November 22, 1963, was the day President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot during the motorcade ride down Elm Street, Dallas, Texas. To this day, the lone gunman explanation by the Warren Commission is still being challenged, and the ballistics and politics of the ricocheting “magic bullet” are analysed in many web sources.
Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who put Charles Manson behind bars, took 20 years to research and write “Reclaiming History” (W.W. Norton & Company 2007, ISBN 978-0-393-04525-3), purportedly to answer all the questions and shut all the doors to conspiracy theories in the most important murder case in American history. Still, his monumental volume of 1612 pages is decried by some as a one-sided attempt to do the impossible, to wash away the conspiracy and pretend it never happened. Oliver Stone used his “artistically and commercially potent paranoid film” to delve into a byzantine labyrinth of deceit and intrigue. While at odds with what conspiracy buffs will admit is the record, his 188 minute “JKF” movie resulted in Congress passing legislation for the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board, to pressure government agencies, and cajole private citizens, to make public documents, films, and other materials related to the assassination. The story has to be told.
Madam Kaur died from intra-abdominal haemorrhage after donating a kidney to her husband in 2005. He sued the hospital for negligence last year, as the unexplained slippage of clips applied to the cut end of the left renal artery by attending doctors led to fatal blood loss. The National University Hospital (NUH) has decided not to appeal the High Court judgment which held NUH was partly to blame for her death. Professor Michael Nicholson from the University of Leicester, had testified that it is wrong to use 4 clips on the renal artery, and the patient should have been monitored every 15 minutes instead of hourly. The monetary settlement with the bereaved family means the public will never know why 4 clips instead of 2 were found by the pathologist, and how the slippage escaped the hospital’s attention.
But the family of Derrick Peh, who became bed-ridden after a shoulder operation in 2006, is rejecting the NUH’s offer of settlement. Through their lawyer Michael Yap, they are sending this message: “This is not about money, this is about grief and emotion and closure.” Another who wants the truth told is a 79-year-old woman who had to undergo emergency surgery when a needle pierced her heart instead of her liver. Her lawyer said, “I am waiting what it (NUH) has to say in its statement of defence which is due to be filed soon.” Their stories have to be told.
Just don’t expect the Jack Neo remake of Michael Moore’s “Sicko” to be screening at a cinema near you anytime soon.
