Ternyata MEMRI Buatan AS

[Captain Pancasila]

http://www.memri.org/

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East and South Asia through their media. MEMRI bridges the language gap between the West and the Middle East and South Asia, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, Urdu-Pashtu and Dari media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends.

Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization. MEMRI's main office is located in Washington, DC, with branch offices in various world capitals. MEMRI research is translated into English, French, Polish, Japanese, and Hebrew.

http://www.memri.org/assistingamerica/

MEMRI's work directly supports fighting the U.S. War on Terror. Highly trained staff thoroughly translate and analyze open-source materials that include television programming, radio, newspapers, textbooks, and websites.

Every single day, MEMRI receives requests from members of the U.S. government, military, and legislature. Since September 11, 2001, the demand for this material has significantly increased – providing thousands of pages of translated documents of Arab, Iranian, Urdu, Pashtu, Hindi, Dari, and Turkish print media, terrorist websites, school books, and tens of thousands of hours of translated footage from Arab and Iranian television.

This video takes you from the halls of government to the briefing rooms of the U.S. military to the frontlines of counter-terrorism efforts, and demonstrates just how MEMRI has become – A Vital Component in the U.S. War on Terror.

[Captain Pancasila]

Selective Memri
Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems

Brian Whitaker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 August 2002 11.29 BST

For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge.

The emails also go to politicians and academics, as well as to lots of other journalists. The stories they contain are usually interesting.

Whenever I get an email from the institute, several of my Guardian colleagues receive one too and regularly forward their copies to me - sometimes with a note suggesting that I might like to check out the story and write about it.

If the note happens to come from a more senior colleague, I'm left feeling that I really ought to write about it. One example last week was a couple of paragraphs translated by the institute, in which a former doctor in the Iraqi army claimed that Saddam Hussein had personally given orders to amputate the ears of military deserters.

The organisation that makes these translations and sends them out is the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), based in Washington but with recently-opened offices in London, Berlin and Jerusalem.

Its work is subsidised by US taxpayers because as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit" organisation, it has tax-deductible status under American law.

Memri's purpose, according to its website, is to bridge the language gap between the west - where few speak Arabic - and the Middle East, by "providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media".

Despite these high-minded statements, several things make me uneasy whenever I'm asked to look at a story circulated by Memri. First of all, it's a rather mysterious organisation. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address.

The reason for this secrecy, according to a former employee, is that "they don't want suicide bombers walking through the door on Monday morning" (Washington Times, June 20).

This strikes me as a somewhat over-the-top precaution for an institute that simply wants to break down east-west language barriers.

The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.

Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Washington Times: "Memri's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."

Memri might, of course, argue that it is seeking to encourage moderation by highlighting the blatant examples of intolerance and extremism. But if so, one would expect it - for the sake of non-partisanship - t o publicise extremist articles in the Hebrew media too.

Although Memri claims that it does provide translations from Hebrew media, I can't recall receiving any.

Evidence from Memri's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises "the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel".

That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.

The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.

Among the other three, one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian.

Col Carmon's co-founder at Memri is Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, which bills itself as "America's premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges".

The ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board, recently joined Hudson's board of trustees.

Ms Wurmser is the author of an academic paper entitled Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism? in which she argues that leftwing Israeli intellectuals pose "more than a passing threat" to the state of Israel, undermining its soul and reducing its will for self-defence.

In addition, Ms Wurmser is a highly qualified, internationally recognised, inspiring and knowledgeable speaker on the Middle East whose presence would make any "event, radio or television show a unique one" - according to Benador Associates, a public relations company which touts her services.

Nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations but there are other reasons to be concerned about its output.

The email it circulated last week about Saddam Hussein ordering people's ears to be cut off was an extract from a longer article in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Hayat, by Adil Awadh who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of it.

It was the sort of tale about Iraqi brutality that newspapers would happily reprint without checking, especially in the current atmosphere of war fever. It may well be true, but it needs to be treated with a little circumspection.

Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. He is, or at least was, a member of the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled Iraqi opposition group backed by the US - and neither al-Hayat nor Memri mentioned this.

Also, Mr Awadh's allegation first came to light some four years ago, when he had a strong personal reason for making it. According to a Washington Post report in 1998, the amputation claim formed part of his application for political asylum in the United States.

At the time, he was one of six Iraqis under arrest in the US as suspected terrorists or Iraqi intelligence agents, and he was trying to show that the Americans had made a mistake.

Earlier this year, Memri scored two significant propaganda successes against Saudi Arabia. The first was its translation of an article from al-Riyadh newspaper in which a columnist wrote that Jews use the blood of Christian or Muslim children in pastries for the Purim religious festival.

The writer, a university teacher, was apparently relying on an anti-semitic myth that dates back to the middle ages. What this demonstrated, more than anything, was the ignorance of many Arabs - even those highly educated - about Judaism and Israel, and their readiness to believe such ridiculous stories.

But Memri claimed al-Riyadh was a Saudi "government newspaper" - in fact it's privately owned - implying that the article had some form of official approval.

Al-Riyadh's editor said he had not seen the article before publication because he had been abroad. He apologised without hesitation and sacked his columnist, but by then the damage had been done.

Memri's next success came a month later when Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London wrote a poem entitled The Martyrs - about a young woman suicide bomber - which was published in al-Hayat newspaper.

Memri sent out translated extracts from the poem, which it described as "praising suicide bombers". Whether that was the poem's real message is a matter of interpretation. It could, perhaps more plausibly, be read as condemning the political ineffectiveness of Arab leaders, but Memri's interpretation was reported, almost without question, by the western media.

These incidents involving Saudi Arabia should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of building a case against the kingdom and persuading the United States to treat it as an enemy, rather than an ally.

It's a campaign that the Israeli government and American neo-conservatives have been pushing since early this year - one aspect of which was the bizarre anti-Saudi briefing at the Pentagon, hosted last month by Richard Perle.

To anyone who reads Arabic newspapers regularly, it should be obvious that the items highlighted by Memri are those that suit its agenda and are not representative of the newspapers' content as a whole.

The danger is that many of the senators, congressmen and "opinion formers" who don't read Arabic but receive Memri's emails may get the idea that these extreme examples are not only truly representative but also reflect the policies of Arab governments.

Memri's Col Carmon seems eager to encourage them in that belief. In Washington last April, in testimony to the House committee on international relations, he portrayed the Arab media as part of a wide-scale system of government-sponsored indoctrination.

"The controlled media of the Arab governments conveys hatred of the west, and in particular, of the United States," he said. "Prior to September 11, one could frequently find articles which openly supported, or even called for, terrorist attacks against the United States ...

"The United States is sometimes compared to Nazi Germany, President Bush to Hitler, Guantanamo to Auschwitz," he said.

In the case of the al-Jazeera satellite channel, he added, "the overwhelming majority of guests and callers are typically anti-American and anti-semitic".

Unfortunately, it is on the basis of such sweeping generalisations that much of American foreign policy is built these days.

As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.

All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.

It is not difficult to see what Arabs might do to counter that. A group of Arab media companies could get together and publish translations of articles that more accurately reflect the content of their newspapers.

It would certainly not be beyond their means. But, as usual, they may prefer to sit back and grumble about the machinations of Israeli intelligence veterans.

[simplyguest]

Loh cep, artikelnya kok GAK LENGKAP?
Yang di bawah ini kok gak ikut ente kopas?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/au ... anwhitaker

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Wednesday August 21 2002

In an article headed Atrocity stories regain currency, page 13, August 8, and in an article headed Selective Memri on the Guardian website, we referred to Dr Adil Awadh, an Iraqi doctor who alleged that Saddam Hussein had ordered doctors to amputate the ears of soldiers who deserted. Dr Awadh has asked us to make it clear that he has no connection with Memri (Middle East Media Research Institute), and that he did not authorise its translation of parts of an article by him. He is no longer a member of the Iraqi National Accord (INA). He is an independent member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). His reference to orders by Saddam Hussein to cut off the ears of deserters has been supported by evidence from other sources.

Namanya juga antek ammarrah.com...

[Captain Pancasila]

lha koreksi terhadap artikel lain kok dicantumin? ntar kan yang mbaca bingung!

[simplyguest]

lha koreksi terhadap artikel lain kok dicantumin? ntar kan yang mbaca bingung!

Maksud ente apaan nih?
Kan itu masih satu artikel sama yang ente kopas dan di situ juga disebutin untuk mengklarifikasi isi artikel "Selective Memri" tentang Dr. Awadh?
Ente punya mata gak sih?

[simplyguest]

REBUTTAL "SELECTIVE MEMRI"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/21/israel1
Media organisation rebuts accusations of selective journalism
A Guardian Unlimited article recently questioned the neutrality of a US-based institute that translates articles from Arabic newspapers. Here, the institute's president responds

Yigal Carmon
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 August 2002 13.15 BST

Brian Whitaker's Selective Memri is an example of selective journalism.

Disregarding the Guardian's own code - "A newspaper's primary office is the gathering of news" - Whitaker has simply recycled inaccurate and previously published material.

Two days before his piece appeared on the web, he called our Washington office to ask for the Arabic original of an article translated by Memri from the London daily Al-Hayat. He could have used this opportunity to check his facts. He chose not to do so.

To start with, Memri is not a "mysterious organisation". Our telephone number, fax and email appear on every dispatch. True, the office address is no longer posted on our website. Whitaker may scoff, but we have received threats from rightwing radicals in America.

Had he asked, we would have provided him with our addresses in Washington, London, Berlin, Moscow and Jerusalem (as well as informing him that I retired from government office almost a decade ago).

We could also have told Whitaker that we have over 30 employees of different nationalities, rather than six. But then, facts might have got in the way of a "good story".

Memri is involved in a variety of projects, apart from translating material into most European languages and Turkish: an economic project, headed by a former World Bank expert, an Arab anti-semitism documentation project, studies of school books from Arab educational systems, monitoring Friday sermons in the Arab world.

Most important and innovative is our reform project, which highlights liberal voices, not only from western capitals, but also from within the Arab and Muslim world, courageously calling for political, religious, social and economic reform, and taking all the risks involved.

Is this "Selective Memri"? No, it's Selective Whitaker. He cites the Memri-translated "Blood Libel" - an article that resurrected an ancient myth that accuses Jews of using the blood of (non-Jewish) children to make a special pastry for the Purim religious festival - published by the Saudi al-Riyadh daily.

This is a paper which, contrary to Whitaker's statement, is identified as government-controlled by the Saudi government's website, by the BBC and by news agencies such as Associated Press.

It is true that the editor later apologised and the columnist was sacked. Memri reported all this, giving the paper credit even though these events came in the wake of severe US criticism.

Whitaker implies that this was a marginal case - another article deliberately "selected" by Memri that merely reflects the "ignorance of many Arabs - even those [as] highly educated" as the author of the piece - a university teacher.

Does Brian Whitaker still think it mere ignorance when the major Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram follows a similar line? The government-appointed editor-in-chief is currently facing prosecution in France (and possible prosecution in the UK) for incitement to anti-semitism and racial violence.

The editor is prepared to do battle over his right to spread this poison and he is supported by most of Egypt's literary elite, parliamentarians, trades unions and various organisations throughout the Arab world.

Surely the Guardian's editorial board would agree that this goes far beyond ignorance. It is the deliberate dissemination of a Blood Libel.

Another supposedly marginal issue "selected" by Memri is the Ode to Terrorism by the Saudi Ambassador to the UK, Ghazi Al-Qusaybi. Were Whitaker a regular reader of the Arab papers published in London, he would know that it is not a matter of poetry.

Al-Qusaybi has authored several articles expressing the same political position (Memri Dispatches 251, 256, 389 at http://www.memri.org). Indeed, does Whitaker read the Arab press at all? Or does he rely on Arab Media Watch?

If this is the case, we could provide him with some documentation on their bias. In any event, I wouldn't blame him for seeking assistance. Monitoring the Arab media is far too much for one person to handle. We have a team of 20 translators doing it, and we can't possibly cover it all.

Whitaker's view of Memri's work is not shared by others. In fact most of the well-known media in the US respect and frequently quote Memri, for example the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Miami Herald.

The Guardian itself published Thomas Friedman's column (October 16 2001) commending Memri translations. The Qatari Al-Jazeera television channel also trusts Memri and frequently asks me to appear on their programmes.

Even the Palestinian National Authority website has posted our material - with attribution. On the other hand, it is interesting to see whom Whitaker did choose to quote to back up his allegations against Memri. Ibrahim Hooper is the spokesman of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, which supports Hamas.

· Yigal Carmon is president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri)

[CrimsonJack]

Nyang ga sesuai qoran dan menista islam atau muslim ga wajib dicopas dan boleh dilewatkan

[simplyguest]

Nyang ga sesuai qoran dan menista islam atau muslim ga wajib dicopas dan boleh dilewatkan

CEPERRAHMAH.COM.... Filter your kopasan...

[1234567890]

emang kalau memri dari mama rika nafe cef ?
harusnya buatan araf ya ? seperti al jazeera
nyang beritanya berat sebelah mulu seferti media punya muslim di negeri muslim

[simplyguest]

emang kalau memri dari mama rika nafe cef ?
harusnya buatan araf ya ? seperti al jazeera
nyang beritanya berat sebelah mulu seferti media punya muslim di negeri muslim

Pengennya kayak mama rahmah mungkin, yang justru ngeributin pisang ama susu kambing.

[MaNuSiA_bLeGuG]

Pengennya kayak mama rahmah mungkin, yang justru ngeributin pisang ama susu kambing.

lah..islam kan emg termasuk banyak ngurusin soal 'SUSU' dan 'PISANG'

[sixpackguy]

Mau buatan siapapun ngak masalah, yg penting isi video2 nya memang asli mempertontonkan ajaran islam yg masih original di timur tengah sono, dr muslim2 arab asli, dan terjemahan bahasa yg sebenar2nya.

[simplyguest]

Ternyata MEMRI Buatan AS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Eas ... _Institute

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is a United States not for profit[1] press monitoring organization with headquarters located in Washington, DC.

Lah, dari dulu MEMRI itu emang buatan Amerika kok. Si cepe baru tahu?