Typhoeus

My Publications

“Still Life” appears in For When the Veil Drops, an anthology of dark fiction from NYC’s West Pigeon Press.

“Badass” appears in Going Down Swinging No. 33, an anthology of prose, poetry, art, and music from Melbourne’s Going Down Swinging, Inc.

“The Frontline Is Everywhere” appears in A High Shrill Thump: War Stories, an anthology of dystopian fiction from Fort Collins’s Third Flatiron Publishing.

“Resignation” appears in Northwind Magazine, a quarterly review of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Arlington, Virginia’s, Chain Bridge Press.

“A Bigger Boat” appears in The Smart Set, an online magazine of reportage, personal and critical essays, travel writing, memoirs, stories, and photography from Drexel University.

“Copyeditor Worries About Errors” appears in several newspapers, including the White Bear Press, a publication of Greater Minneapolis / St. Paul’s Press Publications.

Nader on Democrats’ definition of health care reform

…

The drug companies and health insurance companies control every nook and cranny on the Hill.

If you doubt it, look no further than the events of the past two weeks at the Senate Finance Committee.

Committee chair Senator Max Baucus called a full 28 witnesses for two hearings on health care reform.

Senator Baucus called on the Business Roundtable.

He called on the Heritage Foundation.

He called on the lobby known as America’s Health Insurance Plans.

But not one of the 28 witnesses called by Baucus supported what the majority of the American people want.

And what the majority of doctors, nurses and health economists want.

Single payer, full Medicare for all, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital health care.

And so, Single Payer Action decided to act.

Last week, eight citizens - including three doctors - led by Single Payer Action - simply demanded that Baucus add a seat at the table for a single payer advocate.

Instead of adding a seat at the table, Baucus called for the police.

The eight were arrested, handcuffed, and charged with so-called “disruption of Congress.”

The police left behind undisturbed the horde of corporate lobbyists accustomed to “the purchase of Congress.”

This week, two doctors, two nurses, and a citizen from Maine - inspired by the actions of the Baucus 8 - rose and simply demanded that Baucus add a single payer advocate to the witness list.

Again, Baucus refused.

And again, Baucus called for the police.

Now it’s the Baucus 13.

…

May 2009

Got excited about your Derrida post. Found this. “Fear of Writing” interview clip.

» No. 1 mafia boss makes further spectacle of politics

"Candidates standing for the PdL would
be unlike the 'malodorous and badly
dressed people who represent certain parties
in parliament,' Mr Berlusconi added."

“

… According to recent polls, the majority of the American people want single payer.

So do the majority of doctors, nurses, and health economists.

So, what will the Democrat leadership do?

They will keep single payer off the table.

Because they fear the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry - and want their campaign money - more than they fear the American people.

Or as Speaker of the House Pelosi told reporters last week:

“Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer.”

Who is Nancy Pelosi speaking for?

Not for the American people.

Not for those who will die or get sicker month after month.

How are we to respond?

Focus our collective creative energy on Congressional offices around the country — offices of all 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate.

That’s why we have set up Single Payer Action.

Less than two months old — and already Single Payer Action is making waves.

In front of Congressional offices from Martinsburg, West Virginia to Seattle, Washington.

On Capitol Hill, standing up to the corporate lobbyists and their lackeys in Congress.

And on the web, challenging the corporate controlled media to put single payer back on the table of public debate.

There is support in Congress for single payer.

Already, 76 House members support HR 676 — the single payer bill in the House.

But the Democratic leadership in Washington has taken single payer off the table.

They meet regularly behind closed doors with insurance and drug industry lobbyists — to thwart single payer… .

— Ralph Nader, http://singlepayeraction.org

Times Sets Stage for Torture Whitewash

The [clandestine] 2002 Gang of Four briefings left a hodgepodge of contradictory recollections that, to some Congressional staff members, reveal a dysfunctional oversight system. Without full staff support, few lawmakers are equipped to make difficult legal and policy judgments about secret programs, critics say.

[Here the Times reporters choose to use the words “SECRET PROGRAMS” when they know damn well the subject isn’t secret programs but “TORTURE”; but it’s out of the question for the sentence to read: “Without full staff support, few lawmakers are equipped to make difficult legal and policy judgments about torture.”]

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.

By contrast, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, Porter J. Goss of Florida, who later served as C.I.A. director, recalls a clear message that the methods would be used.

“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”

[CIA-scapegoats-Congress + Congress-scapegoats-CIA = everbody wins.]

—NYTimes, “In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use”

“ En attendant, Beckett writes self-admittedly “pestilential” letters about waiting. In Dublin, he records the “fruitless retreat from Monday to Friday and then the degrading cotton wool interpolation of the weekend” and acknowledges that he’s “more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another.” In London, he sleeps “more and more — 10 hours at a stretch. I wish it were 20.” In Paris, he is “paralyzed in listlessness” and has “done nothing.” His disorders are physical, too. Although his spleen is clearly in fine working order, he suffers from a series of ailments whose details he entrusts to his stalwart confidant Thomas McGreevy. Most significant are acutely distressing nocturnal “heart attacks,” which lead him to try cure by psychoanalysis. We also learn of pulled teeth, dry pleurisy (“I feel all right except for a reluctance to sneeze & belch”), intestinal pains, boils and — brace yourself — “a sebaceous cyst in my anus, which happily a fart swept away before it became operable.” Beckett’s fondness for this kind of unsavory detail wasn’t trivial. Decay and decrepitude were central to his dramatic vision, but just as significant was the connection he drew between compulsory bodily functions (his poems are “turds”) and the proper making of art. He seeks “the integrity of a pendu’s emission of semen.

— NYTimes Book Review. ‘The Letters of Samuel Beckett - Volume I - 1929-1940,’ edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck.

Anton Karas on the Zither.

» A friend from my soccer team's book reviewed in NY Times Sunday Book Review:

“STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE By David Yoo. Hyperion. $16.99. (Ages 13 and up) It wouldn’t seem possible to make high school jocks, popular girls and losers fresh and hilarious, but Yoo does it. His Romeo and Juliet story is a winner (outcast Albert Kim with popular girl Mia? No way), but it’s Albert’s ice-dry telling of his tale of woe that sets it apart. From his uncool Korean parents with their ‘egitimately tragic childhoods’ to the angry little kids next door (‘a barrage of iceballs arc overhead like grenades’), Albert views growing up with all the comic sweetness and unsentimentality it deserves.”

Karl Rove vs. Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Bugliosi Cover Letter to Local County District Attorneys

“I am herein enclosing a copy of my New York Times bestselling book The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder. I hope that you will find the time to read it and that you will agree with its essential conclusion-that George Bush took this nation to war in Iraq on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore, under the law, he is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who have died so far fighting his war in Iraq.

“If you agree, I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk or perhaps meet with you to discuss two main points. First, whether there is sufficient legally admissible evidence against Bush (in my opinion, there is clear and very persuasive evidence) to warrant a criminal prosecution against him now that he has left office. It should be noted that in addition to all the primary evidence set forth in my book, I think we can be very confident that during a grand jury investigation and with the power of subpoena, much more evidence of Bush’s guilt (as well as that of his co-conspirators like Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice) will emerge. Just one example. In a book by Ron Suskind that came out after mine, The Way of the World, he presents evidence that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a document linking Hussein with Al Qaeda. The second point to be considered is whether your office would have jurisdiction to prosecute Bush (see pages 154-156, 168, 305-307, and 309-310 of my book) for the murder of any soldier or soldiers from your county who died fighting his war. If the answer to each of these questions is ‘yes,’ and you are willing to proceed with this legal case, I would of course be available to assist you in any way you saw fit in this historic prosecution.”

Full Bugliosi letter here.

Contact your district attorney here.

Afghanistan + More Troops = Catastrophe. (Documentary from bravenewfilms.)

» Obama Mirrors Bush in Opposing Release of White House Emails

“The White House has already continued Bush stance’s on seeking dismissal of a lawsuit by former CIA detainees and to prevent a federal court from reviewing the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program.”

» President Obama to Sanction Israel?

“Last Thursday, Sen. John Kerry and Reps. Keith Ellison and Brian Baird visited the occupied Gaza Strip to assess the damage from Israel’s recent war and ongoing siege. This was the first time any U.S. government official visited Gaza in more than three years. After their visit, Ellison and Baird released a strong press release, stating:

‘If this had happened in our own country, there would be national outrage and an appeal for urgent assistance. We are glad that the Obama administration acted quickly to send much needed funding for this effort but the arbitrary and unreasonable Israeli limitations on food and repair essentials is unacceptable and indefensible. People, innocent children, women and non-combatants, are going without water, food and sanitation, while the things they so desperately need are sitting in trucks at the border, being denied permission to go in.’”