, emerging market corporate debt increased from $4 trillion to $18 trillion, with much of the increase taking place since 2008.

One figure highlights the further growth of economic parasitism since the 2008 crisis: global debt has increased by 40 percent to $200 trillion, almost three times the size of the world economy.

To pay for this exercise in recklessness and greed, the working class all over the world has been hammered with austerity programs, mass layoffs and cuts in wages, pensions and health benefits. This has only deepened the stagnation and decline in the real economy. But these attacks will continue and intensify in 2016 and beyond, in tandem with the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system.

Perhaps the sharpest expression of the explosive growth of parasitism is the record increase registered in 2015 in mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks. US corporations that amassed trillions from cost cutting, wage cuts and the benevolence of the Obama administration and the Fed, rather than invest their cash hoards in job-creating, productive areas, have instead plowed it into stock buybacks to increase the payouts to big investors, and in mergers, which result in downsizing and job cutting. This past year, $4.7 trillion worth of mergers and acquisitions were announced in the US, a record.

One day prior to Lagarde’s column in Handelsblatt, the initial fruits of one of the biggest mergers of the year, the $130 billion deal involving the chemical giants DuPont and Dow, were announced. DuPont said Tuesday it would cut 1,700 jobs in its home area around Wilmington, Delaware. This is part of a $700 million cost-cutting plan that will reduce the firm’s 6,100-strong work force by 10 percent.

On the threshold of the New Year

Joseph Kishore

As the year 2015 ends, a general mood of fear and foreboding predominates in ruling circles. It is hard to find a trace of optimism. Commentators in the bourgeois media look back on the past year and recognize that it has been a year of deepening crisis. They look forward to 2016 with apprehension. The general sense in government offices and corporate boardrooms is that the coming year will be one of deep shocks, with unexpected consequences.

The Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman gives expression to this pervasive feeling in his end-of-the-year assessment published on Tuesday. “In 2015, a sense of unease and foreboding seemed to settle on all the world’s power centers,” he writes. “All the big players seem uncertain—even fearful.” China “feels much less stable.” In Europe, the mood is “bleak.” In the US, public sentiment is “sour.”

Significantly, Rachman singles out as the “biggest common factor” in the world situation “a bubbling anti-elite sentiment, combining anxiety about inequality and rage about corruption that is visible in countries as different as France, Brazil, China and the US.” This observation reflects a growing recognition within the corporate media that the coming period will be one of immense social upheavals.

Rachman’s comment and others like it that have appeared in recent days confirm the assessment made by the World Socialist Web Site during the first week of 2015. The intervals between the eruption of major geopolitical, economic and social crises have “become so short that they can hardly be described as intervals,” we wrote. Crises “appear not as isolated ‘episodes,’ but as more or less permanent features of contemporary reality. The pattern of perpetual crisis that characterized 2014—an essential indicator of the advanced state of global capitalist disequilibrium—will continue with even greater intensity in 2015.”

In defending its rule, the ruling class seeks to cover over the reality of capitalism beneath a mass of lies and hypocrisy. War is cloaked in the language of freedom and democracy; antisocial domestic policy is portrayed as the pursuit of equality and freedom. But—and this is characteristic of a period of crisis—more and more, the essential nature of capitalism—a system of exploitation, inequality, war and repression—comes into alignment with the everyday experiences of broad masses of people. Illusions are dispelled; the essence appears.

In the sphere of world economy, any expectation of an upturn has given way to the reality of permanent crisis. In the United States, six years into the so-called economic “recovery,” real unemployment remains at near-record highs, wages are under attack, and health care and pensions for millions of Americans are being wiped out. Europe is growing at less than 2 percent a year, and large parts of the European economy—including Greece, the target of brutal austerity measures demanded by the European banks—are in deep recession. China, presented as a possible engine of world economic growth, is slowing sharply. Brazil and much of Latin America are in deep slump. Russia is in recession.

Meanwhile, the easy-money policy of the world’s central banks has produced a new wave of speculative investment, centered in junk bonds and other forms of debt, which is beginning to unravel in a process that parallels the crisis in subprime mortgages prior to 2008.

The essential and intended consequence of government policy over the past seven years has been to vastly increase social inequality. During the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires surged past $7 trillion and the top 1 percent now controls half of the world’s wealth. In the US, the scale of social inequality—and therefore political inequality—is so great that one recent scientific study concluded that “the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.”

The economic crisis intersects with and intensifies geopolitical conflicts, which in 2015 brought the globe closer to world war than at any time in the past half-century. Virtually every part of the world has either become a battlefield or is assuming the character of a potential battlefield. The Middle East has been propelled into a regional civil war stoked by the imperialist powers, with Syria now the target of an intensified war drive waged under the guise of a new “war on terror.” Eastern Europe is being remilitarized as part of the US and NATO’s campaign against Russia. In East Asia, the US is staging provocations against China over the South China Sea. In Africa, US and European forces are planning operations in Libya, Cameroon, Nigeria and other countries.

Imperialism operates with a level of ruthlessness and criminality that can be compared only to the period of the first half of the 20th century. Entire countries are being torn apart. Atrocities—like the deliberate bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in October—are carried out with no consequences. Wars are launched without even the pretense of international legality.

Great power conflict—which produced two devastating wars in the 20th century—is again emerging as the basic dynamic of global relations. The relentless war drive of American imperialism is bringing it into conflict not only with Russia and China, but increasingly with other imperialist powers. The past year has seen a major effort by Germany to reassert itself as the principal European power, with calls from politicians, media commentators and academics for the establishment of a “strong state” to enable Germany to fill the role of “taskmaster” of Europe. Once again, the German ruling class is developing plans to “control Europe in order to control the world.”

For masses of people, the essential character of the state as a “body of armed men” dedicated to the defense of class rule is becoming evident. The “war on terror”—intensified following the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino toward the end of the year—is used to justify the abrogation of the formal procedures of bourgeois democracy. France has been placed under a permanent “state of emergency.” The European powers, in response to a massive refugee crisis produced by the military devastation of the Middle East, are erecting barriers and expelling migrants. Under conditions of unending war, fascistic and neo-fascistic forces (the National Front in France, Pegida in Germany, the candidacy of Donald Trump in the US) are growing.

The American ruling class, which employs torture and drone assassination in pursuit of its global ambitions, has built up a colossal apparatus of repression at home. Every day brings new reports of unarmed workers and youth being gunned down in cold blood by police officers who operate, with impunity, as self-appointed executioners.

As in every period of intense crisis, the real class interests represented by different tendencies are exposed. This goes not only for the established bourgeois parties, but also for the “left” parties of the petty bourgeoisie. The central strategic experience for the working class in 2015 was the election in Greece of Syriza, the “Coalition of the Radical Left,” whose coming to power in January was presented as a major turning point in world politics. Over the course of the year, however, Syriza betrayed every one of its election promises and is now implementing the very policies it claimed to oppose. As the year came to a close, elections in Spain showed a significant growth in support for Syriza’s ally, Podemos, with new claims that the era of austerity is over.

In fact, as the experience in Greece demonstrated, parties like Podemos, Syriza and many others internationally are thoroughly hostile to the working class. Politically and theoretically, they are rooted in the anti-Marxist conceptions of postmodernism, obsessed with race, sex and gender. The past year has not only exposed the political bankruptcy of the pseudo-left, but contributed to a growing realization that what has been called “left” is, in fact, only one expression of the general rightward movement of bourgeois politics as a whole.

What these experiences prove is that there is no alternative except the revolutionary mobilization of the working class in opposition to the capitalist system.

Against this background, the final and most decisive expression of the capitalist crisis is the intensification of class struggle and the growing signs of the emergence of the working class as an independent force. There is deep and profound anger and opposition that is continually erupting in different forms—strikes, protests, demonstrations—which the ruling class seeks to isolate and suppress through a combination of violence and the mobilization of its auxiliary agencies in the pseudo-left and the trade unions.

In the final months of the past year, opposition among US autoworkers brought them into conflict with both the auto companies and the corporatist United Auto Workers union. The efforts of American workers, paralleled in countries throughout the world, to break through the barriers erected by the reactionary unions are entering a new stage. This process, though in its initial stages, will become increasingly pronounced. The period in which the class struggle has been artificially suppressed, in which opposition to war, inequality and dictatorship has been excluded from political life, is coming to an end.

The past year was not lived in vain. Workers all over the world are beginning to draw the lessons, to acquire a greater consciousness of the social and political forces they confront. In this regard, it is significant that the struggle of autoworkers corresponded to a sharp growth in the readership of the World Socialist Web Site, as thousands of workers turned to the WSWS as a source of truth and perspective. This can and will be repeated on an ever-larger scale in countless forms in the coming period.

Political problems are posed with enormous sharpness. That capitalism confronts an existential crisis is now self-evident. The question raised is: How will this crisis be resolved? Which will develop more rapidly, the tendency toward world war and dictatorship or the tendency toward socialist revolution? That is the great question that is posed as the New Year begins.