Monti raised alert levels on Sunday at some sensitive sites across Italy to handle the recent violence that has hit the country.

Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri also said on Sunday that she was considering bringing in the army to defend certain locations.

“There have been several attacks on the offices of Equitalia (the agency handling tax collections) in recent weeks. I want to remind people that attacking Equitalia is the equivalent of attacking the State,” she said.

“The army could be used to guard buildings which could be the target of violent protest. The danger of an escalation exists. It’s a situation which demands drastic action,” she added.

On Saturday, two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the offices of Equitalia in Livorno, Tuscany, and severely damaged the front of the building after they blew off. Moreover, a letter bomb, which did not blast, was sent to the organization’s offices in Rome on Friday.

CONTINUED at Press TV.

When riot police broke up a recent protest over a forced eviction, Vietnam’s bloggers were ready — hidden in nearby trees, they documented the entire incident and quickly posted videos and photos online.

Their shaky images spread like wildfire on Facebook, in a sign of growing online defiance in Vietnam, in the face of efforts by authorities to rein in the country’s Internet community.

“They follow me, they keep track of what I am writing, they keep track of all dissident bloggers. Anything they can do to harass us, they do,” said blogger Nguyen Thi Dung, one of several bloggers who publicised the April 24 Hung Yen unrest on a variety of websites.

“They have many people browsing the net, reporting things they don’t like, getting them taken down. It is a perfect copy of what the Chinese are doing on the Internet,” she told AFP, asking that her name be changed for her safety.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News Canada.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety issued a press release today announcing the suspension of a drug recognition program conducted by the Minnesota State Patrol. The program was exposed earlier this month by activists and members of Communities United Against Police Brutality in Minneapolis.

Prior to the press release, Eric Roeske, a State Patrol public information officer, said, “there’s been no evidence or no information that has been presented to us that would substantiate any of the allegations,” City Pages reports today.

“Our investigation points to particular efforts to target and recruit youth,” ostensibly for a program designed to train police in detecting drivers under the influence of drugs, Infowars.comreported on May, 2012.

The Infowars.com article continues:

CONTINUED at Infowars. Videos at link.

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe tomorrow calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur andSydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said.

Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee.

Events are scheduled in more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week.

“Our goal is to kick off the spring offensive and go directly to where the financial elite play and plan,” she said.

After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations.

CONTINUED at The San Francisco Chronicle.

The hacker collective Anonymous has taken down the official Formula 1 website with a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack. The group claims it is in response toincreasingly violent protests in Bahrainahead of this weekend’s Formula 1 race.

UPDATE (11:27 AM EST): The mobile site for Formula 1 is still up, but the regular website is still down. So is live timing.

UPDATE (11:19 AM EST): We now also have the following press release also purporting to be from Anonymous:

Anonymous Press Release – Operation Bahrain

Thursday – April 19, 2012 7:00 PM ET USA

Anonymous has watched with growing alarm the incredible human rights abuses of the Bahrain regime. We have watched this tyrannical government tear gas it’s own people literally to death, with over 30 fatalities so far. We have watched as thousands of innocent protesters and activists have been jailed. We have suffered with our dear friend @AngryArabiya on Twitter as she watches her father slowly die of a hunger strike in prison to protest the atrocities committed by the regime of this “king” of Bahrain. We have witnessed doctors and nurses imprisoned for simply treating the wounded protesters that your security forces have brutalized. And finally we have suffered in outrage the ignorance and out right lies of mainstream media regarding what is REALLY happening in Bahrain.

1) This is NOT a Shia uprising against a Sunni government. It is a popular and peaceful revolt against the medieval concept of absolute monarchy. It is a movement that spans all strata and sectors of society, and all religions in Bahrain. It is a movement that demands only freedom, justice – and democracy.

2) This government is not quelling violent protests, it is brutally and violently crushing peaceful dissent.

3) This government is NOT legitimate. It is a tyrannical, barbaric – and human rights violating dictatorship. And ANYONE doing business with this regime have the blood of Bahrain’s Freedom Martyrs on their hands.

For over a year now, we have as a global movement concentrated our efforts in Libya and Syria, leaving Anonymous Bahrain to to defend their fellow citizens in cyber space. This will no longer be the case. As of tomorrow, Friday – April 20, 2012 the entire global Anonymous will begin to take up the cause of the Bahrain Revolution. The King of Bahrain be warned, we are about to unleash the worst shitstorm you have ever seen – and your time as dictator is over. We will help your people remove you from power, and we will see you tried in the Hague for your many crimes against humanity.

The occasion of Anonymous re-launching Operation Bahrain will be this despicable Grand Prix Formula One race to be held in Bahrain tomorrow through the 22nd of April. Mr. Eccelstone, you are either one evil mother fucker to hold your race in support of this regime (The Kings family are actually investors and make direct profit) – or else you have been lied to and are ignorant of the atrocities committed by these tyrants. In either case, beginning tomorrow – and lasting for the duration of your race we are going to fucking educate you on the truth in a way you can not ignore.

Beginning tomorrow, and lasting for the duration of this race – Anonymous will turn your web site (www.formula1.com) into a smoking crater in cyber space. We will also jam your phone lines, bomb your E-Mail inboxes – and wreck anything else of yours we can find on the internet. You can god damn well expect us. And to anyone in the world who watches this race, either in person or on television – you also have the blood of the Bahrain Freedom Martyrs on your hands. Turn your face away from this abominable entertainment, and join us online to defend the brave protesters fighting for their freedom in Bahrain. Finally, we join with Anonymous Bahrain in asking that all the drivers in this race protest this evil regime by refusing to cross the start line at the beginning of the race.

Internet Freedom Fighters around the globe, join us this weekend and fight for freedom and justice in Bahrain: irc.voxanon.net #OpBahrain

We Are Anonymous – We Are Everywhere – We Are Legion – We Never Forget – We Never Forgive – EXPECT US

SIGNED — Anonymous

A former F1 fan website F1-racers.net was also pulled down and the following statement,attributed to the hacker collective Anonymous has been pasted on the site’s front page:

Greetings from Anonymous

For over one year the people of Bahrain have struggled against the oppressive regime of King Hamad bin Al Khalifa. They have been murdered in the streets, run over with vehicles, beaten, tortured, tear gassed, kidnapped by police, had their businesses vandalised by police, and have tear gas thrown in to their homes on a nightly basis.

Still the regmine persists to deny any meaningful reform and continues to use brutal and violent tactics to oppress the popular calls for reformation. Not only is the Human Rights situation in Bahrain tragic, it becomes more drastic with each passing day. For these reasons the F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain should be strongly opposed. The Al Khalifa regime stands to profit heavily off the race and has promised to use live ammunition against protestors in preparation. They have already begun issuing collective punishment to entire villages for protests and have promised further retribution “to keep order” for the F1 events in Bahrain. The Formula 1 racing authority was well-aware of the Human Rights situation in Bahrain and still chose to contribute to the regime’s oppression of civilians and will be punished.

We demand the immediate release of human rights worker Abdulhadi Alkhawaja who has spent over 70 days on hunger strike. He has committed no crimes and is being punished by the regime for advocating people’s basic human rights. Free him and all other political prisoners in Bahrain. End torture. Deport all mercenary police and stop the use of tear gas against civilians.

We Do Not Forgive. We Do Not Forget. Expect Us.

0×0 was and still is here. Join #OpBahrain

In addition, the official Formula 1 website has been brought to its knees and has not been returning data requests for the past hour.

If you were involved in the DDoS — or you have the scoop on how Anonymous took down Bernie Ecclestone’s evil web empire, send me an email.

Source: Jalopnik. Updates posted live at link.

Future riots could be quelled by projectiles containing chemical irritants fired by police using new weapons that are now in the final stages of development.

The Discriminating Irritant Projectile (Dip) has been under development by the Home Office’s centre for applied science and technology (Cast) as a potential replacement for plastic bullets.

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that last summer’s riots in England provided a major impetus to Home Office research into new-generation riot control technology, ranging from the Dip to even more curious weaponry described by Cast technicians as “skunk oil”.

CONTINUED at The Guardian.

MOSCOW, March 18 (Reuters) – Russian police detained more than 100 people on Sunday, including leaders of the largest protest movement against Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule, as hundreds rallied against him weeks after his re-election to the presidency.

At least 500 protesters gathered near Moscow’s largest television tower at Ostankino to condemn what they said was the Kremlin’s domination of the media and to denounce a recent documentary that portrayed them as floundering traitors.

“Putin’s most important weapons are lies and propaganda and they are just as effective at protecting him as police batons,” said former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, minutes before riot police surrounded him and pushed him into a police van.

Protest leader Sergei Udaltsov, who is coordinator of opposition group Left Front, was also detained minutes after joining the demonstration. The rally had not been approved by city authorities.

A wave of protests began in December over allegations of fraud in an election that gave Putin’s United Russia party a small parliamentary majority. Putin’s nearly 64 percent victory in a separate presidential election in March has taken some of the wind out of the protests, but they show no sign of stopping.

Demonstrators on Sunday chanted “Russia without Putin”, holding placards and white ribbons, which have become the symbol of the protest.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

When I was growing up, police in America generally treated women with gentleness and respect.  It was generally understood that women were not to be thrown around or mistreated by police unless they were being openly violent.  But in most areas of the United States those days are long gone.  Sadly, many police officers seem to make it a point to be especially mean and degrading to women.  All over the country women are being openly abused and humiliated by police.  In America today, women are being yanked around by their hair by police, women are being pepper sprayed directly in the face by police, and women are being brutally strip-searched in front of leering male police officers.  This is not how a civilized nation should be treating women and there is no excuse for treating women like dogs.  The incidents that you are about to read about are absolutely shocking.  They reveal just how far America has fallen.  If police will treat non-violent women like dogs, then what will they do when the time comes to arrest you?  That is something to think about.

What police are doing to peaceful female protesters in some areas of the country is absolutely horrific.  A recent article by Steve Watson described the degrading things that were done to one group of women when they were arrested in Maryland….

Attorneys with the anti-abortion groups the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the Thomas More Society of Chicago, and the American Catholic Lawyers Association revealed that after their arrest, the protesters, including women and young girls, one as young as 14, were put into leg shackles and strip searched twice, while being denied the right to make phone calls, and make contact with lawyers. The protesters were kept in jail overnight.

Reports indicate that the first strip search took place in the police station parking lot in full view of male officers. The second strip search was conducted at the Harford County Detention Center.

You can view a few minutes of video from when the women were originally arrested right here.

How would you feel if your mother, your wife or your daughter was being treated like this?

How would you respond if you learned that your female family members were strip-searched in front of leering male police officers?

There is no excuse for treating women like this.

In other parts of the country, police are getting very violent with peaceful female protesters.

For example, you can see videos about female protesters being pepper sprayed in the face here and here.

Is there any excuse for spraying pepper spray directly into the face of a woman that is being completely non-violent?

Police officers like that give all police a bad name.

Perhaps even more disturbing are the police officers that have been yanking women around by their hair.

In the video posted below, police brutally drag UCB English Professor Celeste Langan to the ground by her hair.  She was not being violent at all and she actually offered her wrists to the police and verbally told them that they could arrest her.  But instead of doing that, the police yanked her by the hair and threw her to the ground.  Subsequently, the police did the same thing to two other peaceful female protesters….

In the old days, any police officers that treated women like that would be run out of town.

But in modern “Amerika”, police get to treat women as brutally as they want.

In fact, if a woman calls the police in “Amerika” she may get raped.  When one 19-year-old single woman in Milwaukee dialed 911 for assistance, she never imagined that the police officer responding to the call would sexually assault her.  But that is exactly what happened.

Yes, there are still lots of good police officers out there in America.  Many work incredibly hard in extremely difficult circumstances to try to make our communities a safe place to live.

Unfortunately though, there is a cultural shift happening in America and the number of good police officers continues to decrease.  Many good officers are being slowly but surely replaced by brutal monsters that have no problem with treating people like garbage.

This kind of mistreatment of females by police officers is even going on in our public schools.

For example, a sixth-grade girl in Colorado was recently arrested and marched out of her school in handcuffs for being “argumentative and rude”….

An Adams County Sheriff’s Office incident report says the assistant principal found Yajira walking in the hallway during lunch because the girl claimed she was cold and needed to get a sweater from her locker.

The report says the assistant principal was in mid-sentence when Yajira, “turned and walked away saying, ‘I don’t have time for this.’”

When intervention efforts with a counselor failed, Yajira was handcuffed and put in the school resource officer’s patrol car and taken to a juvenile holding facility called “The Link.”

In a previous article, I detailed some other incidents where female students have been arrested and publicly humiliated while at school….

*At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

*A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

*In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

*A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

*A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

*In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

Are you disgusted yet?

You should be.

In Massachusetts, police were even sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

What kind of country are we becoming?

Of course the federal government is one of the worst offenders when it comes to treating women like dogs.

At airports all over America, women are being strip-searched and publicly humiliated by TSA agents.

The following is how blogger Erin Chase described what she experienced when she went through a TSA pat-down while going through airport security with her young baby….

She patted my left arm, my right arm, my upper back and my lower back. She then said, “I need to reach in and feel along the inside of your waistband.”

She felt along my waistline, moved behind me, then proceeded to feel both of my buttocks. She reached from behind in the middle of my buttocks towards my vagina area.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my buttocks, or reach forward to my vagina area.

She then moved in front of my and touched the top and underneath portions of both of my breasts.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my breasts.

She then felt around my waist. She then moved to the bottoms of my legs.

She then felt my inner thighs and my vagina area, touching both of my labia.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my vagina area or my labia.

Does treating women like this make us a safer country?

No.

The truth is that no other nation on earth is doing this sort of thing.

But it does show that we are becoming a country full of idiots.

After enduring such a horrific pat-down, Erin began shaking and she felt as though she had just been sexually assaulted….

I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.

Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures.

It is absolutely mind blowing how women are being treated in America today.

How we treat women says a lot about where we are at as a nation.

And right now America is becoming a very heartless place.

Source: The American Dream.