The Middle East in English

Michael Young | July 29, 2005

For a very useful overview of the Arabic and Iranian press, in English, let me recommend a new service called Mideastwire started by a former and a present colleague of mine at the Daily Star, Nicholas Noe and Majdoline Hatoum. Mideastwire, in its own words, is a daily email newsletter to English speaking subscribers that aggregates key English language stories about the Middle East, together with translated Arabic and Farsi stories that appear via the print, radio and television media of the region.

The service is still free for the next month and a half, after which it will be no more than $80 a year. That said, Noe and Hatoum are working on getting grants so that it will remain free. The work is still one in progress, so both welcome comments and criticism.

Comments

|7.29.05 @ 8:55AM|#

That sounds interesting! Thanks for the tip.

|7.29.05 @ 10:22AM|#

Aw, they're getting grants. Isn't that nice.

Pray tell, whose grants?

gaius marius|7.29.05 @ 1:08PM|#

if they're mr young's friends, one almost has to assume aei and pnac, doesn't one, mr joe?

|7.29.05 @ 1:16PM|#

Oh, for crap's sake guys. Read it first, point to the bias, THEN argue 'follow the money'. Raimondo has supporters that are ideologically similar to his position, too. Oh, the horror of it all.

|7.29.05 @ 1:16PM|#

I wouldn't go that far, gaius. Mr. Young, for all his faults, seems to be someone committed to democracy, liberalism, freedom, and opposition to tyranny.

I'm sure he'd be quite happy to see the American Library Association or even the Association of Muslim Scholars fund a project like this.

|7.29.05 @ 1:43PM|#

"committed to democracy, liberalism, freedom, and opposition to tyranny"

joe -- Assuming you are using the term "liberalism" as in classical liberalism, what does the American Library Association have to do with any of that? They are a liberal (in the modern political sense) organization tied too closely to their ideology to be useful or honest.

|7.29.05 @ 3:04PM|#

C'mon, Joe has a fair question. I, too, wondered, what kind of grants? Can't point to bias until the facts are clarified.

Jersey Exile|7.30.05 @ 11:11AM|#

They are a liberal (in the modern political sense) organization tied too closely to their ideology to be useful or honest.

Yeah, all of that battling for freedom of access to information and users' right to privacy has really turned us librarians into Left-wing monsters...

(!)