I generally avoid linking to the cesspool over at WBW. They have a few talented and thoughtful (albeit misguided) writers, but most of them are hacks. In fact, I only visit every once in a while to see what they are talking about. It was during such a visit earlier today that I came upon this post by their newest addition, Amir Butler. It appears that Mr. Butler is upset at the folks at MEMRI. He calls into question their ideological bias (fair enough), their funding sources (okay), their staff (mostly former Israeli intelligence agents), and their choice of materials to be translated (another reasonable target). However, despite the 630 word length of his post, at no time does he dispute the accuracy of the translations, which is the real point.
It was rather interesting that he cherry-picked through the Online Journalism Review article he links to take one out-of-context quote to serve his purposes. Follow the link, and you will indeed find the words he quoted, at the beginning of an overwhelmingly positive review of MEMRI's work.
One last thing that I noticed was Mr. Butler's distortion of what tax-exempt means. He states:
Anyway, back to MEMRI. The first point to know about them is that they are a tax-exempt organisation - in other words they are subsidised by American taxpayers.
Wrong. Tax-exempt means that they don't pay taxes on the contributions they receive. They don't receive subsidies from the government, and I am sure the Butler knows that. Greeenpeace is tax-exempt; so is CAIR.
Make sure you read the comments, as some of the readers have done a marvelous job of dismantling Butler's dissembling. Howard Owens (one of WBW's most hated) shreds the whole piece in his comment, well down the comments list.
posted on August 14, 2002 05:54 PM
posted by 
