the reported burnings of manuscript collections in Timbuktu is somehow worse than a human massacre. people die. killed or naturally. but do books have even a believed justice "post-mortem"?
and books and manuscripts burned destroys their contained lives and ideas of the past, the contents possible for learning and edification. and it is perhaps more the ideas, or the stories and searching systems of the world on the pages than the physical rarities -- but also these rare pieces, anchors of the past -- that are lost and mournable.
there have been book burnings for ages, even before trying to understand the a-historic, anti-historic (pre-historic?) mentalities who would proudly be destructive iconoclasts -- but remember England during the Civil War, the anti-religious destruction in the early USSR, Alexandria's library, burning books at Nuremberg,...
Prefer to condemn such an act as those of "primitive" (though this is too simplistic) human, impassioned ignorance; to comprehend revenge within the Inferno of Dante's Comedy.
and if there are therein none who committed bibliocide, let this be added.
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