Lögnernas symmetri: politikersex med minderåriga, Schakalen och Palmemordet

Nyligen sände teveprogrammet Kobra en special om överklassterroristen Illich Ramirez Sanches, ”Schakalen” som han brukar kallas. På telefonintervju fick Schakalen tillfälle att dementera ett gammalt rykte om att han hade planerat ett dåd i Sverige på 1970-talet. Det hela visade sig handla om en avledande lögn som Hans Holmér och Ebbe Carlsson på dåvarande justitieminister Lennart Geijers uppdrag hade kokat ihop för att ursäkta varför det fanns en för riksdagen hemlig underrättelsetjänst, IB som på Palmeregeringens uppdrag spanade efter kommunister på Sahlgrenska sjukhuset. Även om det var smart att förklara att det var SÄPO som spanade tyckte Geijer att dokumentet om Schakalen som Holmer och Carlsson fantiserat ihop var väl magstarkt och det hamnade i SÄPO:s kassaskåp.

                      Några år senare var det Palme istället som fick rycka in för att rädda Geijer, men återigen var det med hjälp av duon Hans Holmér och Ebbe Carlsson. Peter Bratt hade i DN, efter ett tips från Leif G W Persson, avslöjat att justitieminister Lennart Geijer knullade minderåriga prostituerade på en bordell i Stockholm. Palme, Holmer och Carlsson slog sig därför samman och fabricerade ihop en dementi som menade att Bratt och kommunisterna försökte smutskasta SAP med rena lögner. Statsministerns auktoritet var så stor attt Bratt och DN verkligen trodde de blivit förledda och gick offentligen ut med en ursäkt. Det har dock visat sig att de hade rätt från början. Poliserna som spanade på bordellen av annan inledning upptäckte förfärat att viktiga politiker fanns bland besökarna och skickade rapport till rikspolischefen för att han skulle ta beslut. Rikspolischefen ringde till statsminister Palme som sa åt honom låsa in rapporten i rikspolisens kassaskåp. Så blev det men Leif G W Persson hade hört samtalet, tipsade och därmed var hans lovande karriär inom justitieväsendet slut.

                      När Palme mördas 1986 vad händer då? Jo först utses Hans Holmer som nu blivit länspolismästare att sköta mordutredningen. Efter att ha klantat till det med det fantasifulla stickspåret rörande kurderna avskedas han från uppdraget. Då rycker tidningsmannen Ebbe Carlsson ut, med hemligt stöd från dåvarande socialdemokratiska justitieministern Anna Greta Leijon (som RAF terrorister planerat kidnappa 1976!), att med avlyssningsapparater ta upp privatspaning på kurderna.

                      Symmetrin i detta svenska kammardrama om Olof Palme, justitieministrar, polischefer och kassaskåpsgömda dokument är fullkomligt symmetriskt som ni ser, utom på en enda punkt. Det var därför synd att Kobra inte tänkte på att fråga Schakalen också om han möjligen var inblandad i Palmemordet. Säpo eller polisen har säkert inte gjort det. 

Frederick the Great vs Confucius

Since the Chinese State Administration of Radio Film and Television had just come out with new guidelines against time travel dramas, saying that history should not be treated so “frivolously” I decided to pay a visit to the newly reopened National Museum of China. The museum is located across the huge Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. The square is huge, built to house a million people hailing the communist leaders in the former imperial palace. After the people demonstrated against the Party in 1989 it has been difficult to access the square as freely as before. I have a hard enough time finding my way into the museum, hoping first that the VIP entrance close to the subway exit would be open now not just for military and cadres. But no, I have to walk all the way round, passing makeshift constructions cordoning off the square and the ever present groups of marching men in green uniform, just to find a small handwritten sign saying the tickets are all sold out. Ignoring this I labyrinthine my way to a very inconspicuous entrance. The ticket is just thirty yuan and I am soon standing in the greatest room I have ever experienced. The building is higher then any cathedral, held up by pillars that would have made Mussolini green of envy.  

                      Tired by the flu I head for the nearest escalator and on my way ask two of the numerous young staff, where in this huge history museum I can find the exhibition rooms for pre-modern China. They reply there is no such section. Ok I think, understanding perfectly well that all the young people working here are employed because they do not know anything on history. I decide to find the exhibit myself. Stupid idea! The reason for constructing this new museum was reportedly that the leadership felt Beijing was lacking the cultural patina of other world cities like Paris and New York. A couple of calls to the Met and Louvre and the planners realise they could create the largest museum in the world. After walking up and down I realise however that the world’s greatest museum is close to empty. No wonder the entrance was only thirty yuan! But God is it big museum running around trying to find anything of interest.

                      When I finally had made it to one of the two small rooms on Chinese history I find myself surrounded by wooden Bodhisattvas - god of compassion. Now I was close to fainting of fatigue and fever. I asked one of the ten or so staff where to sit. I had not seen a single chair or sofa anywhere in the building. There is nowhere to sit I was told. But, I do not feel well, I have to rest for a while I protested feebly. At the café he replied, in the basement, you can sit.  This was third floor, so I decided to sit instead on one of the many fire posts in the room. Suddenly all ten staff came running towards me as if I had just ruined the Chinese Mona Lisa. I could not sit there, totally forbidden. I tried to argue that I was ill and just needed five minutes but was chased away. Staggering out of the room I kind of collapsed on the floor. Right away I had four staff on me saying I had to get up. Their stout early forties boss pointed to his head indicating I was crazy. And, of course, in a People’s Republic where political dissidents and discontent people are put in mental hospitals I certainly belong to the madmen. However a young employee, not more then seventeen, rushed to the office and got out a stool for me. A real Guanyin of mercy, I pray he will keep his job despite this serious breach of protocol.

                      After such a parable on contemporary Chinese civility, I decided it was time to check out the Enlightenment exhibition. Two small rooms were filled with paintings on European eighteenth century nobility but very little on the actual enlightenment: Nothing on revolutionary ideas, freedom, democracy, equality, the French Revolution or human rights. The main introductory sign to the exhibition said that the enlightenment put focus on man (I always believed that was the Renaissance). Besides a portrait of Fredric the Great, I found the only other reference really to the enlightenment. It explained the good Frederick practised enlightenment “from above”!

That night someone mysteriously removed (arrested?) the huge statue of Confucius from Tiananmen Square where he had been fronting the museum for four months. 

Bin Laden’s death and the dialectics of the Arabic spring

Just a few days before his murder Osama Bin Laden recorded a message saying he supports the democratic uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Luckily for the Americans they got him before it could be broadcasted. The message would have much complicated the story we are fed with. But hat CNN and other news organisations find this message strange is maybe just as much a symptom of ignorance and stupidity as a conspiracy. Of all the terabytes already written on the Arabic spring I have not yet read one piece of analysis worth the keyboard it was written on.

Nineteenth century analysts would have been much more able to see the dialectics played out in the beginning of our millennium. Bin Laden has been vilified into a monster and in that process robbed of his own history. Was not the rationale behind his turn against the US that he wanted to topple the Saudi dictatorship and understood, correctly, that he first had to chase the Americans away from the Middle East? His terror attack on the Twin Towers had the same effect as the terror attack in Sarajevo 1914, starting a World War. The American drive for, and sudden interest in, democratic change in the Middle East by ways of invading Iraq and Afghanistan was the reaction, or antithesis as Hegel would have put it. The Arab spring, the popular movement for getting rid of Arabic dictators propped up by America and Europe is then the obvious synthesis of the conflict between bin Laden and the USA. Therefore his death came, so to say, after the event. Before he was shot Bin Laden had already played out his role historically, and partly achieved his original goal.