Archives for August 2004

Gymnastics officials want Hamm to give up gold

Posted: Friday August 27, 2004 9:53AM; Updated: Friday August 27, 2004 10:31AM

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Gymnastics officials asked Paul Hamm to give up his gold medal as the ultimate show of sportsmanship, but the U.S. Olympic Committee told them to take responsibility for their own mistakes.

The USOC is exactly right.



In a dispute over scores that has turned into a political squabble, the head of the International Gymnastics Federation suggested in a letter to Hamm that giving the all-around gold medal to South Korea’s Yang Tae-young “would be recognized as the ultimate demonstration of fair play by the whole world.”

You cannot change history, no matter how you try. If you could I can think of about 6 different things in my life that would be different.

FIG president Bruno Grandi tried to send the letter Thursday night to Hamm through the USOC, but the USOC refused to deliver it.

Give the USOC a harrumph.

In a letter back to Grandi, USOC secretary general Jim Scherr called the request “a blatant and inappropriate attempt on the part of (FIG) to once again shift responsibility for its own mistakes and instead pressure Mr. Hamm into resolving what has become an embarrassing situation for your federation.”

That is correct, I feel badly for Hamm. He shouldn’t be placed in this position.



Yang, the bronze medalist, was wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his parallel bars routine. If he had received the proper score, he would have won gold and Hamm would have won silver. Three judges were suspended, and FIG said the results would stand.

Through his agent, Hamm declined comment, but he has said in the past that he has no intentions of giving up his medal unless ordered to do so by FIG. Grandi said Friday he believed the issue was closed until he learned of that comment by Hamm.

Although Grandi’s letter says “the true winner of the all-around competition is Yang Tae-young” the FIG president insisted he’s not pressuring Hamm.

“There is no doubt he has won the medal,” Grandi said. “He deserves the medal and the ranking is clear. … I respect totally Paul Hamm and all the decisions he makes. If he says give back the medal, I respect it. Don’t give back the medal, I respect the decision. He is not responsible for anything.”

The USOC had a much different interpretation of the letter.

“I don’t know of any comparison in any sport anywhere where you crown an athlete, crown a team and then say, ‘Oh, that was a mistake. Would you fix this for us?”‘ USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said.

Ueberroth said the USOC considers the case closed, based on the FIG ruling — that the scores cannot be changed — and from a statement from International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who said the IOC would stick with the results turned in by the federation and wouldn’t step in unless there were clear signs of impropriety.

If Hamm had known about this during the competition he might have done things differently too. He could have engaged in a more difficult routine to elevate his scores. But you can’t go back.



If the Lakers would have been completely healthy the Pistons never would have won, but again, unless you are HG Wells history is immutable.

Europe’s New War With America

By Seth Jayson (TMF Bent) August 26, 2004

If you were spooked by the vision of technology and institutional hubris gone amok in Minority Report, pull the covers over your head now. This week, the European Union’s (EU) European Commission (EC) opened an investigation into a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) deal that would give them control of digital rights management (DRM) company Contentguard.

The crime? Future domination of a market that does not yet exist.

If you’re confused or angered by this, then you must not be a socialist or an EU commissioner. So step outside yourself for a moment, you capitalist dog, and try to see things from the EC’s side of the table.

Here’s what the EC claims: “It appears to the Commission that the transaction might possibly create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions.”

Silly me, but I thought the whole point of a business was to make money from a competitive advantage. Apparently, in Europe, competition is OK, so long as there’s no winner. That may be a nice way to run a church T-ball league, but it’s no way to advance an economy or culture. (But maybe it explains a few things about the medal counts in Athens these days.)

Another unfortunate reality for the commissioners is that there isn’t much of a market for DRM at all right now, and the leader in the field is the only company making a splash in the download biz: not Microsoft but Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Of course, from the EC point of view, Cupertino had better stop selling so many iPods. Not only is the device cuter than the other players out there, but also it refuses to run files from RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) and other competitors. That’s clearly an advantage, and therefore, it must be stopped. Oh, and by the way, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Home Depot (NYSE: HD)? Your low prices and tight inventory control put your competitors at a disadvantage. Get out your checkbooks.

You get the idea. The EC’s recent record on big business looks a lot more like sour grapes than consumer protection. Earlier Microsoft settlements and the ongoing Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) investigation have been long on suspicion and short on substance. Unfortunately for shareholders, the easiest thing to do is often just to pay up so the EC will shut up.

Top Russian Official: Plane Terror Likely

By MARIA DANILOVA, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – A top Russian official acknowledged on Thursday what many citizens already suspected — that terrorism was the most likely cause of two jetliners crashing minutes apart, a feeling reflected in a newspaper headline warning that “Russia now has a Sept. 11.”

Just a day after officials stressed there were many possibilities besides terrorism, presidential envoy Vladimir Yakovlev told Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency that the main theory “all the same remains terrorism.”

He said the planes’ flight recorders had not provided any clues to the disaster.

Additionally, Transport Minister Igor Levitin confirmed Sibir airlines’ report that its crew activated an emergency signal shortly before the plane disappeared from radar screens. Visiting the site of the crash, he said, however, that details were slim because “no verbal confirmation from the crew was received” saying what the problem was.

Officials previously said there was no indication of trouble from a Volga-Aviaexpress airliner that also crashed late Tuesday, although people on the ground reported hearing a series of explosions.

Russian media also raised questions about a possible link between the crashes and an explosion a few hours earlier at a bus stop on a road leading to Domodedovo airport, where the two doomed planes took off. Without citing any evidence, the reports suggested the blast, which wounded four people, might have been an effort to distract attention.

The suspicion of terrorism came after earlier warnings from officials that separatists might try to carry out attacks before an election this Sunday in Chechnya (news – web sites) to replace the war-torn region’s assassinated pro-Kremlin president. The rebels have made attacks in Moscow and other cities, hijacked planes outside Russia and allegedly staged suicide bombings.

“I am inclined to think that it is a terrorist act, because there are too many coincidences,” said Ruben Suryaninov, an elderly retiree. “What needs to happen so that two planes going from the same airport would bang at the same moment?”

“It’s too suspicious,” agreed Natalia Kozhelupova, a physicist who was out on a national day of mourning for the 89 people killed in the crashes. Russia’s tricolor flag flew at half-staff and television canceled entertainment programs.

Despite Yakovlev’s statement about terrorism, officially the government’s investigation was still looking at all possibilities, including bombs, hijackers, mechanical failure, bad fuel and human error. Officials said no evidence had been found pointing to terrorism.

The government had hoped the jetliners’ flight data recorders would shed some light, but Yakovlev told state-run First Channel that experts found both boxes shut off before indicating any problems.

Yakovlev, the president’s envoy for southern Russia, where one of the planes crashed, said both boxes “turned off immediately” — an indication “that something happened very fast.”

The planes — a Sibir Tu-154 with 46 aboard and a Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 with 43 people — disappeared from radar almost simultaneously around 11 p.m. Tuesday. The Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd and the other plane to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where President Vladimir Putin (news – web sites) had been vacationing. They had taken off about 40 minutes apart.

A government commission appointed to investigate the crashes traveled Thursday to the site where the Tu-134 crashed about 120 miles south of Moscow. Emergency crews had already completed their work there, but other workers continued to check wreckage of the Tu-154 a few hundred miles south.

“There is still no clear-cut concept of what occurred, because the procedure of deciphering the data recorders will be conducted more than once,” Levitin, the transport minister and head of the commission, was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass.

Oleg Panteleyev, an independent aviation expert in Russia, said that just because no clear evidence of terrorism had been found didn’t mean it that wasn’t the cause.

Any other explanation “seems to be purely impossible,” he told The Associated Press. “But then again absolutely incredible things can happen in life.”

There also was doubt about whether Russians could count on their government to tell the truth.

“I never trust what the authorities are saying, but in this case, I don’t know — it could have been an accident or a terrorist act,” said Yevgeny Skepner, a 37-year-old computer programmer.

Many Russians have ingrained doubts about the government’s candor after the confused and contradictory reports on the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk (news – web sites) in 2000 and the still-murky 2002 seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels.

Still, Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst who is often critical of the government, said the government would have nothing to gain in covering up a terror attack.

“For the companies, the aviation industry, society and Russia as a whole, it would be better … because otherwise it means that things are really bad here — we have bad planes that crash to the ground one after another,” he said. “The fact that it is not being called a terrorist act, means they have no such evidence … because hiding a terrorist act is impossible.”

Panteleyev disagreed. “To miss such a major terrorist act for the security services means to acknowledge their impotence,” he said.

I am betting on terrorism, this is just way too coincidental for it to be an accident.

Assuming that Howard Lefkowitz is being totally honest and forthcoming he is running the kind of operation I like frequenting. Service, service, service. We all love to be serviced, some of us more than others. 😉 But do it right and you can make a mint, or a chocolate bar.

Charles Manson cult member denied parole for 15th time

Thu Aug 26, 9:58 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – One of the members of the murderous 1960s Manson “family”, Leslie Van Houten, sobbed and apologized to her victims’ family as she was denied parole for the 15th time.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I was raised to be a decent human being. I turned into a monster and I have spent these years going back to a decent human being, and I just don’t know what else to say.”

Van Houten, 55, is serving a life sentence for her role in the gruesome August 1969 murders of a Los Angeles store owner and his wife, a day after Charles Manson’s acolytes killed film star Sharon Tate and four other people at her Beverly Hills mansion, sowing panic in Hollywood.

But a two-member parole panel sitting in a jail near Los Angeles found Wednesday that Van Houten, who was one of Manson’s gang of devoted young women 35 years ago, should spend the next two years in state prison, at least.

“We have come to the conclusion that you’re not yet suitable for parole,” one of them announced after a hearing that lasted more than two hours and included about a half hour of deliberations.

The now grey-haired former cheerleader and daughter of a middle-class family will be next eligible for parole in 2006. She was last denied a chance at freedom two years ago.

Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for participating with fellow Manson family members Charles “Tex” Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel in the slayings of grocers Leno and Rosemary La Bianca.

Prosecutors said Van Houten stabbed Rosemary between 14 and 16 times in the back, although Van Houten has maintained Rosemary was already dead when she began stabbing her on Manson’s orders and under Watson’s supervision.

Van Houten did not participate in the Manson family’s slayings of the eight-month pregnant Tate, three friends and a visitor at a home rented by Tate and her husband, Polish-born director Roman Polanski.

Manson had hoped the copy-cat murder would disguise the Manson family’s role in the Tate murder and help spark a racial war which he dubbed “Helter Skelter,” prosecutors alleged.

The death sentences handed down to Van Houten and other members of Manson’s family after their 1970 trial were commuted to life in prison with the chance of parole after the US Supreme Court temporarily abolished capital punishment.

Manson, Krenwinkel, Watson and other members of the family all remain behind bars and have repeatedly been refused parole.

The LaBiancas’ nephew, Louis Smaldino and Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, who helped prosecute Van Houten, who was 19 at the time of the murders, attended the parole hearing in a women’s prison.

Kay has vigorously opposed Van Houten being released on parole, saying she stopped Rosemary LaBianca from defending her husband and pinned her down on a bed so that Krenwinkel could stab her.

Van Houten has acknowledged stabbing her female victim, but said she was already dead.

“And did you believe she was dead at the time that you plunged the knife into her body?,” she was asked Wednesday. “Yes, I believed she was,” the inmate responded.

Van Houten, who has in the past expressed shame for her devotion to the charismatic Manson, said she found her actions tough to explain.

“And it’s very hard as a 55-year-old woman to look back on the behaviour of who I was at 19,” she said at the hearing that took place two days after her 55th birthday.

Manson, now 59, Krenwinkel, Watson, Susan Atkins and other members of the Manson family all remain behind bars and have repeatedly been refused parole over the years.

Youth is not always a viable excuse for engaging in acts of recklessness and stupidity. It is a hard lesson for some to learn.