Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Get Ready for the Next One

“Who Killed Olaf Palme?” (Guardian Podcast 2020) ; “Who Killed Malcolm X?” (Netflix documentary 2020)

Assassination is the favorite tactic of security states, entitled business owners and fascists.  Our own government ‘security’ forces have killed a number of high-profile leftist leaders outside the U.S. and also inside the U.S.  Presently across the world most of the targets are left-wing ‘trouble-makers’ - journalists, earth and animal protectors and leftist politicians.  These two documentaries discuss two significant assassinations against left-wing figures carried out in Stockholm, Sweden and New York, U.S.A. on 2/28/1986 and 2/21/1965.

Olof Palme
Olof Palme was the elected leader of Sweden from the Social-Democratic Party. (Note to Paul Krugman: the European version of a ‘democratic socialist’).  He was from the left of the Social-Democratic Party and supported non-alignment, visited Cuba, was tough on the USSR, opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam and opposed apartheid in South Africa.  This podcast discusses the long hunt for the real killer of Palme after the original suspect was acquitted.  The podcast interviewer is clueless about why anyone would still care about the assassination.  She interviews mystery writer and journalist Jan Stocklassa who became obsessed with solving the murder.  Palme was gunned down on the busiest street in Stockholm while returning from a movie with his wife.  The original police investigation did not secure the scene, missing several clues.  It idiotically focused on the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) as the source of the trigger-man, though Palme himself was not an enemy of the PKK.  Subsequent investigations went nowhere.

Through an offhand comment by a person he was interviewing, Stocklassa discovered that Steig Larsson, the left-wing Trotskyist author of the “Millennium” trilogy (“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” etc.) had been investigating the killing for many years until his death.   Stocklassa is eventually led to a storage locker outside Stockholm by the editor of Expo which contained 20 boxes of material Larsson had accumulated on the Palme assassination. 

After scanning, OCR’ing and reviewing the material Stocklassa became convinced that Larsson’s theory on who killed Olof Palme was correct.  It involves a fascist trigger-man in Sweden, a go-between Swedish businessman who lived overseas and the South African “State Security Bureau” (BOSS) who wanted to shut up Palme regarding apartheid.  Stocklassa found a phone that had been left at the scene and claims the Stockholm police are updating their investigation.  


Malcolm X
Malcolm X was the leader of a breakaway faction of the black Muslim Nation of Islam (NOI).  In the last year of his life he became a standard Muslim and a Pan-African socialist. At the time of his death many wanted him dead, beginning with the NYC police, the FBI, the U.S. government and the leadership of the NOI.  This 6-part Netflix series tracks the investigation by another civilian, Abdur-Rahmann Muhammad, a practicing Muslim who remained astonished that the police had not solved this murder either. 

Audubon Ballroom after the Assassination
Abdur-Rahmann’s investigation involved FOI requests to the FBI, reviews of NYPD files, discussions with people involved in the NOI and the Nation’s military wing, the Fruit of Islam (FOI), and videos.  The documentary also has interviews with many principals, including Tony Bouza, head of the police ‘red squad’ in Manhattan (BOSSI).  Abdur-Rahmann affirms prior investigations that two of the three people convicted of the assassination were innocent.  The one guilty one, Talmadge Hayer/Hagan, was injured by one of Malcolm’s  bodyguards and caught. The two innocent men convicted on fuzzy ‘witness’ testimony were sent to prison for 20+ years.  It is not clear from the documentary who the ‘witnesses’ who implicated them were, as 9 FBI informants were in the audience at the Audubon Ballroom. Abdur-Rahmann's investigation shows there were a total of 5 shooters - 4 getting away.  Those 4 were known to the FBI but never revealed to the NY prosecutor, a pompous ass who thought he did a great job in his investigation.  The murder scene was not secured.  Another shoddy police investigation, which is the mark of political assassinations world-wide. 

The police BOSSI squad surveilled Malcolm for years, spending money on constant tails, recording and photos.  On Bouza’s orders no protection was offered to Malcolm after the fire-bombing of his house in Queens a week before the assassination.  Nor were police in evidence at the Audubon except in a remote location in the building.  Bouza said protection would have been ‘expensive’ so they left Malcolm unguarded.  No one looks at how expensive the surveillance was!  Additionally a key bodyguard, Gene Roberts, was a BOSSI police agent.  Bouza calls Malcolm a ‘thug’ in the documentary.  J. Edgar Hoover said to “do something about Malcolm X.” Elijah Muhammad’s son said in NYC that we need to “cut out his tongue and send it to my father.’  They all wanted Malcolm X dead.

The jailed shooter Hayer named his 4 other accomplices in an Affidavit and said the other jailed ones were innocent.  The real accomplices all came from Newark, New Jersey NOI Mosque #25.  Abdur-Rahmann identifies the individual who killed Malcolm with a shotgun as William Bradley, who then changed his name to Al-Mustaffa Shabazz.  There is film of Bradley outside the Audubon after the assassination. Abdur-Rahmann talks with many former members of Mosque #25, with Corey Booker, with NJ Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver and they all play dumb about Shabazz, even though it seems common knowledge in the Newark Muslim community that he was the killer.

In Manning Marable’s book on Malcolm X, there was information that the FBI had an agent or informant or conduit inside Mosque #25.  This is not discussed in the documentary.  It is clear the FBI was protecting the 4 other shooters.  They had sent poison letters to the NOI before the split, trying to increase hostility between Malcolm and ‘the Prophet.’  The FBI always uses ‘fronts’ – just like the South African State Security Services – to do the actual killings.

There is no statute of limitations on murder, but don’t hold your breath for the NY police or prosecutors to reopen the investigation.  

P.S. - A recent comment by SWP comrade Roland Sheppard, who was in the Audubon when Malcolm was shot, reveals that he saw the shotgun shooter Bradley kill Malcolm.  When he was called for questioning to the police station, Sheppard also saw him in the bathroom there.  The man then went into an office in the police station that was presumably his.  

P.P.S.  - A written memory by Roland, who was at the Ballroom on the day of the assassination:  https://rolandsheppard.com/?page_id=891&fbclid=IwAR3beafVnSt6zj4Dm9Sj44adKC6Ob8nXP1a7YFIYzNUr_3-s6Oah6Ld0abQ

Other prior reviews on this topic, use blog search box upper left:  “Malcolm X – A Life of Reinvention,” “American Assassination - The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone,” “Orders to Kill” and “The Plot to Kill King,” (both by Pepper) “They Killed Our President,” (Ventura) “The Devil’s Chessboard,” (Talbot) “On the Trail of the Assassins,” (Garrison).

Red Frog
February 25, 2020

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