Brian Crozier, Cold War hero

Founder of the Institute for the Study of Conflict, London, and during the Thatcher-Reagan years the chief of “the 61”, the then ultra-secret Anglo-American intelligence service, has written The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (830 pages, published by Prima, Rocklin, California). The book, praised by prominent Cold War doers, such as Lady Thatcher, Dr Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley Jr and Edwin J. Feulner, is partly based on top secret Soviet documents that the Hoover Institution has managed to get from Russia. Mr Bertil Wedin, Contra’s Middle Eastern correspondent, has met the author for an interview and has reviewed the book and Mr Crozier’s eventful career. The now 82 year old and newly re-married Mr Crozier warns of the “Red Phoenix”, i.e. effective attempts, commonly unnoticed, to bring Communism back to power. Anti-Communists are urged to remain alert.

The crook and humbug Arafat

One of the most important differences between the Israelis and Palestinians in the present conflict is that while you have a spectrum of views on the Israeli side, there are no distinctions on the Palestinian side. Also so-called moderate Palestinians – among them Mr Yassir Arafat – are extremists.

The myth of the new economy

The economy in Sweden has improved rapidly for the past seven years. Many want to explain the progress with the transformation within information technology. Progress within IT is not insignificant. But there is an explanation that is far more important: freeing of capital that previously has been held idle outside the control of “greedy capitalists”. A lot of capital has been held within mutual insurance companies, savings and loans association, consumer cooperatives, agricultural cooperatives and government owned enterprises. There has been a rapid change with demutualization, divestments of coop held manufacturers (one of the most successful an electric truck manufacturer that was owned by the Swedish Cooperative Society, floated on the Stockholm stock exchange in the mid-1990s and recently acquired after a 1 billion dollar bid from Japanese car manufacturer Toyota…), public offerings of government owned companies lika steel manufacturer SSAB, forest company Assi and telecom company Telia. These important deals now mean that there is someone controlling the equity that previously was “orphaned”, demanding efficiency and return on invetsments.

The scandal with the Baltic Billion

No one is entitled to get into the government purse in order to be able to distribute money according to his private wish. Not even the Prime Minister. But that is exactly what Prime Minister Göran Persson did in 1996. Mr Persson foresaw a significant loss for the Social Democratic Party in the 1998 election and he needed replacement of government funding that would be lost with lost seats in the Riksdag (Parliament). Mr Persson was permitted to personally allocate 1 billion kronor in government support to various environmental projects on the Eastern and Southern shores of the Baltic Sea. No ordinary control of money distributed, no auditing and now a large number of minor scandals in various projects. And only 850 million of the 1,000 million allocated have been properly listed as government expenses

Raoul Wallenberg – the common guilt of Sweden

Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of 100,000 jews in Budapest in 1944 disappeared in the Gulag. The last traces being in a Moscow prison in 1947. Sweden did not even make proper efforts to get this hero released. Mr Wallenberg is by now an honorary citizen of both the United States (the second so honored only to Winston Churchill) and Israel. His destiny is the common guilt of all Swedes.

The control of public libraries

Public libraries improve the possibilities of citizens to acquire information. But there are certain limitations, many caused by “political correctness”. Of course, a library in a medium-sized town is not able to buy everything that is published. Thus buying policies are crucial to the possibilities of the citizens to read freely. Many public libraries also have introduced a policy that they are refusing to borrow books from other libraries, if they have decided not to buy the books themselves, Mr Karl-Göran Bottwyk, frequent visitor of the public library in Skellefteå, in the far north of Sweden, reports on his problems to read books, newspapers and magazines that are not politically correct according to the head of the library, an active Communist!

Those who destoyed Sweden: Gunnar Myrdal – socialist and racist theorist

Gunnar Myrdal (1892-1987) was, like his wife Alva, one of the architects behind the social and economic planning that made Sweden a model for “progressives” all around the world. But the vision of the Myrdal couple did not only include economic planning, but also racial planning, similar to Nazi policies in Germany. Tens of thousand mentally weak Swedes were either sterilized or lobotomized as a result of the Myrdal plans.