I have long considered MEMRI a suspect source, from when I first encountered it - back in the days when I sometimes posted on a message board called The Straight Dope (which I was introduced to by someone who knew me from my prior incarnation working in business related to genetic engineering, and wanted to get my response to some human genetics issues, a hobby of mine then as I found my business with plants to be not as inspiring). It was oft cited, and back then (99-00 as I recall) I found its supposed presentation of the Arabic media slanted in terms of selection and the translations consisently biased to the worst possible presentation of the underlying article's language. It smelled of agitprop, and the claim at the time on the website that the translation was done by volunteers just was not credible given the volume I was seeing. I knew how long it takes to translate, and I could not credit they had enough students and others who just happened to have so much time to be banging away at such things.

In short, as a private businessman in the region, the thing stuck out like a sore thumb as probably an Israeli intel op.

I was unsurprised to learn via other sources, news arties and the like that its founders have Israeli intel backgrounds and one has to suspect current, ongoing connexions.

It strikes me that such issues as the skewed Wafa Sultan interview clip, this utterly mendacious spin over the Apple Cube (not that there are not surely neo-Salafi professional offenderati who would not manufacture offendedness if they thought it useful) rather confirms my sense.

I, however, confess that I do not closely follow MEMRI - I have no need to one the Arabic media side, and frankly far better things to do (like this fund closing).

That being said, MEMRI is dangerous as it is creating spin that is fundamentally dangerous, spin that tends to push for "Clash of Civilizations" and the mutual alienation of Western and MENA communities, mutual alienation that will only serve the interests of the Pimps of Conflict and Pimps of Terror.

It also serves to pimp the strangely distorted vision of a MENA full of terror and conflict - there is indeed both - and barbarism - there is that too - that Americans have to a highly exaggerated extent. What I read online among Americans and to an extent Europeans about MENA often causes me to shake my head for having spent around a decade in region in various countries over time, I simply do not recognise the image. Local problems are generalised, and relatively limited issues that while serious are not to be overdone are blown up into generalisations. It reminds me of images rural people cite regarding big cities such as NY or London, regarding crime and violence. Images certainly based on truth, but grossly exaggerated and over-generalised, as the rural hick, the provincial is unable to differentiate between bad districts and where, in general, "most people live."

I cite this to provide context. Certainly problems like domestic violence and in the East, honour killings, are serious ones. But the image I often get from online whanking is that the writers genuinely believe they are
"common" - that one sees women being beaten in the streets etc. etc. Or rather like I used to hear when I lived in NY long ago in the bad days, provincials fearing getting robbed in broad daylight on 5th avenue, absurd exaggerations and false generalisations.

In short, I find the image that seems to obtain in the blogosphere of MENA to be a fun house mirror image that tends to exagerate real problems almost beyond recognition and render the inhabitants of the region - who largely in real contact would seem to Americans to be actually very boring and ordinary people - monstrous.

Hopefully new efforts like Qahwa Sada and Aqoul can help correct that. In the meantime, it strikes me this latest offence from MEMRI needs to be publicised and emphasised as I fail to see how one can treat it as a credible source (although Dean's placing it with human rights' organisations strikes me as queer at best, for all that I am not a huge fan of activist organisations, it strikes me MEMRI is far worse for it is a state deziinformatisa op).