Thursday, July 01, 2010
Elder of ZiyonAssuming that Iran's boycott is only for companies that have a significant presence in Israel, things might get a little hairy. From Zvi:
Among the top 20 non-oil companies in the S&P Global 100 list (not yet updated to reflect Apple's rise), the only companies that DON'T have research labs, joint ventures, strategic investments, subsidiaries, etc. in Israel are:
* lung cancer purveyor Philip Morris
* WalMart
* BHP Billiton (diamond miner that does significant business with Israel and uses Israeli technology)
* Banco Santander
Every other company on the list has a direct presence in Israel. So the IRI would have to boycott the rest of the world's largest companies, including companies that they probably don't want to boycott (such as Samsung, Siemens and Toyota) as well as frequently companies such as Intel and Microsoft. They would also have to boycott most of the world's leading pharmaceutical and medical-device companies - but then, health care has never been the IRI's top priority, has it?
Apple
The iPad and iPhone 4 include components from Samsung and Micron, which have Israeli R&D centers. Apple's computers use Intel chips.
So sorry! Mahmoud, if you were hoping to buy an iPad on your next trip to Europe, you will need to reconsider.
AMD and Linux
Iran is on the US list of Embargoed Countries. AMD can't legally sell to Iran. Nevertheless, the IRI regime obtains AMD chips on the black market and has used them to build a 216-processor supercomputer and to conduct aerospace research (i.e. missiles), which Iran then bragged about. An AMD statement says that the company is investigating how the IRI could have obtained these CPUs and that it has alerted the US State Dept. to these reports.
The IRI is using the SUSE distribution of Linux in its aerospace programs. This is the free distribution from Novell. Novell has a local office in Israel. Want to try again, Mahmoud?
I'm not going to guess how many contributions to the Linux source come from "Zionists" (Israelis, Jews, Christians who support Israel, Muslims who support Israel, anyone whose country Iran has ever accused of being Zionists, e.g. all Americans, etc.) or from companies on the banned list. However, I definitely encourage IRI bureaucrats to immediately go through the source code and delete every line contributed by these pernicious Zionists, as well as by all companies on the "banned" list, e.g. IBM. The IRI can't possibly want to have evil Zionist code running Iran's computers. Furthermore, I encourage all Iranians who love the Islamic Republic to immediately content their leaders and tell them that it is unacceptable to be running the country using a crypto-Zionist operating system that might be secretly mocking Islam and which might deviously cause Iran's missiles to turn around and blow up Tehran. I do think this is a very reasonable fear for delusional paranoid conspiracy theorists to hold, and I am happy to warn them about this secret plot.
Coke & Pepsi: failed again
The IRI is boycotting Coke but not Pepsi; however, in 2008, Pepsi and Strauss formed a joint venture that acquired an Israeli company. Better luck next time, Mahmoud.
Conclusion
The whole boycott-Israel is an example of the IRI regime's badly skewed priorities. Instead of working pragmatically to create the greatest value for its people, the IRI regime continues to focus on attacking a country 1000km away and attempting to slaughter a people that has never, in thousands of years of recorded history, initiated military action against Iran/Persia. The Iranian regime will continue to operate in this obsessively destructive fashion until it collapses, because this psychotic obsession is quite literally the backbone of the regime.
