The Vatican: Is The City Under Threat Of Invasion By The ISIS?

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The Vatican City

This article was first published on the Eidolon site by Jay Reef

ISIS often airs its threats to conquer Rome and convert St. Peter’s, above, into a mosque. These aspirations go all the way back to the early years of Islam, when Constantinople — the capital of the Eastern Roman empire and bulwark of Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, was an early target of Arab ambitions..

In October 2014, an arresting image appeared on the cover of Dabiq, the slickly produced, English-language magazine of ISIS (the “Islamic State in Syria,” also known as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” among other names). 

The magazine features — as Robert Evans has detailed in an article of the “I read it so you don’t have to” variety — interviews with jihadis and photos of their brutally slain victims, together with other material calculated to entice the devout to join the cause of world domination.

The Photoshop job in question shows the ISIS flag flying in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, hoisted atop the Egyptian obelisk that marks the center of the piazza. 

The accompanying headline, ‘The Failed Crusade, ’ imagines a reversal of the West’s medieval crusades, launched against the Muslim world from the Holy See. 

It also reverses the West’s more recent dispensations in the Middle East, from the divisions of the former Ottoman provinces after World War I to the results of the 2003 Iraq War.

ISIS is an expert at representing its aspirations in prankish, media-friendly terms. Its black and white flag, inspired by ancient descriptions of Mohammed’s own banners, also coincides in color and general design with the Jolly Roger. 

It flutters in the image like a skull-and-crossbones raised over a captured vessel, the flagship of Western Christendom reduced to pirates’ booty.

The Italian daily Corriere Della Sera was quick to take notice of the image, while in the International Business Umberto Bacchi pointed to the gloss provided by ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.”

On one level, he is trolling us with a cartoonish Orientalist stereotype (like Boris Karloff’s Fu Manchu urging his Asiatic hordes to “kill the white man and take his women!”) with the phallic obelisk mischievously restored to Eastern ownership. But al-Adnani is also quite serious.

My tale as an immigrant living in Rome's Pantanella

Pantanella, the abandoned ex-pasta factory in Rome

As a child growing up in a strongly religious family, I was taught that everything opposite to the teachings of the Holy Bible, including laziness, is a sin. I tried my best to live a clean life. 

Without understanding that Israel, Jerusalem, and other biblical nations were on the same planet as our own, we were raised to think that they were all in heaven.

When I left my family looking for a job, I tried to be sincere and avoid doing anything wrong, which could land me in jail. I read that jail can change people’s attitudes for better or worse. But I wasn’t interested in knowing the positive or negative influences of jail on people. My only interest is in never being there because it’s not the right place for me.

In the year 1990, from Lagos, Nigeria, I made a transit in Rome on my way to Germany. In Rome, I was detained at Fiumicino airport. Italian immigration regularly does that to many foreigners, especially Africans. Like a tourist, I walked around the airport lounge without a room to sleep in or food for three days.

 

On the third day, I was really starving, so I approached one of the immigration officials and said to him that I was hungry. He looked at my face and asked me, “Am I your father?” Then he walked away.

Without knowing what the officials had in store for me, I handed over an application for asylum as a journalist, and it worked, because I have a few publications in my profession. 

On the fourth day, from nowhere came one of the immigration officers; he said to me, “Your application has been accepted; today the police will come to take you to Rome.” I was shocked beyond expression.

The good Samaritan didn’t only deliver the unexpected message, but he pulled out from his pocket several notes and said to me, “I don’t want my colleagues to see me giving you money; buy some food to eat at the airport.” I didn’t take the money. 

I told him, “This important information you have given to me has taken all the hunger away, thank you.” He walked away with his money.

On the fourth day, the police came, just as the officer told me, and took me in a police car to the city, Rome, and left me there to fight for my survival. 

Without anywhere to sleep, I passed all my nights at the Central Train Station. Among other Africans, we watched a big television screen during the day to forget our misery, and then at night, I went to sleep at my hiding place. The police and the workers at the train station never discovered the place where I slept.

After some time, I discovered places where I could eat every day without paying for food. I could take my bath and put on some clothes. One such place was at ‘Via Dandolo.’ 

Daniela, the head of the Caritas (Charity) at Via Dandolo, was a very good woman, but one of her female workers was a very bad woman. A thief, since we had no address, our letters passed through the Caritas at Via Dandola, and this woman took the opportunity to steal money from our letters.

I caught her twice, so I wasn’t surprised when I lost the 10 pounds a friend sent me from England, but I didn’t tell Daniela about it. Through Caritas, I had my initial lessons and attended classes to learn Italian. 

I was one of the best immigrants who could write and speak the language fluently, yet my life was miserable because I was still sleeping at the train station.

In Rome, I was robbed, admitted, and operated on at a hospital, but the nurse refused to touch me because of my color; thus, every morning when on duty, she called someone to attend to me, but she had time for every Italian patient at the hospital.

I was once sitting in the hospital’s garden after the operation when an old Italian man, one of the patients, came close to me, looked at my face, and said to me, “Marocchino motaccizoa.” – an insult, after mistakenly taking me for a Moroccan. I didn’t say a word.

Then all of a sudden, as if it was announced on the radio, all the immigrants in Rome without accommodation discovered an abandoned pasta factory called ‘Pantanella.’ Pantanella is notoriously known for all criminal activities, including drug peddling and crime, similar to the drug cartel zones of Mexico. 

One needs strength, courage, heart, and bravery to survive in that place. Italians think they are brave, but many of them dare to pass Via Casilina, the street where Pantanella is located, at night.

That was the place I lived and worked as a toilet cleaner for thousands of immigrants, using six containers as toilets, to raise money to feed them. I was employed by the Muslim head at the place. It’s terrible and frightening to live at Pantenella. 

It wasn’t a prison, but the place, I think, was tough like Alcatraz because of the criminal activities many illegal immigrants engaged in.

The abandoned factory accommodated both soft and hardened criminals from various countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Africa etc.  I lived in Pantanella for four months, and the Italian government, tired of the crimes going on in that abandoned pasta factory, ejected all the foreigners.

However, the Italian government did something great for the African immigrants. Something we weren’t expecting. The government paid for two weeks to stay in a hotel for all the Africans, with the ultimatum that before the two weeks expired, we should find a place on our own to live.

Through a very good and sympathetic woman called Nana (she died in Rome a few years ago), I got a job as a houseboy to serve one journalist called Claudio Lavazza, working at the television station TG2, belonging to the former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. 

He provided me with accommodation and paid me well. Besides, he gave me the new version of the Fiat Cinque Cento (500) to drive. It may be likely that I was the first Black man in the entirety of Italy to drive the new Fiat Cinque Cento when it first came out. I met other journalist friends of Claudio, including Michele Cucuzza.

http://www.amazon.com/Overseas-Chronicle-Joel-Savage-ebook/dp/B013SLNWFC

After three years, I said goodbye to Rome and returned to Africa. I married and returned to Europe once again, but this time I chose Amsterdam. 

‘Overseas Chronicle: The Rome and Amsterdam Experience’ is a book that once started, you’ll find it hard to put away because of the shocking, intriguing stories in the book. 

Find out more about what happened to me in Rome and later in Holland, which led me to detention in Amsterdam.

Immigration: Europe Doesn't Make One Rich Overnight. That's The Simple Truth

Books by Joel Savage

Through cultural diversity, I would like to share my experience as an African writer with you. Joel Savage is a freelance writer who enjoys the challenges of creativity and adventure. 

I arrived in Europe as an illegal immigrant a couple of years ago. One of my sleeping places was the central train station in Rome. I worked as a houseboy and raised enough money to come to Amsterdam. 

It was during my efforts to get papers that I landed in detention. After getting my papers, I decided to write my stories as books.

There are many people in Africa eager to sell all their properties with the aim of coming to Europe. Through the media, I have encouraged people to read my books before making the decision to come to Europe. 

Many think Europe makes one rich overnight, but I use my books as a teacher, educating the masses on how difficult it is to be an illegal immigrant in Europe.

On immigration issues, on how to educate Third World Countries about the difficulties of being an illegal immigrant and prevent them from coming to Europe, I'm available to share my experience. 

I always ask how I can be useful to educate desperate Africans willing to come to Europe at all costs when Europe doesn't make one rich overnight?

https://www.amazon.com/author/joelsavage-1957

MY LIFE AND MY BOOKS

Joel Savage

Joel Savage is a freelance writer who enjoys the challenges of creativity and adventure. Growing up in an environment where he sees the experiences of hard living and suffering deepens his understanding and knowledge to start writing. His work is considered to be a pure genre of creative nonfiction. 

He studied at Ebenezer Secondary School and Accra High School and later studied at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in Accra. His first book, “The Writer Died’’ which focuses on his father’s childhood and adult experiences, reveals the ordeal of a neglected child.

His second book, “Road of Agony,” reflects on his life as he struggles to take care of the welfare of his family after the untimely death of his father. 

As a passionate writer, Joel records his life experiences as a roofless illegal immigrant sleeping at the central train station in Rome and shifting camp to Amsterdam, only to be incarcerated in his third memoir, “Overseas Chronicle-The Rome and Amsterdam Experience.”

Leaving his wife and a year-old child in Africa for nine years, they finally joined them in Europe. But the happiness of the family turned into a nightmare as his wife was diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer. Those days of sorrow are recorded in Joel’s fourth book, “Heart of Endurance.”

Having dedicated his life to writing non-fiction books, Joel’s amassed experience and skills from previous publications, enabling him to write his fifth book, "Little Boygium-Wonderful Experience" about his life in Antwerp, as he tries to integrate as a forklift driver, whilst he writes his books between scorn, underestimation, and racism.

“AIDS Doesn’t Discriminate, So Why Do We?” is Joel’s sixth book. The book, which is dedicated to HIV/AIDS victims worldwide, eliminates the fears of caring for such patients and brings the human side to the forefront. 

The writer, a Belgian national and member of the 'Flemish Journalists Association, currently lives in Antwerp with his wife and three children.

Joel Savage is a freelance writer who enjoys the challenges of creativity and adventure. Growing up in an environment where he sees the experiences of hard living and suffering deepens his understanding and knowledge to start writing. His work is considered to be a pure genre of creative nonfiction.

http://www.amazon.com/Joel-Savage/e/B008SCTYI6

The Book Connection Guest Blogger Joel Savage

The book connection

 

Everyone has objectives, but not everything goes as planned for those who want to achieve something unique in society. I am one of them. I missed part of my education after the sudden death of my father. It occurred to me that if I really wanted to further my education, the only option was to travel to Europe. 

 

I wasn’t greedy, thinking that Europe makes one rich overnight, but I had an idea that if I succeeded in integrating legally, I could follow my dreams since they have the best educational facilities and good teachers.

Upon arrival in Europe, I realized that going to a foreign country could be very difficult in regard to financial aspects and visa applications, but nothing was more difficult than gaining legal immigrant status in a foreign country.

 

Like Paul’s missionary journey to Rome, I found myself sleeping in rough places, including the central train station and a deserted food factory. Rome might be a strong Catholic city, but it views foreigners, especially blacks, as people from an unknown, strange planet.

At the mission houses, amongst other foreigners, we continuously witnessed the abuse of young boys by the priests and the constant stealing of money from our letters that passed through the mission’s office, because we had no resident address. In Rome, I went to a school run by the ‘Caritas’ [Charity] under the umbrella of the Vatican City.

 

I could read and write Italian very well, but that didn’t help to facilitate my status as a legal immigrant. The continuous degradation, racism, and discrimination forced many immigrants from Africa to leave Rome as illegal immigrants, but I stayed, hoping for the best; however, the situation never changed.

After working as a houseboy to an Italian journalist, I saved enough money and moved to Amsterdam, leaving behind a year-old child and my wife in Africa. Holland is a multi-cultural country and far ahead in development and integration.

 

Unfortunately, the hard immigration policies and liberal laws on soft drugs have encouraged others to do hard drugs, thereby having a drastic effect on many people, including illegal immigrants. I saw the disastrous effects of drugs on many, but they turned a blind eye and pretended they didn’t know what was going on because the free sales of drugs are like a catalyst that sustains the tourism industry.

This was something I wanted to avoid, and the only way to prevent falling victim to depression and drugs was to fight for my documents after almost four and a half years as an illegal immigrant. One thing I didn’t understand was the drug issue.

 

The Dutch drug force in the past and present has successfully arrested drug couriers in the city and at Schiphol, the airport, but the coffee shops sell drugs, including marijuana, to customers without impunity. Who then supplies drugs to the coffee shops? This was a question I never found the answer to.

I never encourage crime or violence. I fear these two acts, and therefore, try my best to live a clean life. But to upgrade my status to a legal resident, I was involved in a serious crime, leading me to be behind bars. A Surinamese woman collected money from me with the promise of helping me get my papers. I didn’t know her, but I trusted her.

 

According to the police, she was a criminal preying on illegal immigrants. I was thrown behind bars for several days while my passport was with the immigration police. It was likely they were preparing my documents to be deported, as I foresaw my deportation to Africa to be very close.

One day, while behind bars, I had no bath and food for the whole day, even though every day the cell was opened for me to wash and be served food. The next day, when they served me food, I asked them why they had failed to give me my food the day before.

 

The officer thought I was joking, but he quickly realized I was speaking the truth. According to him, I was a very quiet person; therefore, the officers on duty failed to realize that there was someone in the cell. Because of this mistake, they gave back my passport and set me free. Today, I am a married Belgian national with three children.

 

Overseas Chronicle: The Rome and Amsterdam Experience

http://www.amazon.com/Joel-Savage/e/B008SCTYI6

OVERSEAS CHRONICLE, A NOVEL BY JOEL SAVAGE

Life adventure based on a true story

There are so many writers in the world. Each has his or her subject of interest. Some write about fiction, agriculture, science, and children's stories, while others prefer fairy tales and horror stories. 

As a man who has suffered a great deal, traumatized and haunted by my past bitter experiences, I have no room in my life for fiction. This certifies the accounts of this book are genuine, leaving no doubt of its truth.

After writing and publishing “The Writer Died” and “The Road of Agony,” I had the inspiration to write this book. What is the significance of writing this book at all? Is it worth reading? What will readers get from reading this book? These are some of the questions cracking my brain. 

Knowing perfectly well the torment of being an illegal immigrant and as an eyewitness to how the need to get a resident permit in Europe and America has destroyed the lives of many immigrants, especially Africans, I put in enormous effort to write this book.

In Europe and the United States of America, the quest for immigrants to obtain legal status and become documented has destroyed many people. 

Some are insane, depressed, speak at random without stopping, dress shabbily without noticing how they look, and some end up in jail, detention, and death, taking them away, all because of a resident permit. 

Apart from the inhuman activities, methods, strategies, and procedures adopted by authorities that issue resident permits against immigrants, to frustrate them to not getting their legal papers, the act of documented foreigners against their fellow ones without a permit is totally insane and obscured.

An African is not only dark in colour but could also be dark sometimes in the mind. As an illegal African in Europe, especially in a country like the Netherlands, you’re worth nothing to a documented African. You are like salt that has lost its taste. You need to be thrown away for people to trample on you. 

It is the documented African that would make it clear to you that if you are undocumented, you don’t have to join the conversation of the documented. Even if you are right, you are wrong because you have no documents. 

When slapped across the face by the document, you don’t need to hit back because you are an illegal immigrant, and when being cheated, accept it.

Take a deep breath and read about my experience in Europe as an undocumented immigrant before I became documented. “Overseas Chronicle-The Rome and Amsterdam Experience” is like a picture hanging on the wall. I see it every day. I can't take it out of my mind. 

Read this remarkable book revealing the true untold story of an illegal immigrant in Rome and Amsterdam.

Chapters

        1.   Detained At the Fiumicino Airport, Rome

       2.  Sleeping At Rome Central Station and Pantanella

       3.  Help from the Caritas

 4.  Living and Working in Sacrofano

       5.  In Accra, Ghana

       6.  In Bijlmer, Amsterdam

       7.  Working as an Illegal Immigrant

       8.  Working under a New Name

        9.  In Detention

      10. Going for an Advocate

      11. The Struggle over Guns

    12. The Death Of Princess Diana

     13. Arrested At Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam

     14. Exploited by two Dutch Lesbians

    15. Revisiting Rome and Back to Amsterdam After Documented

    16. The Female Angel in Police Uniform

              

 http://www.amazon.com/Overseas-Chronicle-Joel-Savage-ebook/dp/B013SLNWFC/ref=la_B008SCTYI6_1_3?

BLACK GANGS RELATED CRIME AND SOCIETY

Black gangs



In every institution that accommodates people with different backgrounds, including schools and even hospitals, there is likely to be racism. 


I couldn’t believe it in my hospital bed in Rome, Italy, in the early nineties, a nurse refused to give me my daily medication, because of the color of my skin. She completely neglected me and gave the task to someone else to do.

Despite this bitter experience, I wouldn’t like to accept the fact that many racists in police uniforms terrorized Blacks because of racism, and I will do everything to put them behind bars. The law must work. 

If one commits a crime, he must pay for his or her crime, and as a matter of fact, “Black-related crime” has increased abnormally in recent years, landing many behind bars.

Wherever there are lots of Black people, there is always crime. Morons, school dropouts, and frustrated teenagers formed gangs. After smoking marijuana and feeding on cocaine, they take to the streets to terrorize and shoot people, including their fellow Blacks. 

They enjoy sitting by the television to watch and listen to the horrendous crime they have committed. Stiff-necked fools. What a waste of precious time and suffering by the mothers who carried the pregnancies of these monsters.

Growing up in Africa, I witnessed that poverty is the major cause of many problems, such as stealing, crime, teenage pregnancy, and other social crimes. 

Many parents couldn’t educate their children because of the high cost of education. Yet the crime rate, besides South Africa, is not as high in many African countries as in Britain and America, where education is available without tears. 

There are so many Blacks in jail across Britain and America than Whites. Some argue that there are targets to police brutality and racism, but the question is, “Why would one be incarcerated or put behind bars when innocent?” 

Others also say that Blacks are jailed than Whites because of the cheap labor that is needed at the prisons. Whatever the case may be, why can’t people try to live a crime-free life?

If Black gangs would ever sit and take into consideration how gang violence has destroyed and continues destroying societies, also in Britain and America, they could turn a new leaf overnight. How does one expect to get a job to lead a decent life when your CV is full of crime and bloodshed? 

They say the best way to hide something from the Blackman is to write it in a book”. That means Black people don’t read. It is time to prove this statement wrong. Crime doesn’t pay. Education is the key to success.