SUMMARY IN ENGLISH
CONTRA # 4 2006
Iran – violence and imperial dreams
by Bertil Häggman
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks that nuclear arms in his posession is a historical opportunity. His regime is trying to make apocalyptical dreams come true. And he fully believes that the ”Messiah” of shia muslims, the twelfth imam, will shortly reappear after a millenium of absence.
The radical interpretation of moslem commandments by al-Qaida
The centereof islamic efforts to build a moslem world empire is the terror
network al-Qaida, which in arabic means ”the Base”. Al-Qaida
was established in 1988 by jihadists (holy warriors) like Abdallah Azzam,
Osama bin Laden, Muhammed Atef and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in order to wage
a ”holy war” on the international scene. Al-Qaida was founded
with the help of a computerized list of participants in the Afghan liberation
war against the Soviet Union. According to bin Laden, who is called ”emir”,
the islamic worlld is divided into two parts, the islamic house and the
house of war. The former is consisted of countries which have left the
true road of islam, like Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Livya and Saudi Arabia.
Learn the language of political correctness
by Tommy Hansson
2006 is election year in Sweden. Still we do not know if we will have
a new government or not. In order to let Contra readers understand the
political lingo of the day, we give a short introduction to the language
of political correctness.
Reformed labour law gives lower sickness rates
by Fredrik Runebert
How is labour law affecting job security and sickness absence rates? The effects of labour law usually are hard to study, while they are affected by a number of other uncontrollable effects. But a change in the law of employment severance for companies with less than 10 employees, which was adopted in 2001, has made it possible. Three economists, Assar Lindbeck, Mårten Palme (the son of the assassinated prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme) and Mats Persson have compared companies with less than ten employees with those that have up to twenty employees. Their conclusion is that the total absence rates declined by 0.2-0.3 days a year per employee after the change in legislation. The report also shows that employees with high absence rates, more often are sacked in companies that were affected by the change in legislation. But on the contrary people with a bad record of sickness were more easily employed in the companies that were affected by more liberal severance legislation.
Carter – a catasrophe in and outside of the White House
by Tommy Hansson
Jimmy Carter’s time as president of the United States were hit by catastrophes and fatal mistakes to a large extent. These affected both internal and externnal policies. The peanut farmer from Georgia put the US into a crisis in most political areas, and he did not even have the confidence of his fellow party members in Congress. It is thus astounding that Carter still, twentyfive years after his failure as president, can excercise inetrnational political influence.
The Ronald Reagan defense program is now deployed
by C G Holm
In 1983 president Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative,
popularily called Star Wars. The program aimed at creating a defense against
nuclear missiles, against which the United States until now have been
completely open. Reagan wanted to replace the old doctrine MAD (mutual
assured destruction) by an effort to defend the American people against
attacking missiles. The only response against an attack should not be
the destruction of the enemy, but the effort to protect the own people.
SDI was a radically new concept in nuclear strategic thinking, but the
Soviet Union, close to its dissolution, reacted negatively.Probably because
Soviet leaders realized that they lacked both financial and technical
strength to counter the American efforts. This proved to be true. The
entire Soviet Union fell into parts in connection with the Reagan defense
programs. Defense programs that have not been deployed until these very
days.
Segerstedt harassing Hitler and Stalin
Tommy Hansson on Torgny Segerstedt
In 1917-1945 Torgny Segerstedt was editor-in-chief of Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning. During the later years of that era he became famous as the leading anti-nazi in Sweden, which made him a nuisance to the Swedish government which tried to avoid confrontation with the German nazi regime. Segerstedt died March 31 1945, and thus he did not have the opportunity to celebrate the fall of the Third Reich.
