No one has mentioned anything political, Candice: though I guess it's
not beyond the possible. And it happens every year, if not always
with such spectacular effects. I guess it produces terror - flames
200 feet high, travelling at 60mph is pretty terrifying - but
"terrorism" is one of those meaningless words, and getting more
meaningless by the day. Ask the FBI to define it, and see if they
get anwhere...
This particular sickness is called pyromania. There is a strange
phenomenon in Melbourne, hedge burning, where someone attacks those
big cypress hedges outside people's homes in the suburbs (they
arrested some guy, but every now and then are further spates of it)
which is most definitely associated with sexual excitement. Does it
happen anywhere else?
A
>Yes, it's a pretty well-defined psychiatric syndrome, classified with the
>-manias (klepto-, etc.) I believe, and it's important to distinguish this
>kind of arson from arson-for-profit (typically, the burning of a
>money-losing property in order to collect the insurance on it), and the
>arson-terrorism of fire used to destroy large tracts of land (settled or
>unsettled) with the sole aim being the widest possible destruction impacting
>on the greatest possible number (as with all terrorist acts) for its own
>sake or allegedly as a political statement in some cases. (Is anything
>political entailed by this current instance of arson-terrorism?)
>
>Simple "arson" will of course not "do" for all these different--and
>differently motivated--kinds, with only deliberate fire-setting in common.
>
>Candice
>
>
>
>on 1/1/02 8:45 PM, david.bircumshaw at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>>> People who light fires (they all seem to be individuals who get off
>>> on it) seem to have a very particular sickness. I don't understand
>>> it.
>>
>> There was a guy, a middle-aged man who drank all day, who used to live in
>> these flats but is now awaiting trial for a series of arson attacks
>> aroundabouts, who used to talk to me in the lobby or the lifts. He was
>> forever cracking off-colour jokes and would go to local churches pretending
>> to be homeless for free meals. All I could understand about him was that
>> 'keep clear' signals flashed through my mind whenever he neared. What his
>> psychology was, is, I think only he knows.
>>
>> While one of the most disquieting things I have seen recently was a
>> documentary on the ironically named Burnley Wood area of said town, a
>> district of almost Third World poverty where houses cannot sell for 5
>> thousand pounds. The principal pastime of the local kids is starting fires
>> both small and petty and full house burnings. There Guy Fawkes bonfires were
>> spectacular, and enthusiastic, but also involved the dismemberment of empty
>> houses as fuel.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>> David Bircumshaw
>>
>> Leicester, England
>>
>> Home Page
>>
>> A Chide's Alphabet
>>
>> Painting Without Numbers
>>
>> www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
>>
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 12:56 AM
>> Subject: Re: Happy New Year
>>
>>
>>> Alot of the fires were lit by aronists, but others are the result of
>>> lightning strikes. "Arson-terrorism" seems an inaccurate term to me;
>>> arson will do. So far nobody has been killed, and hopefully nobody
>>> will be. But the damage to the national parks must be very grim.
>>> Though I suppose one must also remember that many Australia plants
>>> need fire to seed, though the increased ferocity of recent fires,
>>> ironically because they are not as regular as they once were and have
>>> more fuel, might be too destructive.
>>>
>>> Bush has an amazing capacity for regeneration. If you go through
>>> bushland six months after fire it has an eerie beauty - all that new
>>> fresh green on the black.
> >>
>>> Being a country child I remember the fires in my childhood - it was I
>>> think 1979 when very bad ones burnt a lot of the Western District in
>>> Victoria. I remember being driven through a small town, Strathan,
>>> which was completely burnt out while the firefighters were out
>>> somewhere battling another fire and the spooky thing of a street of
>>> houses completely reduced to ash, with one in the middle completely
>>> untouched. Acres of black with the bloated and burned corpses of
>>> sheep and cattle in the paddocks, their legs sticking up. My father
>>> coming home completely black and red eyed after fighting fires in the
>>> state forest behind us. Or Ash Wednesday here, watching a huge
>>> bloodred moon rise through the smoke, and flaming bits of bark
>>> falling even in the middle of the city. Enough to give anyone a
>>> feeling of doom. Horrible.
>>>
>>> People who light fires (they all seem to be individuals who get off
>>> on it) seem to have a very particular sickness. I don't understand
>>> it.
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Alison
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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