Posted on 10/15/2011 1:35:02 PM PDT by tobyhill
Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday, torching cars and breaking windows during a larger peaceful protest against elites blamed for economic downturn.
Police repeatedly fired tear gas and water cannon in attempts to disperse them but the clashes with a minority of violent demonstrators stretched into the evening, hours after tens of thousands of people in Rome joined a global "day of rage" against bankers and politicians.
Smoke rose over many parts of the neighborhood between the Colosseum and St John's Basilica, forcing many residents and peaceful demonstrators to run into buildings and churches for shelter as militant protesters ran wild.
After police managed to push the well-organized radicals away from the St John's area, they ravaged a major thoroughfare, the Via Merulana building barricades with garbage cans and setting the netting of the scaffolding of a building on fire.
Discontent is smoldering in Italy over high unemployment, political paralysis and 60 billion euros ($83 billion) of austerity measures that have raised taxes and the cost of health care.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
We have high unemployment as a cronic problem with the logging industry on it’s last legs. Moveon.org his it’s crazys here along with many California transplants. However you are right about it being fairly normal.
The folks on the street today are proud anti capitalists. Profoundly depressing in small town America.
One of my family members got my daughter a shirt with a neronic cross on it for her birthday last month... the day after I had just explained to her what the symbol actually represented. Needless to say, she was horrified when she opened the box and saw it. When I tried to explain to my good Catholic family the origins of the symbol, a war ensued. Everyone against me. They thought I was insane, and still do.
Sort of like someone shouting “theater” into a crowded firehall.
Police Commander, “I love the smell of CS in the morning... It smells like victory!”
Yes. It's an out of control temper tantrum.
That is interesting, but I’m wondering why you no longer espouse anarchism. (Perhaps because it’ll never happen?) I love the idea of anarcho-capitalism, but I’m a bit too much of a pessimist to be hopeful.
I want small government. I mostly want to be left alone. But I don't think that will magically happen by letting human nature be our guide.
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