Revelation

"Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads."

Which might be interpreted in our post-baroque world as 

"Save those fleeing from terrorism before dealing definitively with the terrorists."

Pietro da Cortona,  in his

Gli angeli segnano la fronte di coloro che devono restare illesi, [Angels mark the forehead of those who are to remain unharmed]

speaks with la muta eloquentia delle arti e dei loro generi di scrittura Capolavori antichi alla mostra "Il Visibile Narrare", dedicata all'antiquario Pietro Cantore Eventi a Cesena
„ as clearly in modern Rome as  he did in the 17th century.

Italy Protects Itself From Islamic Low-Level Warfare That Uses Human Weapons

The Tripoli insurrectionist islamic "government" is demanding that any response (to thousands of people being launched onto the sea to take their chances in return for millions of dollars mulcted from them and their (extended) families) should be negotiated with Tripoli first.  Such public attempts to legitimise their status as worthwhile interlocutors is ignored by the Italian government.

It is the Italian government that makes all decisions on the defence of its borders.  National security is within the remit of individual member states of the European Union and Italian decision-taking  includes, but is not be bound by, its ties with Brussels; and with the United Nations.  Acts of war such as instituting a naval blockade (which would alter the relationships with the EU or the UN) are not envisioned among the Italians' reactions to the use of migrants as islamic attack-weapons upon Italy.

Italy has now ascertained that European states will resist any formal reallocation (of the unfortunate human weapons used by islamicists)  to the entire EU membership.  The informal reallocation will continue apace,  with the steady transfer northwards of these modern-day slaves.  Unfortunately there being no European demand for slaves these days,  there is little to be done but pull these people from the water;  after which there is nothing for them except reliance upon our Christian and human duty, insofar as we are able, to support them in their powerlessness.

The movement northwards is now being put onto a more organised footing: instead of the patchy and often criminal and exploitative transfer systems via France, government collection centres are being established further and further north where processing can take place and the necessary settlement -rights papers issued for on-goers to other countries.  Most want to continue their migration; there is little  scope for welfare-driven settlement in Italy (or Greece, for that matter).  The state welfare systems are in the north of Europe, not here; and what is here in the South is being dismantled under  'troika'-style debt repayment obligations and demand for 'restructuring'.   North European nations wanted less welfare in the South?  Then their human and Christian  (the words are interchangeable in Italian - Human is Christian, as once it was in English) responsibility to these rescued people is to provide what they have stripped, in their 'debt'-repayments policies, from Southern European member-states.

Italy is already protecting its moral, economic and security statuses along the north African coasts,  rescuing, sifting through the boatloads that it rescues, and arresting the threats to internal security,  monitoring,  disrupting and prohibiting  extant links between organised crime (Italian) and slavers (islamic); (the latest arrests are of the master and mate of the boat from which islamics threw dozens of Christians to their deaths  before they were rescued.  These people were taken from a migrants' collection zone in Foiano della Chiana, near Arezzo, yesterday and charged).  Italian security services'  networks in their north African former colonies are excellent and large numbers of those involved in this 'weaponisation' of people are being picked up and dealt with.

Europe might think itself clever in refusing  to help, indeed hindering attempts to officialise European-level resistance to low-level islamic warfare but, frankly, Italy can see to its interests much more efficiently than when it is hampered by the politics of others with wholly different political and social goals and needs.  In the end they will have what Italy needs - the relocation of the rescued - imposed upon them.

International and European Union Meeting on Drownings in the Mediterranean

Death in Rhodes

200 shipwrecked on Rhodes beaches today, some pulled ashore by local people and tourists but many feared drowned.

Italian Local Resistance to Permanent Settlement for the Trafficked Grows

Once Italy has fished the survivors from the sea, arrested those people-traffickers it can identify (and reach; 19 arrest orders, some of them international, were issued by the Palermo magistrates yesterday for  the usual, historic slaver suspects: north African Arabs,  West Africans, particularly Ghanaians) the country finds determined resistance to any provision of settlement here, led by local and regional  representatives.

The Ministry of the Interior issued peremptory demands [read in English, ed.] to Prefects, Regional Presidents,  Mayors which have been met with every mode of expression of refusal to co-operate: from flat 'No',  through excuses, expressions of regret 'We are full up', to total silence. Consequently barracks are being prepared, tents readied -  and clear local lines of 'Not here' drawn up.

Until now there has been a reasonably rapid pass-through rate to other parts of Europe (accompanied by further criminal exploitation of the need for some kind of papers to obtain settlement in other EU states) but numbers are now so great - 10,000 landed last week alone - that that system cannot cope.

Bitterly the Italians recognise that only the threatened mass arrivals in France, Germany, the UK have levered an emergency discussion out of the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels today.  Locally, they are determined to keep up the pressure to share the burden of misery that sweeps towards us.

700 Migrants Drown Today (so far)

700 migrants are feared drowned 40 miles off the Libyan coast after an overloaded boat capsized early this morning.  A Portuguese merchant ship was directed to the scene (as the nearest vessel) but has succeeded in rescuing only 20 people.  Other ships are now there searching for survivors but there is little hope.   The merchant ship reported it had done everything it could but is not equipped for such a huge rescue operation.

UPDATE

The first refugees to reach Italy have said there were 950 people aboard the lost boat of which 200 were women and 50 children.  Many had been locked into the hold.  So far only 40 people have been saved.  Prime Minister Matteo Renzi returned to Rome early this morning from campaigning in local elections to organise help but stated this afternoon that the rescue ships reaching the scene were now "searching for the living among the floating corpses".  Only now is their some kind of response from other European governments; some expressions of the need to help Italy cope, after such a long term, disgraceful disregard of the situation here.

The migrants were from:  Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Zambia, Bangladesh, Ghana.

Italian Navy to the Rescue of Sicilian Fishing Boat

This is the Airone, a fishing boat from Mazara del Vallo, in Sicily.  It was boarded by armed militias early this morning in international waters and taken in tow towards a Libyan port (probably Maserata).  The crew were resisting being towed and attempting to free the boat when the Italian navy turned up after the Italian department of Fisheries had protested to its counterpart in Libya but had been told the Libyan government knew nothing of the taking of the Airone.

A number of prisoners have been secured and the fishing boat is now under escort on its way to Lampedusa.  The fishermen were determined not to be taken by Libyan militias whose reputation ranges from vicious to murderous.

This incident follows yesterday's arrest by the carabinieri of just-landed islamic 'migrants' who had thrown Christian refugees into the sea, where they drowned.

UPDATE

The evening RAI news reports that the first Italian military resource to arrive at the beleaguered Airone  was a helicopter of the Italian Marines, rapidly followed by a small, fast boat full of marines arriving from the Italian naval intervention vessel (so useful these helicopter- troop-carrying, fast, naval resources compared with aircraft carriers).   The fishermen then finished off overpowering the islamic whatever they ares -government (denied) or terrorist - with a bit of help from their friends, and sailed for home and civilisation.

UPDATE Sunday morning

There are reports that the boarding party was of the official Libyan government.   On being contacted by the Italian government about the Airone the Libyan government said it knew nothing of the occurrence.  On which the Italian navy was dispatched to the scene and arrived with wholly admirable speed.

Frankly, I wouldn't have waited to find out; would you?  The master of the Italian fishing boat stated,  "I was determined to do anything necessary to get my men and my boat out of their hands and home."  Bravo, bravissimo .  Libyan 'government' has no credibility and cannot be trusted any more than Libyan 'insurgents'.

Opposing Islam and the Genocide Tendency

The Italian state response to fundamentalist islam showing its ugly face so close to  mainland Italy,  within Italy's Near Abroad, has been a physical blockade of some of its north African coast.  Particular protection has been given to energy supply installations both on-land and off-shore (as well, Italy is still scooping desperate refugees from islamic horror from watery graves: 1500 last week alone). *    This has been done with little fuss and great speed.  And has left  international organisations and the international Great and Good  to scurry about having talks and consultations and all the rest of it with whomsoever they choose.  In the meantime, while the UN et al. faff about,  islamics have taken their attentions and threats off  to the cultural vandalism of undefended human heritage in which they so excel.  Rome, it seems, might need a little longer after all.

Rome  is gathering other forces: not the State's naval and air coverage operating in the Mediterranean -  but Voice.   Politics and religion being the same thing,  opposing political primitives vested in religious garb is best undertaken by the religiously experienced.  The Christian Church  knows what has to be dealt with - it moves  its own religious primitives on into a more modern world after all.   In naming the three 20th century genocides for what they were -  the slaughter of peoples for primitive politico/ideological beliefs and goals - Pope Francis has placed fundamentalist islam within its proper modern category, the category of imperialism, nazism, and stalinism.

A Jesuit pope is just what is needed to take on islam's imams in the religious end of this political spectrum.  Rome has some experience in the assertion of imperial power too. 


UPDATE 14 April 2015

8,400 refugees have been saved from drowning in the last four days by the Italian navy and the Italian coastguard (RAI News at lunchtime).

FURTHER UPDATE

Another  400 souls are feared drowned this afternoon (14 April).  The evening RAI news reports some people have been rescued from sinking, unseaworthy boats but there were just too many of them to save them all in time in the winter sea.