Iranians speaking their mind, no booze for Jets fans tommorow and criminals on fishing vessels

- If you are an Iranian looking for a hero and a voice against your repressive, totalitarian government, Mir Hossein Moussavi just might be your man. Iranians know Moussavi as the reformist Iranian politician who failed to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June election because Ahmadinejad rigged the election, but Moussavi is not going away and neither are those who believe he was screwed over in a fraudulent election. While protestors rage against the machine and the government brutally attacks, beats and arrests them when they demonstrate, Moussavi is speaking out angrily against Ahmadinejad’s regime. On Sunday, Moussavi addressed anti-government demonstrations in which at least seven protesters were killed. He stated the obvious, namely that anti-government sentiments won't disappear no matter what the government does in its attempts to silence them. Playing its eternal role as the repressive, totalitarian bad guy, the government is denying that any of the protestor deaths were caused by official security forces. Never mind that videos shot at demonstrations and now found on YouTube show green-and-white police trucks speeding into crowds of demonstrators in Tehran, including groups on narrow side streets with no place to escape. In the video, one person can be seen crumpled in the street and seconds later another truck drives over the person. Moussavi does have a personal stake in this beyond the election results, as his nephew was killed in protests. "Yours truly and friends are still being told that 'If you don't issue announcements, the people will not take to the streets and will stop demonstrating, making the return of calm and stability possible throughout the country,' " Moussavi said. "I do not agree with these opinions, and I think that until such time that the needed reforms ... can be extricated from the constitution ... what has been lost will not be restored. I have no fear of being one of the martyrs that the people of this nation have offered, on the path of reaching their religious and national rights, and my blood will not be any redder than the blood of the other martyrs. Until a crisis is recognized as such, there will be no way to resolve it." I don’t disagree with anything he said there and it’s clear that the government is looking to place blame anywhere but the one place it belongs – on itself. They are attempting to use Moussavi’s comments to say that he basically accepted responsibility for Sunday’s riots. Never mind that the Iranian people all have free will, many of them are intelligent and all of them can make up their own damn minds. It’s somewhat amusing to listen to Ahmadinejad’s government attempt to convince itself and the world that it is not to blame for what is happening while simultaneously failing to realize or being too delusional to admit what a ridiculous task that is………….

- Depending on the outcome of Sunday night’s game, New York Jets fans may need a drink or five. They may need it, but they won't be able to get it at the stadium. As their team prepares to face the Cincinnati Bengals in the final game at Giants Stadium (which the Jets share with the Giants), fans are faced with the reality that they will not be able to buy one final beer to celebrate the closing of a chapter in their franchise’s history and a possible playoff berth. The Jets have banned the sale of alcohol on Sunday at the stadium they've called home for 26 years. "With the late start of Sunday's game, coupled with this being the final regular season and final game at the stadium, we feel it is prudent not to serve alcohol," said Bruce Speight, a spokesman for the team. For your information, Sunday’s game is an 8:20 p.m. kickoff, making it the final game of the day and the NFL regular season. If the Jets win, they are guaranteed a playoff berth. If they lose…..well, with four other teams currently boasting 8-7 records to match the Jets’ mark, the odds aren’t good. But fans will have to cope with that reality, which seems a difficult task because they are known for their unruly behavior during games for example, a half-time "tradition" of women baring their breasts for men who loudly urge them to do so. The team maintains that it makes the decision of whether to serve alcohol on a game-by-game basis, but that hasn’t salved the wounds of angry fans who want their booze, dammit. Majorska Vodka, which calls itself "one of the largest liquor companies in the Garden State," is calling for a 24-hour boycott of Johnson & Johnson products because Jets owner Woody Johnson is the "heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune." Majorska spokesman Jeff Scott also said Majorska plans to stop paying for three of their executive's seats at the Meadowlands and that the company is set to lose more than $100,000 in revenue from tailgate parties this weekend. In other words, the New Jersey vodka distillery has a financial stake in the decision and as such, their criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt. Speight insists that that "negative fan reaction has been minimal at best," but somehow I doubt that as well. Sure, fans can still get buzzed at their pregame tailgate and with the ridiculous prices charged for concessions at any professional sporting event, they are much better off doing so. That being said, in-game beers are a tradition and in the final game at a stadium, fans should be able to enjoy a pop or two. Something tells me that handing out green and white "rowdy towels" to the first 70,000 fans arriving at the stadium won't placate anyone who wanted to get drunk and rowdy. Next season, both New York teams will move into a new stadium just a short distance away and will play in a new, as-yet-unnamed stadium. Giants Stadium will be demolished after this season and now it must do so with a sober, bitter crowd for its final game…………

- In case I haven’t made this clear, I am a big fan of pirates of all sorts. That includes old-school, high seas swashbucklers, modern-day Somali pirates and even electronic pirates. With the popularity of electronic readers going up at a rapid rate, piracy has a whole new frontier to take over. A prime example is Dan Brown's novel "The Lost Symbol," which hit stores in September. On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. But in a truly proud moment for the piracy-loving among us, pirated digital copies of the novel were found on file-sharing sites such as Rapidshare and BitTorrent within 24 hours of its release. It was downloaded for free more than 100,000 times within the net few days, a truly awesome showcase of pirating goodness. Sure, those making money from the pirated publications – Amazon with is Kindle, Sony with its Reader, Barnes & Noble with its Nook and Apple's forthcoming tablet computer – will tell you that those pirating this book are heinous criminals who need to be tracked down and prosecuted, but anyone who sides with these soulless corporate giants is no friend of mine. I would point out that these same people who are downloading free copies of books such as Brown’s could just as easily check them out for free from their local library, so that argument doesn’t hold much merit. All told, this boils down to the same damn thing that every major unrest deals with these days – money. Sales for digital books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million, more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008. We’ve been down this road before with the music industry and while file-sharing sites like Napster have been either shut down or neutered to the point that they no longer serve their original purpose. Yet imaginative, resourceful people still find a way to, um, uh. let’s just say they find ways to get their music via cheaper (free) methods. At this point, there is no consensus on how to fight digital book piracy, although some publishers attempt to minimize theft by delaying releases of e-books for several weeks after physical copies go on sale. Some authors elect to not release their books digitally at all, which seems to cut off the proverbial nose to spite their face. Their books run no risk of digital piracy, but they also lose the large revenues they could gain from digital sales. As for me, I’ll be rooting for the pirates…………

- I don’t think I should be surprised at this next bit of news and I am in fact not surprised in the least. Hearing that a man who appeared on Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch has been arrested on a warrant charging him with three bank robberies in Oregon is not a stunner in any sense. By no means am I issuing a sweeping indictment of everyone who works on the king crab fishing boat in Alaska’s Bearing Sea, but if you had to pick a profession where a sketchy character could thrive and make quick cash while also staying off the radar, who wouldn’t pick crab fishing? You go out on a boat for a few months, are out there with a small crew not likely to ask a lot of questions about you or your background and you can make an extremely large chunk of cash during that time. The police are going to have a very difficult time tracking you down on the open seas and you don’t exactly need a college degree or an exceptionally high IQ to do the job. You can surely do the job with those qualifications, but they are not mandatory. The character at the center of this particular story is Joshua Tel Warner, who was arrested by police in East Peoria, Ill. early Thursday on the Oregon bank robbery warrant after he was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. They did a quick check and found the warrant, after which they contacted police in Eugene, Ore., who say he's the same Josh Warner who appeared as a deckhand on the ship Wizard in Deadliest Catch last year. Warner is charged with one bank robbery in 2007 and two in 2009, which does make one wonder why the hell dude is out there working his butt off and risking his life as a deckhand on a crab fishing vessel. Either he’s not a very good bank robber and didn’t make much money from his three alleged bank robberies or dude just like to work and take risks. But as I said, this is certainly no surprise and I’m actually stunned we don’t hear stories like this more often……….

- Better brush up on your firefighting techniques, residents and business owners in North Providence, Rhode Island. Your fire station is shutting down and the legal system apparently isn't going to do anything about it. On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear refused to stop the closure of the Douglas Ave. fire station in North Providence. Judge Lanphear issued a written decision denying a restraining order requested by Local 2334 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, AFL CIO. “The Union has failed to establish a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm, equities weighing in its favor, or that an injunction would preserve the status quo," Judge Lanphear wrote. "The Plaintiff’s motion for issuance of a preliminary injunction is denied and the temporary restraining order previously issued in this action is quashed.” On the opposing side of the issue is Mayor Charles Lombardi, who said he wants to close the station as a cost-saving measure. What’s important to note is that no firefighters would be laid off because of the move. These firefighters are merely fighting against the inconvenience of being reassigned to fire stations that are further from their homes, basically. The AFF is arguing that public safety would be in jeopardy if Station 3 shuts down, but Lanphear clearly disagrees. Still, the judge admitted in his decision that the battle between the union and the town would probably continue. In the meantime, I’m advising everyone in North Providence to stock up on buckets, hoses and water tanks, just in case……….