Editor's Note: LOFT The Nordic BOOKazine Volume #8

When the year’s end approaches, I feel compelled to review the passing year and contemplate my wishes for the next year. For 2009, as usual, I wish for love, peace and understanding, being the true ’68 student I once was. But peace doesn’t seem any closer today and even if I found love personally, so many of my youthful dreams remain unfulfilled. I was sure that my generation would leave the world in better shape than the one handed to us by our parents.

   It is 40 years since we marched on the streets, occupied universities, struggling for freedom from wars and authoritarian societies. Have we succeeded in making the world a better place? I am not so sure, but some of us and many younger than us are still fighting the good fight for equality, for a spirit of democracy, and to protect nature from a cannibalistic human footprint. Sometimes, I begin to daydream … how things could be if … what if …

   As the year comes to a close, like Dickens’ Scrooge I want to do some good before it’s too late … and in true Disney Uncle Scrooge spirit I munificently dispense below what doesn’t cost—advice and freebies, with a generous dose of humor.

To Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister, I recommend writing daily, one hundred times, ‘I shall not suggest killing any journalist who disagrees with me’. For quicker results, he should involve his buddy, President Dmitry Medvedev, in this practice. Also recommended is regular attendance at ‘Anger Aggression Control Anonymous’ meetings. Viewing inspirational photos of journalists, such as the late Yelena Tregubova, Anna Politkovskaya, Adlan Khasanov, Dmitry Kholodov, Valery Ivanov and Aleksei Sidorov might help. The drill should continue until measurable changes appear. When it ends, a 12-month internship with the Committee to Protect Journalists is urged.

To my resilient compatriot, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, I gift two tools which might enhance his cheerful political approach that has lightened crisis meetings of heads of state with such topics as ‘football’ and ‘women’. First, a handy pocket-sized issue of Playboy that fits into his double-breasted suit, with naked women from all over the world as incontrovertible evidence of his international open-mindedness. Second, a set of autographed photos of the players in AC Milan, the football team he owns, to distribute at the prime ministers’ meetings, providing irrefutable proof that he has the right to be called the one and only Football Prime Minister.

To Barack Obama, I offer 30,000 airplane tickets for a cadre of doctors, nurses, teachers and technicians to work among the civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan. On the cover of each ticket, a photo of the smiling first family, autographed: “The battle for democracy is fought better in a civil society than on the battleground.” This group of highly-skilled civilian personnel will first be integrated into then rapidly substitute 90% of the fighting troops. Although extremely well compensated financially, these professionals will cost an infinitesimal fraction of the present military cost, but will return the investment tenfold.

Modern-day Somali pirates are invited to the London School of Economics to lead a two-day workshop for small business entrepreneurs ‘Don’t Let Opportunity Pass You By’. A unique hands-on experience, in which the Somali experts will provide know-how and practical tips on how to seize big loads with small means. Sample weapons, food and drinks will be complimentary. Participants wishing to buy the exhibited weapons will receive a 25% discount and, as per the English Ministry of Defense, because of their status as ‘teaching aids’ the weapons will be exempt from sales tax.

Quentin Tarantino is directing a new Hollywood action movie ‘The Car on the Race to Nowhere’ staged in the USA and Sweden. This 105-minute thriller of pure high tempo entertainment, filled with blood and gore as well as surprise bombshells in a style typical of the American director, is due to be released February 2009.

   At Sony Pictures Studio on 10202 W. Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, I am offered a sneak preview of selected scenes.

Scene 1 — ‘The ransom is two million jobless workers’. Setting: US Senate hearing, Washington DC. Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Bob Nardelli, the three chiefs of GM, Ford and Chrysler, plead for money. The senators, since they are being televised, want to look tough, the beggars, humble. Close-up shots of sweaty brows, twitching eyes and nervous hands.

Scene 2 — ‘We invented the car for the masses!’ Setting: US Senate hearing. A cartoon depicting the American dream substitutes the meaningless babbling between the senators and the CEOs — big pick-ups, heavy SUVs, oversized cars morph into dinosaurs, doomed to extinction, furiously battling each other.

Scene 3 — ‘The old leadership is the real survivor’. Setting: A gory battleground, covered with workers’ corpses and bloody body parts, scattered among oily car parts and heaps of unsold vehicles. The automaker leaders, those who led them into defeat, are traveling down the same dead-end road once again, producing ever more ‘dinosaur’ cars, in blithe denial of their errors. Any promise of salvation for the workers is once again put on hold.

Scene 4 — ‘On the other side of the ocean’. Setting: A tornado is building up over two of Sweden’s symbols of pride, Saab and Volvo. Bought up by euphoric GM and Ford in the late 1990s, they are now up for sale again. Saab continues to lose money and its innovative identity. Volvo relies on an obsolete model of car safety associated with weight. Both brands, like their US mother companies, produce cars that are too heavy, consume too much fuel, pollute and have a non-recyclable 15 % per car. Heavy rains and blustery winds heralding the approaching storm shower down on them.

Scene 5 — ‘Skype video conversation between two assembly line workers’. Setting: A woman in Sweden and a man in the USA chatting via two laptops.

   Marianne, of Saab from Trollhättan: “John, let me tell you a story that I read on the Internet … A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (GM) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The depressed Americans, reeling from their crushing defeat, appoint an investigative team made up of senior management. Their conclusion — the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the Americans had 2 people rowing and 7 people steering. A deeper study was commissioned. They hire a consulting company for a second opinion, paying them a huge fee. Their conclusion — too many people were steering the boat, not enough rowing it. The team’s management structure was reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. The result — A 'Rowing Team Quality First Program' was implemented with meetings, dinners and free pens as well as incentives for the 2 rowers to work harder—new paddles, canoes, extra vacation days for practice and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition', some of the resultant savings channeled into morale-boosting programs and teamwork posters. The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the Americans laid off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled capital investment for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses. The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race, having no paddles, … so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.”

   John, of GM in Detroit: [Gloomily] “Uhm… not funny. Sounds like what’s happening to us. In the next year we will be without work. What will you do?”

   Marianne, of Saab in Trollhättan: “I don’t know.”

Pio Barone Lumaga,

Ape-in-Chief, Stockholm