14 QUESTIONS AND THE PINKHASOV PINCHAS COMMENTS

TO THE NATIONAL SPORTS ASSOCIATIONS AND CONCERNED PERSONS

Dear Friends:

In the last several weeks I was requested to present my answers or opinion or input  on  14 different questions, which were provided to me by various persons and organizations from many countries. These questions concern the CISS, deaf sports movement and the
still-ongoing lawsuit.

Although I am not obligated to respond to anyone with these questions, I will nevertheless  be generous in agreeing to provide my own answers and comments. I am doing this out of my respect for the questioning persons and organizations and my love and concern for the deaf sports.
Below are 14 questions and my answers and comments:

1. We carefully studied your material related to the many inconsistencies and errors  allegedly committed by the current CISS Secretary General  regarding  the Minutes Report of the 37th CISS Congress. We, however, noticed on the CISS Website that , to this day,  no changes have been made in the Minutes according to your previous comments. Does this mean that the Minutes are already approved as an official CISS document? ( question came from Germany ).

It is the CISS Congress delegates who will  vote to approve the Miinutes of the Congress as an official document. This act is expected to be done at the coming 38th CISS Congress in 2003.
In the interests of accuracy, factual data and fairness, I do urge the current CISS superiors to review the videotape of the 37th CISS Congress produced  by the FISS, which should help to make appropriate corrections, deletions and additions in the Minutes before the document goes to the floor of the next Congress in Sundsvall, Sweden, for an official approval  or ratification by the delegates.

2. You sharply criticized John Lovett and Donalda Ammons  for their poor  work and supervision in preparing and editing the e-News issue at the start of this year.What do you think of the latest CISS e-News, Number 204, April 2002  issue released on the website?  ( Russia, USA, South Africa ).

Unfortunately, I see that no improvement is being made yet. Again, I noticed nearly 49 grammatical errors, inaccuracies and questionable facts in various materials of the April 2002 e-News issue. Like in the previous three  issues, Lovett and Ammons obviously did not do a proper and careful job in the areas of proofreading, fact verification  and supervising before releasing the whole material on  the worldwide website system. I do not know for how long they will continue to work in such an irresponsible and unprofessional manner. Have you noticed that the e-News has not mentioned the  name of its Editor in it or the name of person who edited the whole issue? Overall, this type of work undoubtedly tarnishes  the image of the CISS everywhere!

3. Why was not our former outstanding deaf wrestler from South Africa, Max Ordman  included  on the honorable list of the top ten Deaf Olympians of the Century?
( South Africa )

Regretfully, no one alerted   Lovett or me about Max Ordman's previous participation as a wrestler at the Olympic Games in 1960 before. We had no advance knowledge of this fact. I learned about this very belatedly, that is, only last year when I was contacted by one deaf foreign leader, who told me of the many positive things about Ordman and his 1960 Olympic Games connection.

4. What do you think of Lovett's recent meeting with the IOC President in  Lausanne, Switzerland, which was  reported in the CISS e-News? ( USA ).

Every visit by a top CISS official to the IOC site  should be viewed as a major and historical event.
By holding important meetings there, especially with the IOC President, Dr. Jacques Rogge, Lovett should have reported his meetings and activities held at the IOC premises in a full and detailed manner.
How about, for example, producing  a transcript of the Rogge-Lovett meeting?
Lovett went to Lausanne along with one person named John Lee, according to his brief   e-News report. The e-News identified that person as a BSL interpreter ( any foreign reader, by the way, will not understand as to what does the acronym of BSL stand for? Is it for Bulgarian or Brazilian Sign Language? Lovett in his column should  have spelled letters of BSL fully).
Since Lovett gave a  limited account of his activities at the IOC headquarters in the      
e-News, it is hard to judge whether his recent trip to Lausanne was a success or failure.
This way no one in the CISS community will know, for instance, as to what Dr. Rogge or Gilbert Felli, the IOC Sports Director, told to Lovett in detail, vice versa, during their encounters at the IOC premises.
In addition, after visiting the IOC headquarters twice,  in September, 2001 and recently, it is still unclear whether Lovett finally obtained an original May 16, 2001 letter from the IOC - permitting the CISS to use the wording Deaflympics - with the then IOC President Senor Juan Antonio Samaranch's signature in it?   
Were you aware of the fact that Lovett, by lacking an original letter on his hands, on May 17, 2001, instructed his CISS Secretary General to hurriedly announce to the world about IOC's granting the CISS the permission to use the word  Deaflympics?
Please read the following comment in the Minutes of the 37th CISS Congress, which was held July 20-21,2001,
"President Lovett said he would ask IOC for an original letter dated May 16 from IOC President Samaranch. CISS only has a faxed copy, not the original letter that never arrived".

5. How do you view a new proposal from the CISS Executive Committee - the Secretary General position will be a non-voting and contractual one  in the CISS - made recently?
( Germany ).

It is an excellent proposal. Hopefully, it will get unanimous support from the delegates at the 38th CISS Congress  next year.

6.At the recent CISS Executive Committee meeting in Sundsvall, a new proposal was made.They created a group called CISS Management Team, in which  the three persons - Lovett, Ammons and Ole Artmann - were included. What is your opinion? ( USA ).

I am not surprised that they created such a group, in which the three persons will have influence and play a very crucial role in organization's policy-making decisions. This act
justifies  my previous statement that it is both Lovett and Ammons who virtually run and control the daily CISS affairs by themselves only. Ole Artmann as  the CISS Treasurer is a nice and normally non-talkative and tranquil person. But on  that CISS Management Team he will formally act as a figurehead participant in the meeting. According to the CISS      e-News April 2002 report, this Team will meet annually or bi-annually (it is confusing because Lovett in  his recent  e-News column reported that the Team would  meet once a year, while on the other  page of the same e-News issue it reported that they would meet twice a year ).
Since the creation of this group is a new and important  proposal in the CISS business, it is my opinion that before starting to do anything  this new item should be debated in front of the CISS Congress delegates first before the so-called CISS Managment  Team can begin its functioning.
Interestingly,  Los Angeles,USA, was "honored" to be chosen  as the venue of the CISS Management Team's initial  meeting slated for this coming October, 2002. Los Angeles is the very city which has left a dark spot  in the history of the CISS as in 1985 this beautiful and vibrant city, regretfully,  hosted  the most disorganized, mismanaged and competition-schedule-wrecked Games in the whole CISS history!

7. The CISS  rejected to accept the FISS-published book devoted to the results of the recent 19th Summer Games in Rome, Italy. Instead,  the CISS considers the Games results information published in www.deaflympics.com as an official one. One day this website will be closed down. As a result, where and how will one find the needed information?
( Brazil, India ).

You better ask the CISS Home Office about this .
By the way, the information  in the website is an inadequate and inaccurate one. I spotted over 485 errors in it!

8. How will the Deaflympic Games Rule 7.A affect the program of the coming Winter Games in Sundsvall? Will ice hockey and nordic skiing still be contested as official medal events in spite of the possible fact that these sports may not exactly meet the requirement of the Rule 7.A? ( Canada, Russia and USA ).

To get  better explanation about the Rule 7.A, please read my material  by logging on to www.deafsportlawsuit.com/update2.html
I have no idea as to how many nations and regions have registered for the ice hockey event at the 2003 Winter Games because the CISS Home Office has not publicly released the information yet. The deadline for such a registration was November 1,2001, though.
In spite of the above, it will be interesting to see as to how both Lovett and Ammons
( you should be aware of the fact that it was the Lovett-led CISS Legal Commission that made such a Rule ) will handle this issue.
It is possible that ice hockey will be played at Sundsvall as a demonstration event unless
both Lovett and Ammons will be forced to commit another rule violation.
We will also see as to how the Rule 7.A will affect another premier winter sport - nordic skiing - in Sundsvall. We will see as to what kind of measure Lovett and Ammons will take in case this sport, like ice hockey, will not register the skiers - male and/or female -
from the required 3 different regions.
I must repeatedly advise you that I do still think that  the Rule 7.A. is a nuisance rule. It is  a very harmful rule, especially for the Winter Games program.
Despite the fact that Lovett is a long-time CISS functionary and globetrotter, I must, to my much regret, tell  you  that he had not appropriately and adequately prepared himself to act as a self-appointed member of the CISS Legal Commission. I can justify this by presenting  my following arguments:

a) Lovett  had obviously lacked his own all-around analytical instinct of the sports practiced among the deaf worldwide,
b) he had been unthoughtful in understanding the smallness of our deaf sports world, and
c) he had failed to envision the probable consequences of the Rule 7.A for the future.

Therefore, Lovett, surrounded by his own hand-picked cronies in the CISS Legal Commission, was unable to rationally draft, formulate and propose the Rule 7.A in a realistic and beneficial to the deaf sports cause way!
To present additional justification to the above arguments of mine, there is another fact which implicates Lovett - directly and  indirectly.  Some nine years ago,  in  the summer of 1993, at the 33rd CISS Congress in Bulgaria, it was a female delegate from Australia and Lovett disciple, who successfully pushed to propose to the Congress delegates  to accept  the minmum of five nations per sport in order to declare any sport in the Games  program - Summer and Winter - as an official  medal event at the  Games ( read the CISS Bulletin issues, Number 169, June, 1993 and Number  170, November, 1993 ). Such an Australian-inspired rule proposal  instantly "killed" one winter sport - speed skating, which has as a result been absent from the Winter Games program since 1995.
Interestingly, that very same female delegate from Australia four years later, in 1997 in Copenhagen, Denmark, received from Lovett's own  hands a honor - the CISS Medal of Merit for her "promotion and outstanding contribution to the deaf sports cause in the world"!

9. Is there any chance to include martial arts on the program of the Summer Games in 2005? ( France, Italy, Argentina, Ukraine ).

The CISS, as I understand, along with the Organizing Committee of the XXth Games has already finalized the list of sports which will be played in Melbourne, Australia in 2005. However, because of the Rule 7.A, I guarantee you that not all 15 sports, which were on the official program of the XIXth Games in Rome, will fulfill that rule requirement. Therefore, certain sports will have to be excluded from the Games program in 2005. This will happen unless the  Lovett-led CISS will do something with the Rule 7.A.
As a lifelong proponent of mass sport and mass competitions among the deaf, I believe that the CISS along with the IMAFD, an associate member of the CISS, should, for a number of motives, employ the following open-minded and innovative strategy:

the CISS and IMAFD should jointly begin now or one year before the start of the 2005 Games to conduct a survey or registration among all the National Sports Associations to see whether there will be sufficient number of entries in the sport of martial arts ( judo and/or karate ) for the 2005 Games competitions. If the requirement of the Rule 7.A is met in certain weight class categories of judo and karate, then let  these sports be included as official  medal events of the Games.

On the other hand, recently the IOC, under the  recommendation and pressure from  the women's groups and the International Fencing Federation, for example, at the last minute, agreed to include the women's individual sabre discipline as a new medal event at  the 2004 Olympic Summer Games  in  Athens, Greece.

10. Last October our organization nominated our two best sportspersons for the 2001 World  Athlete of the Year Award honors. The two of our nominees  made to the list of the top 15. But we still do not know as to how each of our nominees-finalists received points in the voting procedure  by the nine-member international Selections Commission?
( Russia ).

As a founder and first chairman of the annual  World SportsMan and SportsWoman of the Year Awards Commission, I have asked Knud Sondergaard, the man who was in charge of the 2001 Awards project, to explain publicly as to how the points were allocated to each finalist in the two different categories. However, to this minute and to my puzzlement, Sondergaard has not publicly released the information yet.
I am still hopeful  that Sondergaard,  a former professional statistician for the government of Denmark, did a proper and accurate job with the 2001 Award point system count.

11. Is it true that any athlete who will compete at the inaugural World Deaf Rugby Championship, will be suspended by the CISS and not allowed to compete in the future Deaflympic Games? ( Australia ).

I did receive similar rumors before. However, I do not have hard evidence in my hands saying that the CISS would suspend these deaf athletes if they  participate in a CISS-non-sanctioned event.
I know that this coming August 9-24 the city of Auckland, New Zealand, will be hosting  the first ever world championship in rugby ( six nations - New Zealand, Australia, Wales, Japan, Fiji Islands and France - are scheduled to compete).
In my own opinion, the CISS, for a variety of  reasons, has no moral or legal right to suspend any deaf person who chooses to freely compete  in an international, CISS-non-sanctioned sports event like the world championship in rugby.

12. Why did you sue the CISS? ( Belarus, Italy, Denmark, USA, Ireland).

This is a nonsense. I never sued the CISS!

13. Have defendants Jerald Jordan, Donalda Ammons and John Lovett  agreed to accept the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in order to litigate your claim?

( USA, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Germany ).

Sorry, I am not going to answer this question now.

14.What is the current status of your legal case against defendants Jerald Jordan, John Lovett and Donalda Ammons at the USA District Court in Baltimore? ( USA, Austria ).

The decision  by a judge whether the parties will go to trial is still pending.


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