You haunt my dreams, you wall of fear
Towering above the abandoned olive groves
Forgotten in the wake of the lines you force
Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long.
As if to underscore the point, yesterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime's ambitions.
The decision is also a reminder of how unchastened Iran has been by President Obama's revelation in September that Iran had been building a secret 3,000 centrifuge facility near the city of Qom. The IAEA's governing board finally got around on Friday to rebuking Iran for that deception, a vote the Administration trumpeted because both Russia and China voted with the United States. But perhaps only within the Obama Administration can a symbolic gesture by the IAEA be considered a diplomatic triumph.
Associated PressMohamad ElBaradei
"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September.
The regime scoffed at Mr. Obama after he delivered a conciliating message for the Persian New Year in March, scoffed again after he mildly criticized its post-election crackdown and killing spree in June (following days of silence), and scoffed a third time by rejecting the West's offer last month to enrich Iran's uranium for it. Yet the Administration insists the enrichment deal is still Iran's for the taking. "A few years ago [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month. "Now look where we are today."
Those are the words of a man who believes he has Mr. Obama's number. And until the President, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force it to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic Republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb over the wreckage of Mohamed ElBaradei's—and Barack Obama's—best intentions.
Almost a decade ago I worked on what, at the time, was called an eBusiness Strategy for a telecommunications company in the GCC, and one of the our most exciting findings was the potential the web had on integrating women into the workforce in some of the more conservative societies. Our findings, while interesting, never did match the reality on the ground. That's not to say that there aren't female entrepreneurs in the region. In fact a member of the founding team at Bayt, one of the most successful start-ups in the region, was a Saudi woman. Recently, however, I sat through a presentation about social media usage in the Middle East that led me to believe that this may soon change. We were presented with a statistic on the gender split of registered Facebook users in the GCC which showed that females outnumbered males. I was so excited that when I got home I Googled and identified the source of those numbers. It was a study conducted by TechCrunch in 2007. A little dated, but how much could things have changed? A lot, as it turns out! In 2007, there were 317,400 registered Facebook users in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Of those, 62% were female and 39% were male. Now this is actually in line with most other regions around the world, but it was still pretty interesting to see that it was the GCC wasn't so different. By 2009 the number of users had grown to 2.2 Million in those countries. This further affirms the spectacular growth of Facebook in the region, but what was even more interesting was the change in the demographics of registered users! I extracted data from Facebook's Advertising platform and it shows that the ratio of men to women is now almost 64% male to 36% female, so a complete reversal from two years ago. What is interesting, though is that this is absolutely in line with the gender split of Internet users in the GCC, where 62% of users are male while 38% are female. Now, I don't know whether or not this has an impact on the demographics of Internet entrepreneurs in the region. I know of some start-ups in the MENA (Middle East, North Africa) region that target a female only audience, but those tend to be run by men. So here is a request to our readers: We'd like to feature some start-ups that have been established or are led by female entrepreneurs in the region. If you, or anyone you know, would like to be featured please feel free to drop me an email on khaled@me.thenextweb.com.
Last week we interview Reza Sadeha, the found of I'm Halal. Today, we caught up wtih Kareem Arafat, the CEO of WatWet, essentially an Arabic Twitter! I like it, and I certainly like the fact that you can access the service through SMS from several countries in the Middle East.
Enjoy!
TheNextWeb (TNW): What inspired you to create Watwet when twitter seems to be making major inroads in the region?
Kareem Arafat (KA): We actually started working on Watwet before the Twitter hype.
The founding team of our mother company, TootCorp, have been always focusing on user generated content and citizen media. Before Watwet, we launched Ikbis (ikbis.com), a leading video sharing service in the Arab World, and Toot (itoot.net) a blog aggregator. We believe the micro-blogging scene is still maturing and we want to focus on populating this expression format across the local mass in the markets we operate in.
TNW: How many users do you have today? Can you provide us with some demographic details (age and location)?
KA: I prefer not to answer this question until we have reached a certain milestone.
TNW: How do you intend on competing with twitter in the region?
KA: We want to focus on the local mass market. Twitter and Watwet are still popular among the early adopters and the tech savvy. In the coming year or two, it will be about taking it to the masses, and we want to have a decent share of this segment of the market.
TNW: Any interesting upcoming features you would like to tell our readers about?
KA: Well, we are working on a set of new enhancements. We are focusing on availability across platforms; desktop apps and mobile apps. Since we don't have millions of users, developers are less keen to create apps for us via our APIs. Thus, we are taking our time developing these apps since we are an extremely small team.
TNW: What was your largest challenge in establishing watwet in the Middle East?
KA: Many! At the very beginning, users did not understand the concept of micro-blogging. Now it is a bit more popular among people. Today our main challenges are around getting mobile operators to work with local brands like us and not only global brands, and finding the right strategic investors to fund our ambitious plans.
TNW: How is your website financed and do you intend on accessing any of the venture capital companies in the region? If you've already dealt with a VC, what is your opinion of the regional VCs and access to capital for start-up companies?
KA: We are financed by an angel investor. Yes, we are talking to VCs around the region. A couple of days ago, I attended a talk by Joi Ito in Amman, and one of the things he said that Japanese and Middle Eastern investors like to invest in what he terms "safe investments" i.e. companies with globally recognized brands, and end up with little upside if any. I agree with his point. I think VCs in the region should take more risk, and should increase their stakes and go for the steeper upside.
TNW: How do you view the regional start-up landscape?
KA: I think it is starting to mature up. I think investors will recognize technology as the new sector to invest in; after years of investment in lands, real estate and financial markets. So I think we will see some more funds available for startups. But having said so, mistakes and gaps in expectations (not every startup will be bought by Google!) will happen in the process. Generally, technology sector is more complicated, and will require more institutionalized approach to investment.
Additionally, while availability of funds will stimulate and entertain a startup scene to develop, it also requires other factors to sync in to make it all happen. We need more users connected to true broadband internet (an area I think that needs much more committed investment in), investment in knowledge and research; our universities should be improved massively. I really consider it an amazing miracle/achievement to have the talented people we have today in the region (mostly attributed to people improving their capacity on an individual basis and not driven by the educational institutions around them). Imagine, if the process of creating talent is institutionalized, we would be much better off.
I think Amman is one of the most startup-friendly cities in the region. Talent is more available relatively, and operational costs are reasonable. Dubai is great for networking, but operational costs are too high. Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Doha and Cairo are emerging fast. More and more clustering will happen in the coming 5-10 years. Hopefully by then, we will be VCs! :)
TNW: Finally, for our many twitter users who would like to migrate to watwet: Is there a way of integrating twitter posts with watwet (I know I can integrate watwet with twitter, but I'm already established on twitter, any advice)?
KA: Yes, you could migrate your latest tweets on Twitter, and sync in your Watwet and Twitter posts. Try out Watwet, if you like it, sync the accounts. We are happy to hear any suggestions from anyone. So write in.
A pretty good presentation by Craig Hepburn, Director of Social Media Strategy at Open Text. Nothing ground breaking, it's more of a beginners guide to social media.
Enjoy!
This has remained one of my favorite sources of information on the readiness of the Middle East to embrace a start-up culture. It provides some wonderful insight that can be summarised as: we have the money in this region, but not the engineers/ scientists.
Enjoy.
Question
Your talk gave me a lot to think about over the weekend and I decided
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Here's the other side of the story in the Middle East. This is the side of the Palestinian people, who are also refugees. I feel for them greatly. They do not have a good situation, and it should be better. I do not agree with their solution, though. Both sides, the Palestinians and the Israelis, must feel beyond the parameters of their own skin. To feel one's own point of view only will get no one anywhere in the Middle East, or beyond. The point of view is unbalanced and tells only one side of the story. When we can see only our side of the story, interpersonal relationships cannot exist. Bring that up to the level of nationalism, and the consequences are tragic.
Both nationalities are displaced and need to consider one another. However, to feel the need to destroy the other goes back to the concept of silencing that which is within by quieting that which is "out there". It will not work. Peace comes from within, and the only way to world peace is through inner peace.
"Balance is the path."
Please note that this the written opinion is original content and I am the author and copyright holder. This is original intellectual property belonging to onewomansthoughts.posterous.com. Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under copyright laws. The movie, above, is not my property.
