New Year's Attack Kills 21 in Egypt The Daily Beast
Bomb hits Egypt church at New Year's Mass, 21 dead The Associated Press
"Ash-heap of four cultures,/Bounded by Mareotis, a salt lake,"* writes Lawrence Durrell as he begins his poem "Conon in Alexandria." He is Conan. Reading about this terrible tragedy I first thought about his "Alexandrian Quartet" which brought modern Alexandria to the world over 50 years ago and especially the Coptic Greek poet Constantine P Cavafy whom he called "the old man in the city."
Cavafy wrote in one of his poems "Expecting the Barbarians" that they had been a kind of solution but had disappeared. Not any longer as the barbarians are entering the gates and bombing the Coptic Christians with the government suspecting or at least pointing a finger at Iraqi al Qaeda. It seems as though two Coptic women wanting a divorce forbidden in the Coptic Christian Orthodox Church converted to Islam but are now being held by the Coptic Church in Alexandria. Al Qaeda never one to ignore an opportunity for terrorism has declared revenge against Coptics in Egypt where there are some 8 million of them or 10% of the 80 million population.
Terrorism is emerging everywhere under any excuse, and the Alexandria of myth created by Durrell with Justine, Melissa and Clea will become another battleground of innocent death and destruction where love has turned to hate. What can the poet do about this? Cavafy ends his poem "The God Forsakes Antony" with the line "bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing."**
I recall W Somerset Maugham writing about Alexandria in the context of a place where someone while travelling had gotten off his ship and was enchanted with Alexandria so much that he wanted to stay and refused to leave. His friends, Maugham writes, got together to take care of him so he could stay there which he did. I cannot recall where I read this in Maugham.
* “The Poetry of Lawrence Durrell,” E P Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1962.
** "The Complete Poems of Cavafy" translated and with notes by Rae Dalven, Introduction by W H Auden, Harvest Book, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1948/61.
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Don't forget the anarchists with their recent Rome and Athens letter bombs. Terrorists are a breed of criminal that arise from any group when a few seek to exploit hatred by acting out their own killing and maiming the innocent for extreme sadisitc pleasure. These psychological character types have to be identified and dealt with properly. It's not just Muslims. The Muslims in Alexandria did condemn the bombing, Rhett6, read the article.
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In his “Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” Erich Fromm writes that sadism is devotional and the religion of the psychic cripple. The sadisitic personality seeks to completely dominate and control one living creature to assuage a feeling of powerlessness. The sadist seeks to be all powerful, i.e., ominipotent. Thus, the sadist seeks to be god-like. Fundamentally, the sadist is a no-hoper who cannot do anything except be devoted to sadistic behaviour.
Terrorism derives from this kind of personality seeking to dominate and control out of fear by constantly having the threat of violence and destruction at hand while actually carrying out violence against the vulnerable and innocent. Terrorism has to do with sadisitic individuals drawn to violent expression in varous ideological ways that exploits groups or causes. These individuals are the ones that need to be identifed not the groups for these indiividuals exist in every kind of group. The disposition to sadism exists in every human being and must be identifed when it emerges as destructive behaviour.
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You sound like the very tyranny you are condemning and in great ignorance as well. All you are doing is replacing one hatred with another. These problems have been around for a very long time and are characteristic of many different types of groups epitomised by people like you about whom the Kingston Trio sang over 50 years ago:
"They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!
"But we can be tranquil, and thankful, and proud,
For mans' been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we will all be blown away.
"They're rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us, will be done by our fellow man."
["The Merry Minuet" written by Sheldon Harnick and performed by the Kingston Trio http://bit.ly/fNVIUd recorded first on their "Live at the Hungry i" album in the late 1950s.]
They could have written this today and been absolutely correct. However, someone has . . .
Updated lyrics for "The Merry Minuet" http://bit.ly/eJadq2 for today with commentary to be sung at the New Year.
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