ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

[vt]

Modern day Attila the Hun?

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Barbie Latza Nadeau

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TERROR IN TRIPOLI

02.17.15
Italy Fears ISIS Invasion From Libya

As ISIS makes inroads into Libya, officials in Rome are panicking about an Islamic State just across the sea—but have no idea how to combat the crisis.

ROME — Last weekend in Italy, as the threat of ISIS in Libya hit home with a new video addressed to “the nation signed with the blood of the cross” and the warning, “we are south of Rome,” Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi shuttered up the Italian embassy in Tripoli and raised his fist with the threat of impending military action. Never mind that Italy has only 5,000 troops available that are even close to deployable, according to the defense ministry. Or that the military budget was cut by 40 percent two years ago, which has kept the acquisition of 90 F-35 fighter jets hanging in the balance and left the country combat-challenged to lead any mission—especially one against an enemy like the Islamic State.
In fact, Renzi didn’t specify exactly who would wield that military might, and, two days later, when no one volunteered to lead the charge, he backtracked. “It’s not the time for a military intervention,” Renzi told an Italian television station Monday night and said the United Nations had to lead the way. “Our proposal is to wait for the UN Security Council. The strength of the UN is decidedly superior to that of the radical militias.”
Whether the time is right or not, there is no question that there is a palpable tension in Italy over the ISIS threat—Libya is just 109 miles away from the island of Lampedusa and 300 miles from Sicily—made worse by a 64 percent increase in illegal migrant arrivals by sea since last year. In all of 2014, more than 170,000 people arrived from Libya and Turkey, the highest number ever recorded. Last weekend, as the embassy staff made their way to Italy on a mercantile ship, 2,164 migrants left the same Libyan shores en route to Sicily. The week before, more than 300 people were lost in the same seas as their rickety fishing boats capsized before rescuers could save them.
Anti-immigration politicians have argued for months that it would take little for jihadi fighters to infiltrate a migrant boat and effectively end up taxied into Italy by rescue ships and the Italian navy. In a biting editorial in Il Giornalenewspaper, owned by the Silvio Berlusconi family, Sergio Rame hypothesized that the recent influx was an attempt by terrorists to effectively “smoke out” the Italian navy into rescuing the migrants, in an attempt to lure the boats close to Libyan shores in order to launch an attack. The Italian government, which supports the rescue of migrants fleeing war, dismissed the theory.
Meanwhile, the Italian government said they are prepared to deploy 500 special anti-terrorism police to protect sensitive tourist sites in Rome.
What is disturbing is that something is drastically changing in the migrant shuttling business, which has lead defense analysts to warn that Italy has never been so exposed to an attack. For the first time since Italy started officially rescuing migrants in 2013—first through its now defunct Mare Nostrum program and later through the European Union’s border control Frontex Triton mission—the smugglers, who usually melt in with the migrants, are armed and dangerous. Last weekend, smugglers wielding Kalashnikovs fought the Italian coast guard rescue boat to wrestle back a smuggler ship after the human cargo had been rescued and the boat seized. They hauled the boat back towards Libya, presumably to fill it up again. The Office of Migration in Rome says there could be as many as half a million people in camps waiting to come to Italy and the unrest will push them out faster.

The Italian government said they are prepared to deploy 500 special anti-terrorism police to protect sensitive tourist sites in Rome.

The other major concern for Italy is its billion-dollar oil and infrastructure investment in Libya that began during the bromance between the now deposed and deceased Muammar Gaddafi and the now deposed and still very much alive Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. At the height of their alliance, Berlusconi’s photo was emblazoned in Libyan passports as if he was a national treasure. Italy’s ENI oil company was the first to develop the oil industry in Libya when oil was discovered there in 1959. For years, Italy fought international sanctions against Libya to keep its assets protected. Even now, Italy’s foreign ministry has ordered all Italian nationals to leave Libya, but nearly 100 remain to run the oil companies.
Upon his return over the weekend, the Italian ambassador to Libya, Giuseppe Buccino, told an Italian radio station that the situation in Libya was serious, but that not all of the country was in ISIS’s hands—yet. He also warned that befriending rebels in Libya who oppose ISIS was an equally dangerous game. “It is worrying that the logic that could prevail is that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’,” he said, “and that is a dangerous logic that can lead to a strengthening of the extreme terrorism in Libya.”

Italy has been on ISIS’s radar for quite some time. In October, the group dedicated the cover of its Dabiq magazine to a story called “Reflections on the Final Crusade” about how they will conquer Rome, complete with a photo of a black jihadist flag flying over St. Peter’s Square. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market,” said the article in Dabiq. “Every Muslim should get out of his house, find a crusader and kill him… And the Islamic State will remain until its banner flies over Rome.”
Mattia Toaldo, a London-based Libya analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told Europe-online magazine that because of Italy’s past colonial rule over Libya, Rome is asking for trouble and should not lead the charge lest it stir strong local hostility. “The Italians would be facing a completely different kind of enemy from those they faced in [UN-backed operations in] Afghanistan or Lebanon,” he said. “Rome intervention could turn out to be, politically and militarily, the biggest Italian suicide since the Second World War,” he said, adding that Italy “would be a wonderful target for the Islamic State.”
Italy remains caught in the balance, with a young and largely untested cabinet and government that could effectively fall at any moment, leaving a vacuum of power just as the country needs to appear stable. Even the country’s president is new, untested as well, meaning that there is no institutional knowledge to fall back on should the government hit a crisis. On Thursday, Renzi will address parliament with a plan, but no one—perhaps not even he—knows exactly what he will say. No doubt he’s hoping someone will come to the rescue first.

[GRG55]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

"...Mattia Toaldo, a London-based Libya analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told Europe-online magazine that because of Italy’s past colonial rule over Libya, Rome is asking for trouble and should not lead the charge lest it stir strong local hostility. “The Italians would be facing a completely different kind of enemy from those they faced in [UN-backed operations in] Afghanistan or Lebanon,” he said. “Rome intervention could turn out to be, politically and militarily, the biggest Italian suicide since the Second World War,” he said, adding that Italy “would be a wonderful target for the Islamic State.”..."



This is what passes for "analysis"? Geezus we are in trouble.

It does not matter one bit what the Italians do. Rome is a target because it houses, in Vatican City, a collection of some of the most prominent symbols of Christianity worldwide, including St Peter's Basilica. For the jihadists a successful attack there would be elevated above even 9/11.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

..This is what passes for "analysis"? Geezus we are in trouble....

I had the same thought when I read the author whining that Italy has not yet purchased its new fleet of F35 fighters and had cut military spending recently.
Italy currently operates something like 150 Tornado's and Typhoons, world-class fourth generation jet fighters and attack aircraft at the forefront of NATO air forces. Apparently MS. Nadeau thinks Italy needs a much bigger and better uniformed military to fight the Jihadists.

If one were cynical, one might accuse the author of whipping up hysteria to increase military budgets.

[Mega]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

All that Light sweet crude............sorry poor Libyan people whom need "our" help...
Mike

[lakedaemonian]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

Italy has some big problems that include illegal immigration.

Buying military gear isn't going to fix it.

Although maybe more emphasis on maritime patrol and surveillance could have some genuine security benefits.

Roberto Saviano wrote a book turned into a movie/TV series called Gomorrah that might offer some insight into an Italian problem that incorporates this seemingly unending governance/security issue that haunts Italy.

Illicit networks far greater in size and threat than ideological illicit network infiltration into Italy.

Illegal immigration ties into it, directly/indirectly.

Surveillance is a naughty word.

But maybe maritime patrol and surveillance may offer some mitigation to some genuine problems, of which I would think genuine ideological terrorism plays a real, but likely very small(but growing) part.

[GRG55]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

All that Light sweet crude............sorry poor Libyan people whom need "our" help...
Mike

Don't sweat it Mike. That black shzt's been there for millions of years. A few more to allow time to "drone" the unlucky inhabitants before we get around to pump it out won't make any difference.

[don]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

That black shzt's been there for millions of years. A few more to allow time to "drone" the unlucky inhabitants before we get around to pump it out won't make any difference.

What better way to store it for future use than in an Empire of Chaos, so would say Ms. Bohne

The Logic of the Imperial Security State

by LUCIANA BOHNE

What to think of a policy that bombs countries and leaves them to their fate? Most observers of US foreign policy since 2001 regard this policy as a failure. They look upon the ruins of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and see no victory parade, no reconstruction, no stable government, no democracy, and no human rights. These are observers whose mindset is stuck in models of the past. They may have in mind WW II, a declared war, battles, victory, negotiations, treaties, and reconstruction. Say, Europe and the Marshall Plan or Japan. They may be thinking of a world order ruled by international law, Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, and of America as safeguarding this order. Consequently the disorder that the United States is sowing across the planet makes no sense. The politicos on the Potomac must be crazy—is the conclusion.

No such thing. They may be megalomaniacs, but they have a plan for precisely disorder, no less a plan than to subdue the world to its economic will militarily. America is slipping from its rank as the #1 economy in the world, a record held since the 1870s. History instructs that it is impossible to maintain a global empire without economic primacy. The American empire has its back to the wall, but it still has military supremacy, after the exit of its main challenger, the USSR, the greatest tragedy to relative peace in the world of our era. The world really did change on 11 September 2001. It gave America the excuse to choose the military option to keep dominating the world, which it could no longer do economically. The United States, too, took the opportunity to effect a silent coup at home, starting with the Patriot Act, and moving gradually forward to change the US from a democracy to a security state and to destroy, unopposed by a frightened domestic population, pieces of the world, one inconvenient country at a time. It’s a way of doing WW III without anybody but the victims noticing.

Failure? Look at Iraq, the epitome of a cancer cell eating the vital organs of the body, producing pain and suffering as it dies. But do, too, look at Iraq’s border with Iran and see that it is dotted with US military bases. Afghanistan? Permanent and indefinite US military occupation, clothed as a security agreement between Washington and Kabul, squeezing Iran on its eastern border. Libya? The removal of Muanmar Qaddafi in 2011 has left the whole continent bereft of protection from neo-colonial penetration. Since then, we’ve had the French invasion of Mali. Since the fall of Qaddafi, Libya’s North-African coast has become a gigantic refugee port, where thousands of desperate people gather chaotically to flee war and famine to reach Italy, 200 miles away, in inflatable boats. According to the United Nations, 90% of those fleeing Libya land in Italy. Only a few weeks ago 300 of these refugees drowned off the coast of Lampedusa, the volcanic island north of Sicily. According to Amnesty International’s latest report, 37,000 refugees are waiting to brave the sea to reach the shores of Europe. Two governments, two parliaments, and two armies currently rule Libya. Both vie for power and for control of the oil fields on the Gulf of Sirte. Islamist militia rule in Tripoli; a government recognized by the international “community” rules in Tobruk. In this institutional vacuum, the IS are moving in. They are in Derna, applying the whip to young men known to have imbibed alcohol. Perhaps in two months, IS will control the Libyan coast. The US is not stopping them.

Libya, in fact, provides the example, as good as any, of the logic of American imperial policy. After the bombing and the grotesque spectacle of the leader’s assassination, chaos ensues. Then, the “terrorists” move in to mop up the territory. Is there anyone sentient who still believes that the “terrorists” are the enemies of the empire? Is there anyone who still doesn’t see that the “terrorists” are the equivalent of the einsatzgruppen of the Hitlerite SS? With their sadistic theatre of public and grotesque terror, they provide the empire with reasons for intensifying interventions (Iraq) and renewing bombing campaigns for regime change (Syria). Moreover, the supposed advance of the “terrorist threat” serves to bind the empire’s vassals together in a common goal in the supposed struggle against terrorism– to “tighten security” at home and “to internationalize” foreign policy abroad. In reality, to get with the empire’s long-term goal of world domination.

Italy currently provides a good example of this vassalage to the empire’s goal. With the advance of IS in Libya, feudatory Italy prepares “to internationalize” a response to this perceived threat. To this end, it raises the specter of the black flag of IS flying on top of St. Peter’s. Italian Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, alerted viewers recently on SkyTg24 that Italy is threatened by the alarming situation in Libya, failing to note that the crisis is the result of Italy’s participation in the coup in Libya. Gentiloni warned that if mediation fails to produce results in reconciling the warring parties in Libya it is necessary “to do something more. . . . Italy is prepared to fight in a scenario of international legality.”

The “war on terror” was a brilliant propaganda idea. It created a state of exception to democratic order throughout the West, one that facilitated a craven and unquestioned transition from constitutional democracies to control states. In the US, the Patriot Act inaugurated this control state, which politologists like to call a “security state” to avoid calling it a police state, in which every citizen is regarded as a potential terrorist. The function of this type of state is not to promote order but to manage the disorder that it produces. On the world stage, terrorism is used as the instrument for creating the disorder that the world’s policeman—the United States—and its “allies” are called to manage.

Unquestionably, America is a basket case–and should be hospitalized in one of history’s asylums for states with Napoleonic delusions—but not because of its failures but because of its successes in achieving their ends: they make a wreckage of democracy and call it security; they terrorize the world one country at a time and call it . . . what? Anti-terrorism. They create the effect and call it the cause.

Is this a failure? In moral terms, yes. In imperial-policy terms, no.

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu

[GRG55]

Re: ISIS On The Shores Of Italy?

What better way to store it for future use than in an Empire of Chaos, so would say Ms. Bohne

The Logic of the Imperial Security State

by LUCIANA BOHNE

What to think of a policy that bombs countries and leaves them to their fate? Most observers of US foreign policy since 2001 regard this policy as a failure. They look upon the ruins of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and see no victory parade, no reconstruction, no stable government, no democracy, and no human rights. These are observers whose mindset is stuck in models of the past...

...Since the fall of Qaddafi, Libya’s North-African coast has become a gigantic refugee port, where thousands of desperate people gather chaotically to flee war and famine to reach Italy, 200 miles away, in inflatable boats...

...Two governments, two parliaments, and two armies currently rule Libya. Both vie for power and for control of the oil fields on the Gulf of Sirte. Islamist militia rule in Tripoli; a government recognized by the international “community” rules in Tobruk...

...Libya, in fact, provides the example, as good as any, of the logic of American imperial policy. After the bombing and the grotesque spectacle of the leader’s assassination, chaos ensues....

...Is this a failure? In moral terms, yes. In imperial-policy terms, no.

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu

As usual, if one was listening we heard it here on the 'Tulip first:

From 01-27-11:

It's the Muslim Holy Day here in the Middle East, the mosques will be full this morning and the streets in Egypt and elsewhere likely much more active than usual this afternoon...

There's a growing view that the USA has given up on trying to balance stability vs "democracy" in this region, and is now pursuing a policy of "fragmentation"...as the only way to deal with the perpetual ecclesiastical schism across the region, and preserve its interests.

The US role in Sudan [to promote the referendum to separate the Christian south from the Muslim north], the potential descent of Lebanon back into civil war, the recent escalation of violence against the Coptic Christians in Egypt, and other sectarian hot spots are suggesting that change. All still speculation, but now out in the open here...

From 07-30-11:

Don't take your eye off Libya or Egypt...they are both going to factor into USA and global politics to a greater degree than most currently imagine...

In Libya we are almost certain to witness a splendid example of tribal retaliation. The General's tribe is a large and powerful one in that country and, given the reports that he was tortured before being killed, "revenging his honour" will doubtless be a bloody affair. Perhaps a civil war within a civil war.

The only logical explanation I can come up with for the USA's involvement in Libya is part of an "organized chaos" strategy for the entire Middle East...

Saturday 30 July 2011

Libyan rebel forces commander's body found in Benghazi

Libyan rebel forces chief commander, Abdul Fatah Younis' body was found on Thursday, dumped outside Benghazi, along with the bodies of two colonels who were his top aides, according to Ali Tarhouni, minister of the petrol and finance of the National Transitional Council.

Chaos. And it's not going to magically fix itself now that the USA has declared victory and withdraws troops.

Rudi Guiliani said yesterday during a CNN interview about the debt/deficit circus in D.C. that the rest of the world should grow up and get used to it because that's democracy in action. I'm not sure much of the rest of the world has that much respect remaining for "democracy"...

30 July 2011 Last updated at 11:18 ET

Iraq less safe than a year ago: US watchdog

As has been said before, De-stabilization Unlimited is the name of the game. Russia and China are both penciled in the agenda.

Everyone now taking sides in a timeless Muslim theological war within a proxy war within an even larger proxy war.

Sunni vs. Shia --> Saudi Arabia vs Iran --> "West" (USA et al) vs "East" (Russia et al).