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Across Europe, racists have cheered the result of last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland, which saw a vote to impose a ban on the building of minarets on mosques.

New revolts in Europe The university occupation movement in Austria is now into its fifth week and is going from strength to strength. The media is supporting the protests, and commenting on the international character of the movement – and that the Austrian students have "infected" Germany with their radicalism. The movement is helping to put increasing pressure on the government.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), took time out from stoking up race hatred in Britain last weekend to hobnob with fellow fascists in Europe.

The Lives of Others is a gripping thriller focusing on the role of the East German secret police – the notorious Stasi – in mid-1980s Berlin.

In 1989 popular revolutions across Eastern Europe overthrew their Communist dictatorships. These countries had nothing to do with socialism. The state and party bureaucracy that ruled society acted as a collective capitalist that exploited the working class.

The media have been gloating about the plight of the left in the wake of the German federal elections a fortnight ago. "A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of socialism’s slow collapse", announced the New York Times last week.

The 67 percent vote in the Irish Republic to ratify the European Union’s Lisbon treaty represented a major victory for the country’s corporate and political elite.

The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) plan to prosecute the arms company BAE Systems for bribery in Africa and Eastern Europe has shone a light on the murky world of multinational corruption.

The Tories showed their more sinister side through the European allies they invited to their conference.

The people of Ireland were to vote again on the European Union’s neoliberal Lisbon Treaty on Friday of this week – despite voters rejecting it last year.

A group of leading BNP members from the Midlands have been pictured speaking at a recent neo-Nazi rally in Germany. BNP organiser Mike Bell headed a group of British fascists, joining others from across Europe at a rock festival organised by the German fascist NPD group. This shows that the BNP is serious about building a network of fascist groups across Europe.

Is Barack Obama’s decision to cancel the deployment of missile defence in central and eastern Europe another sign of how the US has been weakened by the Iraq disaster? In a very obvious sense, yes.