Hank Kalet

Sabre-rattlers get you nowhere

Barack Obama did it. The Bush folks did it. Several members of Congress have done it.

They all have essentially threatened to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to go after al Qaeda — regardless of whether the Pakistani government wants them to.

I know this is what you say during an election year, that you need to look tough — blah, blah, blah.

But if anyone wants to understand the folly of this approach, they only need to read this story from the L.A. Times on what Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has to say about all this sabre-rattling:

The president pointed out that certain recent U.S. statements were counterproductive to the close cooperation and coordination between the two countries in combating the threat of terrorism,” said a statement released by the Foreign Office.

The Pakistani leader, it said, “emphasized that only Pakistan’s security forces, which were fully capable of dealing with any situation, would take counter-terrorism action inside Pakistani territory.”

Musharraf also called new legislation tying U.S. aid to Pakistan to his government’s fight against militants an “irritant” to the two countries’ relations.

I am no fan of the Pakistani president, but it seems pretty arrogant of us to assume we can just waltz into a sovereign nation and take care of our own business without their being repercussions.

Oh, wait. I think I’ve seen that movie before.

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Runner’s diary, Wednesday

Oh, man, is it hot and muggy out there.

So I stayed inside and hit the treadmill — five miles in 44:10 (actually about five and a half miles total), giving me 10 this week (two fives sandwiched around an offday yesterday).

Tomorrow, Mike and I have plans to do a seven-miler.

Musical choice: Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, Streetcore

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Some thoughts on Bonds and steroids

I’ll have a column on Barry Bonds tomorrow, but I thougth I’d offer some thoughts on steroids in baseball and the evolution of my thinking.

There was a time when I was completely aghast at the notion that steroids were apparently rampant in the sport, believing they compromised the integrity of the game and its statistical foundation and sent a terrible message to young fans.

But steroids are not the scourge envisioned by the press. It’s not that I endorse their use — I think any athlete is foolish to put that kind of stuff into their bodies. But they are adults and adults get to make decisions about their lives for good or ill.

And don’t give me that line about athletes being role models. They are athletes. They hit a ball with a long stick and often do really assinine things; why we think they should be paragons of virtue — better than the mechanic down the street or the office-worker next door — is a question that begs for an answer.

In any case, here is a summary of my current thinking on steroids in sports. Feel free to let me know that I’m wrong (but, please, keep it clean):

1. Adults should have the right, within limits and so long as they are clear about the risks, to do what they like to their bodies, be it tattoos or steroids or what have you. The government, however, does have a right to step in when an adult’s behavior may put someone else in danger — by banning drinking and driving, for instance, or by prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars to protect workers and other patrons from second-hand smoke. Or by limiting access to adults, as we try to do with liquor.

2. Steroids — like the myriad recreational drugs out there — should be treated as a health issue. A massive health-education campaign is probably needed to demonstrate the dangers to the body and society of steroid abuse. There should be treatment options with law enforcement geared toward pushing users into treatment slots.

3. Sports always has been about finding the advantage and I’m not sure that, ethically, there is a lot of difference between a ballplayer using steroids, a pitcher throwing a spitball or all the body armor batters now wear. That may seem an odd set of connections, but there is some equivalence here — especially when you consider that steroids were not considered a banned substance in baseball until relatively recently.

James Carroll spelled this point out in a June column:

What are the issues embedded in these sporting controversies? In an age when improvement of physical and mental ability is promoted as a fundamental virtue, why do some methods of improvement seem right, while others leave us feeling queasy? What happens when genetic engineering replaces exercise and drug use as the main mode of athletic enhancement? Will bionic athletes whose bodies have been transformed by cloning complete the steroid-inspired movement from sport to spectacle?

It is part of a “drive to mastery” that reaches well beyond the sports world and raises the specter of “genetic manipulation aimed at flawless children” and even “a new eugenics that could ultimately create two classes of human beings.”

Sports already operates in this realm, self selecting for particular attributes — think about the growth in size of offensive linemen in football over the years, or the way all basketball players, regardless of their position, seem taller than in years past.

It is a sports version of natural selection: Hitters who see the ball more quickly than others survive; those who are slower to see it coming in do not. The same kinds of calculations are made about pitchers, quarterbacks, tennis players and soccer goalies. You either get the job done — by whatever means necessary — or you find a new line of work.

So is it any wonder that athletes turn to steroids and other perfomance enhancers?

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Dem bums

There have been thousands of words written in recent days about the Democrats’ failure to show any backbone and stand up to one of history’s least popular presidents on an issue that is vital to the health and survival of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The New York Times, for instance, called the party’s Senate leaders “feckless” today in an editorial; Glenn Greenwald offers this dissection; and Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque offers this and this.

But none have been able to top Arthur Silber, who makes the point — a valid one I think — that the Democrats and Republicans share a basic goal, shared also by corporate America: Control.

(T)he Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years — just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years — is what the Democrats want, too.

It may seem a bit extreme, but an honest evaluation of Democratic presidencies — and wars, as offered by Silber — doesn’t exactly show the party to be a shining light of populism or progressive principles. State liberalism in the form of the Democratic Party has really been little more than the flip side of the old business conservatism — a system designed to keep the corporate engine humming.

They could have made a stand here, stopped the president in his tracks and forced the national GOP to stand as the paragon of repressive government the party has become.

But instead the Democrats stood down. A cowardly move, perhaps, but as Floyd says in his post, the Demcorats “cop to cowardice to cover up complicity.” (This criticism exempts Rush Holt, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold and the others who were willing to fight, but whose swords were taken from them.)

Am I sounding a tad angry? Is my natural lefty populism showing through? What do you expect when a party that has been elected to reverse six years of domestic neglect, foreign misadventure and religious pandering manages to cave on the most important of issues and refuses to truly engage the public on several others (universal health care, anyone?).

The game, of course, is rigged. We are not likely to see a viable progressive third-party presence running at the national level. The system affords just two choices — bad and dangerous. Democrats may be bad, but the current crop of Republican candidates are downright dangerous.

I may not be ready for a return of Clinton corporatism, but I can’t see how a Rudy Giuliani presidency would be good for America or for the world — and he may be the best of this ugly lot of Republican wannabes.

So I and too many others will vote for a candidate come November 2008 that we don’t like because we dislike the other major candidate more. And then we’ll complain about our lack of choices for four years and do it again.

Is this any way to run a democracy?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Matrix plan poses difficult issues

This is a tough call. Residents of the new Four Seasons adult community on Georges Road at Route 130 are concerned that a warehouse plan proposed by Matrix for Friendship Road will create problems for the community. They are calling on the Planning Board to deny the Matrix plan — and subsequent plans by the developer for several other warehouses in the area.

The residents have formed a group — Friends of Southern Middlesex County — to make their case and are allying themselves with other groups with similar concerns.

I am a huge proponent, as most people probably know by now, of citizen action and activism and, as a general rule, I tend to support neighbors in their fights against developers.

The issue here, however, is that the basic outline of this development is allowed under current zoning — and was allowed well before the Four Seasons development was built. The question, then, is how to address the concerns of residents without infringing on the rights of Matrix.

Neighbors are mistaken if they think they can stop the project in its tracks, but that does not mean that nothing can be done.

The answer, it would seem, is to hold the developer to the letter of the zoning, to ensure adequate buffering between residential and commercial uses. Make sure that whatever it is that Matrix ultimately builds has as little impact on the adjacent neighborhoods as possible.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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