Slashdot Mirror
HP Accused of Illegal Exportation To Iran
AdamWeeden writes "According to research done by the Boston Globe, HP has been secretly using a third-party company to sell printers to Iran. This is illegal under a ban instituted in 1995 by then US President Bill Clinton. The third-party company, Redington Gulf, operates out of Dubai and previously stated on their web site that the company began in 1997 with 'a team of five people and the HP supplies as our first product, we started operations as the distributor for Iran,' though now the site has been changed to remove the mention of Iran. Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?"
Nice to hear that another country has its entire WLAN infastructure polluted by "Hpsetup" SSIDs!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
>"Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the U.S. governement's export restrictions?"
Yes.
Oh, and Timmy...please use a modern browser w/spell checking, thanks.
We gave Muslims top secret printer technology. They can now print G'Had pantalets at 28 ppm. The world will now end.
Is it not a good think for the people of Iran to have access to printers? You know, to express their right to free speech and stuff?
Is there some military use for this stuff, I am not aware of?
]{
Only if you put big finger-quotes around "unknowingly".
On the other hand, maybe this is a secret government plot to bankrupt Iran by selling them cheap printers, then gouging them on cartridges.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Selling product to people who want them is a slap in the face of our American free market system!! How dare they!
There is something wrong in the world when a private company can't sell its printers to a private buyer simply because the seller is in the US and the buyer is in Iran. I understand the reason for sanctions (whether or not I agree with that reason), but I am pretty sure that some people's liberties are being infringed due to a political disagreement they have nothing to do with. Nothing new, I guess, for Iran or the US.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
This is what IBM did during WWII to avoid the ban on sales to Nazi Germany.
You are with the free market system, or you are against it.
shhhhhh.... it is a CIA ploy to bankrupt Iran via HP printer ink refills... would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling /.
Let's for a moment gloss over whether those restrictions are good ideas. Are they even possible? I mean, we're talking about computing hardware here, the kind of stuff you can buy anywhere in the world without identification. It's not like a ban on nuclear materials where there's a limited supply and you can watch the sources pretty closely. So if HP quits selling to Iran, what's to stop them from buying from Turkey or England or India or Japan or China, and how could we ever pretend to know or that we could prevent it?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
At a time where our economy is taking a beating we should be glad that someone is willing to buy our stuff, even if they are crappy and actually made in China.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
HP recently acquired EDS.
EDS holds the contract for NavyMarineCorpsIntranet.
aforementioned contract is up for renewal soon.
I can't imagine this helping EDS, An HP Company to re-win the contract.
Apart from HP there are dozens of US companies who utilize the same methods of bypassing the pretend ban. Now what would be more believable was if the US banned the importation of Iranian OIL and locked up some OIL executives ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
"anything that helps a business run pretty much helps the military run"
..
Then who not ban the importation of their OIL, or how about invading Iran and liberating the OIL and then selling it back to them just like Bush did in Iraq. Only first they'll have to talk up the bogus WMD scare
davecb5620@gmail.com
You know Canada had price controls on their goods in 1980, so...the US killed 2 million of us? Oh no wait you're just an uninformed troll.
Om, nomnomnom...
Just before the islamic revolution, the Shah had acquired US made bank note printing presses, the exact same used to make US dollars.
So they can already make the most real fake notes.
They will use the parts of the printers to make nuclear bombs....
"Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the U.S. governement's export restrictions?"
Nope! They haven't been doing it unknowingly.
It's not like there was another country a few thousand km away that made all sorts of IT products, including but not limited to printers, which just happened to want to buy exactly what Iran had a lot of.
Clearly, without US-made printers, the Iranian military is unable to function properly.
Print Controlla!
THL phish sticks
If Iran wants HP printers, what's to stop some guy from going into a store in any other country where HP printers are available. Then, you just take them back to Iran. It's not like it's a nuclear sub or something. It's a printer for cryin' out loud. It fits in carry-on luggage. Of course, the Iranians would pay a hefty premium using such methods. It'd be easier to make wholesale arrangements via a 3rd country, which is probably what this deal ammounts to. If HP can wholesale printers in countries that aren't sanctioning Iran, then it's game over--our hypothetical shopkeeper would just leave the printers in their pallet, impose a modest markup, and send them on to their final destination.
Oh well... tilting at windmills. I mean, this is the same government mentality the brought us the "you must state you are not from Iran before you download 128-bit encryption". Because, you know... Iranians can't copy 128-bit Netscape from one of their relatives who came back with a CD-ROM, and they would never lie.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That explains why those guys are so pissed off at the West. It really didn't add up for a while. I mean our policies of colonialism and arrogance might be a bit irksome, but it's no reason to want to kill us. But those poor bastards have had to talk to use HP hardware and talk to HP tech support. Yeah... now I understand where they're coming from. Perhaps now that HP's been busted and will no doubt be forced to stop, our relations with Iran will improve...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
With those printers, they'll take over the world. There's nothing to stop them.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
i think Iran should be allowed to buy printers. Ink is more expensive than oil and with HP's / Lexmark's, etc. business model, I'd say making them buy ink to print is nearly an act of economic war more effective than the trade embargo itself.
[/humor]
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
TLA=Three Letter Agency
They can use tor to download anything they want from any US server, or they can simply connect to any other countries' mirrors.
That's why reading this is always mind-boggingly hilarious:
This source code is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and other U.S. laws, and may not be exported or re-exported to certain countries (currently Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) or to persons or entities prohibited from receiving U.S. exports (including those (a) on the Bureau of Industry and Security Denied Parties List or Entity List, (b) on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons, and (c) involved with missile technology or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons).
Hm, yeah, right, sure.
PC load letter! FSCK!
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
It may be tempting to personify companies, but they aren't persons, they're people (snicker.) Somebody at HP knew. Some people didn't. Only a proper investigation will bring us closer to knowing. But don't imagine it's as simple as HP being 100% guilty or 100% innocent.
Whether (and how) to penalize HP is a much more interesting question since such penalties are for -- I hope -- their deterrent effect.
Fuck the ban. Is this or is this not a free market? Export restrictions are bull. If someone else wants to buy our stuff, then let them.
the printers are mostly made in China in the first place, so whose are they really? Especially in a partially command economy like China's.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sell them (Iran) ink more expensive than oil until they become bankrupt.
so this entire story is based on a retailer web page?
please find us something more interesting, dear slashdot god.
PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?
Would the Iranian government be smart enough to know that the Secret Service has microprinting turned on by default? Would the Secret Service be smart enough to further tamper with the hardware for.. remote access?
http://www.eff.org/issues/printers
HP is just being proactive. They feig... umm, COIned the term "Invent" regarding their public side of business. Privately, it seems, they CIRCUMvent.... Let's leave 'em alone to privacy. They're just ... venting..
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Around 1998 I got hired by a company that manufactured medical lab equipment. Just before I started, they got a HUGE order from Iraq, which at the time, was under UN embargo and the scandal-ridden oil-for-food program.
The type and quantity of equipment that was ordered was ASTOUNDING, and sent alarm bells off through-out my organization. This was an enormous order, which amounted to about 70% of our typical annual production (world-wide) for the specific products. On top of that, there was a second order for spare parts to fully rebuild 2/3 of the original order. The equipment was specifically designed to grow bacterial and viral cultures on a very large scale for research. 60 Minutes had just done an investigative report on Saddam's chief biological weapons expert, who to most western news was only known as "Dr. Germ".
Our organization was struggling, and we really needed the revenue. To the workers on the floor, it meant that the lay-offs had stopped, for the moment.
I was dismayed that the organization was not in the position just reject the order on principle. Instead, they submitted the order to Clinton Administration's Commerce Department and set up a contingency plan to sell the equipment through multiple intermediary companies if permission was denied. Our CEO then made a large donation to the Democratic National Committee, and magically the sale was approved and blessed by the Commerce Department as "Humanitarian Medical Equipment", which it clearly was not.
Many can claim that no WMD's were found in Iraq, but I have a very good insight to the scale of the program that they had put in place. Almost all politicians have a price, and none are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Where there is money to be made, the barriers can be overcome.
One would think that HP's consumer goods could not be easily adapted to nefarious purposes (beyond counterfeiting), but you never know. Most laser printers do contain processors that are far beyond the capability allowed to pass through the embargo. Desperate people become very resourceful.
-- Len
I remember reading that before the 1st Iraq war printers sold to Iraq had some kind of radio targeting devices installed that allowed smart bombs to find their aiming points. I don't know if that was true, but this could be a CIA or US military ploy to find good targets.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Accidental my a$$.
This is precisely what went on prior to the Gulf War. US-made printers were smuggled into Iraq and laced with transponder chips that acted as beacons for air strikes and special ops.
I wonder if HP is allowed (under the embargo) to provide technical support over the phone, over the web, or via download for customers (direct or indirect) from Iran or other embargoed countries. It would be easy enough to tell if the caller's number is a 011+98+n prefix, if the e-mail address or hostname ends with .ir If that is the case I'd feel bad for the legitimate business who buys a new printer from a reseller and can't get any support for it from the manufacturer (if that is the case).
If they did provide the support, they'd have to admit they knowingly had post-embargo products over there, and I would imagine uncle Sam would find that helping an embargoed state with an IT/Business problem actively is worst than tossing a box of hardware at them and letting them figure it out. Then again, I can't say HP support has ever really been that helpful (or timely; the embargo will probably be over before they actually got some support; but that is a different story).
I think I'm with everyone else in that the embargo is "wishful thinking" on the government's part, and they haven't learned that all the embargo does is drive up the prices (e.g. cuban cigars) and make a middleman (such as canadian tobacco shops) wealthier than their US counterparts. If the dictaror (whose name I can't remember off the top of my head) in Iran wants an iPod to superclusters of linux PCs as a poor mans supercomputer, this isn't going to stop him; but might deny or drive the price up for the average citizen who would love some US medicine or blue jeans.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Nevermind the farmers were growing opium. The CIA will have none of that price fixing crap.
They didn't think twice about lying to obtain the phone records of their employees. (Remember the hooplah about "pretexting?") I'm sure they wouldn't think twice about selling in violation of trade embargoes to a country that continually supports terrorist acts against U.S. troops, Iraqi Civilians, and Israel.
Embargoes like this are unfair to the innocent people - who have no malintent towards the US. They likely don't even approve of their government's activities. Why wouldn't the ordinary Iranian, therefore, have access to printers?
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
"Everyone does it!"
(( The following may or may not be fiction ))
I have personally witnessed similar activities being attempted by EFTDatalink/Amstar Systems (both entities run by the same people) trying to set up ATM based money transfers between the US and Mexico... yes... if your first thought was "drug money laundering" then you wouldn't be alone because talks with various money handling entities refused to talk to Amstar Systems about it and simply walked out of talks with the company's executives. "Amstar Mexico" was pursuing business activities in ALL of central and south america and CUBA. Amstar Mexico is free to deal with whoever they want... they are a Mexican company and they don't have those restrictions as far as I know.
Of course, all of the statements I just made are mostly based on my own recollection and may be inaccurate. My last contact with the operators of the company was well over 10 years ago. I believe my memory is accurate enough but should be treated as speculation or even as fiction. One of the executives at the time was an arrogant asshole of a lawyer and who knows what he might try to do to me if Slashdot offers little to no protection regarding my identity.
Given how technologically advanced HP printers have become, this presents a huge risk to national security. I'm mortally afraid that my comfy way of life has been jeopardized by HP's actions. President-Elect Obama needs to appoint a special prosecutor ASAP!
Actually, now that I think about it, my comfy life has already been jeopardized by HP products... anyone want a paperweight that just happens to look like a fancy scanner with ADF?
Fail.
It's not illegal to sell most American goods to Iran.
As long as the goods are not crypto or weapons it's legal to sell to Iran as long as Americans are not directly involved. Shipping via a third country is legal and common practice.
There is no evidence that HP broke any laws.
Exports from US companies are controlled by the Bureau of Industry and Security, part of the Department of Commerce.
In addition to the list of controls for each country, most people are really, really surprised to read the list of controlled items -- the Commerce Control List. The list itself is Part 774, Catetegories 0 through 9, plus Supplements 2 and 3, linked at the bottom of the page.
One concept not well-known is that merely discussing a controlled technology in the presence of a foreign national from the "wrong" country (think China and Iran, among others) is considered an "export" of technology, and has federal penalties (fines and prison time) just as severe as the actual physical transfer of an object. This tripped up J. Reese Roth, a retired professor now facing a maximum of 150 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for 7 January 2009.
" ... Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?" ..."
Or is HP supplying printers to Iran under direction from the US gov't, via clandestine means, like an "illegal" importer from the area, to the unsuspecting Iranian government, military, academia, and commerce? It's not the first time printers were used to gather intelligence ... I seem to recall a news story during the first year of Gulf War II about certain printers that the US had "modified" in such a way that they offered useful intelligence, gathered from the offices of Saddam's between-Gulf War military.
Even if that isn't going on here, all printers sold everywhere, including in the US, have embedded dots that can identify the origin of any document down to a specific printer. Sold to us as a means to counter counterfeiting of money, It's useful to have such data when you run across something someone printed in a foreign country you are very interested in knowing more secrets about.
Could be wrong, but methinks a secret blind eye, to advance intelligence gathering while appearing to enforce the embargo for the usual reasons, is somewhat more plausible than HP blatantly defying the law to make a few bucks in a relatively small market, as much as they do love the money.
It's either good or bad, depending on your perspective, that if it were true, it's best to deny it, and continue the charade with some kind of nominal punishment. So, we'll never know, unless of course they throw the book at HP.
Whoever was the HP sales rep that was selling the printers to this intermediary company in Dubai, likely had a VERY good knowledge of where all those printers were going.
Whether that sales rep (or their boss) communicated this up the chain to senior execs, however, is anybody's guess.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
I think you're missing an opportunity to balance that nasty oil-fuelled trade deficit..*reaches for calculator*
Yup, about 5 barrels of HP branded inkjet ink should do it.
Oh maaan,
Now they can disassemble the printers and make nuke bombs out of them!
Crappp!!
Placing an embargo on Iran on consumer and business goods, to me, is an act of war. For those Obama-lovers out there (and understand I detest Bush just as much), it's important to focus that Clinton, a Democrat, provided for this act of war.
It's no wonder that Iran's leaders proclaim injustices by the West -- we do them, and we do them fairly openly.
Regardless of whether or not HP did it or was complicit in the act of selling to Iranian businesses, I'll continue to buy HP products and continue to recommend them. When the State does something contrary to freedom, it is up to freedom lovers to work around it. Kudos to HP, and whoever else was involved in the "smuggling" of these goods, for providing a non-lethal product to those who wanted them.
Is it only our government's job to sell weapons of mass destruction to the various parties of war in the Middle East? Does the American government have any Constitutional priviledge to tell individuals and businesses elsewhere in the world what they can and can't buy? I don't think so.
It's ridiculous that our government, on behalf of the voters, can tell another country and people in another country what business items they can purchase and use. Considering how much HP pays in payroll on behalf of US citizens, I'm even more shocked that the U.S. government has wasted more tax dollars investigating what is obviously nothing but their desire to strongarm Iranian citizens to get mad at their government for not being able to buy decent printers, when it fact it just gives those citizens more reason to point the finger at the U.S. citizens who want nothing to do with their government's insane actions.
Let Iranians buy what they want to buy from whoever wants to sell it to them. That's call an open and free market. To embargo PRINTERS is ridiculous, and an obvious act of war.
What are they going to do? Bury us in paper like the Federal Reserve?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
At what point does HP become responsible for the actions of a 3rd party?
If I walk into Office Depot and buy a printer, there's nothing telling me whare I can take it or whom I may resell it to. In fact, forget printers. I've bought some pretty sophisticated test equipment (stuff you can use to work on state of the art radar for example) and nobody has told me that I can't drive across the border with it, put a 'for sale' sign on it and take cash from the first buyer. As long as I've answered customs of the country I'm entering honestly that, 'Yes. I am carrying goods that I intend to sell. Here's your duty. Have a nice day.'
So, back to the printers. If I order a dozen printers, the salesperson will happily help me load them in my truck. A hundred and they'll probably take me out to dinner. At what point can I expect them to ask, "Hey buddy. Just where are you going with all these printers?"
Have gnu, will travel.
they won't use printers for printers, but use the CPUs and memory in those printers to modify their missile guidance systems for longer range.
Plus those HP printers use an encryption scheme that is greater than what is supposed to be sold to the Middle-East. They can unassemble the code from the printer memory and drivers and use it to encrypt messages that are harder to crack.
But it is useless because all they need do is download the source code to GPG and they have one of the best encryption systems there is known to Earth.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Is that some new form of teleportation? The things I learn on digg...
I do not think they would knowingly violate the law. Why in the hell would a big company waste its time and take the risk of breaking the law just to sell a few extra printers, when they've obviously got better legal things to do?
Usually such things are handled in a way which makes it impossible to establish a direct link between corporate policy and delivering some product somewhere. If such bussiness happens it happens usually because some distributor, for whom the market may be not small at all, decides to make a little extra money. There several stages of "corruption" may be involved in this
a) The distributor acts on his own, not telling anybody at the big company where he sells products, maybe even lying.
b) The salesperson responsible at the company knows that jumps of 50% in sales are strange, but why spoil a good business by asking stupid questions?
c) His boss looks only at the sales total and gives him a rise for good sales
d) The official company policy and what the headquarters know may state that a) any departments are responsible for themself, and that b) no department may ship to an embargoed country
Look at the Siemens scandal for an example of a lack of corporate governance. (I know a lot of people at the company. Most of them are happy the scandal happened, because now it's better there.). To make a literal cite on somebody in an accounting deparment "Oh in the numbers reported to the central accounting, you can barely notice such sums" (we where discussing news about inofficial accounts containing on the order of 100million euros).
So yes, i firmly believe that HPs headquarters definitely may have missed a small transfer of 50Mio$ from somewhere via a unofficial account, being reintegrated into the balance by and wrong bill for consulting services somewhere (or by other means. Look at the Siemens scandal to learn what you can do. If Siemens creativity in consumer products would be as good at the accountants ability to hide money, they mobile phone would still rock).
Yep. T'was a grand day when them uppity Canucks got theirs. Deserved it, too; gettin' their pennies all mixed in with ours (if you live in a border state, you know what I mean).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gon' make me some pancakes and slather it with the rich, delicious taste of American-liberated maple syrup.
See? I got it wrong, so I can't be a nerd!
Forget HP and Iran. Can someone please tell me why in the bloody hell the RSS abstract for this and almost every other Slashdot story over the past few weeks has included a banner ad for HGTV's "Myles of Style"? What exactly is their target audience here? I'm pretty sure the number of Slashdot readers who are interested in the finer points of choosing drapery fabrics to match the floor lamp can probably be stored in the register of an 8080 with two or three bits to spare.
Maybe their ad relevance engine picked up this story a few weeks back and misunderstood the meaning of "design patterns"?
No wonder - they want to drum up more business for the huge phone support that would be generated by using HP products. That should drive the Iranians crazy.
Bite me
Ridiculous story. Some random re-seller sells Iran HP printers and HP is incriminated ? I'll bet they sell HP and Dell PCs too - 'cause they are #1 & 2 in the world. A better question is what brand of guns, ammmo and rockets are sold to Iran.
Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?"
if some country wants to reverse engineer a f@ckin printer, they just acquire one through a person and do it. or two. or three.
there is no concept of 'supplying someone with technology' in a case of selling printers en masse. you dont need 100.000 units of printers to reverse engineer anything.
what is happening is pure export. thats it.
summary is retarded beyond comprehension.
Read radical news here
Export controls are largely ineffective and easily bypassed with proxies and intermediate partners. I've heard in several separate cases that people working for multinationals in Iran simply use a middleman to get their hands on any equipment they need. They simply 'advice' their customers that in order to operate foo, they would need x units of component bar which they are sadly unable to deliver due to export restrictions and basically bar 'magically' appears on site when needed, no questions asked.
Basic problem is that the US exports to most countries in the world and exporting from those countries to those to which it doesn't want to export is basically not controlled at all (except by local legislation in e.g. NATO member states). So all you need is a willing middleman in any country the US can export to. The middleman is not in US jurisdiction and under no obligation to even inform US trading partners of intent to export. Likewise US trading partners have no interest whatsoever in knowing what happens to their stuff after they ship it.
Naturally, most US companies maintain good & extensive relations with such middlemen providing them with support, logistics, etc.
Jilles
...'OH NOES! PRINTERS IN IRAN!' when they read the summary? Seriously, what the fuck? I mean, a law's a law and all... But do we really care that HP is selling Iran printers? Fuck 'em. Let HP bleed the country dry over ink and toner! :D
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
to the contrary of your filth reeking brain, you cant.
just try f@ck and fuck in various postings, and see how people's response and moderation differ for both.
Read radical news here
Yeah you heard me. Screw the Embargo. My company does business with Iranians and the US can swear black and blue at me. I still won't stop.
Good on HP. The Iranians need printers too.
RebateFX.com - Spread rebates for Forex traders
HP may even be on trial for light treason.
funniest thing i've read here in a few weeks.
source please?
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008405
Oh I'm off by two years, and it lasted for three. Not really something huge. I suggest using google in the future.
Om, nomnomnom...
Ever tried to print a web page with arabic or farsi characters on a PostScript-enabled HP LaserJet without rasterizing? Since those fonts are not part of the standard PostScript font set, all you get are a lot of empty squares. So, now, who's the "bad guy" who sold the iranians GhostScript or the Windows drivers to actually USE those printers with their fonts? (What a silly embargo...)
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I see HP products everywhere here in Iran, most companies use HP printers, many people have HP laptops and almost all the big companies and government use HP servers in their data centers. The only problem with US products here is that we can't get direct support from these companies and of course there are companies that guarantee these products and support them! In fact we have access to almost most of US IT products but without support, I have a Motorola cellphone and I have an iPod and we have a HP server here and there is an IBM lartop beside me, these are all US products and no one accuse them for selling their products to Iran.
Krytrons. They are used in copiers, lasers, and nuclear weapons. Google it and you'll understand the .gov's concern.
Behind American backs? Who do they think they are? Ronald Reagan or something?
An american company is under scrutiny for selling Inkjet printers to Iran? Dont we have bigger fish to fry? I would be more worried if they were not buying American products, generally as a rule of practical warfare you do not attack your suppliers or your customers. Krytons would be an issue if you were selling laser printers...fine sell inkjet printers.
Screw Iran!
What about HP exporting nearly all of my hard earned money to replace those damned overpriced color ink cartridges. I want a few HP executives ON THE WALL immediately, lined up and blindfolded. I'll invite over eleven of my friends, all with rifles, for a twelve gun salute to their greed and thievery.
Dammit, I want JUSTICE!!!
Ask iran@redingtongulf.com about it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
As an Iranian I've to say we will be buy anything that we need and anybody has a price. we buy enterprise and high tech products from HP, SUN, SGI, Cisco, EMC and others and not only from USA even from Israel. and it's not limited to IT products, we even buy F16 Fighter parts from USA DOD and Nuclear enrichment equipments from halliburton http://digg.com/politics/Top_Censored_Story_Halliburton_Sold_Nuke_Components_to_Iran and as you know they don't tell you about this stuff in CNN, FoxNews and others, Bush was expensive, we are in negotiation with Barak Obama to find what's his price. We pay good price and they can't simply resist. That's money talk.
We have US best minds, nobody cares about silly HP printers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_Americans
Oh no, that's not a printer - it's just a homefill!
Anyone, anyone?
or else!
They're definitely joking! Just take a trip to Iran and see there are not even printers, but also high-end servers and everything that you can imagine available from HP (or Dell, Cisco or whatever name in your mind.)