“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.

Protesting the corruption of the Thieu regime, several thousand Catholics marched through the northern city of Hue on Sunday, September 8. It was the first Catholic antigovernment demonstration to be held in the former imperial capital. Police attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and clubs, confiscating anticorruption banners and dispersing the march. Hundreds of demonstrators later regrouped in a Catholic church, where a document denouncing Thieu was read.

In the last few months South Vietnam has undergone the heaviest fighting since the “cease-fire” agreement went into effect in January 1973.

In the Iron Triangle area north of Saigon, clashes have occurred since May 17, when three militia outposts near Bencat were captured by the liberation forces. Two have still not been retaken. Skirmishes have taken place only sixteen miles from the center of Saigon, and Bienhoa airfield, the largest military airfield in South Vietnam, was said to have been threatened at one point.

The South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee has exploited to the full the attempt on his life August 15 in which his wife was killed.

He has tried to blame the assassination attempt on the North Koreans, claiming that they masterminded the plot. He has pointed to the Japanese government, blaming it for allowing pro-North Korean political activity and for unwittingly issuing a passport to the assassin, who was identified by the Korean police as Mun Se Kwang, a Korean living in Osaka.