Pictures of coffins covered with flags went all over the papers.

A video shared on YouTube, shows students at Amir Kabri University immediately celebrating his release at a rally with songs and banners

Until recently, too, many Europeans believed in their kings and queens, flew their national flags, sang their national anthems, were taught heroic versions of their national histories.

Molotov was greeted by Ribbentrop at the train station decorated with Soviet and Nazi flags above a large basket of flowers, with a band playing The Internationale for the first time since 1933.

For several weeks this summer, the stadiums in Austria and Switzerland, not to mention the streets of European capitals, from Madrid to Moscow, were given to an orgy of flag waving, anthem singing, drum beating patriotism.

There was little of the rampant jingoism, get them at all costs bloodlust, constant speechifying, and flag waving that followed the 2001 attacks.

The third attack on Italian unity launched at the beginning of August by the President of the Lega Nord group in the Senate, Federico Bricolo, who proposed adding a proviso to Article 12 of the Italian Constitution whereby the flags and anthems of the different regions would be officially recognized on an equal footing with the national anthem and flag.