Europe Follow

SOME 120 people turned up to a meeting on Sunday of the coalition mobilising from England to the European Social Forum (ESF) in November.

ARMS COMPANIES plan to hold Europe's largest arms fair from 9 to 12 September in the Docklands area of London. Warships are already cruising the Thames in preparation. Around 1,000 companies will run stalls at the DSEi event, which is attended by representatives of many of the world's most repressive regimes.

GLASGOW IS a city with a rich socialist tradition. The roots of its reputation go back to the First World War when the Red Clyde was part of a great wave of working class revolt that swept Europe. The impact of the war made munitions centres like Glasgow fertile territory for labour unrest and socialist agitation. It produced many fine working class fighters, including Britain's greatest anti-war socialist, John Maclean.

FOR AS long as I can remember, people have been saying that the left needs to organise at a European level to match the development of the European Union. For years, this was just talk. Now, in an absent-minded sort of way, it's happening.

THE SUN claimed an "exclusive" last Friday when it exposed that "callous asylum seekers are barbecuing the queen's swans". The paper's front page ranted, "East European poachers lure the protected royal birds into traps, an official Metropolitan Police report says."

THERE HAS been an explosion of ideas and debate in the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements. People are hungry for answers, and words have been poured over the inequality, misery and war created by global capitalism and how to stop it. On the eve of a previous wave of protest, one which saw revolution spread across Europe, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote one of the most famous and influential political pamphlets of all time: The Communist Manifesto.

UP TO 70,000 people took part in the protests outside the European Union summit near Salonika, Greece, last weekend. "It was a tremendous sight as people came together down the seafront in the centre of the city," says Panos Garganas, editor of Socialist Worker's sister paper in Greece, Workers Solidarity.

Bob Geldof is 100 percent wrong on Bush and Africa BOB GELDOF is right to attack the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to Africa's human crisis. But he is totally wrong to praise George Bush's policies towards the continent. Bush's administration is the central actor in making sure that debt payments are pumped out of Africa.

"TO THE eight who want to rule the world, the world replies - resistance!" The chant was in French, but taken up by people from a dozen or more European countries - and some from Africa, Asia and Latin America too.

GEORGE BUSH, the butcher of Iraq, is arriving in Europe this weekend. He is flying into Evian in France to meet with his fellow leaders of the "G8" richest industrial countries. He comes determined to hammer home his victory in Iraq - even though every day there are reports of more deaths and killings in the country he claims to have liberated.

EVERYONE SHOULD smell a rat when Rupert Murdoch's Sun claims to care about mass sackings of workers. Billionaire Murdoch is responsible for massacring many thousands of jobs in the print industry here and abroad. But Tuesday's Sun had the nerve to play on fears of redundancy in order to whip up pro George Bush hysteria over Europe.

ONE OF the biggest talking points of the past few months has concerned where the war on Iraq leaves relations between Europe and the US. Many people on the left have been speculating that the European Union (EU) can, under French and German leadership, emerge as a counterweight to the US.