@Yanny:
I spent a month in Italy, during the G8 Conference protests (I stayed outside Genoa at the time).
I find Italians very nice and cheery. The countryside was beautiful. However, damn Genoa felt like a warzone. Very riotous. The policemen, throughout the country, carry small semi-automatic Uzi lookalikes. In Venice, you’d find squads of policemen with these, some even sporting bigger weapons.
I saw a documentation on the Genoa G8 summit… and the protest…
scary indeed.
There was one (!) group, that said it would use violence. And only against things that are “capitalistic”… Still, other groups were treated the same, medical doctors were beaten up, one demonstator shot by the police, at least one journalist beaten into coma with his lung punctured (he spent several month in hospital after that). Peaceful groups of demonstrators attacked by the police before they reached the place that the government actually allowed them to go!..