Entertainment Is the Army’s Partner in This War: New Age Islam's Selection, 06 March 2017
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
06 March 2017
• Entertainment Is the Army’s Partner in This War
By Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran
• The Iraqi Parliament Does Not Deserve This
By Adnan Hussein
• How Trump's Immigration Policies Could Cost The Economy
By Patricia Sabga
• Undaunted By Close Calls, Iraqi Soldier Returns To Battle Daesh
By Scott Peterson
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Entertainment Is the Army’s Partner in This War
By Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran
4 March 2017
There’s something on this earth with its water, mountains and hills that’s worth living. Arts flourished when spirits were innocent and when they found great pleasure in the sound of the rebab, performed the Samri dance and celebrated weddings to the music of drums. Songs in their general concept are lived from the sunrise to the sunset. They live with the nature, the mud, the fresh evergreen and the dance-like walks to rugged mountains.
Art has been part of the soul and part of one’s inherent right. It was never a luxury. Even during the worst times of famine, people sang despite the burning hot temperatures and their torn soles.
The innocent society lived through an unimaginable storm. Those with a mourning spirit delivered politicized preaching and brought people out of the bliss of innocence, love, art and joy and took them into the hell of doubt urging them to waste away life. When we went to war, the drums played Ardah music as the war was declared. There’s no contradiction between deriving power from art and angering enemies with war poetry. The Ardah became linked to the unification wars King Abdulaziz led. The sound of the drum while reading Ardah poems causes panic and weakens the enemy. Therefore, there’s absolutely no contradiction between war and art.
During the wars he led, Adolf Hitler was fond of Richard Wagner and particularly of his piece The Valkyrie. He named one of his army forces after it. The role of this music was clearly depicted in Tom Cruise’s movie Valkyrie which was released in 2008. The movie is about the 20 July plot by German officers to assassinate Hitler. The song is played in certain scenes throughout the movie. This piece brings most children to tears due to its military and fierce vengeful rhythm. Politicians employed art like they should in war and there are countless examples to that.
War and art both play part in the will of survival. Art is war and dancing is like war, it resists stillness and depicts an image of power. Late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz mastered the Saudi Ardah in such an exceptional manner. It’s such an artistic and martial dance! As Georges Canguilhem put it, war is conflict and it entails creating risks and suffering. And so is art. What’s strange is that those who oppose art under the excuse of war believe Hollywood is carrying out an ideological invasion. So why do they view it as an invasion there but think it’s reckless and leads to disintegration here?
History and Wisdom
If we take a look at Greece’s history, we’d see how arts revived in wars as they nurtured and empowered the society. It’s through art that they showed how relaxed the society was and how it was not in crisis while managing the war. In this case, art sends a message to infuriate the enemy. The war is led by courageous men. People in towns and cities will listen to works of art which conveys the message that they’re enjoying art and they are completely relaxed. They do so instead of spreading discouragement as if the enemy has won a round!
In his book Wisdom of the West, Bertrand Russell writes about the history of arts’ development in Greece. He wrote: “In a short time, that’s no more than two centuries, Greek cleverness overflowed in the arenas of art, literature and philosophy. The Greeks created masterpieces that ever since have been a general measure of western civilization.”
Let’s take Greece, its wars and arts as an example. In the book The History of Political Philosophy from Thucydides until Spinosa, David Bolton published a research about Thucydides (400 B.C.) and wrote: “Pericles spoke in detail about what the Athenians said in Sparta. He addressed the Athenian people and described them as people who love beauty and wisdom. In addition, he commended the Athenians for their desire to be brave in the battle without needing to depend on a long and tiresome training.” Bolton added that the city with all its details, including art, is part of the martial power, because in this case it will be a complete city. Bolton also wrote: “The Athenians willingly chose to employ their intellect and other talents to serve the city. They were also willing to risk their lives for it. To them and according to how they view themselves, this is part of what made them noble.” Bolton also wrote in detail about how war also sends civilian messages as art reflects the peak of stability. Darkness and sensing fear contradict the aim of war which is to solidify stability and the will to stay. They must incite fear, terror and horror to break the enemy and they can do so via weapons, imagery and sound, through poetry and statements and through music and display of arts.
Entertainment is not luxury but it’s an inherent right that’s linked to the individual and part of man’s existence in this world. In his book “What is Literature?” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that it’s not about choosing the times in which we live but in choosing how to be during these times.
Fahad Shoqiran is a Saudi writer and researcher who also founded the Riyadh philosophers group. His writings have appeared in pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Alarabiya.net, among others. He also blogs on philosophies, cultures and arts.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/03/04/Entertainment-is-the-army-s-partner-in-this-war.html
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The Iraqi Parliament Does Not Deserve This
By Adnan Hussein
4 March 2017
The new fierce attack – as Iraqi parliament speaker Salim al-Jabbouri put it – against the parliament was launched by patriotic media figures and social media activists. It was particularly launched by the civilians in the past two days. However, those who launched the campaign do not have the right to what they’re saying and writing as they should have been patient a little and waited a while before speaking out.
If they had waited a little before getting too comfortable drowning the media and electronic space with their “fierce” attack in which they used slogans of woe and darkness, made grave statements against the “people’s representatives” and protested to condemn their decisions, they would have heard the wise opinion of State of Law Coalition – the political bloc of the Islamic ad-Dawa Party - Member of Parliament Haidar al-Kaabi.
In a clear and frank address, Kaabi said the MPs’ nominal monthly salary increase of 1 million dinars will not be retroactive. This is equal to the entire wage of an employee who worked in the state for around 20 years after attaining a bachelor degree which many of the MPs themselves do not have and it may one day turn out that some of them entered the legislation institution using forged degrees or degrees they attained thanks to their connections. According to Alsumaria News, Kaabi said the salary increase will be paid starting February.
No Shame
After this announcement, we must thank Kaabi and voice appreciation for reassuring us as such. We actually must go ahead and kiss the foreheads of all the MPs, and their speaker in particular, as they deserve this for being humble and for making concessions and accepting that their massive salary increase is not retroactive!
Patriotic media figures and civilian social media activists transformed into fierce predators - as the parliament speaker saw them - that are eating the flesh of the MPs. These poor people, i.e. the MPs, spend their entire time among those who voted for them. They listen to their complaints and work with them to solve their problems. This is why they spend millions of dinars on hosting them and on going from a town to another. Statements about the MPs’ weekly touristic travels to Amman, Beirut, Dubai, Cairo and oversees are “fabrications by the people’s enemies” as Mr. Jabbouri also put it in his statement on Sunday. The parliament speaker must be recalling what American President Donald Trump is repeating these days against media figures who criticize his racial stances and policies.
If what’s reported by Bukhari that the Prophet Mohammed said: “If you feel no shame, then do whatever you wish” is true then the prophet must have specifically known that there will come a time when Iraq will have a parliament whose members have no shame and do whatever they want without any social or national inhibitions.
Adnan Hussein is the executive editor-in-chief of Al-Mada newspaper and head of the National Union of Iraqi journalists. Previously, he has held the position of Managing Editor in Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.
Source: english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2017/03/04/The-Iraqi-parliament-does-not-deserve-this.html
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How Trump's Immigration Policies Could Cost the Economy
By Patricia Sabga
06 March 2017
To get an idea of how undocumented immigrants are responding to President Trump's crackdown, I spoke to Natalia Aristizabal, co-organising director of New York-based Make the Road, a non-profit organisation working with Latino and working-class communities.
"What I've seen from folks is a yearning to fight back," she told me. "Our basic model right now is that we're here to stay and we're not going to go out without a fight."
Arizitzabal noted that resistance is strongest among so-called Dreamers; unauthorised youth who were brought to the US as children, some of whom were granted temporary relief from deportation under President Barack Obama. "Those are the folks I hear even more of a defiant tone of I'm not going anywhere," she said.
That kind of attitude is not surprising, given that immigrants tend to be highly motivated risk-takers with a strong work ethic; attributes that help explain why liberal, conservative, and libertarian think-tanks in the United States may diverge on policy recommendations for undocumented workers, but agree that immigration benefits the economy.
But in the Trump era, policy arguments based on robust research must compete with populist appeals.
Trump has cast unauthorised immigrants as a competitive threat to "vulnerable American workers", a narrative that helps to explain why his sweeping new criteria for deporting undocumented immigrants resonates with his white-working class supporters struggling with unemployment, poor job security and low wages (PDF).
Though framing the US labour market in terms of simplistic cause and effect may be a sound political tactic, the argument that deporting undocumented immigrants en masse will be good for the American jobs market is fundamentally unsound.
First, it is far from clear that undocumented workers even take jobs from American workers. Moreover, the US economy is not a set of unrelated, parallel causes and effects, but a complex ecosystem in which one dramatic change can alter the entire environment.
Undocumented Farm Workers and Your Grocery Bill
Pew Research estimates that there were around eight million undocumented workers in the US in 2014. That's roughly 5 percent of the workforce. "Deporting 5 percent of the workforce would disrupt business activity," said Yelena Shulyatyeva senior US economist at Bloomberg Intelligence.
She also pointed out that the six states with the highest concentration of undocumented workers account for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the country.
"Undocumented workers often fill low-wage jobs such as maintenance and farm work," she said. "Labour shortages could lead to an inflation spike due to severe upward wage pressures."
While American workers could undoubtedly use a raise, a sudden and dramatic wage "spike" can have a destructive ripple effect.
Take the example of your weekly grocery bill. If Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants leads to a shortage of farm workers, employers will probably have to raise pay to attract new ones.
That cost can be passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices. And struggling Americans do not need to pay more for a litre of milk or a head of lettuce.
Of course, grocery stores could choose to substitute expensive homegrown fruit, vegetables and dairy for less expensive imports, but while that would spare consumers' budgets, it could drive US farmers out of business, which would destroy jobs. That's the economic ecosystem.
US Economic Growth
There is also the broader economy to consider when gauging the potential impact of dramatically escalated deportations.
Growth is good for an economy. The more it grows, the more jobs are created and the more workers can demand a decent wage and job security.
Some economists argue that undocumented workers are a significant source of economic growth. A recent paper by economists Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega estimated that undocumented workers contribute 3 percent of all goods and services produced by the private sector in the US. That amounts to about $5 trillion over 10 years.
Eliminating that growth by deporting millions of undocumented workers would be a huge blow to the US economy and cost jobs. How many? Edwards and Ortega estimate that deporting seven million undocumented workers could slash employment "by an amount similar to that experienced during the Great Recession".
Future Competitiveness
The future of the labour market hinges on innovation, which is crucial for keeping the US economy competitive in a globalised world. In his address to Congress this week, President Trump called for a "merit-based" immigration system. Whether the aim is to allow more high-skilled, highly educated workers into the US, or simply to keep out low-skilled ones is unclear.
Either way, between the well-publicised turmoil and courtroom drama surrounding Trump's ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations, reports of revoked visas and over-zealous border control agents threatening, harassing and detaining travellers including green card holders, and the racially motivated, fatal shooting of an Indian engineer in a Kansas bar - which Trump denounced nearly a week after the event - the president's opening days in office have arguably fostered an inhospitable climate for current and aspiring documented immigrants.
That could damage the US economy if it dissuades foreign-born students from seeking degrees in the country. A 2011 study by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank, found that an additional 100 foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields with advanced degrees from US universities created 262 jobs for citizens born in the US.
If students feel unwelcome or unsafe studying on US shores, there are other countries where they can earn degrees, and settle down to become job creators.
Immigrants are also at the forefront of many cutting edge tech companies. A recent study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that more than half of US start-up companies worth at least $1bn had one or more immigrant founders; a list that includes the likes of Elon Musk's Space X, which employs around 5,000 people (PDF).
Winners, Losers and Resisters
There are those in the economic ecosystem who stand to benefit from Trump's immigration policies. Firms that build and operate prisons could profit handsomely from the executive order instructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to immediately build and operate new detention facilities.
But weigh that against all the potential negatives outlined above, not to mention the price tag for detaining and deporting undocumented workers and preventing future entry, which the American Action Forum estimated would cost taxpayers between $400bn to $600bn.
It is important to remember that while Trump promised to deport two to three million undocumented workers, there is no hard data yet to prove that mass deportations are under way.
While we wait for the data to roll in, Americans may want to consider what will make the economy stronger in the future: another detention prison or another Elon Musk?
Patricia Sabga is an economics and global affairs journalist based in New York.
Source: aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/03/trump-immigration-policies-cost-economy-170304110347861.html
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Undaunted By Close Calls, Iraqi Soldier Returns to Battle Daesh
By Scott Peterson
March 5, 2017
Even by the dramatic standards of Iraq's battle against Daesh in western Mosul, soldier Mohamed Selman Methboub had a very big day
As the Iraqi military intelligence officer drove a Humvee in the contested Wadi Hajar district on Tuesday, a Daesh sniper shot his turret gunner square in the forehead, killing him immediately. Misan was a close friend.
His team left the area, only to be interrupted by a distress call that prompted Mohamed to turn and drive back to aid an American armoured vehicle stuck in a ditch and under mortar and sniper fire. During the rescue, Daesh sniper rounds smashed into Mohamed's windshield and engine, but his team managed to pull the US rig out and guide it to safety.
"I didn't leave the Americans until I arrived in Hamam Al Alil," says Mohamed, referring to a safe staging area just south of Mosul. He recounted the incident just hours later, as I met him late in the evening by the roadside near an Iraqi base in Qayarrah, 40 miles south of Mosul. A hug of greeting - we have known each other since 2002, when The Christian Science Monitor started following his family as it dealt with the effects of the Iraq war - produces a puff of battlefield dust from his uniform of digitised camouflage.
"One of their [Iraqi] translators, when we arrived, he kissed me from here to here," the usually soft-spoken Mohamed said, laughing as he gestured from cheek to cheek.
"I swear by God I saved their lives," he said, suddenly sober, noting that the US Army colonel in charge of the American unit also sought him out to express his gratitude.
Mohamed's day of extreme loss and gains comes as Iraqi forces take high casualties as they advance on the warren of roads in western Mosul. They aim to deliver a deathblow to Daesh's self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which was announced in June 2014 after Daesh militants crossed from Syria and seized one-third of Iraq in a lightning offensive.
A military intelligence officer since 2006, Mohamed threw himself back into the fight last year after barely surviving a Daesh ambush in 2014 - exemplifying the passion and unmistakable fearlessness some Iraqis are bringing to the grinding battle to extract Daesh from its last urban stronghold in their country.
The Mosul offensive began last October with a 100-day push that liberated the eastern side of the city, on the east bank of the Tigris River.
"Progress is very good, is very strong," says the Iraqi officer, referring to the second phase of the fight. "Actually, we try to finish the battle as soon as possible."
On the day we met, he says he counted the corpses of 17 Daesh fighters, most with identity cards marking them as Russian nationals, from Chechnya and Dagestan, and one from China.
Overall, the Daesh bodies that his unit has found in Mosul are 60 per cent Iraqi, and 40 per cent foreigners, says Mohamed.
Our meeting is brief: We quickly try to catch up while sitting in an SUV pulled over on the side of the street, beside the closed stalls of the Qayarrah market. Ambulances with lights flashing pass by repeatedly. Mohamad is returning at 4am, in just a few hours, to Wadi Hajar - the same district where he just lost his turret gunner.
The thrust to capture western Mosul began on February 19, with an estimated 750,000 civilians still living in that congested part of Iraq's second city, which at its peak was home to more than two million people. The United Nations said on March 2 that those in the west "remain largely inaccessible to humanitarians, sheltering from the fighting, or waiting for an opportune time to flee."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimates that 191,800 people are still displaced by the fighting - the bulk of the 255,708 that have been cumulatively displaced since October - with 85 per cent living in camps or emergency sites.
Civilians have been caught in the crossfire, too. Since October, some 1,776 received trauma care in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, UN figures show. From early January to February 22, another 618 civilians were treated for trauma injuries at a surgical hospital closer to Mosul.
But the war will be won on the ever-changing front lines in western Mosul, where, like the eastern side, dilapidated streets show the signs of nearly three years of Daesh rule - jihadist graffiti, and Daesh targets flattened by US-led coalition air strikes. Exit routes to Syria have been severed, and several thousand jihadists are expected to fight to the death using favoured tactics like suicide car bombs, snipers, and, more recently, small quad-copter drones rigged to drop grenades and small explosives.
Mohamed's unit, which he has belonged to for more than a decade, is a window on the scale of Iraqi casualties, and what motivates those who fight. Mohamed is the personal driver of an Iraqi general - a rank that in most armies would rarely be on the front line itself. And yet, beside losing his turret gunner on February 28, another incident just two days earlier saw an Daesh mortar hit the back of Mohamed's vehicle, killing two and badly injuring a third member of his team.
Mohamed escaped unscathed - he had briefly moved away from the vehicle - and the general was elsewhere.
"Actually, I lose a lot of vehicles," says Mohamed matter-of-factly. He had another close call earlier in the Mosul campaign, when an Daesh suicide car bomb destroyed all the vehicles around him, and blackened his own - but left him untouched.
"My life is for God, whether I die or not," says the Shiite Muslim, whose family is very devout. "I'm a soldier, I think about my country. I'm not in a [sectarian] militia. I'm a soldier. That's my duty; I have to do it."
"I am not afraid, because I want to go to fight - either to die, or to live life," says Mohamed. "So why be scared?"
Not all Iraqi soldiers are so sanguine, or so calm. They are part of force that has been resurrected from the ashes of June 2014, when much of the Iraqi Army disintegrated before the offensive of Daesh fighters crossing from Syria to seize a chunk of Iraq. Rebuilding has taken time, yet Iraq's security forces have made significant military gains over the past year.
Mosul is the final push. But not all fighters are as committed as Mohamed.
"A lot of friends of mine, when they get home and they take their salary, they don't want to go back anymore, they say, 'I quit the Iraqi Army,'" says Mohamed. "They are afraid. They say, 'I know I will die, so why go to fight?' "
Those calculations mean less to Mohamed, for whom this anti-Daesh battle is personal. In that June onslaught three years ago, Daesh ambushed his convoy near the central Iraqi city of Samarra. A fragment from a 12.7mm anti-aircraft bullet tore through his body at the start of a nine-hour firefight, during which Mohamed was forced to man a heavy machine gun even as he nearly expired from blood loss.
Mohamed was one of just three in his truck full of nine soldiers to survive, and the 50-vehicle convoy suffered a host of casualties. He received life-saving treatment in Baghdad, then more critical surgery in Iran, organised by this reporter and largely funded by a Monitor reader who had long tracked the family's well being.
Reflecting quietly as we sit in the vehicle near the market, Mohamed recalls how, from his hospital bed in Tehran in mid-2014, he had vowed that he would eventually recover, rejoin the Iraqi Army, and fight Daesh in Mosul.
"I told them that I want to fight. I don't want to stay in a stable place," says Mohamed. "That's why I put my name on the list. I want to fight Daesh. That's my wish."
Through his stubble and uneven teeth, Mohamed bears the rounded features and sharp eyes of his mother, Karima Selman Methboub, the matriarch widow of a poverty-stricken Baghdad family whose has raised her eight children alone. At 32, he is relaxed and confident, if slightly heavier and more serious than when I first met him as a teenager.
Interestingly, there is a ritual he engages in before he goes home, where his young family lives with his mother and siblings. Before each break, he stops off at a shop on Baghdad's Saadoun Street to buy a new uniform. "Do you know why?" asks Mohamed, with a mischievous smile. "Because when my friend, my team is wounded, I carry them, and there's a lot of blood on my uniform. I don't want my family to see that."
What he wants them to know instead, and respect, is his determination to rid Iraq of Daesh militants who have already put him and his family through such pain since 2014.
"Am I happy?" he asks. "Of course. I want to liberate my country."
Source: khaleejtimes.com/region/mena/undaunted-by-close-calls-iraqi-soldier-returns-to-battle-daesh
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URL: https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/entertainment-army’s-partner-this-war/d/110293