Olof Palme – murdered today 29 years ago • Wikipedia
A politician who willed a better society, to whom politics was a calling – working for justice, international law, nuclear disarmament, against big countries bullying small countries, a person who made Sweden stand ut. Then.
And it was the Palme Commission on Common Security that broke the ice towards the end of the Cold War with the idea that we can only be sure together with the other side, not against the other side. That was 1982. As relevant today as then – think Ukraine!
I met him twice – the first time to criticise him for Swedish arms exports. The second for an hour-long lunch in which he constantly asked me questions about peace, nonviolence, peace research and alternative defence – and I did not get a chance to ask him a single of all the questions I had prepared…
A rare combination of intellectualism and curiosity, vision and passion, self-confidence and humility – so sadly missed in today’s political world.
Jan,
Could you convey your thoughts and feelings regarding what people living now can learn from the 59-year life of Olof Palme? This is a very personal question, but it seems there is never a time on this Earth where sharing personal views offers anything but positive results. Was Mr. Palme strongly influenced by the life lived by Dag Hammarskjold, in your view. Were these two men the victims of the same forces, or is that a figment of one’s imagination. Certainly every man, woman and child will eventually face and pass through death, yet there are profound lessons to be learned from those who lived and died fully aware of the inevitable.
Thanks,
Jerry