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.

Pope Francis Seems to Be Right

The Synagogue in central Florence, standing in its pretty gardens, all lit up like the Pontevecchio ( as they say here) had its usual pair of soldiers at the main gates inside their glass sentry-box as we walked home after dinner.  There are always sentries at the Synagogue.

What made me jump was a whole patrol of troops rounding the corner of piazza d'Azeglio, carrying submachine guns - in Firenze per bene, patrolling the elegant streets and palazzi of the bourgeoisie.

 The Prefect has authorised patrolling by the regular army in central Florence at 'points of particular vulnerability': so that'll be the entire city within the viali then.  But what about Poggio Imperiale, the Certosa, San Domenico.....better make that the Province.  The Prefects of Siena, Arezzo, Pisa .....will have to look to their own cities, provinces. There aren't going to be enough soldiers to go round though. The Florentine patrols are from the 187th Fanteria based in Livorno (at least they're not from Pisa).   All the Italian marines, sailors and airmen are patrolling the Mediterranean. This country is at war with barbarians. 

The President of Italy Speaks Truth to Islamic Gunpower

"un gesto vile e odioso, commesso ai danni di persone inermi, in spregio alle piu' elementari norme di convivenza civile e rispetto della vita umana" *


*"a defiled and hateful act, carried out against undefended people, contemptuous of the most elementary rules of civilised existence and respect for human life"

Panga Politics and the Rule of Law

The ruling party in Zambia, the Patriotic Front  (PF)  'yesterday issued a strong warning against High Court judge Chitabo of grave consequences if he does not reverse the decision to stay the tribunal appointed to probe Mutembo Nchito',   (Nichito is the Director of Public Prosecutions, ed.).  The PF has also instructed these PF Youth Cadres       

to prevent the reinstated DPP from reaching his offices (reports the Zambian Watchdog).   Last night a PF 'delegation' also visited the house of the High Court judge who issued the order to suspend the tribunal while its constitutionality was considered.  

The judge has promised to reconsider the matter this morning.

The  President of Zambia, on whose instruction the tribunal was instituted and who set its terms of reference and membership, as well as suspending the DPP  during its enquiries -  not to mention appointing another DPP, perhaps more 'sympathetic' to his Executive - is  currently  hospitalised in Johannesburg after collapsing at a women's gala march-past in Lusaka.

UPDATE
Having reconsidered his suspension of the tribunal of enquiry into the Zambian DPP, this morning the judge reinstated it and reinstated the suspension of the DPP.  Well, he would, wouldn't he.   

Meanwhile the President of Zambia is to be discharged from the clinic in Pretoria to which he had been transferred from hospital in Johannesburg, and advised to proceed to Pakistan should he wish to undertake any further treatment, or to return home.  While the US ambassador to Zambia has denied that he has referred to the President having health issues the media is reporting serious concerns on the president's condition.

So Zambia has a newly elected president already hospitalized and out of the country, a vice-president out of the country on a jaunt to the UN and Japan (Japan?), and an acting president  in Lusaka swearing in high officers of the state, the executive, and the civil service.  Sata's demise in late 2014 is beginning to look positively plain sailing in comparison.

Watching African Democracy in Action

To lose one president may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.  To lose three might turn thoughts to witchcraft.

Edgar Lungu, the newly 'elected' Zambian president is being exported for medical treatment unavailable in his own country, having collapsed at a Women's Day march past.  Frankly a legion of Angels probably would collapse during a Wimmin's Day march past: but he'd been standing there for only an hour before the legs gave way.  Perhaps he's a wimp needing the training Elizabeth II can call upon; even in advanced age there's no collapsing on parade from her. The instant  way in which Zambians are wishing him well and offering their sympathy to his relatives and affines (there's something about African politics that makes for an onset of anthropological accuracy) is courteous, patriotic even, but displays faint irritation, doubtless brought on by a considerable history in Zambian politics of presidents dying in office.

Those following the goings-on in Zambia since President Sata died in office last year (he too had been exported, in his case first to the US and then to London for medical treatment unavailable in his own country) will be aware that the vice-President is constitutionally expected to take over when the President can't manage the job.  But the vice President is at the Wimmin's Day knees-up in New York.   Mrs Lungu, First Lady of Zambia,  cancelled her flight to the same freebie at the last minute, after the incident at the march past; she cannot fulfil her speaking engagements at the UN.  The question is will Inonge Wina be persuaded to take Ms Lungu's place in New York or insist on rushing back to Lusaka to take up her constitutional role as acting president while Edgar is indisposed and out of the country?    The Zambian constitution is in the throes of reform, not least in ending the requirement for an election within 90 days of a new president for the residue of the fixed term of office of the deceased.  What a pity there has been so little sense of urgency, particularly with the swathe being cut through sitting presidents. And what a pity the Zambians couldn't leave Guy Scott to  act as president until the scheduled presidential elections in 2016.

Apart from the collapse in copper prices, the outburst of borrowing since Lungu got his hands on the presidency, the fall in the Zambian currency,  the dam could burst.  Meanwhile Zambian Watchdog offers a fine, blow by blow account of every-day politics in southern Africa.

UPDATE

Zambian vice-president Inonge Wina cuts short  her New York shindig to get back to Zambia.  But will the Instruments of Power have been handed to someone else before she gets there?

UPDATE 2

She didn't make it back soon enough:
President of Zambia Edgar Chagwa Lungu has with immediate effect appointed Hon. Ngosa Simbyakula to act as President during his absence; Hon. Simbyakula will also act as Minister of Defence and Minister of Justice.   That sounds like everything is covered, particularly as the Director of Public Prosecutions has also just been suspended with immediate effect and is now the subject of a tribunal enquiry under various sections of the Zambian constitution.

A European Army Would Need to Walk on Water

The call by the Luxembourgeois  Juncker for  a European Union army to 'defend European values' is so offensive at so many levels that perhaps it's simplest to stop at the first: what is needed is a not an army but a navy.  An army  will be useful later but right now ruling the waves (and by modern extension the airspace over the waves and nearby coastal strips) has priority.  As a comment on the FT noted most  European armies are well-armed pension funds.

That the Italian prime minister has more political sense than most presidents has been demonstrated amply over the last couple of years in his own country but his evaluation of what is needed in the Mediterranean and who can offer it is a lesson in realpolitik.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation yearning for lumbering about in tanks on the central and eastern European plains and being rude to Russia is just so  20th century; an exemplar of the well-armed pension fund.  If President Juncker (lots of presidents these days) wants  to 'defend European values'  he needs to stop playing eastern front 1940s games and build some ships and helicopters.  Otherwise Europe will just have to hope Russia can provide.

Obviously From Central Casting

Breedlove (honestly, that is what he's called, I could hardly credit it reading Der Spiegel this morning) and Nuland (another name from some orwellian nomenklatura) better-known for her use of 'language') have faces to match, and doubtless minds to match their faces, seem to have a programme.   In Eastern Europe war is seriously raised.  Thus:  lots and lots of (outdated) arms can be  sold profitably; Ukraine can be partitioned (seeing as it couldn't quite be managed all in one gulp it'll be tried slice by slice); most of all, we all look away to the east.  We, Europeans and European Russia, look away from the Mediterranean.

President Putin and President Renzi (Italian prime ministers are also called 'president') had a three-hour discussion this week (after Renzi had made appropriate gestures in Kiev)  on setting up a naval blockade of the North African coast.  The Italian gunships had been sent earlier and are 'exercising' close to the more important oil ports and off-shore oil and gas infrastructures.  However, Italy couldn't manage more on its own; certainly it can't manage any land operations (though, in all honesty, it has its advantages).  Now, who is bestest friends with Egypt?  Who has  lots of tanks?  And military training links, and Mediterranean and energy interests?

The Mediterranean sea is becoming to Russia (in the older sense of 'becoming').  All those fleets with ports in Greece, ports in Cyprus, ports and facilities in those vulnerable smaller countries of the EU being abused to save private, non-state creditors and threatened because they try to save their populations from the collapse of health, education, housing, energy provision,  employment levels:  in the name of austerity.  Furthermore, and notably, the government in Athens continues to support the Orthodox Church.

So while Central Casting conducts a deadly propaganda war in the east, this

jihad of human misery spearheads the battle for the control of Africa's energy resources and calls into being a Russian conquest of Mediterranean bases and power sought since - oooh, I don't know when.

Between half a million and a million people in the boats of the desperate are waiting to be launched into Europe this Spring.  Those who make it to land (and the Italians are and will be doing their best to get them there) won't stop here.  Only international intervention has the resources to meet their kinds of needs and Italy offers not even state-level help; private charity does what it can but it cannot meet state-level assaults.

Soon all this will reach the Security Council of the UN.  There will be Europe and Russia pointing at the obvious and the desperate need to act, while Central Casting put NATO and the United States in Ukraine.

Giving another Meaning to Mare Nostrum

These are FREMM Italian navy frigates.  Along with a San Giorgio LPD and one (or perhaps two, the Defence Minister was unspecific) other ships with characteristics that also seem really useful  - admittedly aircraft carriers have a certain grandeur but sometimes grandeur is not what is needed - they have set off towards Libya.

The Sabratha platform and Greenstream  are attracting more commitment to  "un ruolo di sicurezza, deterrenza " e di  "dissuasione" in General Claudio Graziano's words, than the migrants being trafficked in rubber boats.

εὐφημία

'Constructive ambiguity' is a prerequisite of political utterance.  Changing your tune is rarely politically  advantageous.  For the German ruling parties it was essential to maintain their stance towards 'Greek' debt or suffer a major shift in strength between the right of the grand coalition and the social democrats (with behind them their potential coalition allies in any administration of the centre-left).  But the world of 2010 and its political needs  is long gone; the  language that 2010 world needed for German interests and coping with German fears is rigidly inappropriate; to get that language toned-down has taken too much and far too long -  from the exit of inadequate political actors (the members of the IMF 'team' were hopelessly under-qualified for what they were doing, indeed even for what they thought they were doing) to the  exit of governments.

Any competent economist can state how to deal with 'Greek' debt, within a eurozone framework and without disturbing treaties;  indeed a whole range of means can be offered (and are readily available within the gloriously constructive ambiguities of those treaties.)  It's not the economics of it all that's defective: it's over-defined political statement masquerading as  (under-defined) political  stance and objectives.  Still, austerity and its associated utterances  has been gagged if not yet bound at last Friday's meeting, of itself a considerable achievement.

Greek Fire

The Greeks are doing well: they have split the Troika with the ECB handing out emergency loans, the IMF being reined-in by the US president, and the EU generally wanting to abandon the hard-line German position; and within Germany itself there is now a Greek wedge between the parties to the Grand Coalition.  The SDP is calling for further negotiation and support for Greece while in the meantime  the Right (itself a coalition) is  split between the German Finance minister's demands for fiscal discipline conditioned by his 'historically (mis)informed view' and the German Chancellor's 21st century understanding of geo-political as well as economic requirements that need to be met.

This realisation  of a threat to Merkel's ruling party and its hegemony over both German and European policies is a very high price to pay for mistaking Greece's need to renegotiate the terms of its economic submission for 'can't pay won't pay' irresponsibility.

Bernini Meets Dutch Visitors

This is Bernini's Fontana della Barcaccia

and this is what was done to it.

Police Action is not War

Exemplary murder by criminal organisations is very familiar to the Italian state.  Mafia acts of the utmost ferocity have been suffered.  The North African fundamentalist scenario is not that of gunned-down magistrates, of mass executions in stables and cellars, of disrespect shown to the remains of the slaughtered that no-one needs to read of again here; instead we see the borrowings from popular media representations of the religious wars of centuries ago.

The immediate response to the murder of tens of Christian hostages on the North African coast has settled into a weary recognition here that Italy is dealing with another Mafia scenario, different in its imagery but identical in its criminality and the level of threat it presents to the state; to be met with police action, not the war response so eagerly sought by the criminals.

The Italian state must deal with two flows from North Africa: oil and gas -  to be secured and maintained, and migrants - to be saved, controlled and channelled out of the Peninsula and across the entire European area where there are more resources to deal with more reasonable, spread out numbers.

The oil and gas needs a sensible interlocutor to be installed in Libya who can maintain order round the fields and pipelines and guarantee the security of the technicians.  The migratory flow requires an international response, first to save the migrants from drowning in the winter waters onto which they are being driven at gunpoint, thousands of them  (and the Italian coast guard and navy deserves every recognition for the determination and courage with which they have saved so many); second to sift  some very deprived people from the criminals among them and then to find them settlement.  They cannot be left to continue through Italy and on, into the European countries with the highest social wage, and there be no concerns or response from the recipients other than to keep them out if possible.  Keeping them out is neither possible nor Christian.

None of this is war.  Apart from the glaringly obvious that war in North Africa needs tanks and soldiers on the ground  (when the World was made North Africa must have been designed for tank warfare) war implies a post-war colonial status for Libya that is acceptable neither to northern Africans nor to Europeans.  Europeans can no more want the reinstatement of a colonial 18th, 19th and 20th century world than they will accept a medieval culture and mindset expressing itself over the lives of others.

The Italian government fully recognises the need for international intervention,  in Libya, on the high seas, and to cope with the migrants, and is ready to take its part.  Europe, perhaps, is fortunate in having a front line state so experienced in dealing with primitive honour and shame social groupings devoted to criminality. 

UPDATE
Yesterday's Italian newspapers report a warning from Calabrian magistrates that the jihadist people-traffickers are attempting to link-up with 'Ndrangheta to provide secure bases for both in north Africa and on the Peninsula.      

Never Mind Ukraine, This is Serious

Italian civilians are on board vessels escorted by marines and over-flown by drones as the Italian embassy in Tripoli is closed.  The Foreign Office has been advising all Italians to leave Libya since 1 February.  These last should arrive in Sicily early tomorrow.  At the same time at least 10 large vessels loaded with migrants are off the island of Lampedusa calling for rescue from the Italian coast guard and other marine resources.  The leader of the Lega Nord is demanding that they should be monitored, supplied with food and water but not permitted to land.  It is known that migrants have jihadisti among them.

The Christian churches in various Libyan cities are under attack and many of their clerics have refused to abandon their faithful.

Jihadisti forces have over-run areas in major Libyan cities, including Sirte, demanding submission to their rule.  In Italy Matteo Renzi, supported by Opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi and by other political leaders is calling for an immediate armed response to the threat to Italy and its interests only 200 miles from the European coast.  Jihadi are naming the Italians Crusaders.