A TALE OF TWO EMERGENCIES

By

J. Michael Springmann

It was not the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was more than one trip to Sibley Hospital’s Emergency Room. And the questionable care provided. Here are two blood-chilling tales of low-tech medical care in a high-tech world.

One. In February 2016, the author, through an act of sheer stupidity, fell down the stairs on a weekend. Subsequently suffering excruciating back pain, he later drove to nearby Sibley Memorial Hospital on Loughboro Road in Northwest Washington. (Established in 1890, Sibley became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Health System Corporation in 2010.)

Recounting his misadventure, this writer explained to Sibley’s emergency room staff the pain’s duration, location, and intensity. The attending emergency room physician asked questions, checked the author’s mobility, and ordered x-rays. She noted that the writer didn’t appear to have a concussion.

Treatment? Experiencing extreme dizziness during the x-rays, the author emphasized his discomfort and concern. The doctor took no notice of his complaints. She sent him home with a prescription for an extra-strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, like Ibuprofen. The physician suggested that if he felt no better, he should consult his own personal medico.

The ability to drive to the emergency room obviously indicated no real emergency and no need for attentive care.

The next day, a Monday, this author was still in great pain. Calling his own doctor, he obtained a quick appointment. There he learned that Sibley had told her he had broken a lumbar vertebra and was exceedingly fortunate that he had not become a paraplegic. She prescribed narcotics for the pain and suggested he look at kyphoplasty, Greek for gluing the broken bone together. This required a waiting period to see if the bone would heal normally.

Ignorance is not bliss. Livid, the author called Sibley and demanded to speak with the emergency room doctor who apparently couldn’t diagnose his situation. Emergency room staff insisted that the physician, whose name was on the discharge papers and prescription, didn’t work at the hospital. This writer then tried and failed to reach the head of the emergency department. When he sought help from the hospital administration, he was ignored. A complaint to the D.C. government brought no relief.

A week later, this writer became so dizzy he could not get out of bed. Calling the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, he was taken back to Sibley. There, he was diagnosed with, and treated for, mirabile dictu, a concussion.

The author then spent the next six weeks watching really bad daytime TV and munching codeine pills. He then made an appointment with another Sibley doctor who breezily explained kyphoplasty, handed over a brochure about the process, and told him to call for an appointment.

Help at last. Following silent, enraged, obscene thoughts about Sibley staff, the author called a surgeon recommended by Georgetown University Hospital. He met with a young, highly-qualified doctor woman of Iranian ancestry. She carefully explained his situation, clarified the kyphoplasty procedure, and showed him an MRI of his back, things Sibley hadn’t done. She also assured the author that she would be using high-tech plastic cement, not Elmer’s Glue.

Once the procedure was done, the writer was out of the hospital the same day. The vertebra is now better and stronger than new.

Two. In mid-December 2018, the author, being careful, took a box of tax papers down to the basement. Then, in an instant, he found himself clutching both handrails and hanging upside down, with a foot in excruciating pain. Alone in the house, he knew that no one had pushed him or that no afreet (a djinn with an attitude) had emerged from his computer to trip him.

Once the pain had subsided, he crawled up the stairs and called the Rescue Squad. Again, the destination was Sibley. It was “nearby” and “had space”. Almost ready to countermand the Squad’s suggestion, this writer thought that the hospital couldn’t make any more mistakes.

Wrong.

Delay is not good for the soul–or body. He sat in the emergency room for a good four hours, before meeting a doctor, who was not an orthopedist. Then, more time went by before he was x-rayed and diagnosed with a broken foot. Apparently, bone doctors are not on staff on the weekends at Sibley. They evidently had to find one to do a telephone consultation about the injury. (Obviously, no one plays sports on Saturdays or Sundays in Washington, D.C.)

Why the delay? Sibley only knows. The emergency room wasn’t crowded and the only really important case with far greater precedence was one elderly man with chest pains.

Unhelpful help. Eventually, a staffer came by to wrap this writer’s foot in a soft cast. She wanted him to remove his jeans and put on paper scrub pants to wear home. She claimed that, otherwise, he couldn’t strip off his jeans once the cast was on. Apparently there were no scissors in the hospital to cut into the pants leg. And no grasp of the difficulty of removing shoes, socks and other garments without putting weight on both feet.

The best part of the scrub pants “idea” was that it was raining. While the author always enjoys impressing his neighbors with his sartorial splendor, wearing paper clothing that would dissolve in the downpour didn’t sound practicable. It also seemed somewhat risqué.

More to the point, a nurse provided a prescription for narcotic painkillers. The nurse knew the author couldn’t walk and the nearest pharmacy, not the hospital’s, was three blocks from his house. Following strong remonstrations, the nurse provided two Vicodin pills, TV Dr. House’s drug of choice.

Can it get worse? Months later, Sibley began sending $2.40 bills to the author. When queried about the charge, Sibley’s billing service asserted the pills were “self-administered medicine” and this writer’s insurance wouldn’t pay for them. Rather than waste money or additional time arguing with the billing bureaucrat, the author ignored the repeated mailings. Now, he’s learned that Sibley, the once-trusted hospital, has referred the staggering, inexplicably increased sum of $6.30 to a collection agency.

The Takeaway? Sibley Memorial Hospital displays an astonishing level of ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence. And, regrettably, this is typical of American medicine today. Adding to this foul brew is the parent, Johns Hopkins. Physicians have told the author that, since the Baltimore company acquired Sibley, the emphasis has been on profit rather than patient care.

The Cure? Besides overhauling Sibley’s emergency room and instituting periodic investigations of its competence? And improving the quality of medical school graduates? Universal Health Care. Something available in nearly all other countries save parts of Africa, the Middle East, and China. It’s absence here quite rightly staggers non-Americans. They can’t conceive of profits instead of care.

MILLIONS OF MARCHING MIGRANTS–A VIEW OF THEIR GREEK BEGINNINGS (AND UNSAVORY CONNECTIONS)

By

As told to us by a Reliable Source
J. Michael Springmann

The Beginning.

As the author noted in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, Greece “has been the main focus for migrants. Swarming out of Turkey, thousands of settlers made for the Hellene islands. In January and February of 2016 alone, more than 120,000 alleged asylum seekers poured into the Peloponnese and nearby isles…”
As soon as the tsunami started in 2015, mirabile dictu, newly-invented NGOs “suddenly” appeared on Lesvos, Chios, Kos, and other Greek islands. These mysterious organizations then did something entirely inexplicable: they immediately dismissed all the aid workers who had been helping the genuine refugees. Moreover, almost NONE of these NGOs had Arabic or French speakers on staff. (N.B., French is a tongue widely used in the Middle East.) Yet, all spoke English, a language which only educated people in Southwest Asia understand.
Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? frequently alludes to questionable outside forces helping to promote the migrant wave. The book discusses involvement of the European Union (EU), Germany, and Israel, among others. Our interlocutor added some more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle, helping add some clarity to the picture.

Outside Influence.

In Greece, the start of the migrant flood coincided with the election of Alexis Tsipras as Greek prime minister in January 2015. A man who had campaigned on Greek sovereignty and resistance to outside pressure, Tsipras acceded to the harsh economic austerity measures which the EU, Germany, and the International Monetary Fund laid down in July 2015. This was followed by, our interlocutor said, a U.S.-imposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the SOFA ” offers legal defense to both militaries while training in the other’s country.” Voltaire.net noted that Greece has a similar arrangement with only one other country, the United States. As the author was told, this threw 70 years of Greek support for Palestinians and that country’s status as a trusted 3rd party in the Middle East-North Africa region (MENA) out the window. Israel has been training in Cyprus, most likely the part which Greek Cypriots control. Additionally, our contact said the Israeli air force immediately took over the Kasteli air force base in Crete. The Jerusalem Post wrote that Israeli warplanes, in a test, staged mock attacks against the Russian S-300 anti-missile system installed on the Greek island of Crete. Moreover, the author was told, Greek navy ships are now under German control and mostly lie idle in harbor, while NATO and Frontex vessels (European border and coast guard agency) cruise Hellenic waters. Deutsche Welle, the German international broadcaster, reports that German “humanitarian” vessels help bring more migrants into Europe. Isn’t there a link?

How Do The Migrants Make It?

On Lesvos, one of the two or three beaches they regularly land on, is close to our contact’s house. Nearly every night (it was most often night) boats full of aliens would arrive, everyone would disembark, and then destroy the boats, rendering them “shipwrecked” under the law of the sea. After changing clothes, the migrants would follow their mobile phone instructions and march into Mytilini port. No one had to give directions, they knew the way. Despite the tragic photos circulated by the media at the time, most of these “refugees”/migrants looked healthy, were fit, and were even well-dressed. (Meanwhile, enterprising old men waited on the beach to collect the abandoned engines and, in some cases, the inflatables, for re-sale. Greece is now flooded with powerful outboard engines.)

Here’s A Few Questions

WHO provided this endless supply of engines? This endless supply of inflatables? (now in six figures). NOT “smugglers” because smugglers return WITH their boats.
Moreover, why is Greece regularly castigated for keeping the migrants in tents at “hot spots”. (These are, according to Human Rights Watch, violence-prone “centers…[originally] established for the reception, identification, and processing of asylum seekers and migrants.”) The Greek government, our interlocutor commented, makes no protest and takes the abuse like a “good bunny”. In fact, the hot spots are closed NGO-territory-only and the Greek government, including police and firemen, cannot enter unless invited. It is the wealthy, fake NGOs that keep migrants in worthless tents, eating disgusting meals at €7 (about US$8.50) a meal, while Greek street charities (particularly the Orthodox church) dish out healthy, fresh meals with a liter of water per person at €0.35 cents (US$0.40) a serving. (It was clear from the start that a lot of EU people and businesses – not necessarily Greek – have made a fortune from this, at the expense of EU taxpayers.)

And does child and organ trafficking take place at these camps? So many children are unaccounted for, and there is no way for anyone to monitor boats going in and out of the camps.
Another question: would a parent, surviving in a Turkish refugee camp, send an 8-year old child off to Europe ALONE “in hope of a better life”? (This is the shopworn story told in Europe and the U.S.) Well, as our contact said, “I am a parent. My answer to that is ‘Never! We stick together! Ok…some parents may have sold these children at their point of origin, but….. Greeks and MENA people are fanatically family-minded.'”

Politics and Money. Increasing Questions.

Continuing, our interlocutor analyzed Germany’s internal politics and delved into the vast sums of money going to the migrants, raising more questions.
Thoroughly drubbed in last year’s elections, to save themselves politically, German chancellor Merkel’s CDU and the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), headed by Martin Shulz, have announced that Germany’s rejected migrants will be sent back to their point-of-origin, such as Greece and Italy, thus reviving the Dublin Treaty. (Under the Dublin accords, asylum-seekers must apply for that status in the first EU country reached.) Our source noted that, despite EU claims, until last year Greece received no money for the migrants. (After these are released from the “hot spots”, they go to Greek army barracks where they are housed in [personally-observed]spare but humane and well organized conditions.). Now, our contact asserts that Greece has received several million Euros to house migrants rent-free in fully equipped and furnished apartments in Athens, Thessaloniki, and elsewhere around the country.
One of these apartments is in our interlocutor’s building, in a “good” part of central Athens, next to the Hilton. The flat is larger than our contact’s and has everything: a washing machine, air conditioning, etc. Utilities are paid for. Medical care is free. Food is delivered twice weekly from UNRWA, plus a small sum of spending money (which UNRWA always tries to make smaller). Supposedly these are temporary accommodations, just for three months, but the last group spent 10 months there before decamping for Thessaloniki where they found jobs. (WHAT jobs? At what pay?) And an additional question, how is the UN Relief and Works Agency, tied to Palestinian aid, involved in this?
This is at a time when half of Greek families are surviving on one grandparent’s pension, more than half have no access to medical care, when many Greeks have no electricity, and too many are homeless. Half have no jobs (with 67% of the youth being unemployed). The old economy overwhelmingly consisted of tiny private sector family businesses).
And, Finally, One More Question
The rape reports which started coming out of Germany and Sweden during the past years puzzled most Greeks because – except for a very few incidents – NOTHING like that happened there. So it was only now, this past Christmas, that in Lesvos these things began taking place.
As the author commented in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?, migrant attacks on women appeared carefully coordinated, likely using their ubiquitous and expensive cell phones. Will that be repeated now in Greece?
Look at this.
Things seem to be replicating themselves. Here’s some news from Lesvos, our source said, from friends returning to Athens after Christmas holidays:
Around 100 migrants were arriving every day by boat, and sometimes several boats a day. Instead of landing on the usual beaches, they were arriving directly at the port of Mytilini because of the weather. Supposedly, smugglers brought them BUT, no “smugglers” were arrested, and the boats would return to Turkey right away.
All of the migrants were men: no women, no grannies, no children. They were all about 35-40 and spoke English. As they were led through the town, they would pop into cafes and bars and talk to the girls: “‘Hey beautiful, shall we drink something together?” without their minders stopping them. Three girls living in the city center said that every time they went out, they were being hit on.
Is this really post-traumatic stress disorder? Is it really a culture clash? Or is it an effort to change Europe’s way of life? Is this happening because journalists are not doing their job?
Our contact asked how NOT ONE journalist worldwide made even one tiny day trip to the Turkish side of the sea from mid-2015 onward….not one person in the whole world, it seemed, had even one drop of curiosity about the “smugglers”. It wasn’t as if the two-hour commuter ferry Ayvalik-Mytilini had stopped running. And, speaking of that ferry, that is how the real migrants before 2015 used to arrive, WITH their passports.

And Finally…

According to the U.S. Department of State, “Geoffrey R. Pyatt, a career member of the Foreign Service, class of Career Minister, was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic in September 2016.
`He served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine from 2013-2016, receiving the State Department’s Robert Frasure Memorial Award in recognition of his commitment to peace and alleviation of human suffering in eastern Ukraine.”
The lack of peace and appearance of human suffering in the Ukraine came from the Obama Administration’s policies, formulated and implemented both by Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
Is there a U.S. plan for Greece to match that for the Ukraine?

[Read more…]

MIGRANTS? SOMEBODY LOSE SOME MIGRANTS?

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During the first week of November 2017, RT and later numerous British sources announced that Her Britannic Majesty’s Home Office (Interior Ministry) had “misplaced” some 56,000 foreigners liable for deportation – including convicted criminals and illegal immigrants. One woman intimately familiar with Europe’s studiously ignored wave of illicit aliens waggishly remarked, “they aren’t lost; they’re all here in Germany, riding the trains.”

What Hath Merkel Wrought? And Why?

And that’s Europe’s chief problem: the nations on the Continent, nearly all members of the European Union (EU), Germany in particular, still don’t recognize that the foreigners, those now present and with more still on the way, are a problem. Mutter der Nation Merkel invited the migrants there to “save” them from the American/Israeli Forever War against Arabs and Muslims. Please take note that German Chancellor Merkel did not, repeat not, attempt to stop that war. She has never spoken out against it. She has never demanded that refugee camps be set up in or near the violence-torn countries. She has never attempted to aid the economies of those wretched lands, except perhaps through German military expenditures for soldiers and airmen stationed in or near them.

But, Angela Merkel did want cheap labor to help German exports. She did want to change the cultural makeup of the country, helping wipe out German values. Look and think on that latter point, especially given Merkel’s remarks when she was an official of one-time East Germany, the German Democratic Republic. “If we reform the GDR, it won’t be in terms of the Federal Republic.” (Then, “West Germany”.)

As noted in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?, the migrants are, to a large extent, not well educated, come from a culture differing in interpersonal behavior from Europeans, and often are not attuned to punctuality. Additionally, their religion is radically different from those of Germany and the rest of the EU.

What Does This Mean?

The German culture stems from the beliefs and values of its people. The role that these principles play are evident in a German’s everyday life. Here are a few of the key values that the Germans possess.

Education

… a good education is very important to German societies. Not only do they have a deep respect for education, but credibility, social status, and the level of employment a person may reach depends on his educational achievement.

Manners

…Displaying politeness and courtesy are ways of showing respect. Boundaries are drawn through social distance, eye contact, touch, and facial expressions. Different types of relationships require different codes of behavior. Failing to follow these protocols is considered rude and may alienate those who are unaware of them.

Punctuality

…Germans pride themselves on their punctuality… Being late to an appointment disturbs their sense of order and is seen as rude… The German sense of “keeping to the schedule” can be seen in and out of the business world. For those who are virtually always on time, there are rarely acceptable excuses for tardiness or delays that may disturb the “schedule.”

Religion

German religion has gone through many changes throughout history. Yet, it continues to be a major part of Germans’ lives. The two most practiced religions are Lutheran Protestant (45%) and Roman Catholic (37%). (Source for foregoing: DePauw University. For more information and analysis on culture clashes between Germans and migrants, see: www.michaelspringmann .com and www.amazon.com/Goodbye-Europe-Hello-Chaos- Merkels/dp/0990926222/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1506524567&sr=8-1)

The Result?

Mama Merkel paid the price for her arrogance and contempt for German culture. She and her right-wing party, the Christian Democratic Union (along with its ally, the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union), lost very badly in the General Election held September 24, 2017. Their percentage of the vote fell sharply, dropping from 41% of the polls in 2013 to barely 33% in 2017. (Normally, the shift of a few percentage points is a big issue.) They lost 63 seats in the Bundestag (parliament), The Alternative for Germany party, the only viable political group opposing migration, grabbed about 13% of the vote, gaining 94 seats, a radical change for a party founded in 2013.

Yet the Chancellor’s response reflected her inability to handle reality. She said that she would listen to those who voted for the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and work to win them back “by solving problems, by taking up their worries, partly also their fears, but above all by good politics.” She didn’t say she would stop the conflicts creating the migrant wave or seek to damn the flood of aliens.

Money Might Be the Root of All Evil But It is Also a Major Cause of Immigration

Frau Merkel seems to also ignore the great effect German generosity has in pulling migrants from all corners of the globe to the Federal Republic. According to The Local.de, “An asylum seeker arriving in Germany has the right to housing and up to €390 euros per month to cover food, clothing and other expenses.” (This is considerably better than US support of asylum seekers.) German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière characterized this as a “siren call for migrants”. Additionally, “The benefits for refugees in Germany are quite high compared to other EU countries. This is part of the pull effect towards Germany,” de Maizière, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in an interview with the Rheinische Post regional daily. (Quoted in The Local.de, Sept4ember 10, 2017.)

So far, Merkel’s done nothing to change the Willkommenskultur (Welcome Culture). And more information about her failed policies and their dreadful consequences is coming to light.

Here’s but one example. On October 16, 2016, an Afghan migrant, Hussein Kavari, raped and drowned Maria Ladenburger, daughter of a high-ranking EU official. The Afghan attacker caught the young medical student as she was bicycling home from a party in the university city of Freiburg. One year later, more explosive news about Karvari came out. RT wrote on November 8, 2017 that Kavari, who claimed to be underage [and, presumably seeking mercy from the court] is really in his 20s and may be as old as 30. (He had kept a previously-extracted tooth that yielded up his true age.) More astonishingly, “The suspect arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied asylum-seeker in 2015, with no identity papers, and had been living with a Germany foster family since.” (When arrested, Kavari claimed he was only 17!)

Migrant Makeup and the Push for More

The “male and unaccompanied issue”, handled in Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?, is still a major problem in Germany, and becoming more complicated. According to The Local.de, “asylum seekers are more likely to be male than female, although the balance changes somewhat from year to year. In 2016 two in every three asylum seekers were male… Government figures show that two age groups are particularly likely to be asylum seekers in Germany. The first is young people aged between the ages of 18 and 30, of whom the large majority are male. The second group is very young children under the age of four. Almost one in every four asylum applications lodged this year have been on behalf of children under the age of four. By contrast children aged 4 to 6 made up only 3 percent of all applications.” (September 1, 2017.)

The Local.de went on to say in the same issue that 2016 was a record year for asylum applications: ” When hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived in the autumn of 2015 they didn’t all apply for asylum at once. Because there was already a long backlog with the immigration authorities, many waited until 2016.

That meant that last year smashed the record for asylum requests – 745,545 applications were lodged during the course of the year. 2015 was the second highest number of applications in German history, with 476,649 being made…”

Not recognizing the reasons for the 2017 electoral backlash against its policies (crashing to 20% of the vote, the worst in its post-war history), the German Socialist Party (SPD) has proposed alienating still more people. Touting the discredited idea that the only way to expand Germany’s population is by migration, Germany’s traditional working-class party believes that 250,000 more aliens should be brought to the country annually. The SPD proposes a point system that would enable additional people to qualify for German citizenship. Its draft law, the party notes, would not affect the rights of anyone seeking asylum in the country. (Cf. The Local.de November 7, 2017.)

Censorship: Free Speech Is Relative

Yet, there appears to be no real change from the German government’s crackdown on speech critical of migrants. In 2016, the Washington Post reported that “German authorities, meanwhile, have reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to get tougher on offensive content, with the outlets agreeing to apply domestic laws, rather than their own corporate policies, to reviews of posts.” (Perhaps that is why Twitter has refused to advertise Goodbye, Europe? and why Facebook does such a poor job of promoting that volume. The work disparages Europe’s, especially Germany’s, migrant policy. )

The Post also noted ” Critics call it the enforcement of political correctness, raising the question of what constitutes hate speech and sparking a national debate over free expression…Some Germans are questioning whether their online comments about migrant crimes [such as the 2015 New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne] could be taken down, or whether they could be charged with incitement, for publicly pondering whether refugees could have been among the assailants.”

Also, “… the incidents have fed a strain of anger and suspicion here beyond the traditional migrant critics in the right wing. It’s not politically correct to say anything against migrants. We don’t have freedom of opinion anymore…tweeted a German user from Hanover going by the handle Pulvermann.”

Furthermore, ” Proponents are hailing the government effort as a way to foment respect while also controlling the most savage voices in society.” Yet, this is not going down as easily as Merkel and her people might wish. “…[E]ven leaders on the political left are questioning whether the bid to weed out hate is going too far. Stefan Körner, chairman of Germany’s liberal Pirate Party, argued that democracies ‘must be able to bear’ a measure of xenophobia. He condemned the government’s deal with social media outlets to get tougher on offensive speech, saying that ‘surely it will lead to too many rather than too few comments being blocked. This is creeping censorship, and we definitely don’t want that.’”

Even the media, the Post said, is censoring itself. “The surge of incendiary comments online has been so strong that one of Germany’s largest media outlets, Der Spiegel, disabled its readers’ comment function for articles related to refugees.”

Proponents of more controls on freedom of speech in Germany assert that uncontrolled speech about migrants causes violent crime against migrants, so the Post says. Perhaps, it’s the other way around. Failure to address an issue of major importance, an issue striking at the heart not only of the state but of its people encourages crime against migrants because the government is seen as working on behalf of aliens to the detriment of the citizenry.

CONCLUSION: The surge in European, especially German, hatred of the Right, particularly those groups opposing unrestricted migration, further demonstrates the failure of the Left. Much like the recent presidential election in the US, Europeans no longer accept polls that go against what they perceive as their interests. And that is why democracy is dying, not as the Washington Post claims on its masthead, in darkness, but in bright sunlight.

PALESTINIAN PRANKS PERVERTS

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Some years ago, a Palestinian-American and employee of the US government traveled to Israel on official business. The perverts at the airport, fearing he might write something favorable to the PLO while in Izzie-land, made him disrobe. At first, they put him in a booth behind a curtain. Then they wanted his winter coat, even though it was cold in the airport. Next, they asked for his jacket. Later, it was shoes, socks, shirt, and pants. Ignoring his pleas for his clothes, the Zio-Nazis demanded his underwear. After his refusal, two burly guards came in and said, give them over or we take them. Stark naked, the US official got his revenge. He ran out in the arrival hall and began demanding his attire. Horrified, the Izzie immigration inspectors began opening suitcases and throwing clothes at him. Can’t we all just say…

SIRHAN SIRHAN: A “REEL BAD” ARAB?

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On July 20, 2017, William F. Pepper, Ed.D., J.D., spoke at the National Press Club about his previous day’s filing of a 200-page petition regarding Sirhan Sirhan.  Sirhan, jailed since 1968, is the alleged killer of Robert F. Kennedy, late New York U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate.  Organized by Andrew Kreig, J.D., editor of the Justice Integrity Project (http://www.justice-integrity.org/), the well-attended conference enabled Dr. Pepper to discuss his long-sought evidentiary hearing.

As Sirhan’s lawyer for many years, Pepper conceded that the legal remedies for his client in the United States have been exhausted–at both the State and federal levels.  California, where Kennedy had been murdered in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, did not assure a fair trial.  Essentially, ineffective assistance of counsel got the accused wrongly convicted.  Grant Cooper, his attorney, under threat of a sealed felony indictment, did almost nothing to defend Sirhan.  He failed to investigate the matter, obtain the autopsy report, or examine ballistics tests.  He spent most of the court proceedings arguing that Sirhan was guilty and, that because of diminished capacity, should not be given the death penalty.

Sirhan also got no relief in the federal system, neither with with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, nor with the extremely liberal and contrarian U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, nor with the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the case.

Now, Pepper is staking Sirhan’s chances on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an Organization of American States (OAS) body. His goal is either a new trial or an evidentiary hearing. The filing alleges that the California and U.S. justice systems violated Sirhan’s right to a fair trial, as required under the OAS Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. By treaty, the IACHR may review U.S. cases and those from 34 other nations when domestic remedies have been exhausted.

Pepper, who had been a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, is known for his winning defense of King’s supposed murderer, James Earle Ray, during a 1993 mock trial on HBO.  In a celebrated wrongful death proceeding in 1999, Pepper obtained a symbolic award based on 10 years of dogged pursuit of relevant evidence and witnesses.  He is doing the same now with Sirhan.

Noting that the U.S. media is controlled, by high level businessmen, bankers, and other influential figures who move in and out of government, such as John J. McCloy one-time U.S. High Commissioner for Germany and member of the Warren Commission, Sirhan’s lawyer said that the “conclusive evidence” reported as news was, in realty, extremely weak.  There was never a hearing on the facts, he commented.  Such an investigation would have shown that Sirhan, the claimed criminal, was nowhere near Kennedy when the shooting started.  Thomas Noguchi, Los Angeles’ chief medical examiner at the time, swore that Kennedy was struck by three shots fired within inches of his body, from behind.  Sirhan got off two shots at Kennedy from a six-foot distance, in front. Sirhan was immediately tackled and pinned down while still pulling the trigger on his handgun.  However, Sirhan fired only eight shots total yet a carefully-examined sound recording heard thirteen rounds.  Moreover, the shots came from different directions.

Yet, the Los Angeles Police Department, Pepper revealed, failed to preserve the physical evidence from the crime scene, such as ceiling tiles, doors, and door frames with bullets buried in them.  The cops’ excuse?  There was no space in which to store them.  Pepper went on to say that the Los Angeles police had long-standing and very close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The suspicion is, Pepper remarked, that Sirhan appeared to fit the parameters of the infamous CIA drug and consciousness-altering program, MK-ULTRA.  (Its former director, Sid Gottlieb, destroyed most of the operation’s records in 1973.)  Dr. Daniel Brown, Harvard Medical School, spent nearly 70 hours examining Sirhan through hypnosis and questioning, concluding that the Palestinian Christian had undergone a variety of procedures coupled with drugs to make him controllable.  Notably, Pepper said, this could have occurred while Sirhan had mysteriously disappeared for two weeks before the assassination.  Seen as a patsy, he was prepped as a distraction while the real murderer fired the close-up shots killing Kennedy, Pepper continued.  Sirhan had apparently had a handler, a woman in a polka dot dress, the attorney remarked.  She disappeared after she pinched the scapegoat on the neck, apparently triggering Sirhan’s belief that he was really shooting at a paper, man-shaped target from a firing range.

COMMENT.  Despite Andrew Kreig ‘s extensive and most vigorous efforts, only a few members of the press turned up at the conference: an intern from the Washington Times, a representative from Al-Mayadeen TV, Beirut, along with a knowledgeable White House correspondent for an alternative news site.  This appeared to validate Dr. Pepper’s view of the heavily-managed American media.  And it bodes ill for what seems to be the attorney’s goal in filing with the OAS–to generate enough adverse publicity to force the United States to re-examine the questionable trial of Sirhan Sirhan.  Indeed, a casual search of the Internet turns up a number of references about “conspiracies” revolving around the problematically convicted man.

Perhaps everyone involved in this matter should take a look at Dr. Jack Shaheen’s writings on Arabs, notably Reel Bad Arabs:  How Hollywood Vilifies A People.