A painting of a dead woman wins the BP Portrait Award, 2010 … surely the winning image in a BP show should be of dead pelicans (and fish and dolphins and crabs and … )
BP Portrait award 2010
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Category Archives: Psipook
Australia Government Initiates Legal Action On Japanese Whaling
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Psipook is back on Twitter: here.
Back to Fallujah
The 2004 battle of Fallujah has flared back into my attention lately.
First, a reader commented on a post in this blog about napalm use in Fallujah, which led me to dig back into the story of the siege.
By coincidence, the same week, I found myself reading more about the siege of Fallujah in Noam Chomsky’s Failed States.
And then, a story appeared on the BBC’s news site about the number of congenital defects afflicting the babies of Fallujah since the battle.
The article details a high incidence of heart deformities, 13 times normal levels, and tells of other defects including a baby born with three heads.
Some doctors blame the legacy of weapons used during the assault of Fallujah.
The US military denies any knowledge of this rise in health problems.
This phenomenon has not yet been properly investigated, yet the statement from the US military that they are unaware of this issue beggars belief.
First, there is a report from medical authorities in the city.
Second, the military of any country takes a close interest in the effects of weaponry, including the secondary or unintended effects. These secondary effects of weapons is integral to their use — the military needs to know of the psychological impact, and certain kinds of injuries tie up hospital space and are a drain on enemy resources, and so on, and so on.
Moreover, if the invasion was undertaken with the best interests of the Iraqi people, as the official narrative goes, why are there no monitors from the US checking on the well being of the people after the harrowing assault?
Birth defects in the wake of battles is not unknown to the US. The first Gulf war and the Kosovo campaign left their own legacy of enduring health problems.
A story from my archives from 2004: http://www.psipook.com/features/osakademo.html
Pat Robertson in deal with devil
 Pat Robertson confers with acquaintance, the Devil |
It has been revealed that US televangelist Pat Robertson is cursed by a secret deal with the Devil.
In return for unlimited power, riches and TV air time, Robertson gave away his brain to Lucifer, thereby cursing himself to talk utter crap for the rest of his days, and cursing us to have to hear about it.
The revelations come from disgruntled Satanic associate and media personality Dr. Johan Faust.
Robertson’s familiar, Rush Limbaugh, said that giving money to earthquake-struck Haitians was equivalent to saving their lives and that we should instead give all our money to him. Or Lucifer.
Beelzebub is as old as time, but not as old as Robertson.
January 17, 2010
Terror and underpants
When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day with a bomb secreted in his underpants, we wondered on this site whether this act would usher in underwear checks at airports.
Well, with an apparently straight face, the US Transportation Security Administration has announced just that. One hundred and fifty full-body scanners that can see through your clothes are to be installed in US airports. Trials of these machines at Manchester airport in the UK have produced complaints from travellers that the images from these machines are too graphic and invasive and offer a considerable potential for abuse.
While passengers at Manchester airport had the choice to opt out of being scanned by these machines it is not clear whether submitting to their use in the US will be compulsory. (There are also claims that the machines are easy to fool.)
Meanwhile, it has come out that Abdulmutallab was known to US intelligence who failed to join the dots that would have led to his exploding pants, obviating the need for intrusive body scanners.
It is also unknown why former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff went on television to tout the importance of equipping airports with the scanners without revealing that he is paid by the machine’s manufacturers.
January 6, 2010
Xmas terror
Poignantly timed at Christmas, an attempted terrorist attack — this time on a US airliner arriving at Chicago. As you all know the bomb failed to go off and no one but the bomber was hurt.
The would-be martyr apparently evaded security at Lagos and Amsterdam airports by finding yet another new way of secreting explosives on his body. His was apparently a technique the security people around the world had not anticipated but will now usher in everywhere a new, stricter security regime.
Not so long ago in Britain, a group of men had the idea of smuggling the ingredients for bombs onto plances in innocuous bottles and making the bombs in the aircraft toilets. That meant that we could no longer take liquids onto planes.
Richard Reid tried hiding explosives in his shoes, and when that didn’t work, airport security demanded we all take our shoes off to be examined before boarding.
The recent bomber apparently hid his explosives in his underpants. Does this mean that we will now have to take off our underwear to have it examined before boarding a flight?
That should take the tedium out of those long security checks.
December 27, 2009
Stoned at last
Weed pokes out of the ground and gets published.
Chris Page’s shock-revelation novel about life in a suit has finally been published.
“About bloody time, too,” exclaimed most of his pals, sick of hearing the unending tales of nothing happening with the book’s distribution.
According to the nice people handling distribution, both Weed and Shorts are in the system now pending acceptance and both books are scheduled for distribution through Barnes & Noble on 11/6/2009 and Sony on 12/1/2009.
They are currently available at www.smashwords.com
Current plans are for the books to be available in paperback in Europe and possibly in north America after that.
It has been a long and frustrating process getting these books out and available, but it appears that there is something to be said for persistence. And something to be said for getting stoned, but you knew that already.
Watch Facebook (Chris Page), Twitter, The Guardian, Time, Newsweek and all good literary reviews for developments.
November 8, 2009
Japan weather god wanted for crimes
The Japanese Shinto god of weather is wanted for crimes against humanity.
The International Court of Human Rights in The Hague has issued a warrant for his arrest.
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| The Shinto god of weather. |
The Japanese government has been accused of hiding the fugitive god and of not cooperating with investigators, accusations the government denies.
The Shinto deity has been accused of atrocities affecting millions of people on an annual basis.
Crimes include, boiling people in their skins, and irradiating people with a sun positioned recklessly close to the ground. Another serious crime is that of suffocating people with excesses of atmospheric humidity, a practice likened to perpetual water boarding.
Other tortures routinely inflicted on people are sleep deprivation and stress positions (standing, sitting, lying).
Trauma and heavy drinking including barley tea addiction are common among victims as is air conditioner abuse.
The deity afflicts his own people but saves his worst excesses for ‘those long-nosed bastards,’ not Tengu, but pale-skinned westerners who have no natural or metaphysical defences against this abuse. Many westerners come from countries where there are no temperatures, and being non-Shinto are not able even to pray for relief.
The court of human rights is quietly pessimistic about apprehending the god. The Japanese government, although denying it publicly, is thought to be shielding the fugitive. Indeed, the Japanese government insists that the god fled the country before the warrant was issued and has refused to comment on reports that evidence of his inhumane acts is visible on a daily basis up and down the country as people continue to sweat, simmer, boil, melt and catch fire.
‘ It will be difficult to catch him,’ concedes a government minister speaking on condition of anonymity because this reporter has yet to invent a facetious name for him. ‘This weather god lives in and is protected by a community of eight million other Shinto gods. Many of these gods themselves have a dark past they don’t want examined and certainly don’t want to set a precedent of being held responsible for their proclivities.’
The task of tracking down this particular god will be further hampered by his invisibility and transdimensionality.
‘ Moreover,’ the official went on, ‘this god has powerful friends, such as ex-prime minister Tojo, the Imperial war machine, Yukio Mishima, and Governor Ishihara of Tokyo.’ He is also thought to have forged an international alliance with climate change deniers.
July 11, 2009
Smiling bastards!
Life imitates art, or in this case damn near plagiarizes it.
Corporate bastards in Japan have evidently been reading this author’s fandoobly novel Weed and have shamelessly ripped it off.
No, we don’t yet have zero-G office environments, but the management of at least one Japanese railway company have evidently been reading the smile training scenes in Weed and have put the concept into action in Japan for real.
Read about the iniquitous swine here.
Now click here and read the future in Weed itself …
July 7, 2009
