(via)

Should 49ers fans be concerned about hooliganism?

I’m posting a letter to the editor from a shocked Saints fan that ran in the Tuesday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle because it deserves a broader community discussion. The letter, written by Don Moses of Mill Valley, describes ugly and profane epithets hurled at him and his two teenage daughters when they went to Saturday’s 49ers game against the New Orleans Saints. Moses decries the combative fan culture. His was not the only letter The Chronicle received from horrified Saints fans.
Another Saints fan who was at the game posted this on a New Orleans life website.
What do you think?
– Lois Kazakoff, deputy editorial page editor

Ugly side of 49ers’ big game
Letters to the editor, Jan. 17
I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 25 years but have remained a staunch Saints fan with close ties to New Orleans. My family still lives in New Orleans and has held our season tickets since 1967. I “get” the emotion of the game, the moment and the enthusiasm of the 49er fans.
Despite the extraordinary setting at the ’Stick, we were shocked by the hostility, vulgarity and intimidation that rained down on me and my two teenage daughters from the moment we stepped into the parking lots. Yes, we were proudly wearing our Saints colors; that’s what loyal fans do. And yes, we expected some good-natured jeering.

We had vulgarities screamed at us repeatedly in the parking lots and literally nonstop by the hooligans around us in the stands. While walking through the lots we had footballs thrown at us, guys screaming curses in our faces — my daughters asked if I had heard the guy who yelled “your mother’s a whore,” which I had, but couldn’t show a reaction for fear for my daughters’ and my own safety. We finally took to shadowing two cops that were strolling through the lots until we dashed for what we thought would be the relative sanity of the stadium.

The stadium was no better. Every other word from dozens of fans around us was an f-bomb shouted at the top of their lungs. There were seven or eight large 30- to 35-year-old guys directly behind us who cursed and threatened us the entire game. After one string of profanities I turned around to look at them and the most obnoxious and combative of the bunch yelled, “Do not turn around again! Do not ever turn around again” and punctuated it with a profanity. They used gay slurs repeatedly at the husband of a middle-aged couple in front of us, the only other Saints fan in our area, and called his wife a bitch.

One of my daughters asked me, “Why don’t you do something, Daddy?” Do what? Fight 10 guys, call/text security when all those guys behind me would know who would have fingered them?
Leave early? We almost did.

The hostility and threats of violence were a constant throughout our experience. It appeared to be ingrained in the fans’ culture, similar to the hooliganism that destroyed the reputation of English soccer. The long wait for the playoffs, the excitement of a big game? No excuse. I’ve been to big games in venues around the world and believe me, I’ve been a Saints fan my whole life so I certainly know about long playoff waits. The Vikings fans in the tailgate parties before the NFC championship game were eating crayfish and dancing along with the Saints fans — they weren’t threatened, they were having a great time.

Every 49ers fan, the team and it’s owners should be ashamed and embarrassed to wear the red and gold today. They won the game but are losers in every other way.

Don Moses, Mill Valley

(via)

A secret dossier detailing plans for policing this summer’s London Olympics was left on a train.

The file, which could have provided terrorists planning an attack with invaluable data, was lost by a cop.

A commuter found it and handed it to The Sun, who returned the file to the police, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

The chief inspector in Scotland Yard’s Territorial Policing branch is said to be “hugely embarrassed” by the potentially serious blunder.

“Restricted” files spell out the security plans in place at the sites of events and provide minutes of top-level meetings in which ways to beat terrorists were discussed.

The dossier contains dates and details of pre-Olympics rehearsals, explains emergency lockdown procedures and sets out plans to avoid traffic congestion.

It also reports at length on damning complaints from officers about the radios they will use during the Olympics.

The documents were found by a commuter on a train in Dartford in Kent, southeastern England, on Jan. 5.

“I couldn’t believe any policeman could have left this on a train. It’s a worry,” the unnamed commuter said.

London’s Metropolitan Police played down the incident, saying the files were not thought to be operationally sensitive.

A spokeswoman said, “An officer lost his bag containing a number of documents. He reported the loss. The Directorate of Professional Standards have been informed, as is routine.”

(via TMZ)

While OJ Simpson rots in the Big House in Nevada … he’s about to lose his big house in Florida.

According to court records, JPMorgan Chase bank is foreclosing on the 4 bedroom, 4bathroom home OJ owns in Miami. Simpson bought the home in 2000 for $575,000 … but the home was recently assessed at $478,401.

OJ is currently serving time in a Nevada prison for kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from an incident in 2007, in which OJ took a bunch of sports memorabilia at gunpoint.

 46 minutes ago via breakingnews.com Favorite Retweet Reply

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAPK3HpI7Q0 603 500]

Drink up life; always smell the roses !

 (via Reuters) 

Iran said on Saturday it had evidence Washington was behind the latest killing of one of its nuclear scientists, state television reported, at a time when tensions over the country’s nuclear program have escalated to their highest level ever.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan’s car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton denied responsibility and Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge.

“We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported. The Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in a country where Washington has no diplomatic ties.

The spokesman for Iran’s Joint Armed Forces Staff, Massoud Jazayeri, said: “Our enemies, especially America , Britain and the Zionist regime (Israel), have to be held responsible for their actions.”

Iran in the past has accused Israel of causing a series of spectacular and sometimes bloody mishaps to its nuclear programme. Israeli officials do not comment on any involvement in those events, although some have publicly expressed satisfaction at the setbacks.

Feeling the heat from unprecedented new sanctions, Iran’s clerical establishment has brandished its sword by threatening to block the main Mid-East oil shipping route, starting to enrich uranium at an underground bunker and sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on spying charges.

State TV said a “letter of condemnation” had also been sent to Britain, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists began after the head of Britain’s MI6 spy service announced intelligence operations against states seeking nuclear weapons.

The West says Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at building a bomb. Tehran says it has the right to peaceful nuclear power.

Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing.

After years of international sanctions that had little impact on Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama signed new measures on New Year’s Eve that, if fully implemented, would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.

Washington is requiring that countries gradually reduce their purchases of Iranian oil in order to receive temporary waivers from the sanctions.

The European Union is expected to unveil similar measures next week, and announce a gradual oil embargo among its member states, who collectively buy about a fifth of Iran’s exports.

The combined measures mean Iran may fail to sell all of the 2.6 million barrels a day of exports it relies on to feed its 74 million people. Even if it finds buyers, it will have to offer steep discounts, cutting into its desperately-needed revenue.

On Tuesday shipping sources told Reuters Iran was storing an increasing supply of oil at sea – as much as 8 million barrels – and was likely to store more as it struggles to sell it.

Iran denies it is having trouble: “There has been no disruption in Iran’s crude exports through the Persian Gulf … We have not stored oil in the Gulf because of sanctions as some foreign media reported,” oil official Pirouz Mousavi told the semi-official Mehr news agency on Friday.

The sanctions are causing real hardship on the streets, where prices for basic imported goods are soaring, the rial currency has plummeted and Iranians have been flocking to sell rials to buy dollars to protect their savings.

The pain comes less than two months before a parliamentary election, Iran’s first since a presidential vote in 2009 that was followed by eight months of street demonstrations.

Iran’s authorities successfully put down that revolt by force, but since then the “Arab Spring” has shown the vulnerability of authoritarian governments in the region to protests fueled by anger over economic difficulty.

CLASH THREAT

Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz leading to the Gulf if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports, and has threatened to take unspecified action if Washington sails an aircraft carrier through the strait, an international waterway.

Military experts say Tehran can do little to fight the massive U.S.-led fleet that guards the strait, but the threats raise the chance of a miscalculation that could lead to a military clash and a global oil crisis.

The Pentagon said on Friday that small Iranian boats had approached close to U.S. vessels in the strait last week, although it said it did not believe there was “hostile intent.”

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute. Iran says it would retaliate if attacked.

The tension has caused spikes in global oil prices in recent weeks, although prices eased at the close of last week’s trading on the prospect of reduced demand in economically stricken European countries. Brent crude fell 82 cents to settle at $110.44 a barrel on Friday.

The chances for an imminent easing of tension look even more remote as the nuclear deadlock continues because of Iran’s refusal to halt the sensitive nuclear work.

Last week Iran began enriching uranium underground – the most controversial part of its nuclear programme – at a bunker deep below a mountain near the Shi’ite holy city of Qom.

Nuclear talks with major powers collapsed a year ago. Iran says it wants the talks to resume, but the West says there is no point unless it is willing to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment, which can be used to make material for a bomb.

(Additional reporting by Mitra Amiri; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

Read here:

New cyber regulations announced by Iran last week, including requiring Internet cafes to install surveillance cameras, could be just a precursor to the Islamic Republic’s “halal” network, many observers are saying.

That network, an “Islamically permissible” intranet that the nation’s telecommunications ministry publicized in early 2011, would disconnect Iran from the rest of the world and run a parallel internal service that would automatically censor material and block popular global sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.

“I don’t think it’s a question of if, but a question of when,” said Austin Heap, executive director of the Censorship Research Center, who also works on developing technologies for increasing Internet freedom.

At the time of the announcement, Iranian authorities said the new infrastructure would be revealed soon, but did not give a specific time frame.

“They are taking the lessons of the 2009 uprisings and figuring out how to prevent that,” Heap said. “A halal network would be only what the regime would want you to see.”

Iran’s network could mirror what Burma, another nation with draconian cyber crackdowns, has done to isolate its people from the Web, limiting users to a national intranet at a high price that deters most potential users.

Insane story here

Fun time down south

Homeland Security is keeping its eye on you.

Fun times in America

(via New York Post)

It was the tea party the Obamas just couldn’t resist.

A White House “Alice in Wonderland” costume ball — put on by Johnny Depp and Hollywood director Tim Burton — proved to be a Mad-as-a-Hatter idea that was never made public for fear of a political backlash during hard economic times, according to a new tell-all.

“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, tells of the first Halloween party the first couple feted at the White House in 2009. It was so over the top that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests.

The book reveals how any official announcement of the glittering affair — coming at a time when Tea Party activists and voters furious over the lagging economy, 10-percent unemployment rate, bank bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan were staging protests — quickly vanished down the rabbit hole.

“White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged,” the book says.

However, the White House made certain that more humble Halloween festivities earlier that day — for thousands of Washington-area schoolkids — were well reported by the press corps.

Then the Obamas went inside, where an invitation-only affair for children of military personnel and White House administrators unfolded in the East Room.

Unbeknownst to reporters, the State Dining Room had also been transformed into a secretive White House Wonderland.

Tim Burton decorated it “in his signature creepy-comic style. His film version was about to be released, and he had turned the room into the Mad Hatter’s tea party, with a long table set with antique-looking linens, enormous stuffed animals in chairs, and tiered serving plates with treats like bone-shaped meringue cookies,” reports the book, which The Post purchased at a Manhattan bookstore.

“Fruit punch was served in blood vials at the bar. Burton’s own Mad Hatter, the actor Johnny Depp, presided over the scene in full costume, standing up on a table to welcome everyone in character.”

The Obamas’ daughters, Malia and Sasha, then 11 and 8 respectively, “sat at the table, surrounded by a gaggle of their friends, and then proceeded to the next delight, a magic show in the East Room.”

Kantor’s book details more personal aspects of the Obama White House, serving up glimpses of the first couple’s marriage, parenting, sometimes tense handling of staff issues and even the president’s sly sense of humor when it comes to race.

One morning during his Senate campaign, Obama didn’t show up to a meeting with donors. “After a frantic search, a white staffer named Peter Coffey called Obama’s barbershop to find that, yes, he was there.”

The president confronted Coffey about the call later that day.

“ ‘The relationship between a black man and his barber is sacred,’ Obama bellowed . . . ‘For failing to understand this truth, your punishment is to watch the movie “Barbershop.” And for further punishment, you will then watch the sequel, “Barbershop 2.” ’ ”

Often White House staffers found themselves in the middle of husband-and-wife quarrels.

“The advisors could feel hopelessly caught between husband and wife,” Kantor writes. “The Obama marriage was awkward for everyone: for the aides, for the president . . . and for the first lady.”

POST PHOTO COMPOSITE

TEA PARTY! Johnny Depp played host, as the Mad Hatter, at a 2009 White House bash, but a new book says it was kept quiet from the press for fear of backlash amid the recession.

Read more: http://trade.cc/wog#ixzz1isybd2Tk

BAC is lead underwriter for $9,7 billion worth of a share offering in UniCredit next week. If the deal goes south then BAC will have to cover the deal.

Full article

Iran saber rattles some planned military exercises in the Persian Gulf. Oil did not react too much as a strong dollar is keeping it down.

Full article

Real or not ?

Own up to your mistakes girls

The head of Iran’s army warned the U.S. against sending an aircraft carrier back to the Persian Gulf after it passed through the Strait of Hormuz a week ago.

“We usually don’t repeat our warning, and we warn only once,” Ataollah Salehi was cited as saying by the state-run Fars news agency. “We recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf.”

Full article