A delegation of prominent intellectuals and civil libertarians presented a petition with 2,000 signatures to the Iranian Embassy in Washington on November 22 demanding the release of Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi and Dr. Ali Shariatti – two of the many writers, intellectuals, and artists now in the shah’s jails.

Utilizing the assassination of the Spanish premier, Admiral Carrero Blanco in December 1973, the Franco regime has cooked up a frame-up of some of Spain’s leading intellectuals.

On September 16, three days after more than ten persons were killed in the bombing of the Bar Rolando, a Madrid cafe, the police arrested some eight persons. Among them was Genoveva (Eva) Forest de Sastre, a psychiatrist and one of the country’s bestknown feminists. She is married to Alfonso Sastre, one of Spain’s leading playwrights.

The appearance of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat before the United Nations General Assembly on November 13 has been followed by demonstrations of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. Not since the upsurge in 1968 has there been such a widespread wave of protest against the Zionist occupation.

“What is involved here is simply a desire for putting a little ‘gas station,’ if you will, down here in the center of the ocean... – Samuel S. Stratton, U.S. House of Representatives, April 4, 1974.

Angry protests erupted throughout Israel in reaction to the huge price rises and other harsh austerity measures decreed by the government in the early hours of Sunday, November 10. Among the measures were a 43 percent devaluation of the Israeli pound and big hikes in the prices of basic foods. The government also intends to impose a wage freeze for one year.

In the weeks preceding President Ford’s visit to South Korea, scheduled for November 22, opponents of Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship intensified their protests.

Two thousand Catholic demonstrators, who assembled for a march from the suburb of Tan Sa Chau to the Supreme Court building in Saigon October 31, were beaten back by Thieu’s police and plainclothes goons. About seventy-five civilians were reported injured. Two opposition deputies were seriously hurt, and a Catholic priest was knocked to the ground and bloodied, the November 1 New York Times reported.

Huge protest rallies throughout Japan on international antiwar day, October 21, demanded the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons and the cancellation of Ford’s scheduled November 18 visit. The sponsoring organizations, which included the Communist and Socialist parties and the major trade unions, reported that 2.2 million persons had taken part in 456 demonstrations.

A secret White House document urging a policy of support to racist white-minority regimes in southern Africa was brought to light in an article by Tad Szulc in the October issue of Esquire magazine. The document, National Security Council Decision Memorandum, was prepared under the direction of Henry Kissinger. It outlined five options for a strategy for holding in check the Black liberation struggles and preserving the status quo in southern Africa.

Seoul and Tokyo have worked out a deal at the expense of South Korean exiles in Japan. After weeks of anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea and speculation that President Park Chung Hee might break diplomatic relations with Japan, Japanese special envoy Etsusaburo Shiina flew to Seoul September 19. He brought expressions of regret over the August 15 attempted assassination of Park by a Korean resident of Japan. Park’s wife was killed in the shooting.