Today’s micro-processors are amongst the most advanced pieces of technology around today, so it is comforting that AMD, the World’s second largest player in PC processors has somehow seen its products skirting sanctions & ending up in Iran.

216 Opterons (server processors) have made their way into one big supercomputing chain in Iran for ‘weather prediction’. Savvy investors will recall that this month AMD came under serious scrutiny by selling 10% of itself to Bahrain UAE, the sale has raised serious security concerns by the US regarding the release of sensitive technologies  - Now apparently for good reason. AMD also owns ATI, the popular Canadian graphics card maker.

The US is investigating;

ITNews 

[...]

Iranian scientists claim to have used 216 microprocessors made by Advanced Micro Devices to build the country’s most powerful supercomputer, despite a ban on the export of U.S. computer equipment to the Middle Eastern nation. Scientists at the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center at the country’s Amirkabir University of Technology said they used a Linux-cluster architecture in building the system of Opteron processors. The supercomputer has a theoretical peak performance of 860 giga-flops, the posting said. A giga-flop is a billion calculations per second.

The disclosure, made in an undated posting on Amirkabir’s Web site, brought an immediate response Monday from AMD, which said it has never authorized shipments of products either directly or indirectly to Iran or any other embargoed country.

“AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products,” the company said. “Any shipment of AMD products to Iran by any authorized distributor of AMD would be a breach of the specific provisions of their contracts with AMD.”

Enforcement of export bans is handled through the Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is part of the U.S. Treasury Department. Officials were unavailable for comment. [...] 

I look forward to hearing more how AMD let sensitive technology leak to Iran and how it came to be that the sanctioned rogue nation is slapping together powerful supercomputers while at the same time pushing forward to enrich uranium?

edit: The University webpage supposedly had images along with the posting which have been removed, pictures with UAE stamped shipping materials. Nice, buy some AMD and ship out contraband right to Iran.

Tags: AMD, Iran, Technology, Sanctions

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I’m starting to get grated by Condi Rice, she’s now pressuring Israel regarding the Har Homa apartment block to the effect that these 300 apartments in the Jerusalem outskirts are preventing peace.

Confidence Measures

According to Rice & the Realists the Palestinians need confidence & hope. Well I submit that Israel has done enough. We’ve stated our willingness two cut our state in HALF & give it to the most UNDESERVING Palestinians, we’ve tabled our Capitol City for negotiations, is Washington also up for sale? No? I didn’t think so. We’ve put our holiest site on earth up for discussions, the temple mount itself. We’ve pledged to ARM our enemies with weapons in the deluded notion they will be used against fellow Palestinians by Abbas, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

NO More measures.

Dear Condi, we appreciate that you want to make peace, but we’ve given more than enough to build confidence with a bunch of terrorists who seek to murder us. We’ve had enough here already, stop wasting our time by telling us now if you only do this, then we can make peace, if you only do that then their will be ‘condifence’, if if if. In the meantime we have Hezbollah to the North, Syria to the NE, Iran to the East, Hamas to the West, and Fatah terrorists in the heart of our country. I’m sorry, we’re too busy preparing for wars to worry about sham peace.

Olmert, Livni - Tell Condi the concessions are over, or go home yourselves. We build wherever we want in our State, we don’t need your permission nor do we seek it. If our leaders cannot maintain this very simple concept of independence in the State of Israel they should resign. it’s very simple - Explain to Condi the realist a little reality, you no longer have a national mandate to sell cookies, let alone make concessions.

Less is more

The less the Palestinians do for peace, the more support they get.. More money, more conferences, more media, apparently less is more. If the Palestinians want peace so badly then here’s their big chance to prove it, we’ve already done our part, right now they have NOTHING, we’ve offered them EVERYTHING.

If that’s not good enough for Rice & her treasonous State Dept not too mention the hapless Palestinians they can both go to hell. Do the Americans think we are stupid? We see your grand bargain with Iran, I never thought I’d say it but I no longer trust the Bush Administration.

You have much more to worry about than the useless Palestinians Condi, you now need to start building confidence measures with the Israelis.

LinkUpdate:

SoccerDad is saying similar things, but the tone is different. He links to Daled Amos where similar opinions are also found.. This time the tone is more near the surface. The reactions are guttural all around, frustration at differing levels in response to the absurdity of certain aspects of this peace process.

At Soccer Dad you have an intellectual argument regarding the diplomacy & its coverage, at DA I see an ideological difficulty with concepts expressed, and here an emotional screed reflecting fears & frustrations on the practical results visible from all the discussions in the 1st place. Three different parts of the body are speaking, the mind, the heart, and the senses - What strikes me most is that despite the differing priorities of these organs, the overall message of the body is on some levels the same:

No more medicine!

Update2: Blair - Israeli Nightmare (Jpost)

I don’t understand what is going on, Blair admits we have a nightmare on our hands, yet insists we carry on anyhow.. For what? What is the purpose here? (If someone answers peace, I will smack them!) It is surely not peace because even as the article states the PA refuses to recognize Israel, the Jewish State - We are told to forge on, give more, expect less. It is already clear my irresponsible govt expected some sort of quid pro-quo regarding Iran in return for this folly. But now even that has fizzled - What are we doing here? Saving Olmert’s govt? Saving Rice’s legacy?

Honestly, what is this all about? It’s not about the Palestinians because truthfully even their fellow Arabs could care less about them, the Palestinian cause has worldwide ALWAYS been more about hating Israel than looking out for the Palestinians, it’s a manufactured problem more than anything else.. Is my Prime Minister, my foreign Minister, someone from my elected govt going to get on TV address this nation & explain what the heck we are doing here?

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The best Rock & Roll band in the history of the world played their 1st live gig last night in a long long time! Via memeorandum NME Reviews the concert and of course you know it was beyond any measure of awesome. Oy, I’m hopeful they put out a DVD of this event so it can be enjoyed by rock aficionados the world over..

I was fortunate enough to see Page & Plant a few years ago when they toured for the No Quarter album, it was without question the best concert I have ever seen by exponents. What a beautiful thing to see them jamming all together again!

Led Zep Emergency Instructions: Open in case of Islamic Jihad ONLY.
There’s no music playing allowed whatsoever under the Jihad - It’s a sin, so hide those Zep CDs when the mullahs come for you.. lest these treasures be lost forever under Islam’s Iron Boot.

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I know, there are intermarried couples who speak of wonderful family life & shared values across faiths growing & enriching their children, who speak of devoted children enthralled with Judaism and preserving the Jewish people and you know what? That’s beautiful.

I’m happy for those people, unfortunately I’m not so happy for the JEWISH PEOPLE. Because the truth of the matter is that in the vast majority of intermarried households the children will not marry Jewish themselves, nor practice the religion, nor will their children be Jewish and intermarriage essentially means the end of the line for Judaism in that tree less than one or two generations out. The exception is unfortunately not the rule, and the intermarriage rates are off the charts pushing the actual two partner Jewish marriage rates into the minority stateside in many communities.

It’s a shocking testament to the failure of Diaspora Judaism in the modern world. I would never have imagined that around my own lifetime I would see the resurgence of a strong, free independent Jewish homeland, or the steady march to the destruction of North American Diaspora Judaism. But I guess this is the natural order of things..

I look to the Jews that stayed behind in Babylon for guidance, a thriving diaspora community when the move to return to Israel & rebuild the 2nd Temple was underway - Many stayed behind comfortable in their Jewish centered lives in Babylon itself. I look to them for some historical perspective, wisdom or guidance on how we might benefit from their experience in preserving Judaism… Unfortunately I can’t find any of the Jews that stayed back in babylon, they vanished from the sands of time and were totally assimilated.

Haaretz: Study finds Maine has highest intermarriage rate in U.S.
By Anthony Weiss, The Forward

In Portland, Maine, even the editor of the local Jewish newspaper was born to intermarried parents, and when she got around to marrying, it was not to a Jew. Given her own experience, Elizabeth Margolis-Pineo, editor of The Voice, was not surprised by a new demographic study that found Portland and its environs to have the highest intermarriage rate in the country.

According to the study, which was funded in part by an intermarried couple, 61% of couples in married Jewish households are interfaith. This is the highest rate of any North American Jewish community measured in the past 15 years. “There are kids in the [Jewish] preschool named ‘Piscapo’ and ‘Isajar,’” Margolis-Pineo said. “Unless you’re an idiot, you realize that there’s a lot of intermarriage.”

The study was conducted by Ira Sheskin, the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami. The new figures place Portland ahead of both Seattle and San Francisco, which previously had shared the highest measured intermarriage rate, at 55%, according to information from the North American Jewish Data Bank.

The national intermarriage rate was 48% in the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. By comparison, Boston - the closest major Jewish population center to Portland - has an intermarriage rate of 46%. New York and Los Angeles have rates of 22% and 23%, respectively. [...]

How wonderfully pigheaded of us Jews to think this time it will be any different.

UPDATE: Author of the study comments on the dangers..

Dr. Ira Sheskin - I am the author of the study. First, please so not assume that the only purpose of the study was to measure intermarriage. In fact, the report is 742 pages.

Second, the data themselves show the problem with a high intermarriage rate in a small community. Less than half of the children in intermarriages are being raised as Jews and even many whose parents say they are raising as Jews are being raised with Christmas trees and little Jewish connection. Just as one example, in in-married households, 58% are synagogue members, versus 20% in intermarried households. Very few Jews (less than 100 households per year) are moving into Southern Maine and an equal number move out each year.

Thus, if this Jewish community is to sustain itself and keep its institutions going, they need to concentrate on connecting people to their heritage so that that heritage is important enough to them that when they select a spouse, they will select someone with whom they can share a common heritage.

This in response to the typical comments at Haaretz, which has become grand central station for hatred of Judaism, Israel etc for commenters wordlwide.

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Honorable..

Here in Israel it’s too routine to be shocking with our large Arabic / Muslim population.. What you may ask? Well I’m talking about finding a dead young girl, often murdered by her father, or her brother. Sometimes they are murdered by cousins, or even their own mothers or sisters.

A few months ago we found one young woman dead from blunt force trauma, dumped by her family unceremoniously in a shallow ditch. Her brothers / family lured her to the area & murdered her with severe blows to the head. It’s called Honor Killing and it involves the ‘honorable’ murder of a loved one / family member for not wearing the proper head covering, or following strict Islamic edicts in the home. These are not isolated events here, it happens as part of the routine.

Oh Canada! 

Canada with its bend over backwards multiculturalism should take a good long look at Muslim efforts to instill Sharia (Muslim Laws) as an alternative to the regular system of laws we employ in Western nations, lest the dead girls really start piling up..

The Religion of Peace strikes again, this time in Canada where a 16 year old young Pakistani girl has been strangled to the point of hanging on in critical condition, her father called the authorities & told them he’d killed his own daughter, her crime? Refusal to wear head covering in Canada.

UPDATE: The young girl has died, her father is being charged with murder. (H/T Malkin)
Starting to spread now thanks to the masterful memeorandum

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Cooking up the holiday Jewish carnival is none other than superman Jack at the Shack, so gear up for the big crisp in the Haveil Havalim Too Many Latkes edition by heading over to Jack’s Shack.  Good man that he is I see he linked over in this week’s edition though I’m not sure to what.. My posts have been pretty edgy in light of Annapolis & the NIE on Iranian weapons (blech!).

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen made a quickly scheduled 24 hour trip to Israel today to be briefed on our intel vis a vis Iran by our own Military chief. The first upper level military meeting on the matter since the NIE surfaced like a wounded sub. I am interested in the extreme to see what plays out of that. Olmert today at our weekly Security Cabinet made mention of ‘exposing the Iranian nuclear program to the world’..

In the mean time, I’m off to scoff another Latka at the Shack.

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Let’s get something straight, a nuclear Iran is a headstone for me & all the rest of us out here in Israel. I say that because I’m going to rip into America now, my second favorite country on Earth next to Israel. I happen to also be Canadian, so that should speak some to my great admiration of the USA, something readers here are already well aware of.

Decline of the American Empire - Rotten from within.

Iran is declaring victory today - and with good reason. This NIE that has been released has ended the fiasco to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons drive. Rice can sing & dance, Bush can stay the course, I applaud their effort but they have failed and Dr Rice shares a heavy load of the blame. The international community have been reluctant partners in this, the drive to end Iran’s program led by the US is over.

So, its not shocking to me that the NIE reeks of US State Dept foreign policy, reeks of Harry ‘now we need a diplomatic surge’ Reid, reeks of the failed stench of North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq (I hope we pull this one off in the end) Gaza, the PA.. A wasteland of failed State Department initiatives, yes sir the stench of failed foreign policy.

Now we are learning that the brand new oversight committee, which resulted in this total reversal of US intel policy, and which was in charge of the NIE as a new format this 1st time out.. Is made up of three former State Dept intel cronies. Shocka!! I question their intel, I question their motives, and I question their analysis. More importantly I question their wisdom.

HotAir has a great post up, including Ambassador Gillerman video btw

CO-Opting America for a ‘better future’.

The Democratic Party has been co-opted by its fringe, and through it America itself. With money & an agenda liberalism gone wild in the extreme is the order of the day. Co-opting, manipulation, you see it in the election campaigns now, you see it with the endless fury of 3rd party agenda groups who manipulate media with great skill, the media in turn like a broken record hammers & hammers until it seeps in, and so fiction can become a collective reality. You see it in the massive American bureaucracy, where critical departments of American policy like State, the CIA, and even in the military & Pentagon, this flourishing culture of entitlement and manipulation knows no bounds. These institutions no longer only serve America, they now also serve the partisan career makers within their walls and the agenda driven political views they hold.

From Plame, to every major national security program or initiative, leaks, partisan pushes, manipulation all pushing the agenda of not America, but of two Americas.. Now, Iran has won a major victory, America has been humbled thanks to what appears to be the most ludicrous intelligence estimate yet. One that totally disregards all shreds of reality in favor of the 2nd America agenda, which is not empowered by votes but the slinging of slime. The grand bargain is coming with Iran, the orgasmic vision of the new progressives that they can make peace with the Jihad.. Let me tell you when you deal with the devil you better expect to pay with your soul. 

How to grab America by the balls, & then lop them clean off.

Castrate America!!! Castrate the Presidency; Castrate the Military; Castrate funding. Castration is good because the fringe hates men.. Hates balls with a passion, the fringe is one big vagina-monologue.

You’ve lost your balls America, and now you’re going to get a taste of the second America full force, as the fringe agenda driven party now controls the house (with 7% approval ratings) and soon will control the big house too come 2008. From the Iraq study group, to Annapolis letters signed by former harbingers of failed policies, to state visits by Pelosi to Syria, right down to the 5th column undermining Bush at every turn in Rice’s State House and the CIA, the politicization of American policy has now reached new heights. Diplomacy with Hamas they say, diplomacy with Iran, diplomacy with the Jihad..

The hard left in America is excited & celebrating, sure why not? When Iran succeeds in its mission to master the nuke you’ll have officially handed the keys of your empire over to them, they’ll have you exactly where your balls USED to be. Even now the day after, the debate is not over how to contain Iran, but over ‘how much Bush knew‘ - Pitiful, all packaged up in that liberal for the sake of liberalness media snark accusatory tone designed to usher in that new era of meatless, moraless, familyless, fueless, ’utopian’ socially engineered society of lesbians and the little men they rule.

One that is just begging for a good Muslim whooping..
—–
Link update: More video from HotAir, this time Bolton framing his views of the NIE.

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Much talk about the US intelligence assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program at some point in 2003. (memeorandum)

That’s it we won!!!

No, not all of us in the free world, I was speaking of the Dems & this election. That’s their reaction & this document seems custom sent for them a few weeks before primary season begins. Israel should have known better than to count on the intl community to stave of this existential threat, some of us have been frothing at the mouth in that regard for some time now.

Now the 1-2 punch is in, instead of Israel make concessions play ball, get screwed etc in return for a ’real substantial halt of Iran’; We have Israel make concessions, play ball get screwed for ‘Iran is not a threat any longer’, oh and btw get ready for the next ‘grand bargain’ deal we are about to make at your expense..

The diplomatic resolution of the Iran issue that just so happens to NOT actually PREVENT the Iranians from their nuclear weapons drive. Lovely.

Which programs are we discussing in this document? Plutonium & heavy water programs? (The more secret arm of the Iranian weapons drive). Or the endless news reports of ever growing spinning centrifuge enrichment programs? (the less secret weapons program). With all these benevolent weapons drives its hard to be sure I guess, so my leaders are playing it cool.. Someone whip out the NIE on Syria also plz, so we can highlight the areas where American intel forgot to catch the Syrians building nuclear weapons plants / reactors the past few years, and the State Dept suggestion we (Israel) talk it out with Syria & ‘engage them’.

Israel’s leaders are playing it cool today, no problem. Of course we all know the Iranians are not halting any weapons drive, how politically expedient all of a sudden they are! I noticed the dates for estimated Iranian nuclear weapons possible achievement has not budged in this latest, or older NIEs, it has stayed the same because that’s how confident everyone is in American Intelligence these days, who’s number one skill it seems is not Intel work, but plumbing & leaks. 

This is just the start too, when the Dems get into full power our over-reliance on the US State Dept to steward & shepherd us the last few years is really going to come home to haunt us. The next step will be the Olmert Govt further playing it cool, preparing us to live with the shadow of a nuclear armed Iran - the result of this government’s amazing drive to halt Iran successfully! It’s working very well so far, just take a peek at the news today.

Link Update: Ledeen writes something coherent on the subject

Link Update II: Via the sexy c-span President Bush news conference where he faces the daunting task of explaining to smug reporters the threat is still around.
(Summary: Iran still seeking to enrich uranium, Iran had a covert program and still has not disclosed it, Iran developing three keys to weapons, material, delivery systems, & know how. Bush also stresses that carrot & stick approach seems to be working.. But what worked really? Moving that invasion force into Iraq around 2003 probably had more effect than socialist grown EU carrots imho, but what do I know.) 

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Annapolis, Iranian nukes, suicide bombers, and now the occasional wall shake - Tel-Aviv TV is more exciting than Vegas baby!

While sitting around waiting for Olmert & CO to begin slicing up & chopping the State of Israel into pieces for Palestinian consumption, I can’t help but remark on the lack of excitement here in Israel. I’m thinking we’ve been beat into submission when it comes to peace. We already know the Palestinians don’t really want to live in peace with Israel, more like gain their biggest foothold here yet. A shiny new corrupt defunct nanny state in the heart of the Jewish world, what could be better than that for the eventual removal of Israel! Not much, but still we have to go through the motions, slice off a little more roast from the beef in a never ending concession stand to ‘inalienable Palestinian rights’..

It all gets a little tiresome after a while recognizing & paying homage to a people that didn’t exist a few decades ago, and who’s sole purpose since has been the destruction of Israel and a passion for violence. The worst part of it is this is like a TV episode, a crummy one at that. One we are forced to view over & over again even though we know how it all plays out. Meanwhile, more beef keeps coming off the roast. Jerusalem is a given these days, since its been put on the table so often already, now instead of keeping settlements, we have to swap land for them because this happened in a previous re-run of the episode. More concessions each airing, with the same lousy script.

Have you seen this one? This is the part where..

Myself, I’m waiting for the gorier part of the episode. You know, the part where the ‘Palestinian peace envoys’ are dispatched to Tel-Aviv & Jerusalem to spread good will, ball bearings & body parts across our public spaces in order to show the world how much they now love the Jews, uh I mean Zionists. Sure, Israel pays the biggest price of all during that part, but usually that’s where the reality TV portion of the episode really takes hold and we finally have something to actually get excited about, the parts just after where we smack the Palestinians around a little bit & actually take back some what we’ve ceded to Terrorists in order to placate world opinion.

Until then there’s plenty to be excited about here in Tel-Aviv, who knows where the 1st Iranian nuke will go off, things are going so well with the US / EU effort to halt that whole thing that I’m figuring it’ll be any time now so that’s exciting. Plus, yesterday was the 4th or 5th earthquake we’ve had in about a month now. Seeing as my second temple era apartment building built on narrow posts (for lord knows what reason) shakes as if the golden calf itself is being stored in the basement with a 4.0 quake, this leaves me fairly certain that in the likely event of a 5.5-6.5 earthshaker soon - I’ll have my hands full trying to dig out of the rubble.

Must See TV 

I hope I don’t miss my favorite episode of ‘The Peace Process’. Maybe the US writers strike will mean re-writes this round, until then Vegas will have to wait, there’s always plenty of action in Tel-Aviv!

Don’t change the channel, my favorite episode of ‘Let’s investigate a senior Olmert Govt official on corruption charges’ is about to air. I think this is the one where Shas’ Eli Yishay, & Avigdor Lieberman explain to all of us why they are still sitting in the government.

That’s got to be better than another ‘Annapolis’ re-run.

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