MIT Arab Business Plan competition which organize a yearly business plan competition for Arab startups has announced round 3 finalists.

12 teams from 30 semi-finalist teams hat qualified for Round 3. The 12 teams will fly to Tunisia and attend a coaching session with Booz & Co. guiding them through how to better perform in oral presentations and pitch their ideas in front of investors. The final award ceremony will be taking place in Tunisia on Friday, June 17. The 3 winning teams will receive up to $65,000 in prize money to help them take their business to the next level.

Here is the list of teams as per MIT Arab Business Plan Competition website:

National Net Ventures (N2V) announced today a joint investment with several Arab executives in AqarMap.com, a real estate portal that is based on interactive Satellite Maps. N2V’s investment in AqarMap.com coincided with the investment of Jamal Al-muttareb, CEO of almuttareb group and Fadi Ghandour, MENA Venture Investments CEO.

Amount of investment were not disclosed, however Aqarmap.com is expected to benefit from N2V’s online ad network Net-Advantage.com This is the second investment for N2V this year after investing few days ago in True-gaming.net an Arabic gaming portal and is the Internet holdings third investment since the inception of its venture investment arm which was with weddings portals Yebab.

One of the oldest online news sites in Jordan Ammoon has accused Jordan Intelligence in hacking the site.

The sites’ editor in chief Bassel Elkour told Jordanian newspaper Assabel the hacking happened when the site posted a statement from some of Jordan’s tribal leaders criticizing certain parties inside the government and corruption in Jordan.

Okur added that the site received direct threats from certain Jordanian security parties one day before the hack and on the next day a message popped up on the site saying that “ because you did wrong to the images of the country your site has been hacked by Jordanian expats in Australia! ” Okus dismissed the message as a decoy.

Like Tunisia, Egypt and the rest of the Arab countries Jordan is a police state who’s intelligence interferes in all aspect of life: sports, tech community media etc and has strong ties with the CIA.

On the story that Assabeel posted about the incident one commenter wrote: “ anyone who accuse Jordan intelligence will die!”

The country has recently been witnessing demonstrations across many cities against economic conditions, inflation and in demand for policy change. The country’s main opposition party showcased last month evidence of fabrication to the last parliamentary elections’ results.

Jordanian opposition main demands are a new election law and a change to the constitution which allows the prime minister to be elected or emerge from a parliament majority block, rather than how it is done now: appointed by the king.

The U.S government suffers from “Dissociative identity disorder,” or multi-persona disorder. Publicly they talk about democracy, human rights, liberty and the right of nations to rule themselves and decide their future . Yet in practice the consecutive US administrations “Democrats or Republican” have been the historical backers of brutal dictatorship and police states in the Muslim world and non-Muslim world, alike.

From Tunisia to Egypt, the U.S governments has backed both regimes, in a recent Wikileaks leaked U.S diplomatic cables that provide a glimpses of the relationship of both oppressive: the FBI has been providing training to Egypt’s state security ‘torturers’ the state security and investigative service (SSIS).

Historically U.S governments have been supporting the state of “Israel” for decades in monetary funding that are being used to build new settlements on land that has been confiscated from the indigenous inhabitants of the land, and in advanced weapons used to kill Palestinians.
Yet in another evidence that the U.S government “under Bush or Obama “call for democracy is baseless the U.S government did not acknowledge the outcome of the last free parliamentary elections in west bank and Gaza!

In Iraq the government of the United States of America killed 2 million Muslims and Christian Iraqis in the name of freeing them ( according to International human right organizations) . And yet after the Iraqi resistance taught them the real lesson of freedom, they started withdrawing ( not finished withdrawing there are still thousands of US troops in Iraq) their troops and yet another deception, they handed the occupation to 100,000 or so of international mercenary forces and to a poppet Iraqi government and army.

So to conceal all their crimes against Muslims and Arabs and to help them win the propaganda war or what they call the “battle of hearts and minds.” Officials of the U.S states dep. are joining Twitter to “engage” “ it is to deceive” the world specially Muslims.

The latest U.S state dep., engagement (deception) effort with Muslims and Arabs is via launching an official Arabic account @USAbilAraby which its first tweet says:

“U.S state dep. acknowledge the role social media plays in the Arab world and we would like to be part of your discussion”

and that discussion to them are now in the forms of Tweets to deceive the Arab public opinion about what the U.S government is doing, as the account was tweeting about the need of change in Egypt praising the Egyptian revolution and so forth….

Oh Ya we believe you!

Political propaganda has entered a new chapter today, it is now Propaganda 2.0. courtesy of Hillary Clinton – Secretary of hypocrisy and miss-leading the public .

Hosni Mubarak is gone, yes gone and we are happy about it, the dictator is gone, The Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is ousted and just handed power to the army.

This is the 3d week  of the blessed Egyptian revolution, it all started on Facebook with Khaled Saed page ( the young man who was killed while being beaten up by Egyptian police) with Twitter coordinating demonstration locations and spreading the news all over the world and Skype for background coordinations.

The fallen regime responded by blocking down Twitter, facebook and other sites, and then shut down the internet all together, to later come down to earth and meet the populations demands

More updates soon…

In a bid to stop the revolution from spreading  Egyptian authorities shut down the internet all together along with cell phone services according to Aljazeera Arabic channel.

Today is Friday and 100s of thousands are expected to join demonstrations after the Muslim pray of friday.

#image via RNN.

Early today, Egyptian authorities unblocked Facebook and Twitter, but they went into blocking it again according to ArabCrunch sources in Egypt.

The blocking is an attempt to stifle the Friday of Anger demonstrations tomorrow against dictatorship and tyranny, as Facebook and Twitter are used by activists to inform the world about the Egyptian revolution, rally support to bring more Egyptians  to join the efforts to topple Husni Mubarak regime and coordinate demonstration places and paths .

However there are several ways to bypass blocking: using a proxy server, Tor project and Opera browser with Turbo enabled.

To follow the events in Egypt follow hashtag #jan25 #25Jan. on Facebook we are all khaled Saed Page and RNN (arabic and sometimes English headlines)

#image via RNN.

Yesterday night Internet users in Egypt told ArabCrunch that Twitter and Facebook are unblocked in Egypt and they can access normally both social networks.

Egyptian authorities blocked both social networks to prevent activists from using them in order to prevent them form informing the public about the revolution that started in Egypt on Jan 25 the and prevent users from using both platforms in coordinating demonstrations and so forth.

In Suez province users reported to ArabCrunch that the authorities has blocked everything there: internet access and cell phone connections.

Suez is witnessing riots as protestors are fighting anti riot police on the streets and a number of casualties has been reported.

Updated.

There is no doubt that here at ArabCrunch we were big fans of Twitter since the day it was launched. We favored it over its Arab clone WaWet, for many reasons on top of them international adoption rate and a large applications ecosystem.

We were happy that Twitter opened a new platform for the world to communicate on 1 to 1 and 1 to many bases, as it played an instrumental role in breaking barriers including boarders.

However the nasty hand of politics comes to spoil things up.

Our compeitiors the US state department interference is not new with Twitter, as they asked Twitter to postpone its scheduled maintenance to give a chance for “the pro democracy revolutionary attempts in Iran”

And since we are under cruel assault by the US administration and its CIA along with the Zionist movement and certain their Arab “allies.” We raised a very legitimate question whether the CIA, Mossad and any other intelligence agency have access to our accounts on Twitter or any of our staff, or not. We are looking for simple answer Yes or No. But until now there is no answer! the tweet was sent on the 27th of sep.

We feel suspicious because we’ve been seeing retweets and replies from mostly social media Arab mercenaries and not normal tweets! Those tweets were designed to install confusion in our staff mind as a physiological warfare against us and as a failed attempts to mislead the public with a new coverup for the CIA crimes against free media.

Giving access to the CIA, Mossad or any other intelligence such as NSA and specially those in certain Arab country has catastrophic results:

1- We can not rollout that we use Twitter to communicate with some of our news sources, as such access to the CIA, NSA and Mossad would put them in grave danger.

2- If the motive before for the CIA/Mossad and Zionism in destroying ArabCrunch is based on colonial dictator and imperial lust to control free media outlets in politics or tech. Now they have a new motive, which is retaliation because we exposed some of their plots against ArabCrunch and other independent Startups founded by independent Muslims, as such they can send a tweet on our behalf that would put us in legal trouble and impressment under certain anti-free media laws in certain Middle Eastern oppressive and dictator banana republics regimes.

We have a message to the CIA and their Aarab tails, we understand what social graph means since before Facebook was public, you will never be able to find our sources. We will do anything (legal) to protect the brave American men and woman who risked their lives to warn us of your criminal plots.

We will never share our password on Twitter, google or else where with anyone, even under torture or a new type of blackmail.

We hope Sean Garrett @SG from Twitter communictations or anyone from Twitter will come and answer our legitimate question.

Update 1:

Sean replied to our question if twitter gave admin access to the CIA/FBI/Mossad/NSA and Other Agencies to Our Twitter Accounts? “um no. just as much chance of this as Twitter being the gunman that killed JFK.”

which is a great news, but we still waiting for him to answer if these agencies asked/have/had any type of access to our accounts.

US official has been repeatedly attacking Wikileaks and its founders, Julain Assang, reports before the release of the 90,000 secret logs of the Afghan war suggested that US officials were looking to assassinate Julain.

According to UK newspaper Guardian, Wikileaks said that the whislteblowing website’s funding has been blocked, moneybookers a UK registered Internet payment company that collect wikileaks donations, emailed wikilekas telling them they had to close the account because it has been on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The Guardian posted moneybookers reply to wikileaks supplied by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange:

Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.’”

US officials have repeatedly asked WIkileaks to “do the right thing” return the logs and destroy all copies. Which is something TOO late. as all files are now at the finger tips of thousands of people around the world.

Julain Assange defiant response to the “do the right thing,” is releasing thousands more of the secret logs it has obtained, this time about the War in Iraq which would expose the amount of murder the US army and its allies has committed against Iraqi civilians.

Is this an outrages and hypocritical move by the US administration, as the public in USA and around the world have the right to know the hidden secrets of how power is being abused by totalitarian and dictator governments around the world? Is this 100% against the principles of free speech and free flow of information?

However the site seems to be down for a while. Is this the case at your end?

Update: RIM replied to our question whether its agreement with TRA offers UAE authorities ways to monitor the service in the country, with the following statement:

RIM cannot discuss the details of confidential regulatory matters that occur in specific countries, but RIM confirms that it continues to approach lawful access matters internationally within the framework of core principles that were publicly communicated by RIM on August 12 -

As our sources close to 3 regional Telecom companies revealed in August that UAE will reach a deal with RIM the owner of Blackberry to continue the service, Today telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) of United Arab Emirates announced officially that BlackBerry (BB) services will not be discounted and wont be banned on the 11th of October. In August a decision by TRA was made to ban BlackBerry Messenger, Blackberry E-mail and Blackberry Web-Browsing Services making the device ineffective was made due to what TRA called security concerns. In his part, Dubai Chief Police called the ban due to “Israeli” & US Spying On The Country. Saudi Arabia followed UAE’s step and announced plans to ban the service but revoked the decision as our sources said that authorities in KSA will have some hand in “monitoring” BB services. TRA statement (Arabic) said that all BlackBerry services are not in compliance with Telecom regulations in UAE. Which most probably is a confirmation to our sources leak that now UAE authorities have access and can monitor BB beams in UAE.

Venture Capital firm Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), has announced three new investments in Lebanese-based companies: Pin-Pay SAL, iLevel SAL, and Multilane SAL. MEVP says the The funding will assist the companies in pursuing regional growth and extending their product offerings. The companies MEVP’s investmented are as follows:

• Pin-Pay SAL: Network-agnostic wireless payment operators, using platform where customers use a java based application to make and receive payment via their mobile phone directly into their bank accounts. Its goal is to transform the mobile handset into a payment tool. The app only works right now with lebaneas operator Alfa.

• iLevel SAL: Calls its self “The first shopper marketing agency in the Middle East”, helping sales outlet to optimize the shopping experience of their customers. Shopper marketing is the discipline of influencing the shopper at the point of decision through various marketing techniques.  iLevel provides turnkey in-store marketing solutions through research, consultancy and design.

• Multilane SAL: An innovative technology firm focused on designing and developing instruments for testing and characterizing optical communication equipment and optical infrastructure equipment.

Despite the ever growing plots, we are happy to announce that ArabCrunch has made a new milestone, last month we grow at more than 50% now serving around 150,000 pageviews.

This furthuer inforce our readship and our readers trust. We will continue to serve you, thank you for visiting and using ArabCrunch we are happy to serve and continue serve you with unbaised tech and startup news and coverage and with our social apps to help you in your startup or your technical skill.

With this milestone ArabCrunch enforces its leadership in the world of Arab tech blogs and news. We remain #1 tech blog from the Arab world. and remain being ranked #6 worldwide in blogs about innovation and e-commerce and 11th in startup ahead of blogs in those topics from media icons such as FT, WSJ and forbes according to US based invesp. (as noted our monhtly vistis is close to 100,000 not 7,388 of what Inveps reports as for engagment ranking with postrank, well due to the terrorirst DDoS attacks by groups of International criminals postrank could not access our engagemnt for this year

If we compare ArabCrunch readship to local Jordanian media, -where I am from- ArabCrunch readership overpass all English print media togather business or entertianment such as Jo, Jordan Business, Venture and so on, Online: ArabCrunch ranks second in English after the political and Jordanain govemrnet owned JordanTimes.

Thank you all for your support, those milestone are not enough to many to advertise on ArabCrunch even though we are a niech.!!!!!

It seems we can not sustain the ammount of the other plots that are coming to us from certian International criminals. However we will try to stay here and alive.

A new Arab Advisors Group’s survey of Jordan’s Internet users revealed that over 15% of Internet users in the country are also e-commerce users.

The Arab Advisors Group estimates the number of Jordan Internet users who use e-commerce to be more than 181,000 which is around 3.0% of the total population in Jordan. These e-commerce users have spent an estimated US$ 192 million in e-commerce transactions (buying products, paying for services and paying bills online) in the past 12 months.

We asked Danya Nusseir, senior research analysis at Arab Advisors about these number and she gave us the following: paying for services is around 75 million USD ( they do not have list of services that users buy), pay bills online around 42 million USD, buying products online around 75 million USD.

The survey also revealed that out of the respondents who have an ADSL connection at home, 13.5% share it with their neighbors. Moreover, the survey revealed that WiMAX operators had a 14.3% share of residential broadband Internet accounts in the country, up from 9.6% in October 2008. The survey also revealed that respondents who have a WiMAX connection at home choose higher Internet speeds than those who have an ADSL connection at home.

The Arab Advisors says that survey results answers were from 1,021 respondent which were used as a basis for the survey.

#image credit.

In a meeting at the house of Dr. Saed Salamn head of Ajamn network Dhahi Khalfan Tamim Dubai Police chief said that United States of America is the first beneficiary from absence of BlackBerry surveillance in his country, and said that USA has an interests in Spying in his country.

Al Tamami showed before evidence of “Israeli Mussad” intelligence agents being behind an assignation which took place in Dubai early this year killing a senior Hamas Military members.

Tamimi added that “the west” has acused us that we have curbed BlackBerry users’ liberty while USA, UK, “Israel” and other countries are allowed to access all users data. Al Tamimi remarks in the meeting was published by Alkhaleej newspaper (Arabic link.)

In the meeting that gathered some of top telecom, IT and education executives in the country, the speakers asked for establishing tech research centers in the country to support decision makers and stressed the need for local engineers to handle sensitive data, as Dr. Mansour Al Our cited that information security  is very important now a days, he cited examples of information leakage one of them in 2005 and 1997 with Israeli spying on US President Bill Clinton and on the US State Department, he cited Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky case as another example of Israeli spying in the united states of America. saying that Israel has provided components to computers that were used by US security and its political branches.

Other speakers like Ibrahim Shamsi head of communications wondered why UAE government seeks help from foreign experts to assess and laydown plans for its branches IT needs while there is existing local talent?

Saudi Arabia has reached an agreement with BlackBerry to get access to users data, our sources with relevance to telecom operators in region told us that UAE and BalckBerry are expected to reach such agreement at the end of the road. UAE said before they are banning BB by next month.

(Discolors: Unfortunately US State Department is a competitor to ArabCrunch.)

Google forms is part of google free web-based business suite Google apps, which offers anyone with easy tool to create questionnaire without any coding.

You can send the send questionnaire via email and respondents can answer from an email message. The responses are saved in a spreadsheet and can be viewed graphically.

Now forms can be sent in Arabic with right-to-left enabled and is ready to take right-to-left input.

Souq.com was launched in 2005 from Maktoob group (Now Jabbar Group) as an auction site, it initially covered Jordan, then expanded into UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The site is not anymore just an auction site, but rather a marketplace for anyone to sell or buy, Souq.com supports many formats (auction, fixed price and Classifieds for the Real Estate and motor vertical.)

Selling in souq sounds a straight forward 123 process: register, add product name, choose the payment method, done. Once a user buys your item, Aramex will contact the you to collect the item, once the the items is delivered to the buyer the funds will be released to your wallet, now it can be transferred to your bank account.

Souq also has what is calls SouqSafePay, where it will release funds to the seller only once the buyer receives and approves the item.

On the Kuwaiti store, Souq also has a storefront for Kuwaiti bricks and mortar stores where users can buy directly from them directly.

Kuwait Souq is available in English and Arabic.

As we enter the 9th day of the holly month of Ramadan, Quran Links pops up as  a new site in English and Arabic for Muslims and interested non-muslims  offerring classified guide to Islamic and Quran related web sites. Visitors can suggest a new site, rate and add comments on an existing listed site. But the site already boost a number of Quran related sites in tags such as Video, Mp3, Quran Interpretation and so on.

Quran Links owners say that the site is not for profit, does NOT belong to any political or any particular denomination. It’s developed by SADAF Technology Development from Gaza, Palestine, and is managed by a team of volunteers.

Update: this site might be of a security risk, the site marketing personnel refused to provide us with his full  name or send us more details related  to security.

They finally responded and here is the update:

Update 2:

We got this response from Dushare marketing team:

How do you close the connection?
1. The connection is closed as soon as the second peer refreshes his page after recieving file or closing the browser page.

if the link is there in the cloud? how would we know that the user PC is not wide open to you guys or anyone?

He is not open, we have implemented a 128-bit encryption algorith on the transferred packets.

Another thing, the link can only be picked by one peer, no one else can coonect to it. You can also password-protect your files. And ones the sender leaves our page or doesn’t send another thing. All connections are closed.

Let me explain in details:

1. You pick a file, it gets prepped up and url is produced for you to send it to your friend/other peer.
2. The file link is clicked on directly, http://www.dushare.com#45130 or can be retrieved by entering the code “45130″ in the “claim” part.
3. upto to the point the url is produced, no security risk or any ports or sockets are sockets are exposed.
4. When the other peer, click on the url link and connect to you. The data packets are encrypted using a 128-bit AES encryption. This encryption is required for any tampering of data  by a middle man other than the receiving
peer.
5.We expose no ports or sockets. Once the other peer picks up the file, no one else can pick up the file and url link is useless. You can even password-protect your files.

The above explains the security part.

As for the connection,

You(sender) identify yourself with an id on the main server with your IP, then when the other peers picks the file, he has an ID, and IP, The actual data packets are transferred directly between ID 234 to ID 434 securely.

We have no control and we cannot intercept the file transfer as its transferred directly from peer 1 to peer2. Even in the case, the data is tampered by a man in the middle. It is encrypted using a 128-bit AES encryption.

I hope that clarifies your security concerns.

Another addition, The url link cannot be picked by more than 1 peer. You can also password protect your files.

Update 3:

From dushare team: “With p2p technology you don’t have access of anytype to the peers pc. It’s simply sending and recieving data packets and decoding them.”

There are different ways to share files with peers, coworkers and friends using tools such as torrents and ex- Google MENA Marketing Manager Nagi Salloum‘s Loomn.it

Dushare brings the concept of P2P (peer 2 peer) to the web and for free, no registration,  just hit upload any file of any-size and then share the key with your friend, he/she can join the link to chat with you while getting the file.

Dushare claims that it does not see your files or chat logs as they rely on secure direct transferee connection between the 2 peers. Dushare also offers the option to protect your files with a password.

Dushare is a product of DuLeaf FZE a United Arab Emirates’s Dubai Silicon Oasis based company. We do not know what is the startup model but we have replied to their coverage request and will let you know if they answer.

On the file sharing front, Infinite USB Memory Drive (IUM) also from Dubai provides unlimited file transfer between devices using WIFI.

Aramex the Jordanian based international delivery company has been always been in the forefront when it comes to utilizing technology and the web to add more value to its customers.

The company which was the first Arab-based international company to trade its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange  ( now listed in Dubai Financial Market -DFM) has launched about yesterday its iPhone app to help its customers manage their Aramex shipments using an iPhone mobile.

The iPhone app has Shipment Tracking feature which allows you to add shipments to your list, show the current tracking update for each, give your shipments “nicknames” . You can also view the detailed tracking history for each of your shipments.

The app also comes with Office Locations features which allows you to quickly find the nearest Aramex office using GPS, you can also lookup the address and phone number for any Aramex office. The app requires iOS 3.0 or later.

Similar features of the iPhone app are already available on Aramex website.

Aramex has also shopNship a delivery service that helps residents in the Arab world buy from international e-commerce sites such as Amazon. The company has formed recently a number of partnerships with regional e-commerce startups offering their extensive delivery and logistics base of over 310 locations around the globe, not just to deliver goods but also to collect payments.

Aramex founder and CEO Fadi Ghandour is an active angel investor in many startups, he previously was one of Maktoob’s investors and made a nice exit with Yahoo’s buyout.

(Disclosure: Fadi Ghandour is a member of ArabCrunch Advisory board.)

ComScore released today a report on Twitter stats for the month of June, the report reveals that 93 million Internet users visited Twitter.com -exluding third party app such as TweetDeck- an increase of 109% from last year.

Indonesia the largest Muslim country in terms of population achieved the highest penetration rate, at 20.8 percent of the country’s Internet users. Brazil and Venezuela follows Indonesia in that category.

In terms of users growth, Twitter is growing at much higher rates Internationally than in its homeland in North America as the region’s growth rate is at 22% to nearly 25 million visitors in June. Latin America had the strongest audience growth, surging 305 percent to 15.4 million users. Asia Pacific ranked as the second-fastest growing region, climbing 243 percent to 25.1 million visitors. The Middle-East Africa jumped 142 percent to 5 million visitors, while Europe soared 106 percent to 22.5 million visitors. ( we do not know what the term Middle East and Africa means to ComScore, is it the Arab world plus Iran and Turkey plus all Africa? last time we wrote about Twitter visitors  in early this year via 2 parties it was  about 15 to 30,000 thousand users, so 5 Million is a very massive growth rate)

The report reveals that Twitter is gaining adoption among smartphone users. In the U.S., 8.3 percent of smartphone users (4.2 million people) accessed Twitter.com in a month via the browser on their mobile devices, outpacing each of the European markets. In Europe, 2.8 percent of smartphone users overall accessed Twitter.com (1.7 million users), with the U.K. experiencing the strongest penetration in the region at 5.8 percent, followed by Germany with 3.1 percent and France with 2.1 percent.

It would be great to add third party apps usage, not sure how would that number increase, but many users who use apps like TweetDeck access Twitter.com occasionally over the month period. Another Interesting finding would be knowing who are the active memebrs from those reported and those coming as visitors via referrals like Google.

What is your take, why Twitter growth in Middle East and Africa plus Latin America is exploding?

#image via Si.

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks that is now well known for releasing the Afghanistan War Log of around 90,000 secret US military documents and the Baghdad shooting Video seems to be preparing for a new massive batch of leaks.

A Tweet sent by the Twitter account of Wikileaks asked for 700,00 USD for its next harm-minimization review, and accused the Pentagon and the media of not helping in the efforts of harm minimization.

That money seems to be going to help edit 15,000 more documents about the war in Afghanistan which might mean removing the “informants” names or a 260,000 pages that involves the Middle East or a new  a batch of fresh leaks and that money might be used to support the organizations infrastructure such as servers and so on as it lives off donations as a not for profit organization. Wikileaks accepts donations via different means starting with big to small payments on sites such as micropayment site Flattr.com.

The Pentagon has asked wikileaks recently “to do the right thing” and remove the war logs but wikileaks spokesman said more leaks to come.

Wikileaks accused in another tweet that “the pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist  the review.

“Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review.Media won’t take responsibility.Amnesty won’t.What to do?”

The Obama administration has asked today Britain, Germany, Australia and its other allies to consider criminal charges against the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange to limit his cores Europe movement.

While an American official was quoted by The Daily Beast saying ““It’s amazing how Assange has overplayed his hand,”…. “Now, he’s alienating the sort of people who you’d normally think would be his biggest supporters.”

He was referring to 4 human rights organizations such as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission AIHRC.

Wikileaks replied via Twitter by saying “Research note: AIHRC is primary funded by the occupying forces of Afghanistan.” and “Remember well those organizations currently rushing to push the Pentagon’s agenda without fact checking.”

A Petition posted online with the title of “Defend WikiLeaks – End the Secret Wars” said that “We believe that WikiLeaks and those whistleblowers who declassify documents in a time of secret war should be welcomed as defenders of democracy, not demonized as criminals. We support their First Amendment rights and welcome their continued disobedience in response to a long train of official deception.” The Petition has gathered   a number of well known people with 3061 signatures saying.”

Wikileaks has released on March 15, 2010 a classified 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation reveled a plan in plotting to destroy the center gravity of the site by attacking its “trust.”

Sukar a private shopping club that offers on a weekly bases from well known brands at discount rates up to 70% has started offering delivery to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. It was available before only in UAE. Sukar was launched end of last April.

Jabbar group is the majority owner of Sukar, the other e-commerce company that Jabbar owns is Souq.com like ebay but for  the Arab world ( an auction site) has announced partnership with Mobily a Mobile operator in Saudi Arabia. Now Mobily users can use Mobily loyalty program points called “Neqatai” and redeem them in buying goods on the auction site.. Souq.com is available in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE.

Jabbar’s e-commerce quest did not stop in 2 companies, as the growing success of Dubai Based group buying startup GoNabit has led Jabbar to announce its own copycat called cobbone.

GoNabit managed to get the backing of Bayt ( a leading Middle East e-jobs site) as a majority share holder. Both Bayt and Jabbar share the same investor, NewYork based Tiger Global Management.

In today’s Press conference Lebanaon’s “Hezbollah” Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah, displayed a video of an “Israeli drone” video transmission Hezbollah managed to hack in 1996. “Before 1997, the Resistance managed to capture the transmission of an MK drone and we managed to access this transmission which enabled us of capturing the images transmitted by the drone as the enemy’s operation room was receiving them.” Nasrallah said.  According to him a drone video feed Hezbollah hacked in 1997  has helped “Hezbollah fighters” to set up an ambush for “Israeli commandos” team who where in their way to conduct “military operations” in southern Lebanon.

In the press conference Hezbollah accused “Israel” of being behind  the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minster Rafiq Al Hariri. He was assassinated in Lebanon in February, 14,  2005. In his speech Nasrallah said that a lebanese “Israeli spay”  has been “blackmailing” Hariri to think that Hezbollah was plotting to kill him.

Nasrallah also unveiled several intercepted videos from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination. He said that these Israeli drones had carefully monitoring Al Harrari’s motorcade. “Such footage generally comes as the first leg of the execution of an operation.” he added..

In his speech, Nasrallah showed a profile of different Israeli spies and said they used high tech equipment such as mobile phones that can monitor other mobile conversations.

In December 2009, Wall Street Journal reported that “Military groups” in U.S occupied Iraq managed to hack U.S. Military and CIA Predator drones using software programs such as SkyGrabber — now available for as little as $29.95 British Pounds.

Nasrallah hinted that his party has other evidence and secrets to be reveled at “the appropriate time.”

Israel has developed many drone types including Heron TP (Eitan) which is  designed as a Multi-payload, Multi-mission platform  The Dorn has a powerful Turbo-Prop engine, which enables the aircraft to climb and operate at altitude above 40,000 ft avoiding any airspace conflict with commercial aircraft traffic. And can fly for 36 consecutive hours with full mission payload and reach the Arab Gulf.

#Via Almanar TV. Elbit Hermes 450 Image.

There are a number of  pure Arabic distributions for the free and open source operating system Linux, Ojuba is one of the most recognized one.

Few days ago the 4th edition of Ojuba has been launched under the name “Riyadh”, the most notable features are support for 64 bit CPUs, a personal lock folder for encrypted files, activating 3G connection automatically and more.

Ojuba is available for free under Waqf General Public License ,To download Ojuba you can go here ( arabic) english unofficial site here.