The Herri Batasuna leaders were charged with "collaborating" with the ETA - an armed group fighting for Basque independence from Spain. The act of "collaboration" was the attempt to air a video on television, which among other things included the ETA's peace initiative. The oppressed nation of Basque people numbers 3 million in northern Spain and southern France. Herri Batasuna is a legal political party with representatives in the regional and national parliaments.

EU bans milk from Poland
The European Union (EU) imposed a ban on all imports of Polish milk and other diary products December 1. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, claimed its inspectors found "significant hygiene and operational failure" in two of four Polish facilities they visited in November. Warsaw officials say the accusations are false.

A $43 million EU contract with Poland to sell milk and dairy products to 40 enterprises in EU-member countries lapsed at midnight November 30. EU officials are also pressing the Polish government to lower tariffs on EU steel imports from 9 percent to 3 percent. Warsaw is one of the governments that has campaigned for admittance into the European Union.

Danish gov't curbs immigration
Denmark's social democratic government announced measures tightening its immigration policy December 4. They include ending the right of immigrants to have their parents and other family members gain permanent residence and deporting those convicted of "serious crimes." Many refugees and other immigrants will also be forced to attend classes in Danish and on Danish social conditions. General elections will be held in Denmark sometime between now and next September. The ultrarightist Danish People's Party, headed by Pia Kjaersgaard, has made scapegoating of immigrants for supposedly living on social security benefits one of its main themes. Its ratings have risen to as high as 15 percent in some opinion polls.

Turkmenistan plans gas pipeline
Turkmenistan president Sepurmurat Niyazov has reached an initial agreement with Royal/Dutch Shell to build a pipeline to transport gas from that country to Turkey. Moscow has placed heavy restrictions on Turkmenistan's access to current gas lines servicing western Europe, where Russian gas giant Gazprom holds a monopoly.

The new pipeline, projected to be built as early as 2000, will access Turkey through Iran, based on preliminary agreements signed between the three governments in May. One problem with the plan is U.S. sanctions on Iran, which will make it difficult to fund that leg of the pipeline. Shell also faces a potential conflict over a deal it signed in mid- November with Gazprom to transport Russian gas to Turkey via the Black Sea.

Talks on Korea are scheduled
Pyonyang, Seoul, Washington, and Beijing are scheduled to begin talks in Geneva, Switzerland, December 9 on a treaty to formally end the 1950 - 53 Korean War. While the negotiations agenda does not explicitly include the call for the 37,000 U.S. troops to leave south Korea, U.S. officials are clear that this will be raised by Pyongyang's representatives as part of the talks.

Leading up to the talks, the Clinton administration said it would increase its modest food aid to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea next year - a measure Washington had previously refused to agree to. The U.S. government, in collaboration with Seoul, have used north Korea's near-famine conditions - resulting from two years of failed crops due to massive flooding and then a drought - as a cudgel to demand that Pyongyang carry out "market reforms" and renounce the near half-century fight to reunify Korea.

Land reform in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has announced that government will confiscate and redistribute more than 1,500 farms, most of them white-owned, to landless peasants. Mugabe said the government would not pay for the land, which totals about 10 million acres, but would reimburse farmers for any buildings, or infrastructural improvements made on the land.

Nearly two decades after Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980, one-third of the land is still owned by a small minority of white farmers. Some 8 million peasants are crammed into another third, while the rest of the country is composed of mountains and nature reserves. Substantial areas belonging to foreign-owned companies are also slated for redistribution.

`Mothers' protest Menem gov't
Argentine president Carlos Menem "is killing the people with hunger and unemployment," declared Hebe de Bonafini, leader of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, at a December 4 demonstration in Buenos Aires. The action was the annual "resistance march" of the Mothers, a group formed to demand justice for the "disappearings" of youth under the 1976 - 83 military dictatorship in that country. Circling the Plaza de Mayo, opposite the presidential palace in the capital, the protesters also denounced the government's austerity drive. Unemployment there stands at 16 percent.

Brazil gov't deepens austerity
Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso on December 2 assured executives of the Confederation of British Industry in London that they "may be certain that there will be no deviations and no U-turns" from the $18 billion austerity package. Brasília has set out to impose the measures in the wake of the currency crises that continue to rock southeast Asian countries and reverberate around the world.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian division of Volkswagen AG is threatening its 31,000 workers with massive layoffs if they do not accept a 20 percent cut in hours - and pay - along with reductions in annual pay bonuses and paid vacation time. There is resistance by working people there. Dock workers in Sao Paulo struck for jobs at the end of November, paralyzing that state, and earlier that month crane operators held work stoppages at the same port, which the state recently sold to capitalist investors.

S. Carolina case sets precedent for prosecuting `fetus abuse'
A 27-year-old woman in South Carolina pled guilty December 2 to involuntary manslaughter for the miscarriage of her fetus, allegedly as a result of smoking crack cocaine. She was sentenced to three years' probation.

Talitha Renee Garick had faced charges of "murder by child abuse" in the case. Some 30 states since 1990 have combined drug abuse laws and so-called child-endangerment laws to try to bring such charges, but South Carolina's Supreme Court is the only one to uphold them so far.

- BRIAN TAYLOR  
 
 
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