In other news, up to 8,000 soldiers and cops are being deployed in Porlamar, the capital of the small Venezuelan island of Margarita. They are preparing for the arrival of 23 representatives from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal to attend a weekend summit entitled "Ethical Values in Democracies." All demonstrations have been prohibited and government officials are severely restricting travel to the island.

Indian cops kill four in Kashmir
On November 7 Indian security forces leveled a home in Srinagar, in the state of Kashmir, with rocket fire, killing at least four residents. Top Kashmir police official P.S. Gill, whose forces surrounded the house in Sprigar, India, claimed they were responding to a Kashmir guerrilla gun-fire attack on forces patrolling the neighborhood. When residents responded to the siege with gunfire, the cops annihilated the place.

Egyptian peasants face land loss
The Egyptian government on October 1 began to implement a policy that will authorize landowners to double the rent paid by some 904,000 tenant farmers. State protections on production quotas are also being dropped, so peasants will now face the competition of the open market. Saad Nassar, the economic adviser to the agriculture minister said, "When rent is low, the tenant doesn't have any interest in increasing output. Before the change, it was sufficient to cultivate one crop a year. Now," he continued, "the farmers will be paying up to three times the previous rents, so they will have to work harder."

N. Korea called, Cuba answered
In response to the appeal for international food assistance from the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), socialist Cuba sent a shipment of 10,000 tons of sugar. Agriculture in north Korea has been hard hit by floods and drought over the last few years. The Cuban government's solidarity package, which arrived October 27, was well received in the Pyongyang press. In sharp contrast, Washington continues to demand that the DPRK accept "market reforms" and renounce its near half-century fight to reunify Korea in exchange for any substantial relief.

Yugoslav dinar down 10 percent
The Yugoslav dinar fell 10 percent against the German mark the first week of November. The dinar is officially set at a rate of 3.3 to the mark, but black marketeers will now give up 4.4 dinars. Overall, the currency has dropped 33 percent since August. The government has nearly doubled the amount of paper money in circulation over the last month. Aleksandra Posarac, an economist and vice president of the pro-capitalist Civic Alliance, said, "It seems the government is really in trouble. They are running out of funds." The party of Slodoban Milosevic, the president of the coalition government in Yugoslavia, lost a majority of the Serbian parliament in recent elections, and almost lost the presidency to Vojislav Seselj of the Serbian Radical Party. The vote was invalidated, however, because the turnout fell short of the 50 percent required voters. A new election is scheduled for December 7.

Currency wavers in Greece
On October 31, in a move to stabilize the wavering Greek drachma, Athen's central bank raised its short-term interest rates for commercial banks to 150 percent. Stocks in Athens fell 13 percent the same day. This was precipitated by international investors selling off Greek bonds. The Bank of Greece sold about $2 billion in foreign exchange reserves to prevent the drachma from falling. A November 4 Financial Times article contributes the currency crisis in Greece to the "slide in emerging markets worldwide."

`No foreign hands on our land'
Three hundred farmers in Budapest, Hungary, demonstrated November 3 against the plan to open arable land to foreign ownership. Farmers were also incensed by the low prices they receive for their goods. Police detained one of the demonstrators who they said was a leader of the protest.

Bonn: joblessness hits new high
Unemployment in Germany has reached over 4.5 million workers for the first time. About 3 million people in eastern Germany are jobless, and in the west some 1.5 million are without work, according to official figures. The government also released seasonally adjusted figures showing a 1.6 percent decline in industrial production for September, following a 4.9 percent drop in August.

U.S. `diplomat' caught spying
A U.S. intelligence official left Austria after being arrested for wiretapping the phone of a diplomat of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Vienna, a U.S. government official said November 5. That same official said the exposed operation was part of a larger effort by Washington to recruit and spy on north Korean officials worldwide. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had no comment on the incident.

N.Y. cop gets jail sentence for assault, walks until appeal
Ex-cop Francis Livoti, who was acquitted in the choke- hold killing of Anthony Baez, was sentenced November 7 to seven months in prison for choking and smacking Steven Resto in 1983. Judge Megan Tallmer called the assault "consistent with a pattern of abuse of your [Livoti's] position." Livoti, who was allowed to walk free pending an appeal, said in court, "How much more must I pay before I'm allowed to be productive again as I've always been?" Resto filed a $3 million law suit against Livoti for civil rights violations. After the trial Resto said, "We need to stick together more" to fight against cop brutality.

- BRIAN TAYLOR

In Brief Photo Box
More than 5,000 farmers from across El Salvador demonstrated in the capital city, San Salvador, November 6, demanding the president sign a law canceling more than $168 million in farmers' debts. The debt, according to legislators, has left more than 100,000 peasant families impoverished. On October 30 the Congress adopted a law partially canceling the debt, but there are no guarantees the government will implement it.  
 
 
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