an evening redness in Iraq

Following up on LI’s last post, about miracles, there is a story in the Guardian today that begins with a sentence that could have been ripped from the Victorian book of prejudices:

“Italy remains a profoundly superstitious country and there was uproar recently when a group of scientists queried a religious rite in Naples in which the dried blood of a saint beheaded in AD305 "miraculously" liquefies.”

Ah, those superstitious Italians, always being fooled by the priestly caste. The superstition in question is the famous transformation of a liquid in two vials in Naples into blood on the Feast of San Gennaro:

“This time, members of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of the Paranormal (Cicap) have said the red-coloured contents are a thixotropic substance, based on iron chloride. This means that it liquefies when stirred or vibrated and returns to solid form when left to stand. According to Cicap, the substance was probably stumbled upon by an alchemist or a painter in medieval times.
Attempts to explode the myth about Naples' much-loved patron saint has however, reignited the debate about science versus faith in Italy.

Members of Cicap, who include Umberto Eco and two winners of the Nobel Prize, have been accused of trying to undermine the religious beliefs of the dwindling numbers of the faithful. They have also been called spoilsports and compared to magicians who reveal their tricks.”

Compare this story (funny foreigners will believe anything!) with the headline story, in which the funny, credulous PM proclaims that Iran is importing weapons into Iraq. Of course, this isn’t superstition – this is merely lying to buttress a shabby imperial venture that is falling apart. The PM’s proclamation comes after a meeting with the favorite Iraqi government official, Jalal Talabani, the for show liberal secularist for foreign consumption. Far more interesting would have been a meeting with Iraq’s PM, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose first act was to go to Teheran and apologize profusely for the Iraq-Iranian war.

The deep level of the press’s complicity and ignorance regarding the Iraqi debacle is shown by the way in which stories like this are simply shoved down the chute, instead of provoking the question: why would Iran try to destabilize a state headed by a group Iran nurtured for twenty years? Hasn’t the very government that British soldiers are fighting to protect, the “democratically elected” Iraqi government, said over and over again that it wants a military alliance with Iran? What part of that doesn’t the PM get?

As we have repeated ad nauseam, the policy of Double Containment was one of the chief causes that Saddam Hussein retained power in Iraq during the nineties. The policy is being retained by the ever superstitious British, who obviously believe in miracles much more harmful than a little redness showing up in two vials on San Gennaro’s feast day. There’s a whole lotta redness showing up on the streets and fields of Iraq, and no magic wand will transform it into the blood of liberation.