position:professor of political science

The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/28/the-u-s-is-wrong-about-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-arab-world-is-suffering-for-it/?noredirect=on

Texte intégral de l’article:
By Jamal Khashoggi

August 28, 2018
During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement.
That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent book “Into the Hands of the Soldiers,” which was released this month. A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Kirkpatrick gives a sad account of Egypt’s 2013 coup that led to the loss of a great opportunity to reform the entire Arab world and allow a historic change that might have freed the region from a thousand years of tyranny.
The United States’s aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes. In turn, this will mean the continuation of the causes behind revolution, extremism and refugees — all of which have affected the security of Europe and the rest of the world. Terrorism and the refugee crisis have changed the political mood in the West and brought the extreme right to prominence there.
There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is allowed. It seems clear then that the only way to prevent political Islam from playing a role in Arab politics is to abolish democracy, which essentially deprives citizens of their basic right to choose their political representatives.
Shafeeq Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, explains the problem in this way: “The Arab regimes’ war on the Brotherhood does not target the movement alone, but rather targets those who practice politics, who demand freedom and accountability, and all who have a popular base in society.” A quick look at the political degradation that has taken place in Egypt since the military’s return to power confirms what Ghabra says. President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s regime has cracked down on the Islamists and arrested some 60,000 of them. Now it has extended its heavy hand against both secular and military figures, even those who supported him in the coup. In today’s Egypt, political life is totally dead.
It is wrong to dwell on political Islam, conservatism and identity issues when the choice is between having a free society tolerant of all viewpoints and having an oppressive regime. Five years of Sissi’s rule in Egypt makes this point clear.
There are efforts here in Washington, encouraged by some Arab states that do not support freedom and democracy, to persuade Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If they succeed, the designation will weaken the fragile steps toward democracy and political reform that have already been curbed in the Arab world. It will also push backward the Arab countries that have made progress in creating a tolerant environment and allowing political participation by various components of society, including the Islamists.
Islamists today participate in the parliaments of various Arab countries such as Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia and Morocco. This has led to the emergence of Islamic democracy, such as the Ennahda movement in Tunisia, and the maturing of democratic transformation in the other countries.
The coup in Egypt led to the loss of a precious opportunity for Egypt and the entire Arab world. If the democratic process had continued there, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political practices could have matured and become more inclusive, and the unimaginable peaceful rotation of power could have become a reality and a precedent to be followed.
The Trump administration always says it wants to correct Obama’s mistakes. It should add his mishandling of Arab democracy to its list. Obama erred when he wasted the precious opportunity that could have changed the history of the Arab world, and when he caved to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from members of his own administration. They all missed the big picture and were governed by their intolerant hatred for any form of political Islam, a hatred that has destroyed Arabs’ choice for democracy and good governance.

#démocratie #Islam #pays-arabes #Egypte #Sissi #Morsi #Révolutions-arabes #Trump #Etats-Unis #coup-d'état

Can Islamist moderates remake the politics of the Muslim world? - CSMonitor.com

▻https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2018/0919/Can-Islamist-moderates-remake-the-politics-of-the-Muslim-world

By Taylor Luck Correspondent

AMMAN, JORDAN; TUNIS, TUNISIA; KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
Alaa Faroukh insists he is the future. After nearly a decade in the Muslim Brotherhood, he says that he has finally found harmony between his faith and politics, not as a hardcore Islamist, but as a “Muslim democrat.”

“We respect and include minorities, we fight for women’s rights, we respect different points of view, we are democratic both in our homes and in our politics – that is how we honor our faith,” Mr. Faroukh says.

The jovial psychologist with a toothy smile, who can quote Freud as easily as he can recite the Quran, is speaking from his airy Amman clinic, located one floor below the headquarters of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, the very movement he left.

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“The time of divisive politics of older Islamists is over, and everyone in my generation agrees,” says the 30-something Faroukh. “The era of political Islam is dead.”

Faroukh is symbolic of a shift sweeping through parts of the Arab world. From Tunisia to Egypt to Jordan, many Islamist activists and some established Islamic organizations are adopting a more progressive and moderate tone in their approach to politics and governing. They are reaching out to minorities and secular Muslims while doing away with decades-old political goals to impose their interpretation of Islam on society.

Taylor Luck
“The time of divisive politics of older Islamists is over, and everyone in my generation agrees. The era of political Islam is dead,” says Alaa Faroukh, a young Jordanian who left the Muslim Brotherhood for a moderate political party.
Part of the move is simple pragmatism. After watching the Muslim Brotherhood – with its call for sharia (Islamic law) and failure to reach out to minorities and secular Muslims – get routed in Egypt, and the defeat of other political Islamic groups across the Arab world, many Islamic activists believe taking a more moderate stance is the only way to gain and hold power. Yet others, including many young Muslims, believe a deeper ideological shift is under way in which Islamist organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of religious tolerance and political pluralism in modern societies. 

Think you know the Greater Middle East? Take our geography quiz.
While Islamist movements remain the largest and most potent political movement in the region, a widespread adoption of democratic principles by their followers could transform the discourse in a region where politics are often bound to identity and are bitterly polarized.

“We believe that young Jordanians and young Arabs in general see that the future is not in partisan politics, but in cooperation, understanding, and putting the country above petty party politics,” says Rheil Gharaibeh, the moderate former head of the Jordanian Brotherhood’s politburo who has formed his own political party.

Is this the beginning of a fundamental shift in the politics of the Middle East or just an expedient move by a few activists?

*

Many Islamist groups say their move to the center is a natural step in multiparty politics, but this obscures how far their positions have truly shifted in a short time.

Some 20 years ago, the manifesto of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Sunni Islamic political group with affiliates across the Arab world – called for the implementation of sharia and gender segregation at universities, and commonly employed slogans such as “Islam is the solution.”

In 2011, the Arab Spring uprisings swept these Islamist movements into power or installed them as the leading political force from the Arab Gulf to Morocco, sparking fears of an Islamization of Arab societies.

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But instead of rolling back women’s rights, the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda pushed through gender equality laws and helped write the most progressive, gender-equal constitution in the Arab world. The Moroccan Justice and Development Party (PJD) has played down its Islamic rhetoric, abandoning talk of Islamic identity and sharia and instead speaking about democratic reform and human rights. And the Brotherhood in Jordan traded in its slogan “Islam is the solution” for “the people demand reform” and “popular sovereignty for all.”

The past few years have seen an even more dramatic shift to the center. Not only have Islamist movements dropped calls for using sharia as a main source of law, but they nearly all now advocate for a “civil state”­ – a secular nation where the law, rather than holy scriptures or the word of God, is sovereign.

Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
Supporters of the National Alliance for Reform rally in Amman, Jordan, in 2016. They have rebranded themselves as a national rather than an Islamic movement.
In Morocco and Jordan, Islamist groups separated their religious activities – preaching, charitable activities, and dawa (spreading the good word of God) – from their political branches. In 2016, Ennahda members in Tunisia went one step further and essentially eliminated their religious activities altogether, rebranding themselves as “Muslim democrats.”

Islamist moderates say this shift away from religious activities to a greater focus on party politics is a natural step in line with what President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has done with his Justice and Development Party in Turkey, or even, they hope, with the Christian democrats in Europe: to become movements inspired by faith, not governing through faith.

“While we are a Muslim country, we are aware that we do not have one interpretation of religion and we will not impose one interpretation of faith over others,” says Mehrezia Labidi, a member of the Tunisian Parliament and Ennahda party leader. “As Muslim democrats we are guided by Islamic values, but we are bound by the Constitution, the will of the people, and the rule of law for all.”

Experts say this shift is a natural evolution for movements that are taking part in the decisionmaking process for the first time after decades in the opposition.

“As the opposition, you can refuse, you can criticize, you can obstruct,” says Rachid Mouqtadir, professor of political science at Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco, and an expert in Islamist movements. “But when you are in a coalition with other parties and trying to govern, the parameters change, your approach changes, and as a result your ideology changes.”

The trend has even gone beyond the borders of the Arab world. The Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM), founded in 1971 by Malaysian university students inspired by the Brotherhood and now one of the strongest civil society groups in the country, is also shedding the “Islamist” label.

In addition to running schools and hospitals, ABIM now hosts interfaith concerts, partners on projects with Christians and Buddhists, and even reaches out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists in its campaign for social justice.

“We are in the age of post-political Islam,” says Ahmad Fahmi Mohd Samsudin, ABIM vice president, from the movement’s headquarters in a leafy Kuala Lumpur suburb. “That means when we say we stand for Islam, we stand for social justice and equality for all – no matter their faith or background.”

*

The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it - The Washington Post

By Jamal Khashoggi
August 28 at 3:26 PM

▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/28/the-u-s-is-wrong-about-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-arab-world-is-

During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement.

That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent book “Into the Hands of the Soldiers,” which was released this month. A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Kirkpatrick gives a sad account of Egypt’s 2013 coup that led to the loss of a great opportunity to reform the entire Arab world and allow a historic change that might have freed the region from a thousand years of tyranny.

She Left #Harvard. He Got to Stay.

Did the university’s handling of one professor’s sexual-harassment complaint keep other women from coming forward for decades?

Karl’s first semester at Harvard went well. Her course evaluations were excellent, she remembers. When Domínguez came by her office one day that summer, he wrapped her in his arms and tried to kiss her. She pulled away, though she didn’t make a scene. She didn’t want to offend him. Domínguez offered a parting suggestion: Don’t spend too much time on students, he said, because teaching is not what Harvard rewards.

She mentioned the hug and kiss to some friends, but didn’t report him to administrators. She hoped it was an aberration.

That fall, Harvard hosted a dinner that included, as a guest, the former president of Venezuela, Rafael Caldera. Karl had done research in Venezuela, and had gotten to know Caldera. When she arrived at the dinner, Domínguez greeted her then turned to Caldera and said, “Conoce a Terry. Ella es mi esclava.”

Translation: “You know Terry. She is my slave.”

Domínguez asked for a ride home that night, as he often did. She had come to dread those requests, but it was hard to say no. In the car, she confronted him about the comment. He told her he was surprised that she was offended. That’s when he kissed her and slid his hand up her skirt, telling her he would be the next department chairman, decide her promotion, review her book. Karl froze. She had never even heard the term “sexual harassment,” but she knew what was going on. “I’m feeling like somebody is asking for sexual favors in return for a good review,” she says.

Later, she would scold herself for being naïve, for not recognizing what seemed, in retrospect, like an obvious ploy. She also told herself she could handle it. “You try to minimize it,” she says. “OK, this just happened in the hotel, and I’m going to lunch with him and I’m going to say ‘Don’t ever do this again’ and it’s going to be OK. You tell yourself over and over, ‘It’s going to be OK.’”

Considering his previous behavior, Karl took the statement as a threat. “At this point, I became physically afraid of him,” she would later write when describing the incident in a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was determined never to be alone with him again.

At the end of July 1983, Karl and Domínguez signed an agreement, one she hoped would offer some measure of protection. Domínguez promised to “conduct himself in the future at all times in a fashion respectful” of Karl. In August, Rosovsky wrote in a letter to Karl that Domínguez’s “repeated sexual advances and certain other deprecating actions” amounted to a “serious abuse of authority — for which he is fully responsible.” Along with being temporarily removed from administrative responsibilities, he was also forbidden from reviewing Karl’s work or taking part in discussions about her promotion. As for Karl, she was given three semesters of paid leave, and her tenure clock was put on hold for two years. In addition, Rosovsky said that administrators would talk more about sexual-harassment procedures and that the faculty council might address it.

But the books weren’t closed yet. Karl was hearing rumors that made her worried about her reputation. In October Domínguez met with a number of graduate students, including Philip Oxhorn, now a professor of political science at McGill University. Oxhorn recalls that Domínguez told the students what happened was “a love affair gone bad, and that he was as much a victim as Terry, if not more so.” Another graduate student who was at that meeting, Cynthia Sanborn, now research vice president at the University of the Pacific, in Peru, later described it in a letter to Rosovsky: “[Domínguez] clearly implied that his harassment of the junior professor in this case was actually a ’misunderstanding,’ and if he could only tell us his side of the story we would see things differently,” she wrote.

Meanwhile Domínguez steadily climbed the ladder at Harvard. In 1995, he was selected as director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, a post previously occupied by scholarly heavyweights like Samuel Huntington and Robert Putnam. In 2006, he was made vice provost for international affairs, and, in 2014, he and Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, traveled to Mexico City together as part of the university’s international outreach. In 2016, a dissertation prize was set up in Domínguez’s honor at the university’s Latin American-studies center. Originally the prize, and the $54,000 raised to support it, was to be given through the Latin American Studies Association, but when some who knew about Domínguez’s behavior, including Philip Oxhorn, caught wind of the plan, they worked behind the scenes to scuttle it. “This was not a man who deserved that kind of recognition,” Oxhorn says.

Karl believes Harvard administrators played down her many complaints, attempting to mollify her rather than dealing with a difficult situation head-on. Harvard refused, as some universities still do, to publicly name the person responsible. They also let him stay, and promoted him, which sent a signal that Karl believes discouraged others from coming forward. If they hadn’t done that, "then these women who experienced harassment in the 1990s and 2000s, it wouldn’t have happened, or they would have known that someone would be punished if they were harassed,” she says. “That’s the great enabling. It’s why the silence is so terrible.”

▻https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/harvard-harassment
#université #harcèlement_sexuel #injustice #Teddy_Karl #témoignage

Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/world/europe/afd-unions-social-democrats.html?mabReward=ART_TS7&recid=10QNLdudNovobmvNWE

BOTTROP, Germany — Guido Reil is a coal miner, like his father and grandfather before him. He joined a trade union at 18 and the center-left Social Democratic Party at 20. Fast-talking and loud, he has been an elected union representative for over a decade.

But two years ago, after the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Germany, Mr. Reil switched to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. Competing in state legislative elections last May, the party won 20 percent of the vote in his home district with his name on its list — and the Social Democrats slipped 16 percentage points from a previous election.

“Those are my former comrades,” Mr. Reil said, chuckling. “They came with me.”

How is a far-right party drawing voters from labor, a traditional bastion of the left? The question is not academic, but goes directly to the heart of the emerging threat the AfD presents to Germany’s political establishment, including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The AfD shocked Germany in the fall when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II. But that breakthrough not only shattered a significant postwar taboo. It has also enormously complicated the task of forming a new governing coalition, leaving Germany and all of Europe in months of limbo.

Ms. Merkel and her conservative alliance are negotiating a coalition deal with their former governing partners, the left-leaning Social Democrats. If they do, the AfD will be Germany’s primary opposition party, leaving a wide opening for it to pick up even more traditionally left-leaning voters who fear the Social Democrats have been co-opted.
Continue reading the main story

Many fear that the AfD, as the leading voice of the opposition, would have a perfect perch to turn the protest vote it received in national elections in September — it finished third with 13 percent of the vote — into a loyal and sustained following.

“If we go back into government, the AfD will overtake us,” predicted Hilde Mattheis, a Social Democratic lawmaker from Baden-Wurttemberg, where that has already happened.
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Photo
Mr. Reil driving by the Prosper-Haniel mine in Bottrop. He has worked in six mines, five of which have closed. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

The 92 AfD lawmakers, who have been busy moving into their new parliamentary offices in central Berlin, have not been shy about using the spotlight.

One, Jürgen Pohl, recently addressed Parliament and criticized the labor market changes that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democratic Party passed from 2003 to 2005, saying they created a host of poorly regulated, precarious jobs.

The AfD, Mr. Pohl said, “is a new people’s party that cares about the little people.”

When some center-left lawmakers guffawed, Mr. Pohl pointed at the television cameras. “Go ahead and laugh,” he said, “your voters are watching.”

Indeed, they are. The AfD has already overtaken the Social Democrats as the second-biggest party in state elections across much of what was formerly East Germany. In Bavaria, it is not far behind.

But Mr. Reil believes his party has the greatest potential in places like Bottrop, in the Ruhr area, once the industrial heartland of West Germany and long a bastion of Social Democratic and union power.

The Ruhr has produced coal since the 16th century, and it shaped modern Germany in the process. It powered the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the postwar economic miracle and even European integration: The coal and steel community was the seedling of the European Union.

But today, Bottrop and surrounding cities are in decline.

Mr. Reil has worked in six mines, five of which have closed. Along with some 2,500 others, he will take early retirement, at 48, after the last mine ceases production in December.

With the mines, most bars have closed, too, as has a whole social and cultural scene that once kept the area alive.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Mr. Reil won 20 percent of votes in a district where the AfD had never fielded a candidate before. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

The AfD’s “pro-worker” platform (“pro-coal, pro-diesel and anti-immigration,” as Mr. Reil puts it) resonates in Bottrop as well as on the factory floors of Germany’s iconic carmakers in the former east and the wealthy south of the country.

As elections loom nationwide for worker representatives who bargain with management on behalf of their fellow employees, lists of candidates close to the AfD are circulating at several flagship companies, including Daimler and BMW. There are plans to create a new national workers’ movement, Mr. Reil said. The working name is the Alternative Union of Germany.

“The revolution,” he predicted, “will be in the car industry.”

Trade union leaders, currently on strike for higher pay and a 28-hour workweek for those wanting to care for children or elderly relatives, publicly dismiss such talk as “marginal.” But privately, some worry.

One of Mr. Reil’s allies, Oliver Hilburger, a mechanic at a Daimler plant near Stuttgart, founded an alternative union called Zentrum Automobil in 2009, four years before the AfD even existed.

Mr. Hilburger, who has been at the company for 28 years, is not a member of the AfD but he votes for it. He thinks the party and his union are a natural fit.
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When it emerged that he had once played for a band associated with neo-Nazis, the news media reported the fact widely. But that did not stop his colleagues from giving his union 10 percent of their votes and electing him as one of their representatives.

This spring, Mr. Hilburger, who calls his musical past “a sin of youth,” is fielding more than 250 candidates in at least four factories. Several of them, he said, are immigrants who have lived in Germany for years and support the AfD.

“There is a feeling among workers that the old unions collude with the bosses and the government,” Mr. Hilburger said.
Continue reading the main story
Photo
Mr. Reil with AfD supporters during an informal meeting at a bar in Essen. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

“The bosses and the media talk about skills shortages and how we need even more immigration,” he said. “We want to talk about a shortage of decent jobs for those who are already in the country. The AfD has understood that.”

The AfD is ideologically divided, with many senior members staunchly capitalist and suspicious of labor unions.

The strategic focus on the working class speaks to the challenge of turning protest voters into a loyal base, said Oskar Niedermayer, a professor of political science at the Free University in Berlin.

“Breaking into the union milieu is key to that strategy,” Mr. Niedermayer said.

He warned that the reflex to ostracize the AfD could backfire. Some unions are advising members to shun anyone in the AfD. Some soccer clubs are planning to outright bar them. And as Mr. Niedermayer pointed out, lawmakers from other parties have systematically blocked every AfD candidate for senior parliamentary posts.

“It confirms them in their role as victims of the elites,” he said. “Workers who see themselves as victims of the elites will only identify with them more.”

As the AfD appeals to Germany’s left-behinds, it is also trying to tie them to other parts of the party’s agenda, like its hard line on immigration.

For instance, the battle cry of Frank-Christian Hansel, an AfD member of Berlin’s state Parliament, is to save the German welfare state — but for Germans.

“If you want social justice, you need to manage who is coming into your country,” Mr. Hansel said. “Open borders and welfare state don’t go together.”
Continue reading the main story
Photo
An advertising board near the Prosper-Haniel mine. Mr. Reil said the AfD was “pro-coal, pro-diesel and anti-immigration.” Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

It is the kind of rhetoric that sets the AfD apart from the traditional left, even as it goes fishing for voters in Social Democratic waters.

For the AfD, it is not just those at the bottom against those at the top, Mr. Niedermayer said. It is insiders against outsiders. Social justice, yes, but only for Germans.

In Bottrop, this message plays well.

Residents complain about some refugees being prescribed “therapeutic horseback-riding” and courses in flirtation, courtesy of taxpayers, while public schools are in decline.

“They get the renovated social housing, while Germans wait for years,” said Linda Emde, the manager of one of the few remaining bars. “But when you speak up against migration, they call you a racist.”

Ms. Emde had voted for the Social Democrats all her life. But in September, she and her husband switched to the AfD.

Mr. Reil, who never managed to rise through the Social Democrats’ local party hierarchy, is now a member of the AfD’s national leadership team. At the monthly meetings, he sits at the same table as the aristocrat Beatrix von Storch and Alice Weidel, a professor.

The two female lawmakers are perhaps best known for a recent social media rant about “barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men.” But for Mr. Reil, the point of his comment was that he had risen socially.

“What do a miner, a princess and a professor have in common?” he jokes. “They are all in the AfD.”

Follow Katrin Bennhold on Twitter: @kbennhold.

Christopher Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin.

#Allemagne #extrême_droite #syndicalisme

Germany election: U.S. right-wing voices meddling more than Russia
▻https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/09/20/meddling-germany-election-not-russia-but-u-s-right-wing/676142001

An alliance of mostly anonymous online trolls and extremist agitators are meddling in Germany’s election, but researchers say Russians aren’t to blame.

Instead, they say, right-wing groups in the United States are behind materials popping up on YouTube, messaging board sites like 4chan and reddit and texting service Gab.ai.

The evidence comes less than a week before Sunday’s vote that is likely to hand German Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term. 

“So far we have not been able to track down any specific Russian activity,” said Simon Hegelich, a professor of political science data at the Technical University of Munich who has advised the German government about the threat of hacking and false information. 

Hegelich said proving connections among sympathizers is difficult and may never be conclusive. 

But an analysis of 300 million tweets over the past six months by Hegelich and researchers at the Technical University of Munich shows Germany is a hotspot for posts that use the hashtag #AltRight.
[…]
One example: Gaycken said for the past two months, new and existing Facebook users in Germany who search for political discussion groups have been automatically given recommendations that prioritize right-wing parties such as AfD, expected to enter the country’s national parliament for the first time after Sunday’s vote.

“It’s really strange because Facebook says this should be impossible because you are only supposed to get recommendations based on your own ’friends,’ ’groups’ and ’likes.’ But everyone in Germany is getting these right-wing party recommendations,” he said. “Even left-wing journalists.”

Facebook said in a statement it was aware of the issue reported in Germany and that it was related to its “Groups Discover” feature. Facebook has now temporarily turned off the category “news and politics” in the “Discover” tab while it investigates the matter.

Hamas looks to rebrand internationally with new policy document
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/hamas-to-release-soon-new-policy-document-expressing-stances.html

Raed Enairat, a professor of political science at An-Najah National University in Nablus and head of the Contemporary Center for Studies and Policy Analysis, told Al-Monitor that based on what he had gather from leaks, “The Hamas document is not a ticket for Hamas to join the international community, but it is perhaps a step on the path toward breaking out of its isolation. Before allowing Hamas access to its ranks, the international community will have basic demands, such as Hamas recognizing Israel. This would mean that it is still too early for Hamas to replace the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people in regional and international forums and that the document will not speed up this process.”

Also based on leaks about the document, Haaretz correspondent Jack Khoury wrote March 8 that it will stress that peaceful popular struggle against Israel is a legitimate approach, along with armed struggle, a move that could facilitate the movement’s contacts with the international community.

In a March 15 article for the Arabi 21 website, Jordanian political writer Majed Abu Dyak wrote that he had obtained a copy of the document that includes Hamas agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as an interim solution to the conflict with Israel, but without acknowledging the legitimacy of Israeli sovereignty over the land of historic Palestine (that is, recognizing Israel) or waiving refugees’ right to return. If accurate, it would appear that Hamas’ end goal remains Palestinian rule over all of pre-1948 Palestine.

A senior Hamas leader who requested anonymity revealed some procedural details to Al-Monitor, stating, “Hamas began work on the document two years ago. The document has been submitted to the movement’s governing bodies, the political bureau and Shura Council. Legal and political parties inside Hamas are currently editing the document and translating it from Arabic into French and English. Hamas’ current head, Khaled Meshaal, will be presenting the document in late March or early April.”

Read more: ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/hamas-to-release-soon-new-policy-document-expressing-stances.html#ixzz4b

When world leaders thought you shouldn’t need passports or visas, by Speranta Dumitru, Associate Professor of Political Sciences, Université Paris Descartes – USPC
►http://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-need-passports-or-visas-648

http://cdn.theconversation.com/files/138965/width1356x668/image-20160923-29916-b0qghu.jpg

The idea of abolishing passports is almost unthinkable. But in the 20th century, governments considered their “total abolition” as an important goal, and even discussed the issue at several international conferences.

The first passport conference was held in Paris in 1920, under the auspices of the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations). Part of the Committee on Communication and Transit’s aim was to restore the pre-war regime of freedom of movement.

#visas #utopie
►https://visionscarto.net/voyager-sans-visa

Most people move from one non-Western country to another; their stories are rarely told
▻http://africasacountry.com/2016/10/most-people-move-from-one-non-western-country-to-another-their-stor

Immigration to the West accounts for less than 50% of all global #migration according to data from the United Nations. Most people move from one non-Western country to another, yet their stories are rarely told. Journalism about immigration focuses overwhelmingly on those coming to North America and Western Europe, even though individuals who move within […]

#INEQUALITY #Books #Ghana #Inter-African_migration #refugees

New Study Shows Reading Harry Potter Lowers Americans’ Opinions of Donald Trump
▻https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/new-study-shows-reading-harry-potter-lowers-americans%E2%80%99-opinions-d

Harry may not be a full-on patronus against the Republican presidential nominee’s appeal, but reading Potter stories does appear to be a shield charm against Trump’s message.

A new study to be published in a special 2016 election issue of PS: Political Science and Politics finds that reading Harry Potter books leads Americans to take a lower opinion of Donald Trump. In fact, the more books the participants read, the greater the effect.

Even when controlling for party identification, gender, education level, age, evangelical self-identification, and social dominance orientation — all factors known to predict Americans’ attitudes toward Donald Trump — the Harry Potter effect remained.

The study, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Donald?,” was written by Professor Diana Mutz, the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

▻http://www.salon.com/2016/05/09/media_really_got_isis_wrong_its_brutality_helped_al_qaeda_terrorism_expert_sa

“The media really got ISIS wrong for a long time,” argues scholar Max Abrahms, a prominent terrorism expert.

Many Western media outlets “made it seem as if ISIS has a big advantage over al-Qaeda because it is even more radical; that because the group uses violence in such a brutal fashion, it will be able to out-recruit al-Qaeda, have a larger membership size, more staying power and greater capabilities.”

Yet actually, in the long term, Abrahms says, al-Qaeda is the group that has benefited the most from ISIS’ extremism, because it allows al-Qaeda to present itself as the more “moderate” alternative.

ISIS’ brutality, and the attention much of the world has paid to the extremist group, has allowed al-Qaeda to grow with much less opposition, and even with support of U.S. allies in some areas, particularly in Syria.

Max Abrahms is an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University who has closely studied terrorism for more than a decade.

Migrant Crisis: ’If We Don’t Stop Climate Change...What We See Right Now Is Just the Beginning’ | InsideClimate News
▻http://insideclimatenews.org/news/13092015/migrant-crisis-syria-europe-climate-change

Frank Biermann, a professor of political science and environmental policy sciences at VU University Amsterdam, led researchers in the Netherlands five years ago in a study that warned there may be as many as 200 million climate refugees by 2050. That staggering number first arose out of research in 1995, and it has always been controversial.

#climat #réfugiés #controverse #j'ai_pas_d'avis_sur_la_question

Lebanon’s political scions step up | News , Lebanon News | THE DAILY STAR
▻http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Feb-07/286715-lebanons-political-scions-step-up.ashx

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/dailystar/Pictures/2015/02/07/388546_mainimg.jpg

Au Liban les fils s’apprêtent à ("démocratiquement") remplacer les pères

According to Imad Salamey, an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, the whole process was indicative of the continuation of political feudalism in Lebanon, a tradition that has been entrenched for hundreds of years.

He attributed this phenomenon to “the general sense of insecurity in the country and sectarian or communal fear from others.”

“This happens typically when a community senses external threat from other communities. This becomes an option that maintains cohesion among the rank of the community and provides a way to avoid struggle over leadership ... it is the easy way out,” Salamey said.

He noted that the sectarian struggle in Lebanon often emerged as an existential struggle.

“The community feels that it’s going to be wiped out.”

Salamey said that had Lebanon not been a country “where there is communal struggle for power of sectarian orientation,” then political parties could easily modernize and afford leadership struggle.

#féodalisme et son #papa le #sectarisme #Liban

Voice of Palestine (March 2nd, 2013) » The Voice of Palestine
▻http://www.voiceofpalestine.ca/?p=3703

SPHR-UBC marked Israeli Apartheid Week with a series of events, one of which was a keynote address by Dr. As’ad Abu Khalil, a Lebanese American Professor of Political Science at California State University and the creator of the Angry Arab News Agency blog. The March 1/13 event entitled “The Case Against ‘Israel’” shed light on very important questions facing Palestinians and their supporters. Voice of Palestine presents Dr. Abu Khalil’s speech in its entirety as he discusses the following points – Does the apartheid state have a right to exist? Did it ethnically cleanse 750,000 Palestinians and destroy over 500 villages or is this just a Palestinian myth? And why does this Zionist entity have to maintain its aggression and occupation of Palestine? Is this structure of systemic and systematic colonialism, oppression and occupation of stolen land viable or is it doomed to failure?

▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7xvzr0n-04k