We have received this report from Iceland about a protest outside a conference hosted by the Icelandic government and the IMF. The letter makes the point that the IMF package for Iceland has been unsuccesful and that ordinary Icelanders are struggling to make ends meet. It shows that the political and economic crisis in Iceland is continuing.

October 28 is a National holiday in Greece marking ΟΧΙ (No) Day – the refusal of Greece in 1940 to accept the Italian ultimatum advanced by Mussolini, to allow the Italian fascist troops to enter the country. Not only did Greek forces stop the Italian invasion, but actually forced Mussolini's troops back into Albania. Every year it is celebrated as a day of “national pride”. Not so this year! The masses took over the celebrations and used them to express their anger at the Greek ruling class. Here we publish a report from Athens written on the day of the “celebrations”.

Socialist Appeal supporter Adam Booth spoke against Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business in the UK coalition government, in the Cambridge Union on Thursday 27^th October, in a debate that highlighted the two starkly contrasting choices facing society as a result of the crisis of capitalism: austerity or socialism.

Two days ago Angela Merkel was warning that peace in Europe could be endangered if an agreement was not reached at the EU summit on how to manage the crisis that has engulfed the euro and the whole of the EU economy. Speaking to the German parliament she said, “No one should think that a further half century of peace and prosperity is assured. It isn't. And that's why I say if the euro fails, Europe will fail, and that mustn't happen." Some of the more serious strategists of capital have even raised the prospect that the euro could break up. The 27 EU leaders on Wednesday night, however, finally produced a three part deal.

The Greek working class has moved decisively into action. The last few days in Greece have demonstrated that faced with an approaching economic calamity the workers are prepared to fight to defend their living standards and their jobs also. However, the bankers and the various competing European powers have no option but to fight for their own interests and will fight to the last gasp. The scene is set for further conflict in the euro zone between the increasingly divergent interests of the European states and between the classes in each of the European countries.

On Thursday in Athens during the mass workers' protests we saw the state collaborating with hooligans and provocateurs against the labour movement. What is now required is a political general strike! Here we publish a statement by the Greek Marxists of Marxistiki Foni.

Today (October 19), the first day of the 48-hour general strike in Greece was sensational. Apart from the government and public utilities workers that participated in the strike massively, hundreds of thousands of workers from the private sector came out on strike for the first time, and also joining the millions of striking workers were tens of thousands of small businesspeople and shopkeepers who closed the shutters to their shops in solidarity.

As Portugal’s right-wing government announced the harshest austerity cuts in the country’s history, economic forecasts were revised down and the main trade union confederations CGTP and UGT announced the calling of a general strike.

On Saturday, 15 October, in the Paradeplatz in Zürich, the heart of the Swiss banking system, over 1500 people met to express their rage against the power of the banks, against the injustice of the system, against the capitalist crisis. Also in the cities of Basel and Geneva smaller demos of between 100 and 400 people were held.

Hundreds of thousands of people, certainly well over a million, took to the streets of Spain on October 15 to express, once again, their indignation at the crisis of capitalism and the austerity plans which are being introduced to make working people pay for it.

The situation in Greece is becoming more and more revolutionary as each day passes. The country has been paralysed by a wave of strikes centred on the public sector and state owned enterprises, which is the workers’ response as they attempt to ward off the terrible attacks of the government. This wave of strikes was anticipated by the mass occupation movement in the universities and schools in September, which proved once again that the youth is a sensitive barometer of the class struggle.

 The decision of the Secretary Of State to revoke Marian Price’s release from prison has been met with widespread opposition from the Republican movement. The justification given was that the threat that she poses has “significantly increased” and that she had been encouraging support for an illegal organisation based on her involvement in an Easter comm

A new government was finally formed last week in Denmark. It is clear that the participation of the Radical Left (a bourgeois party) is going to prove to be catastrophic for the working class. The programme of the new government is a continuation of the right wing’s attack on early retirement, unemployment benefits, etc. All talk about a “fair solution” to the economic problems of Denmark and that “the broadest shoulders also should bear some of the burden” has now disappeared.

The financial crisis in Greece is constantly in the headlines and focusing everyone’ attention on what it could lead to. As we have explained before, the reason for this is not due to the objective economic weight of the Greek economy within European and world capitalism. In absolute terms Greece only accounts for 2% of the European Union’s GDP and even its public debt is only 3% of the total public debt of the Eurozone. The point is, however, that Greece is the weakest link in European capitalism which is now at the centre of the global capitalist crisis.

The Nama Wine Lake Blog recently exposed the scandalous statistic that while there are some 300,000 vacant houses in the state, there are still some 100,000 households on the list for state housing. Nama Wine Lake estimates that this represents a minimum of 176,147 people. Even a very conservative estimate of the “overhang” of vacant properties – excluding holiday homes indicates that there are some 100,000 vacant homes - 23 -33,000 of which are on the so called “ghost estates”.