Friday, January 06, 2006

Holy Oil in Senate


Kudos to Sittingnut for the great post on the conduct of Sri Lankan armed forces and police.

Although I'm little bit pressed for time these days ,This great news seems hard to let go .
"Insisting that God "certainly needs to be involved" in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday
Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name."

Anybody remember how the impeachment of president Premadasa played out ?It was said that the President brought in an indian "Poosari" (or whoever) and cast a spell on Parliament and annointed some oil on the seats so that anybody who sit on them couldn't vote against him!It was "pig's oil" or "Uuru Thel" in Sinhala. I don't know the proper term in English.It is said that this mysterious oil is distilled from pork.(I guess he was chanting some mantras while he was brewing it) .The gossip columns of Ravaya ,Yukthiya and other Sinahala papers carried the juicy story.
To break the spell ,the opposition leader Sirimao Bandaranayake brought in a small vial of " pirith pan" (Buddhist holy water) to the parliament .It looks like "Uuru thel" was more powerful than the holy water.The impeachment was stopped just before it was taken for a vote.I don't know how the speaker of the parliament M.H.Mohammed ,a devout muslim and the main player in the whole saga, reacted to the pork story.

Take that America !
We did it 13 years ago!
That's so 90's!

Senator Pat Leahy ,please contact Sri Lankan embassy for details on the great spell busting oil.

1 comment:

sittingnut said...

thanks for the compliment :-)

as for oils, spells, and other religious ceremonies, everybody ( i mean everybody, even atheists who are not on a mission to 'convert ' others to atheism) do them, because that is part of the culture everywhere.

after all what makes chanting pirith, or even just praying, any different from any of those things you refer to? who is to decide what is acceptable or not? politicians just reflect the population. imo it would really be disturbing if politicians in a democracy did not do them.