Thursday, September 29, 2011

Pepperdine University's poll of Syria

Saudi and Qatari media have been touting a "poll of Syria".  It got my attention because I try to follow public opinion surveys in the region.  Then I heard on a Saudi news channel (Al-Arabiyya TV, owned by King Fahd's brother-in-law) that it was conducted by Pepperdine University.  Of course, Arab viewers don't know anything about this university (it has a great campus in Malibu by the way).  They don't know that it is a fanatically right-wing university with ties to Zionist evangelists.  This is the university that hired Edwin Meese and Ken Start, for potato's sake.  So I got more curious because I know that the university has no background in Middle East studies whatsoever.  I then learned that the poll was conducted "in secret" (don't tell anyone) by Pepperdine University in conjunction with a Zionist outfit in LA, called Democracy Council.     The best part of the CNN report (see link) about the survey is the reference to James Prince (a Zionist non-expert of the Middle East) as "leading expert on Arab civil society".  If that does not get you a chuckle, Family Guy is not your show.  Regarding the results?  They don't matter. The entire affair is suspect, and the notion that they were able "to train" a staff (that reads to me that they are Lebanese right-wingers) and send them to Syria is not credible.  Did they survey people in Dir`a for example?  And how did the face-to-face interview go?  My favorite part of the bogus survey is that a mere 5% of Syrian had negative opinions of the protesters.  That is really delicious.  So according to the survey, the regime has fallen and all `Alawites are now opposed to the regime.  We need to establish a center to monitor and critique Middle East news analysis in the Western press and point out the daily dosage of trash.