Three explosive devices blew up outside the Naples offices of Equitalia, a state agency that collects overdue taxes and fines, breaking windows but injuring no one on Monday night, a police official told Reuters.

Police said no group had claimed responsibility for the attack on the building on Corso Meridionale near Naples central rail station.

Equitalia, whose offices have been attacked before, is deeply unpopular among many Italians who accuse it of using strongarm tactics to collect taxes. (Read more)

Thousands protested against the EU Saturday at a rally of the far-right Jobbik party, calling for Hungary’s exit from the bloc and adding pressure on the government which is seeking a funding deal with the EU and IMF to avert insolvency.

Two MPs of Jobbik, the second biggest opposition party in Hungarian parliament, set an European Union flag on fire at the protest in front of the European Commission offices in Budapest.

“This week the EU declared war on Hungary in a very harsh and open way,” Csanad Szegedi, a Jobbik member of European Parliament told the crowd of around 2,000 demonstrators. (Read more)

Russian police don’t take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they’re 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.

“Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests,” Andrei Mulintsev, the city’s deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. “In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event.” (Read more)

A video of a musical group of alleged former Russian paratroopers performing a song that is sharply critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has quickly become a YouTube sensation, The New York Times reports.

By Friday evening, the band had performed the song on a private television channel, TV Dozhd (Russian for ‘TV Rain’). At the time of writing, the YouTube video had more than half a million hits.

Sporting tattoes, berets, and military decorations, the two singers and three back-up musicians leave no stone unturned in letting Putin know exactly what they think of him: a “tyrant” who has “destroyed the military”, AFP reports.

Posted under the title “Putin and Paratroopers,” the song pits the Prime Minister — who claimed in December that he thought the white ribbon (the protest movement’s symbol) was a protest against HIV — against the common man.

Here’s some lyrics, translated by the NYT:

You’re no different from me.
A man and not God.
I’m no different from you.
A man, not some hick.

We won’t let you keep lying, we won’t let you keep stealing
We’re liberated troops who defended the motherland

Ribbons of freedom are positive for all, but for you…
there nothing – just condoms.

On Dozhd, the men said they had received messages of support from all over the country, and had already attended the mass rallies in Moscow last month. (Read more)

Wow!

1) Starting tonight, Ron Paul will begin winning caucuses. This will be followed by either an assassination, or, in the long term, prosperity. Remember, they killed Bobby Kennedy after he began winning primaries. The chances of this are probably small. I do think there are powerful people and institution who would consider it.

If Ron Paul is assassinated, it’ll be followed by isolated instances of violence against federal institutions. These will be used to discredit anything libertarian. Government will declare new powers for itself, and the gigantic anti-terrorism apparatus will turn its full attention to Americans. An assassination would also be followed by large scale tax protests which would cripple the state. They will resort to printing money and slander tax protesters as domestic terrorists.

If, on the other hand, Ron Paul wins the primary, he will defeat Obama. Democrats will defect en masse to support him. The media mud slingers will realize their impotence. The markets will celebrate, perhaps with the exception of large commercial banks. They will threaten to blow-up the economy as revenge upon a public that elected Ron Paul. We will call their bluff.

2) At least one country will leave the Euro Zone. The EU will remain intact, but calls to end it will grow louder and more insistent. The turmoil in Europe will continue to create the illusion of economic stability in the U.S. and capital will flow away from the headlines, but once things have stabilized there, expect the much bigger and much more destructive problems of the U.S. to resume their unfolding. The prices of precious metals will resume their climb. Let’s hope Ron Paul is in power so the crisis isn’t used to lead us further down the road to serfdom.

3) SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a thinly veiled attempt to censor the internet will fail. However, it’s proponents will very quickly put another piece of legislation on the table. They will not stop until it is passed.

4) A massive troop reduction will occur in Afghanistan. It will be done for political reasons. The media will spend weeks praising Obama.

5) A galvanizing incident will be provoked or staged in Iran. There will be an outbreak of hostility, but the United States, despite the propaganda from neo-con politicians and the media will not fully commit to a war.

See also, predictions for:
2011
2010
2009
2008

Excellent interview by Radio Free Market

PAUL: In many ways, it’s a very healthy movement. I’m not one to say, “why don’t you get a bath and go get a job and quit crybabying.” I don’t like that at all. I think that’s a misunderstanding of where the unemployment comes from. The unemployment comes from policy, government policy, and it’s the federal reserve and the business cycle is not a consequence of free markets. That doesn’t mean I think they’re all perfect out there. [...]

When spontaneous movements occur in a country, the johnny-come-latelys like to join and redirect the original intent of the Tea Party Movement and the original intent of the Occupiers, so for that reason the political people get involved and they try to grab hold of the message, and I think that’s been the case on both sides.

(Read more)

Thousands of fake Twitter accounts are being used to drown out activists and bloggers protesting the recent presidential elections in Russia. 



Widespread reports of ballot stuffing and voting irregularities prompted thousands of Russians to demonstrate in Moscow’s wintry Triumfalnaya Square. Hundreds were subsequently arrested by Russian security forces, including well-known anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny.

Kremlin Twitter ‘bots target Russian oppositionProtestors began tweeting anti-Kremlin sentiments using the hashtag #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya), which quickly became one of the most-used hashtags on Twitter. 



But as Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro notes, it wasn’t long before #Triumfalnaya messages were drowned out by loud, pro-Kremlin tweets trumpeted by countless Twitter bots. 



“If you check this hash tag on twitter you’ll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day,” said Goncharov.



“To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour. Whether the attack was supported officially or not is not relevant, but we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech.” (Read more)

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave” turned out to be true, he said.

Netanyahu also slammed Western leaders, and especially U.S. President Barak Obama, who had pushed Mubarak to resign from power. At the time this was happening Netanyahu said in closed talks that the American administration and many European leaders don’t understand reality. On Wednesday, he called them “naive.”

“I ask today, who here didn’t understand reality? Who here didn’t understand history?” he called from the Knesset podium. “Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region. This is certainly not the time to listen to those who say follow your heart.”
Netanyahu used the upheaval in the Arab world to justify his government’s inaction vis-a-vis the peace process with the Palestinians. (Read more)

Maybe the “99%” are right. Maybe we should take all the money from the richest 1%.

Perhaps, however, the protesters don’t go far enough. We should then find the most beautiful 1% and scar their faces with box cutters. Then we should find the smartest 1% and damage their brains. We should find the most athletic 1% and break their legs. We should find the healthiest 1% and feed them poison. (Read more)

I love the beginning of this video. Favorite moment at @ 5:45 – “Polysyllabic, masturbatory wack-jobbery!”

Since the class-warfare message of the Occupy Wall Street protests started nearly two months ago, the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have taken every chance possible to stand in solidarity with the group of mostly underemployed college students and left-leaning activists. With AFT President Randi Weingarten joining in protests and state affiliates taking part and organizing protests of their own, the teachers unions are quick to point out that “public education, teachers and unions have increasingly come under attack from the one percent,” as Leo Casey, spokesman for the AFT’s New York City local put it.

The union support is pouring in state after state. For example, in the union stronghold of California, California NEA affiliate President Dean Vogel called on the rich to pay more taxes. “It’s time to put Main Street before Wall Street, and for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes,” he said. Meanwhile, the union rank and file are resorting to taking the fight into the classroom with lesson plans titled “Who are the 99 percent? Ways to teach about Occupy Wall Street.”

As the protests continue and the union rhetoric becomes more radical, one can’t help but find the situation ironic. While the teachers unions claim they are being persecuted by the wealthiest Americans, clearly it is the unions and union bosses themselves that have benefited from a system that takes advantage of taxpayers at the expense of our students.

An examination of the staggering amount of money accumulated by the teachers unions puts the situation into perspective. The AFT collected $211 million in dues in 2010, while the even larger NEA pulled in $397 million. Taking into consideration affiliated state groups, the unions collectively take in about $1 billion, more than half of which is taken by force in states with compulsory unionism. If you take into account their vast budgets and revenue streams forcibly collected from teachers, the NEA and AFT numbers align nicely with those of the corporations they so vehemently criticize. (Read more from washingtontimes.com)