Dear MEMRI Subscriber,
This winter and spring have seen a significant amount of dire news emerge from the Middle East. On February 22, 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the dispute over Iran's nuclear program to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Her statement followed the February 2010 summits held in Damascus by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah – described by the editor of the London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi as a "war council" – as well as the National and Islamic Solidarity Conference for the Future of Palestine, held in Tehran. The conference was attended by Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, Syrian officials, PFLP-GC leaders, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, all predicting the downfall of the U.S.
As U.S. military forces draw down in Iraq, Iran has been enhancing its military capabilities, including long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear enrichment beyond the level needed for energy production. And while U.S. and NATO forces are engaged in a major offensive against Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, the global jihadist movement has again demonstrated its ability and ambition to strike in the heart of America, as seen at Fort Hood, Detroit, and Times Square.
During this busy and important time, MEMRI has been working around the clock to monitor, translate, and analyze primary source material from these regions, and to keep Western media, academia, legislatures, and governments in the West informed of ongoing developments. No other organization does the vital research that MEMRI does.
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As a reader of MEMRI, you are familiar with our continuing efforts to monitor more media sources in more countries, research more subjects, and translate into more languages. This includes access to our archives of over 6,000 reports from the Special Dispatch and Inquiry & Analysis series as well as to the MEMRI TV Project archives, including all subjects and countries and nearly 16,000 minutes of translated video content. The MEMRI archives also include over 30,000 individual blog entries. MEMRI also has the largest archives in the world of open-source research from the Middle East and beyond.
MEMRI staffers are located around the world, translating every day from hundreds of Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Hindi, Urdu/Pashtu, and Turkish newspapers, magazines, television shows, and websites. The production and distribution of our materials, as well as the maintenance of our websites, is an increasingly costly undertaking.
Like many others, MEMRI has been hard hit by the economic crisis. We need your help now more than ever. Your renewed donation is of critical importance, and we are extremely grateful for your generous support in these difficult times. We are now asking our subscribers who have not yet donated to MEMRI to please consider making a contribution. At the same time, we thank those who have donated to us in the past and ask them if they could kindly renew their support, or even consider increasing it.
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*THE FOLLOWING PROJECTS NEED FUNDING FOR 2010 – YOU CAN DIRECT YOUR DONATION TO THE PROJECT OF YOUR CHOICE
*IRAN STUDIES PROJECT: This project is the only research project in the world that monitors, translates, and analyzes content from the Iranian media on a daily basis. The project, which is headed by native-born Iranians, has produced hundreds of hours of translations from Iran's most important media outlets and websites, including over 40 newspapers and 16 TV channels, as well as hundreds of original analyses on issues of vital importance, such as Iran's pursuit of nuclear capability, the Iranian military's growth, speeches by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the increasing influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), political unrest in Iran, Friday sermons from Iranian leaders, and much more.
*URDU-PASHTU MEDIA PROJECT: This project, launched in January 2008, is releasing an unprecedented amount of research on a daily basis. The most important information pertaining to the U.S. war effort is coming from the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, from where both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are operating. Understanding Urdu and Pashtu-language primary sources is vital to the safety and the success of the mission of Western troops. In addition, militants based in this region are now stepping up their threats against targets on the U.S. mainland, making information provided by the Urdu-Pashtu Media Project more vital than ever.
*REFORM PROJECT: This project, also known as the Democratization in the Arab & Muslim World Project, monitors advocates of reform in the Arab and Muslim world, and the obstacles that they face in advancing their cause. Its goal is to provide reformists with a platform from which they can reach out to their societies and to religious, political, and education leaders while also providing Western policy makers with a solid basis for long-term strategic plans aimed at supporting this effort.
*JIHAD & TERRORISM STUDIES PROJECT: This project provides research about Islamist ideology and organizations that threaten the West. It also monitors groups that educate and preach jihad and martyrdom in mosques, school systems, and the media.
*ANTISEMITISM DOCUMENTATION PROJECT: This project documents antisemitic themes in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu-Pashtu, and Turkish newspaper reports, editorials, and other media sources. This project maintains the largest archive in the world of translated material from the Middle East from the past decade. In April 2009, MEMRI renamed this project in honor of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, and last month released the first annual report of the Tom Lantos Archives on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, at a Capitol Hill event attended by leading senators and congressmen, as well as officials from other U.S. government agencies and foreign diplomats.
*ARAB & IRANIAN TV MONITORING PROJECT: This project monitors 69 television stations in the Middle East and Iran, and has so far produced nearly 2,500 clips, totaling more than 16,000 minutes of footage – the largest archives in the world of such material. MEMRI TV is viewed in 197 countries around the world, and to date over 20 million visitors have accessed its website.
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MEMRI
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Sincerely,
Yigal Carmon Steven Stalinsky
President Executive Director
