White book on counterespionage does not give the full truth
by Tommy Hansson
Of Swedish political scandals during the 20th century, the scandal on the counter-espionage organization IB is the one that got the most coverage in the press and in books. Marxist journalists Jan Guillou and Peter Bratt revealed in May 1973 in the leftist journal FiB/Kulturfront that Sweden had an unknown military intelligence organization called IB. The IB was heavily marked by Social Democratic influence. The three men behind the disclosure (the two journalists and the sacked former IB agent Håkan Isacsson) were sentenced to one year each in prison, guilty of espionage. After keeping quiet for close to 30 years, the governing Social Democratic Party, finally decided to speak out. Former party activist Enn Kokk (husband of one of the leading ladies in the Party, Speaker Birgitta Dahl) tries to give the full picture in a “White Book” on the secret network of the military in the labour movement (or maybe the other way around?) He is not fully succesful, but at least gives some additional pieces of information.
Eight moslems out of ten born abroad
by Allan C. Brownfeld
Immediately after the September 11 attacks President Bush and other political leaders in the United States spoke out for ethnic and religious tolerance. They asked the people not to mix up moslem Americans with those responsible for the attacks. But only two out of ten American moslems are born in the United States.
The Heroes of the Cold War: William F. Buckley
by Tommy Hansson
William F. Buckley has justly been described as a renaissance encyclopaedist. And he is an offspring of Swedish king Oscar II (from one of the King’s extramarital adventures). What we look at here is the publisher Buckley, but he is also known, among other things, as a sailor having crossed the Atlantic and a music theoretician. Buckley’s main achievement was the creation of the National Review in New York in 1955, the starting point of the rebirth of the conservative ideology in the United States, which in due time turned into the Reagan presidency and consequently the Western victory in the Cold War.
The fighting liberal Melker Johnsson
by Tommy Hansson
The author and political philosopher Melker Johnsson left his socialist beliefs and turned into a classic liberal (in the European meaning of the word, thus rather a conservative for a US audience). As opposed to Tage Lindbom, which Contra wrote about in the issue # 6 2001, Johnsson was not conservative in his intellectual analysis, rather a classic liberal. He saw Communism as the worst disaster in the 20th century.
Sun or man behind the increased temperature on earth?
by C G Holm
In the “Kyoto protocol” most nations in the world undertake to decrease carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat the greenhouse effect. This in order to cope with the problem that entire countries could be drowned if the polar ice caps melt down, due to an increase in the average temperature with a couple of degrees (Celsius). The world is expected to invest hundreds of billion dollars to reduce emissions of a gas that is a natural component of the atmosphere and is produced by man himself in the process of breathing.