Thursday, April 23, 2015

Arab public opinion industry

It is an industry in which Western propaganda vehicles participate no so much to measure Arab public opinion but to influence Arab public opinion. Look at this supposed comprehensive Arab public opinion survey of the Arab youth.  Look at the methodology section: there is no methodology in the methodology section but we discover that the sample (and we don't know anything about the preparation of the sample) in Egypt is equal in size to that one in Saudi Arabia, despite the difference in population size.  And in Lebanon: they only surveyed people in Beirut, Tripoli, and Sidon (the last two are predominant Sunni cities) which clear skew the results in one direction in a deeply divided country like Lebanon. And then they ask people about "dangers" to the Arab world and the answers that they give them are phrased rather oddly: they ask for example about the danger from "the Arab-Israeli conflict" (and not from Israel itself, and I doubt that any Arab say that he/she feels danger from the conflict and not from Israel itself), and yet they offer a possible answer about of "Iranian nuclear threat" although they never offer a possible choice of "actual Israel nuclear weapon threat".  Yet, only 8% according to this lousy survey chose Iranian nuclear threat as a threat.