From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the World

Because Brookfield Properties didn’t shut down the Zuccotti Park occupation when it began four weeks ago, the “Occupy” movement has spread worldwide. Deutsch Presse-Agentur reports:

Hundreds of thousands gathered in cities across the world Saturday in protests against corporate greed and income inequality, sparked by the month-old Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City.

And at one of these demonstrations, in Rome on Saturday, massive damage was done to the city by left-wing rioters:

Italian officials defend police conduct in Rome riots
Oct 16, 2011, 11:01 GMT

Rome—Italian officials on Sunday rejected criticism that they had failed to take the necessary measures to prevent riots in Rome that left dozens injured and marred what had been billed as a peaceful anti-capitalist protest.

‘To prevent something like this from taking place is materially impossible,’ Junior Minister for the Interior Alfredo Mantovano said in an interview with Turin-based daily La Stampa.

Around 100 people—including at least 30 police officers—were injured in the Italian capital Saturday when left-wing extremists clashed with police after during street protests.

Scores of shop windows were smashed and several cars were torched, including a police van whose occupants escaped unhurt.

Damage amounted to ‘at least’ 1 million euros (1.4 million dollars), according to Rome’s Mayor Gianni Alemanno.

‘This is the material damage to the city. Then we have the moral damage—the damage to the city’s image which is harder to quantify,’ Alemanno said.

Twelve people were taken into custody in connection with the violence which according to news reports had been organized by anarchist ‘Black Bloc’ groups.

Alemanno accused some of the rioters of using non-violent demonstrators as ‘human shields’ to protect themselves from police baton charges.

However, promoters of the main demonstration which had been fashioned after Spain’s ‘Indignant Ones,’ movement, accused police of failing to intervene to isolate the small, violent minority among the estimated 200,000 people who turned out for the Rome protests.

Mantovano rejected the criticism, saying the authorities had faced a ‘complex’ situation. ‘For some time we had received information that violence would take place,’ Mantovano said.

He said police had been deployed in numbers, but ‘objectively speaking it is difficult to manage an attack of this type, an urban guerrilla with high margins of unpredictability’.

Mantovano warned that similar disturbances could take place in the future. ‘We musn’t become complacent. This is only the beginning … the information we have is not reassuring,’ he said.

Hundreds of thousands gathered in cities across the world Saturday in protests against corporate greed and income inequality, sparked by the month-old Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 17, 2011 07:49 AM | Send