In the presence of representatives from Sawari Ventures and the American University of Cairo, School of Business, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (EIP), Flat6Labs Cairo based startup accelerator celebrated the end of its second cycle with its teams’ Demo Day. In line with the startup accelerator’s aims, the event was a final opportunity for its cycle’s seven teams to present and demonstrate the potential of their respective projects to an audience of entrepreneurs and investors.

In attendance at the Demo Day were the Flat6Labs mentors and staff, reputed IT figures from the region, and investors who were keen on witnessing the progress of the cycle’s teams.
GyroLabs was the first team to step forth, outlining their vision of the possible collaboration between the worlds of television and Internet, one that they are have already taken strong steps towards implementing. Eshtery followed with their plan to revolutionize the shopping experience as known to the Egyptian society, allowing people to shop for groceries using smartphones without losing anything from the joy of the shopping experience. AskNative demonstrated how it plans to serve the adventurous, knowledge seeking public through a question-answering platform that serves to facilitate travel experiences. 2ogra illustrated their plans that are intended to revolutionize Egyptian transportation by developing productive experiences between customers and taxi drivers. Yadget explained their vision of a social experience that is centered around items and places and not just people, wherein people can leave virtual notes anywhere and everywhere. Crowdsay spoke of their desire to facilitate the virtual existence of artists in a platform that allows for talents to grow and be hired. Finally, Nafham brought the team presentations to a close with their vision of an online system that aids in developing the educational system in Egypt by helping students in their education process away from the world of private tutors.
Afterwards, Mr. Hany El-Sonabty, Managing Partner of Sawari Ventures, gave closing comments, during which he mentioned that ‘ Flat6Labs next cycle will begin by early June 2012.

Syrian Electronic Army a hacker group affiliated with Bashar Al Asad regime has claimed responsibility for taking down Linkedin Blog http://blog.linkedin.com/.

As of writing this post Linkedin in blog is down.
This is the zone-h info of the hack.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on facebook that his company is acquiring iPhone and Android popular photo sharing startup Instagram.
Mark did not say how much was the price, Update: the price is $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook according to facebook announcement. but he said unlike other facebook acquisitions instagram will keep growing independently. And that it wont milt inside facebook.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.”

Google’s YouTube has launched a UAE domain name http://youtube.co.ae

So Muslim Brotherhood has announced last night that they will nominate from their part Khairat Alshater as presidential candidate for Egypt.

The news was very much controversial on socialmedia as some denounce it and others supported it.
Right after his nomination Alshater official facebook page has been setup and it received so far 43,000 likes. Not something that what Wael Ghonim Page Received after his television appearance during the Egyptian revolution in 2011. But many observers note that Muslim Brotherhood has many supporters “millions” and that Alshater has a very good chances in the race along with presidential candidate Hazim Salah Abu Ismael whose facebook page has more than 439,000 likes.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the arrests and trials of netizens in the United Arab Emirates, yesterday. It also listed the UAE as a country “under surveillance” in its 2012 report on “Enemies of the Internet.”

“The Emirati authorities are cracking down harder on bloggers and netizens who criticize the regime,” Reporters Without Borders said. “March has seen a wave of arrests, attacks and acts of intimidation. We urge the government to abandon these methods. The authorities must stop arresting netizens and bloggers for what they post online and must guarantee their safety.”

In a “post” in its site Reporters Without Boarders published names of some of the Emarati activist who were arrested or attacked for their online activism specifically on Twitter:

“Saleh Al-Dhufairi, a netizen who is very active on social networks (@SalehAlDhfairi), was finally released on bail on 20 March after being arrested on 9 March and held in Abu Dhabi’s Al Wathba prison. He is charged with using Twitter to “incite sedition” and “abuse religion.”
Dhufairi has been covering sensitive subjects such as the “UAE 7,” a group of pro-democracy activists whose citizenship was withdrawn after calling on the government to carry out political reforms and organize elections, and criticizing the state security department’s meddling in political matters. He is to be tried by a state security court but no trial date has so far been set.
The blogger Juma Al-Felasi (@jalfelasi) was attacked by an unidentified group as he was driving in Dubai on 6 March. His assailants pulled him out of his car and beat him, accusing him of sullying the image of the UAE’s rulers. Felasi is known for criticizing government policies and calling for democratic reforms in his blog posts.
The continued close monitoring of the Internet is evident from the immediate reprisals against anyone posting content that is not to the government’s liking. The police do not hesitate to intimidate opposition bloggers and netizens using social networks.
Mohammed Abdul Razzaq Al-Siddiq, one of the “UAE 7,” was arrested at his home without a warrant in the northeastern emirate of Al Sharjah at 4 a.m. on 24 March following a comment on Twitter accusing the emirate’s ruler, Sultan Al-Qassimi, of discriminating against the UAE’s large expatriate population. He was released later in the day after paying a fine, and will not be prosecuted.
Another “UAE 7” member, activist Ahmed Ghaith Al Suwaidi, was arrested in Abu Dhabi on 26 March along with Judge Ahmed Yousef Buatabh Zaabi, a fellow activist. The police did not have a warrant and the two men are still being held although no charge has been brought against them.
Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan used Twitter to warn human rights activist Khalifa Al-Nuaimi (‎@Alnuaimi_k) that police were coming to arrest him 13 March:
ضاحي خلفان تميم ‏ @Dhahi_Khalfan ‎
‎@Alnuaimi_k‏ انت مطلوب للعدالة… ونحن شفا فون … حضورك الينا افضل.
ضاحي خلفان تميم ‏ @Dhahi_Khalfan ‎
‎‎@Alnuaimi_k‏ خليفه لا نعرف اننا سنحيلها هذي جريمة يجوز القبض فيها لنا ولكن النيابة الاتحادية هي جهة الترافع فيه.. شرطة دبي في الطريق اليك .
Translation: You are wanted by the judicial authorities… We are transparent… You’d be advised to surrender.
[...] This is a crime for which we have the right to arrest you but it’s before the federal prosecutor that you enter your plea… the Dubai police are on their way to arrest you.

The netizen Mohamed Ismael Akhbar has been detained since 19 February on a charge of insulting an official for criticizing Khlafan, the police chief, on social networks. A stateless person, he had condemned the corruption he had encountered in the course of his attempts to regularize his situation, and the failure of the police to take any action in response to his complaints. He has had not access to a lawyer and has been held in solitary confinement. A court is expected to issue a verdict on 1 April.

Meanwhile, the “UAE 5,” five activists who were arrested last year and given jail sentences for calling for democratic reforms, have not been given back their passports since their release on 28 November and their convictions have not been quashed, which they requested after getting a presidential pardon. The authorities have also taken no action in response to the complaints they filed against the people who waged a smear campaign against them.”

YouTube, Lenovo, and Space Adventures announced last Thursday the two global winners of YouTube Space Lab (b), the worldwide science competition that challenged 14-18 year-olds to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. Amr Mohamed from Egypt (17-18 year old age group) and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma from the U.S. (14-16 year old age group) were awarded the honor at a ceremony in Washington, DC, attended by members of Space Lab partners including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The students will have their experiments conducted by astronauts 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed to the world on a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop via YouTube later this year.

“Humanity’s future relies on moving beyond Earth,” said renowned scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking. “Realising this goal will require an entrepreneurial spirit and a new generation of scientists and astronauts. YouTube Space Lab is a wonderful initiative that helps inspire young minds around the world to take a greater interest in science and the future of space exploration.”

Amr Mohamed, 18, from Alexandria, Egypt, came up with an experiment to explore the question: “Can you teach an old spider new tricks?” Amr proposed investigating the effects of microgravity on the way the zebra spider catches its prey and whether it could adapt its behavior in this environment. “The idea of sending an experiment into space is the most exciting thing I have ever heard in my life,” said Amr. “Winning YouTube Space Lab means everything to me, to my family, and to the people of the Middle East.”

Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, who attend Troy High School in Troy, Michigan, created an experiment that asks: “Could alien superbugs cure disease on Earth?” Dorothy and Sara want to send bacteria to the space station to see if introducing different nutrients and compounds can block their growth in the hopes of providing new tools to fight germs on Earth. “The idea that something that is your experiment being sent up into space and actually becoming a reality is incredible,” said Sara. “I definitely want to pursue science as a career,” added Dorothy.
Amr, Dorothy and Sara joined the four other regional winning teams in Washington, DC, this week to honor their achievements, with prizes including a ZERO-G flight, a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop and a special tour and dinner at the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum at Dulles. YouTube and Lenovo held the awards ceremony at the Newseum in downtown Washington.
In addition to having their experiments performed in space, Amr, Dorothy and Sara will get to choose one of two unique space experiences: either a trip to Japan to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they turn 18-years old, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts.

Twitter is now available in four new languages Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu.

This happened after Thirteen thousand volunteers around the globe worked in translating and localizing Twitter into these languages.

Twitter is now available in 28 different languages around the world.

Twitter says that it solved the issue when Tweets contain both right-to-left and left-to-right content scramble. It says in that case now Tweets, hashtags and numbers all look and behave correctly.

News surfaced end of last month that Saudi based Kammelna Games! has been acquired by Turkish game developer Peak games! a maker of social games.

Sources familiar with the matter has confirmed to ArabCrunch the deal and said the price tag was 10 million USD in cash and stocks.

Kammelna is a web based card games popular among Saudis called baloot, it has been seeing impressive usage among Saudis.

Peak games is a Turkish based game developer that targets the Arab world and Turkey with culturally relevant games. With more than 20 million monthly active users, Peak Games says it has become one of the top four social game companies in the world in the past 14 months,.

Peak Games is run by chief executive Sidar Sahin. Kammelna was founded by Essam Alzamel, who will continue to run the studio in Damman, Saudi Arabia.

Peak Games already has studios and offices in Istanbul, Ankara, Barcelona, Berlin, San Francisco and Amman Jordan.

The company is funded by Earlybird Venture Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, and serial business angel Evren Ucok. Peak Games has 150 employees and Kammelna has 30.

ArabCrunch World’s only independent and most popular English tech news site focused on Arab tech, startups and social media has announced its selection of the person of the year 2011.

Starting 2010, each December, ArabCrunch selects Person of the Year featuring and profiling a person, group, idea, place, or machine that has done the most to influence the events of the year in technology, internet, entrepreneurship or in using technology.

Last year we selected Julian Assang founder of Wikileaks, to celebrate the distinguished efforts by the Wikileaks in pushing transparency worldwide and exposing wrong doings and crimes of governments and corporations alike. Redefining what media is.

“this year 2011, went through many historical events, which lead to the emergence of new type of persons with achievement and impact that changed the course of history. “Said ArabCrunch spoke person.

adding “For this year it was hard to select one person, Wael Ghonim, Anonymous hacking group and Bradley Manning where all persons of achievement at the global and local stage. So we decided to split the winning person into the three of them.”

Wael Ghonim:

” target=”_blank”>Wael Ghonim via his Facebook page “We are all Khalid Said” was the main person responsible in igniting the Egyptian revolution against tyranny and corruption. Though that revolution did not achieve all its objectives until now. The removal of fear factor and the effort that Wael played in exposing the tyrant and corrupt Husni Mubarak regime will be the guarantee that the times of tyranny is gone and that the Egyptian revolution will achieve by the well of God all its objectives, sooner or later.

Though, the real heroes of the Egyptian revolution are the millions who answered the call and the people who paid their souls and blood so others can live in dignity.

Here is a bio of Wael on Wikipedia.

Anonymous hacking group:

After Wikileaks started publishing the US government diplomatic cables, the true color of big corporations has been reveled, PayPal, Visa and others started blocking funding to Wikileaks with no legal justification. Among other corporations who blockhead Wikileaks, Amazon denied the ability for Wikileaks to host the website on its Amazon’s server. Wikileaks was also subject to massive DDoS attacks.

The result: a group of unknown hackers has emerged to retaliate against in injustice and corruption by the US government and corporate America. From cyber attacks against CIA to leaking defense contractors confidential documents ( that said does not nesacrlly means that ArabCrunch support such hacking activities) . With each attack Anonymous massage against tyranny and corruption of corporate America has grown. Anonymous did not just attack US based government and corporations who are accused of wrong doings. But also sites of governments that witnessed revolutions such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria.

Anonymous also targeted the Mossad and Israeli defense website also, showing solidarity with the Palestinian people struggle for freedom and justice.

Whether a person would agree or disagree with Anonymous attacks or not, their work has been important to spread the message of the unheard, the unknown and essentially its activities laid the ground for the occupy wall street movement to emerge against the corruption and greed of Wall Street, essentially those who run Wall Street: the Zionists. Here is a good list of some of the group operations.

There is another Anonymous group of people who also should be celebrated, they are the young Arab men and woman who are using social media, with tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, likes and share of content that expose the crimes of the current and past Arab regimes. Those users took the effort online then offline to mass protests that toppled criminal governments.

Bradley Manning:

Bradley Manning a US army intelligence officer. he is accused of leaking the video of US army helicopter murdering journalists and children, he is also accused of leaking the classified Iraq war log, Afghanistan War log and the US diplomatic cables.

Bradley Manning is going now through his trial now, instead of being in trial he should be thanked, if he was the person behind the leaks and should be celebrated as a hero. Ask the mothers of the journalists who were killed in the leaked video, asked the young children who were killed by the hands of American Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ask the mothers of the young kids who are auctioned by a US government contractor in Afghanistan to the Afghan Army personnel to be raped as the embassy logs reveals., yes rapped. Ask the populations of many countries who now they know with evidence how brutal is their government, how corrupt and how shameful liars are their leaders.

The world and specially Muslims ow a lot to Bradley Manning , Many human rights activists says that Bradley Manning should be an example for every inelegance agent in the US government or any government in the world. The message is simple: if you witnessed wrong doings and crimes of your government, take all the necessarily security measures and leak to wikileaks and let the world know about those criminals. Remember never to tell anyone that you leaked.

Here is the video that Bradley is accused of leaking:




and here is a song against Tunisian President Bin Ali when the revolution and Arab spring started in Tunis:




Facebook is going away from its traditional zero cost marketing efforts to boost membership to its social network and counter its upcoming rival Google+. Historically Facebook relayed on viral marketing to push current members to invite their friends.

But recently several Facebook ads has been popping in the Arab world at Google’s AdWords on its partnership program with third party websites “Adsense.”

for example one facebook ad, titled: “chat with friends Facebook: lookup for your friends on Facebook and chat with them signup for Facebook today. The text ad link leads to Facebook front-page.”

Yahoo! is also using Adwords, recent ads spotted on Adwords entice users to signup to the new Arabic Yahoo Mail leading to this landing page: http://xa.overview.mail.yahoo.com/

This is an interesting step to see that Facebook appetite for new users in the Arab world extends to use advertising off its website. The same would apply to Yahoo!.

What is interesting too to that both Yahoo and Facebook are using the product of their rival to advertise and reach new users.

What might be worrisome for Arab online activists that Twitter might collaborate with Arab oppressive regimes after Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, and Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), announced today, Monday, December 19th 2011, a combined investment of $300 Million in Twitter.

Prince Alwaleed has a strong presence and influence in media through his investments in entertainment and media entities in the Arab world, and beyond, such as the Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), in which Kingdom Holding holds a 29.9% stake. The publications that fall under SRMG include Asharq Al Awsat, Al Eqtisadiah, Arab News, Hia magazine, Al Majalla magazine, Arrajol magazine and Sayidati magazine. Furthermore, other entities that fall under SRMG are Al Khaleejiya for Publicity Advertising and Public Relations and Al Madina Printing and Publishing Company. KHC is also owner of approximately 7 percent of News Corporation’s Class B Common Stock.

In February 2010, Rotana Group announced that Newscorp had reached an agreement to buy a 9.09 percent stake in Rotana Group.

Under the terms of the agreement, News Corporation will acquire newly-issued shares in Rotana for $70 million. News Corp. has an option to increase its stake to 18.18 percent in the 18 months following completion.

In addition, Prince Alwaleed recently announced his plans to launch his privately owned Alarab news channel. The news channel will be managed by Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.

Google has launched recently a website dedicated to Egyptian parliamentary election that starts today.

The site http://google.com.eg provide a number of services, news about the election aggregated from the web and that can be filtered according to any egyptian political party or issue.

It also has a section which provides a google map mashup that asks users for their national number to get info about where to cast their vote and other voting information, this is done using Egypt’s supreme juridical comity for elections sites.

Also google has a YouTube Channel dedicated for the election called “sayyedqararak” that features videos from elections candidates. The channel is in partnership with BBC, Egyptian Satellite Channel On TV and Egyptian news Maser Al Youm.

As today is the election and if you were an Egyptian who did not vote yet, this is a useful service for you.

According to sources in Egypt, Mobile service is offline in Tahrir square in Cairo Egypt, the square is witnessing a new revolt against the military rule in Egypt with around 1 million people demonstrating.

We do not know if it was switched off intentionally by mobile operators -after a request from the government in Egypt – or not. Vodafone one of the mobile telecom operators in Egypt says over Twitter that the service is running and the outage might be due huge traffic.

In the first version of the Egyptian revolution in January this year , one of Husni Mubarak tactics -which did not save him- was to switch mobile network off.

#image credit.

Twitter trending topics are the most discussed topics on Twitter, last year Twitter added local trending topics to some US cities and some countries around the world, where it buzzed the most discussed topic coming from a given location. However now we can see United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey were added to the list , where users can see trending topics from UAE and Turkey. We do not know when these 2 locations were added, a user told us it has been there for a while

Looking at UAE trending topics we found some of them similar to those trending worldwide, with the exception of hashtag #Syria and #Egypt. As we can see all trending topics are in English due to the high presence of expats in UAE. According to latest estimation there are around 2 million Twitter users in UAE:
#Top100Lies
#ThingsWeDoDuringExams

Yosri Al Tarqi who come by A”bu Qatada The Tunisian” was executed 2 days ago in Iraq despite Tunisian officials attempt to stop his execution.

In response, Tunisian youth launched cyber attacks against many Iraqi government web sites that they accused in being collaborators with the American government leaving. Iraqi oil ministry website was hacked, the hackers left a the message that read:
” WE never forget what you did to Yosri”
“we do not forget, we do not forgive, we are Anonymous .. we are Tunisians! expect us”

Also Iraqi Justice Ministry is still hacked with a posted message by the hacker saying Yosri execution was unjust and that God will bring back his right, It also asked God to accept him as a martyr.

A Facebook page which was setup to stop the execution sentence and had 10,133 fans posted a letter from his father praising him as a martyr saying the crime Yosri was accused of which is bombing Shiat shrines was fabricated and that AlArabiya reporter Atwar Bahjat has revealed that truth about the bombing in the day it happened “but was also killed to coverup the crime and the real people behind it”. He also praised the Iraqi resistance whose blood was mixed with that of Yosri.

Activists in Syria are reporting that hacker group “Syrian Electronic Army” which is affiliated with the Syrian regime is using phishing tactics on Facebook to steal users emails and passwords.

The scam uses an interesting hot story with a fake link often like:

http://facebook.com-video-php-v222423423.homsrev.webgoof.com/video/video.php ( DO NOT USE THE LINK )

The link looks like a facebook link and when opened you get a copy of Facebook homepage but in fact it is a page on webgoof.com and when activists enter their email address and passwords it will be sent to “electronic thugs of the regime” as Anonymous Syria calls them, and then start sending the link to the users’ followers and friends.

Syrian activist Feras Attasi had his facebook profile hacked and this image shows the scam sending tweets from his linked Facebook profile “great operation by Khaled Bragged, watch the heroes, God salut them, please page owners login to spread the video”

Activists and any user need not to trust any link posted on Facebook and Twitter, and should be sure that only https://facebook.com is the only way to log in to Facebook. Also the user need to check the certificate of the https encryption and make sure it is not faked.

Nearly 2.5 million Muslims begin the annual Islamic ritual of the Hajj today, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The Hajj represents one of the five pillars of Islam; it requires all Muslims around the world who are able-bodied and can afford it to perform the pilgrimage once in their lifetime.

YouTube has partnered with Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information’ to live stream Hajj 2011. So now millions of people from around the world will be able to experience the event live on video. Here is the channel link: https://www.youtube.com/hajjlive

Last Ramadan Youtube live streamed prayers from Mecca for the first time.
and here is the live stream it self:



On Wednesday dozens of mental health doctors in the general secretary of mental health in Cairo Egypt protested in front of Abasia hospital against transferring Dr. Basma El Aziz manager of media at the secretary to investigation, after she issued a statement that rejected transferring political activists and those with opposing opinion to mental health hospital.

This comes after transferring Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabel to a mental hospital, he was sentenced of 3 years in person over charges of insulting the military on a tweet. Maikel was sentenced by an Egyptian Military court and he was on hunger strike since then.

Maikel is one of more than 10,000 Egyptians tried by military court since Mubarak’s ouster, according to human rights groups.

One of the tactics used by tyrant regimes is to accuse its opponents, journalists and others of being mentally ill. In many cases mental doctors work as undercover agents for secret police to pass whatever they like or they would be subject to blackmail.

This story reminds us of some suspicious people who wrongly accused ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer of being mentally ill after the site last year revealed parts of governments plots against the site and free media.

#image credit.

Many startups specially Arab ones underestimate the importance of public relations in branding their products and in marketing them. Take a look at startup weekends events in recent Arab countries, does anyone remember them or what they do? does anyone use them? where are they now?

Public relations is a cheapest way to market your products or startup and entice people to use it, if people do not know about you they will not use you.

In nut shell you need to develop media contacts and write a well written press release about your product and services, and pitch your story to the media and journalists from the angle that interest them and their readers not yours, meaning if you have a cooking website you can target women life style magazines by pitching your story in a way that your startups saves time when looking for a recipe to cook something.

I am not going to go through how to write a press release and how to develop media relations, I am going to ask entrepreneurs and specially Arab startups to do the minimal which is having a blog for the company and email relevant media sites like us, with your news.

In your blog you need to keep your users updated with what is new at your company, example: new features, new millstones, new partnership deals and so on. And this is not enough you need to email the media.

Main stream media in many cases won’t understand your startup and the possibility of having an article about you is low. We do encourage to target them but here at ArabCrunch, because we cover Arab startups and the Arab tech sector, your news is important to us and our readers, so go ahead and start sending us your news and we will cover you “inshallah” in ArabCrunch English and ArabCrunch Arabic. You do not have to send a press release, just the basic news of what, when, why, and where. This effort does not need a team or a special PR agency, a startup of 1 or 2 people can handle a small job like that.

One note, we read every email that is sent to us but we can not respond to every email, however if your news is interesting to our readers we promise to do our best and cover it.

Remember in many cases startups die not because the startup idea is horrible, but because their founders did not do the minimal marketing and PR effort. And for those startupweekendrs please stop being lazy and do the minimal and email us

PS: here is 12 Ways to Market Your Startup With Zero Ad Spending.

#image credit.

Tech bloggers and the media in the recent weeks were busy pointing out the conflict of interest TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and his the blog standing as he has founded a Venture Capital fund “Crunch Fund”. As he would favor some startups and companies he funds over the others.

But that was not the only conflict of interest the site suffered from. As it stands in favor of Jews. Israel and it expressed in multiple times its hate to Islam. ArabCrunch is not affiliated to techcrunch.

Michael Arrington says he belongs to the Jewish faith, under his leadership his blog was spreading anti ّslam hate posts and pro Israeli propaganda. Often in contradicting stands in a proof to the world its own bias to Israel and Judaism.

Take a look at this post TechCrunch defends the anti Islam movie the “Fitna” and asks Google not to delete it from Youtube as TC writes “What Google does now will be an interesting test for a company that claims “do no evil” as its company mantra” ….”so ultimately it will be up to Google to decide between free speech and global jihad.”

I watched the movie the Fitna, its full of baseless lies against Islam calling it a terrorist religion. The maker of the movie takes scripts of the Quran out of context and takes some Sheikhes speeches out of context too, to prove that Islam is a religion of terror, that wants to kill all non Muslims. Which is totally untrue and even AlQaeda does not even carry such believe.

So according to TechCrunch publishing a video that is full of lies against Islam is “free speech,” but when it comes to Jews, free speech is not free speech anymore: In one post Arrington asks Facebook to delete groups that question the holocaust. Saying that Facebook is not subject to free speech. “The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies.” ( an excuse often used by some Jews in tech forums to justify deleting other anti Israeli terrorism)  and goes on to say in this post and other posts, that Facebook should take a stand “firm against racial and religious hatred.”

Even worse, TechCrunch in this post questions whether “Islam the new Satanism?”

WOW, so to Arrington to questions the holocaust is racial and religious hatred but to spread lies about Islam and call it a terrorist and a satanic religion is not hatred against religion and an insult against 2 billion Muslims around the world!

In spreading Israeli propaganda, look at titled: “Hello World: Israel is Out-Classing You in Civil Disobedience” were TechCrunch claims that Israel is the most civilized of all countries and nations since the strikes in Israeli occupied cities are non violent and that the Israeli government did not meet them with violence. forgetting that Israeli forces uses violence against “Israeli citizens” of Palestinian origins (both Christens and Muslims) whenever they demonstrate against unjust policies and discrimination by the Israeli government and society. It forgets that “Israel” killed and kills Palestinian men, woman and children in west bank and Gaza in peaceful demonstrations. It forgets that Israel keeps seizing land from its native inhabitants and keeps building settlements, it forgets that Israel killed around 2,000 civilians in its war in gaza, it forgets that Israel does not recognize the right of millions of Palestinians to return to their homes that Israel has forced them while giving a citizenship to any jew, just because he is a jew even though he nor his grand grand parents never even visited Palestine before. and the list keep going ……..

Some pics of Israeli and American forces terrorism in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon:

image credit

Mohammaed Al dura.

Mohammed Al dura.

Sabra and shateal massacre.

American soldiers murdering Iraqis.

I am not questioning here the holocaust, nor saying all jews are evil, but proving here with evidence that TechCrunch under Arrington has been racist and anti Islam, not that every writer at TechCrunch is from this caliber but the above posts proves what TC coverage was over the years is biased when it comes to jews, Israeli and Muslims.

There are many startups founded by jewish entrepreneurs in US or “Israel” that has been covered by TechCrunch, but is TC biased favoring Jewish and Zionist founded or funded startups compared to others from other religious and political backgrounds? taking into account that most VC’s in Silicon Valley are jews? as TC hatred to Islam and its bias with jews in general is evident in in its posts under Arrington’s leadership. We are “suspicions” what do you think?

#Arrington pic,

AreebaAreeba a business social network geared towards residents of the Arab world has reported reaching 650 thousand registered users from 110 countries, in less than a year since its launch.

The Dubai based AreebaAreeba offers smiler functionality to Linkedin, users can post status update where other users can comment on them, start and join groups, blogs and events and discuss topics on forums. However looking at the site you see there is not much activity and user generated content.

If you use iPad it is most likely that you use Flipboad, a popular social magazine that aggregates web content from Twitter and Facebook and displays them in a magazine style.

2 days ago Flipboard announced that Aljazeera is available in Flipboard giving it access to millions of its users. I can say that Al Jazeera is one of the best Arab Media companies to use social media and mobile tech.

There are some controversy about the role Wikileaks has played in the recent Arab Awaking or the Arab Spring that ousted 3 tyrants so far.

However today the role has become clear, as around 200 military veterans and activists demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Amman, Jordan. The first demo in front of the embassy in Amman since 25 years. The demonstration was an objection to in US government interference in Jordanian internal affairs after Wikileaks US embassy cables revelations about its role in Jordan.

The demonstrators burned the US and Israeli flag and chanted slogans such as “ the people want to expel the Americans” “no US embassy in a Jordanian land” and” no US bases on a Jordanian land” . They also demanded the Jordanian armed forces to liberate Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

Ali Habashnah president of Jordan’s military veterans committee told Aljazeera Arabic “we came here to object to US embassy recruitment of CIA agents who plot against our Palestinians brother’s right of return to Palestine.” and he threatened an open strike in the event of continued interference in internal Jordanian affairs by the US embassy.

In the letter sent to the US ambassador in Amman the demonstrators said “this demo is against US policies and not against the friendly American people.”

Via Aljazeera, Albosala and Jordan News

#image credit.

Jordanian youth movement has launched online petition 7erakjo.org rejecting the proposed Jordanian constitutional amendments and in demand for a comprehensive reform.

The activists are demanding to amend Jordan’s constitution in ways that would bring a completely elected parliament as right now half the parliament is appointed by the king, bring a parliamentary elected government, right now it is appointed by the king, and to bring guarantees for public freedom.

In about 2 hours of  its launch the petition got 142 people signed-up, the movement page on facebook said that the website has been under intrusion attempts from “suspicious parties” but the site is back to work now. This campaign coincide with the start of the Jordan parliament to discuss and approve these “patches”,” according to the movement.