Monday, December 11, 2006

Athletes And Doping

Part 2 of an article in the LA Times appears today, with the slant on how hard it is for athletes to fight doping charges.

The article mentions a couple of "innocent" contaminations from glucose tablets, and one case where finasteride for baldness prevention registered as a steroid.

It seems the doping panels are, well, a bunch of dopes, but it also appears that athletes will get as close as possible to the line for illegality, and occasionally will cross it, if no one is watching.

Here's the simplest way to avoid being caught up in a doping scandal: don't use performance enhancing drugs. Shocking, that, I know. Athletes who use these steroids, EPO, etc., are cheats. Sporting competitions are a joke if boths sides are using different rules.

Who gives a flying fuck about Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire? Obviously they're juicers, but they should also be labelled CHEATS, LIARS, and ASSHOLES. Me, I hate baseball, so there's no love lost there, but if you look at any of the big American sports, doping is rift. Where is the model to follow?

England's Football Association, the FA, prohibits drug usage, performance-enhancing or otherwise. There are no gray areas. You dope, you're out, as it should be. FIFA, the world soccer body, also bans drug use, but somehow loopholes exist, like the one that let Adrian Mutu get banned and kicked off Chelsea, but allowed him to play for his new club in Italy without repurcussions.

What has this "harsh" system created? It has created the purity of the sport. It has created conditions where anyone, with talent and practice, can achieve the highest level. The steroid pumping freaks of the NFL are nowhere to be seen, the 75 inch biceps of Barry Bonds are nowhere to be seen. On Manchester United, the star midfielder, Paul Scholes, is only 5'7" tall. On (one of) the best soccer team in the world, the controlling player is 5'7" - because he's fucking amazing and he practiced his ass off and some natural talent.

That gives hope to every kid everywhere. Someone like Bonds and those other assholes caught up in the BALCO scandal (and others) actually rob hope from kids because the message is, if you don't use these dangerous drugs you have no chance. They also pervert the sport, ruin the contest, and cheat everyone.

Fuck those cheaters.
Medevac Helicopter Crashes

Yesterday a Mercy Air Services Inc. medevac helo crashed near the El Cajon pass and all 3 crew members were killed. They had just taken a patient to a hospital and were flying in fog, which probably led to the crash.

My neighbor 3 doors up the street, "Dr. Vince," is also a medevac doctor. He rides along with the pilots to go pickup patients, all children, and stays with them during the flight back to the hospital. Dr Vince recently flew on one mission to collect a girl in Costa Rica. Dr Vince knew the pilot and says he was a really great guy. The whole company is in mourning today and all flights are grounded.

It's a damn shame when anything crashes, and especially poignant one when the people who died have dedicated their lives to saving people. There are many ways to save people, and most of them do not involve pointing guns at other people.

Take a moment today to thank any of these people you should happen to cross paths with.
The Snake Turns And Bites

Three young children of a Palestinian intelligence minister were murdered along with their adult chaperone in a botched assassination attempt today. The father, Baha Balousheh, was not in the vehicle, as gunmen came alongside and pumped over 60 bullets into it.


Balousheh is part of the Fatah party, and although Hamas has denied involvement, the government has stopped just short of officially blaiming them. What, Hamas kill innocent people? Never! Hamas responsible for civilians and children being murdered? No way, not Hamas!

The shooting came a day after gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of Interior Minister Said Siyam of Hamas. Siyam's car was not hit and there were no injuries.

Retaliation. Cycles of violence begetting more violence.

You simply cannot allow vipers to live in your midst. Parties of terrorists to run the government, what did anyone expect but scores of innocent dead children?

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Chelsea 1 Arsenal 1

In a London derby today (any time both teams are from the same area, it's called a "derby" but pronounced "darby"), North London team Arsenal nearly beat the moneybags of Southwest London, Chelsea.

Arsenal controlled the game and were far more cutting in their play, while Chelsea just consistently seemed to have 10 men behind the ball on defense, snuffing out every Arsenal attack. Every one until Matthieu Flamini dinked one in from near the 18 yard box. It looked like the winner until Michael Essien crushed a perfect shot from about 35 yards out and curled it into the upper corner of Jens Lehmanns' goal.

I used to loathe Arsenal, but all those old time assholes are not on the team anymore: Patrick Vieira went to Juventus, Martin Keown and Ray Parlour retired (they should've gone to prison), Sol Campbell is God knows where, and Ashely "I'll suck anything for a buck" Cole moved to Chelsea. Cole was unhappy and insulted when Arsenal offered him a paltry $110,000 per week wages. He had no choice: he had to move to their crosstown rivals. Good one, Ashley, you're a real inspiration for all the young kids out there watching footy.

The only person left to hate on Arsenal is Jens Lehmann, the big, arrogant, occasionally brilliant, generally cheap-shot specialist. Lehmann is the only keeper to have been sent off 6 times! I don't hate Arsenal anymore, and today I was actually cheering them on, hoping to cause Chelsea's title ambitions further derailment.
Joseph Palermo On Kirkpatrick, Friedman and Pinochet

I was still fuming over the distortions and lies being written about Pinochet and Kirkpatrick, about how some of their ideas and policies were really benevolent and far-sighted, gifts to the people of the world, instead of the excessive rapaciousness or pure heartlessness that they were.

In the Huffington Post today, Joseph Palermo nails those two alongside that old gasbag Milton Friedman, here.

Soon after the coup in Chile, information began to leak out that the Nixon Administration had ordered the CIA to engineer the coup that toppled Allende and installed Pinochet, and that ITT corporation had given the Nixon White House $1 million toward this end. The Church Committee report of 1976 exposed the embarrassing details of the operation, which included economic sabotage, political meddling, assassinations, financing of street gangs, and military coordination between the Chilean armed forces and the CIA.


Palermo sums it up with:

Friedman was responsible for the Pinochet regime's economic theories, Kirkpatrick created the geo-political framework, Kissinger engineered the coup, and Pinochet provided the muscle. They were a great team that will not be missed.
Fuck Castro, Too

Soon old Fidel Castro will also be a memory. Who knows what will happen in his wake, but if the Cubans don't rise up and demand a democracy after his death, then maybe they don't deserve to have one.

Small human rights celebrations/vigils/protests occured today in Cuba, and were predictably busted up by government goons.

Let's hope that when Castro is finally worm food, the democracy that will spring up will be a little bit better than ours, which until this last election, appeared to have been as bankrupt as Castro's own rule.



I had a Margarita for lunch and it's affecting my sentences, apologies!
Pinochet Dead

All the great war-criminals of the 70s and 80s are dying, providing some measure of satisfaction to their victims. We had Jeane Kirkpatrick last week, and Augusto Pinochet today.

Pinochet seized power from the democratically elected Salvador Allende, a leftist leader long opposed by us free-trade, free-speech types in America. The CIA claims their hands are clean, that they had nothing to do with overthrowing Allende, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell ya!

Why would the US get involved in Chile's politics? The Cold War, don't you remember? We couldn't have any country elect their own leaders if those leaders were not going to bend over and take it in the ass from US business. It evidently did not matter to anyone how many people were tortured, murdered, or "disappeared" by Pinochet's goons.

But it does matter. It boggles the mind that people were mourning Pinochet's death, just like it staggers the mind that people support Bush or any other fascist who trammels civil rights. Don't these fuckwits see their own names on the list, albeit a little further down?

Soon after Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital, and many detainees were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. Other leftists were rounded up by death squads, and the "Caravan of Death" to Chile's forbidding Atacama desert left victims buried in unmarked mass graves.

Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule, but courts allowed the aging general to escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.