Reply #15: As per the following aritcle in The Guardian,

[JohnyCanuck]

I think we should always take into account the possibility that agent provocateurs are sometimes used by governments, even in democracies, to foment violence and mayhem in order to discredit protesters and their cause with the wider public. Of course their is no way of knowing at this stage if this vandalism against these two Starbucks outlets was the work of agents provocateurs but it would, I think, be naive to discredit this notion out of hand.

Retribution and revenge
A recent interview by Italy's former president sheds light on on of the most secretive periods of the country's history

The extract below is from a recent interview with Francesco Cossiga, the former president of Italy, published in the Quotidiano Nazionale. He was asked what the current head of the interior ministry, (home secretary and therefore in charge of the police) Robert Maroni, should do about the recent demonstrations by students and teachers against proposed funding cuts in schools and universities.

"Maroni should do what I did when I was secretary of the interior. He should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the movement with secret (provacateurs) agents, ready to do anything, and, for about 10 days, let the demonstrators devastate shops, set fire to cars and lay waste the cities. After which, strengthened by popular consent, the sound of ambulance sirens should be louder than the police cars. The security forces should massacre the demonstrators without pity, and send them all to hospital. They shouldn't arrest them, because the magistrates would release them immediately, but they should beat them up. And they should also beat up those teachers who stir them up. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly lecturers, of course, but the young women teachers."

SNIP

Hence the interest in the recent interview, which sheds light on one of the most secretive periods of Italian history - the so-called "strategy of tension" that began with the 1969 bombing of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan (carried out by the far-right and blamed on anarchists) through to the events at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 where the mysterious "black-blok" group created the mayhem and destruction which brought forth the police violence against thousands of anti-globalisation protestors.

The Italian authorities will no-doubt tell us that the words of Cossiga are the result of his rumoured Alzheimers. I prefer to read them as tragic. I believe that Cossiga is persecuted by the Erinyes, the Greek goddesses of retribution, because blood draws blood.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/24/comment