In search of Islamic Petrarch

- "If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.  Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her."

Deuteronomy 22:28-29



This passage from Torah should be followed by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. It's accepted in Judaism as their central holy book, in Islam as a direct message from God and in Christianity as one of the five books of Moses that form the Old Testament. So by all accounts all three should accept these words as a literal will of god and should act accordingly.

Yet the only part of the world where this still happens is in places where sheria law is practised. In Bangalore a Muslim employee raped a 12-year-old daughter of his Muslim employer. He was arrested and sent to prison, but some influential elders of a local masjid committee have commanded the employer to marry his daughter to the rapists so that the rapist will be out of jail. In Morocco a 16 year old rape victim Amina Filali swallowed rat poison and died in protest after a judge ordered her to marry her rapist.

What's funny though, is that Moroccans actually protested over such harsh usage of their penal code and demanded change. It's quite common in the Middle East, even in deeply Islamic societies to see outrage, from a significant percentage of society, after sheria law has been executed word for word. Are these the first sun-rays of enlightenment over the bronze age mentality? Is the middle east now where the western society was after Salem Witch Trials? What is it exactly that makes jews and christians disregard the abhorrent teachings of their holy books and only cherry pick the universal good-samaritan verses? What is it that keeps Islam stuck in the same doldrums of bronze age mythology bringing misery to a few thousand infidels but most importantly countless of millions of believing Muslims?

I have no clear answers. But it's my personal opinion that Muslim faith in general, as broad and inter-cultural as it has become, needs it's own age of enlightenment. A movement as powerful and progressive as European humanism and as rational and determined as the French revolution. Without these, Europe as well as all the Jews and Christians living in it would be a much different place today. It's easy to forget that witchcraft was an offence punishable by death in Germany just two and half centuries ago.

I don't think steady evolution will bring rational thought to Islam. Christianity stagnated trapped in its fundamentalist ideas for hundreds and hundreds of years between the fall of the Roman Empire and  Dark Ages, before Petrarch, inspired by wisemen of the Greko-Roman world lit a spark of knowledge and rationality that explosively propelled the western civilization towards the renaissance and beyond. I reckon Islam still awaits its Petrarch. It might not be a person at all. It might just be a set of ideas, that are so powerful and profound that they'll transcend the muslim world and break down bronze age beliefs into something as harmless as Christianity, Judaism or astrology is today. It will be something revolutionary and will sweep the entirety of the Islamic world. I predict the messiah of Islamic humanism has already been born. In fact I predict he was one of the people protesting during the Arab Spring uprisings. Even though this time his words were drowned out by religious and military opportunists, I believe it is just the beginning. His time will come.

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF SLOVENIA – A JOURNEY FROM A PROMISING EU UPSTART TO A NATION OF AMERICAN-FLAG BURNING EXTREMISTS

I remember that summer of 1999 when our country had a special privilege of hosting The President of the United States. What an honour for a tiny nation of two millions, which was still overwhelmingly pro-European and more importantly pro-western during that period.  As President Clinton greeted an awe inspired American flag waving crowd, reactions were telling. People cheered and you could hear thirty-something women screaming: “Billy!”, as if he came to personally liberate them from decades worth of oppression. I am sure these same women would deny it today.

What a difference a decade makes. I was not at all shocked the other day, while reading an article in the Time which placed Slovenia among 9 nations which hate America the most - joining such esteemed company as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. I was not shocked because I have become accustomed to it for the last several years. One American immigrant who lives in Slovenia commented on his blog how listening to Slovenes discussing foreign politics is like witnessing a lecture in an extremist Islamic madrasa.

First of all let me stipulate that this “hate” has nothing to do with USA per se. It goes without saying that Americans did a lot of geopolitically naïve and uncalled for things in subsequent years from that faithful visit by president Clinton. The costly and unpopular invasion of Iraq and NSA spying scandals come to immediate attention. Yet those things paradoxically have no connection to Slovenia’s “hate” of America. Slovenian hate is actually much broader; we hate everything connected to western values, including but not limited to EU, capitalism, free trade markets, foreign ownership, NATO…. Yes it does read like a political manifesto of Hamas.

What happened one might ask? How on earth did this liberal, democratic nation on the sunny side of the Alps, which has always been a role model of a successful emerging free trade economy turn into a country where words “liberal” and “capitalism” spark same reactions as “communism” would in the USA during McCarthy times. Moreover how did this remarkable metamorphosis of worldview happen in just a few short years?

It is actually quite a simple series of events which somewhat predictively culminated in the advent of the financial crisis of 2007, with seeds for our current mindset planted back in 1991 – or in 1941 as some would argue.

Our emergence from being one of the Federal Communist Republics of Yugoslavia to an independent nation happened smoothly – one might say almost too smoothly. So smooth in fact that the communist party never really left, but instead morphed into a new leftist political option, which began to dominate the political, economic and social sphere of Slovene public life for the next decade and a half. Unlike Czechs or Poles we never had our own Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa – a genuine liberal with free-trade world-views who would not be marred by communist past. Instead what we got was Milan Kučan, a prominent communist during the times of socialist Yugoslavian Federation,  representative for the Slovene Communists in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia's Central Committee in Belgrade became the  President of the Republic – albeit with much less constitutional power than a US president. Moreover the political arena was dominated by the Liberal Party of Slovenia (LDS) lead by what seemed to be at one point PM-for-life – Janez Drnovšek, one of the last Presidents of the Presidency of socialist Yugoslavia (1989–1990). Kučan especially was instrumental in gathering all the leverages of economic influence around him during that time – from former political dignitaries, which kept their influence in the newly formed country to powerful CEOs of former state-owned companies, which were privatized in shady managerial buy-outs. As such he positioned himself as an incognito leader of the country – a role he never quite let go to this day, since he is still a hugely influential figure in Slovene politics, despite being officially retired. In the meantime Drnovšek who was more pragmatic of the two lead several uneasy coalitions while always remaining in firm control of the country all in accordance with powers of political continuity that never really changed from the communist era. As such, even though Slovenia was a success story on the surface, the underpinnings were rotten to the core, marred by chronic nepotism in public administration, systemic corruption and government owned monopolies in telecommunications, postal services and banking which never showed any will to be privatized, since they were a fruitful feeding ground for the political elite.  All this did not seem to matter for quite a long time for as long as there was plenty of cheap money around to spend. The illusion of a progressive free-trade friendly European country was seemingly accentuated by our acceptance into the EU, NATO and eventually the European monetary union.

As mentioned at the beginning Slovenia never had its proper transition from totalitarianism to  political pluralism.  Slovene communist tradition was a homegrown affair – unlike the one in other former communist states of the EU, where communism was maintained “peacefully” with Russian tanks. At first it informally followed Stalin’s Bolshevik revolution, but later took a more independent approach. Our red ideology was concocted and executed by a group of opportunists, which sensed the right time to join the winning side and consequently overthrow the Serbian monarch that reigned here before the world war. These opportunists were of Serbian, Croatian, but also Slovene ethnicities – in fact Tito was of mixed Slovene and Croatian origins.  As such we never associated communism with Soviet oppression and since the government propaganda was constantly in full swing, as it is the case in most totalitarian regimes, we were convinced there is no better or more abundant place on earth than Yugoslavia – even in the 1970s when we were restricted from driving due to oil shortages or in the 1980s when supplies of basic goods began to run out and country was drowning in Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation.

We temporarily turned away from it in the beginning of the 1990s, after our brief war for independence, as we started to connect it with Serbian nationalism. The thing that re-spawned the seed leading us down this infamous path of anti-western sentiment once more was a huge resistance to privatization in the early 2000. All of a sudden connected elites which held all control of our economy had to compete with foreign capital which threatened to buy state-owned companies. This was unacceptable and represented the first tipping point where media started pushing the agenda that everything foreign is bad and harmful for our national interest. As 2008 rolled in and first real life effects of the financial crisis started to be seen, they went into overdrive, 2007 as skeletons finally started falling out of the closet. The stage was set for us to join our middle eastern brothers and sisters in our eternal plight against the western devils.

Tycoonization which ran rampant during joint leadership of Kučan and Drnovšek was finally becoming a problem as tycoons  - which had political connections stemming right back to times of former Yugoslavia - ran out of money while trying to buy out once state-owned companies with loans  secured by capital of the companies which they were buying out. Consequently state-owned banks – long fortresses of elitist groups that got thousands of no-questions-asked bogus loans – suddenly found themselves in dire straits as toxic loans pilled up until taxpayers had to bail them out several times. The consequent predominately leftist governments which all belonged to the same political continuity of former Yugoslavia found answers in tax raises and increased public spending, while throwing superficially appealing candy at the tax payers. The old socialist-inspired ideals of free health care – even if it was completely inadequate and not up to modern standards. Free education – even if most universities are on levels of Somalia or Zimbabwe. No significant salary cuts for our needlessly huge machine of public administration workers, inherited from old Yugoslavia, while the private sector had to make enormous cutbacks in spending just to remain competitive and survive.

Something had to give and as usual in such cases it all came tumbling down on the taxpayer. Quality of life fell drastically since 2007 and with every real wage decrease came more pressure on leading structures that had a cozy status quo in all spheres of political, economic and social engagement since 1991. As unease grew the media, which has been traditionally controlled by leftist political structures since the end of 2^nd world war went into action, while looking for a convenient scape goat for the situation we found ourselves in. We found one in no time!

All of a sudden newspaper columns, television shows and opinion pieces throughout the country started spewing out articles filled with anti-western propaganda, either directed at EU, USA or capitalism in general. All of a sudden America went from fighting an impossible battle with Middle Eastern Islamic extremists to an evil empire slaughtering defenseless women and children all for the sake of oil. EU instead of our natural historic home became a foreign dungeon master which tries to take away our financial independence and sovereignty – a lot of mainstream political parties built their programs on such ideas. Liberal capital ideals of free trade and limited government intervention became scorned upon and labeled as “neo-liberal”, which in context of our country meant something that is equivalent to exploitative capitalism of the late 19^th century, before the advent of unions and workers rights. Yugo-nostalgia was rampant throughout the country, feeding on that old familiar trick our brain does, when it tends to forget all the bad things about the past and keep the pleasant ones. The same trick that made those summer stays at grandmas place so magical for all of us. The more unhappy people got the more they started concocting absurd alternate realities where Yugoslavia was some Shangri-La when everybody had jobs, went on vacation and spent lots of time with their families, rather than remembering it for what it really was – a ruthless bound-to-fail authoritarian state with unsustainable planned economy, where you had to go to Austria if you wanted “luxurious” goods like coffee or chocolate.

This Yugo-nostalgic feeling was well exploited by parties in power since they were all successors of the communist regime. They started playing on people’s nationalist strings, promoting protectionism and government intervention to protect us from being “owned” by foreign masters as we have been so many times in the past.  The current government coalition lead by a party of Kučan’s loyalists never shied away from blatant nationalism, euroskepticism, overwhelming tendency towards protectionism and accentuating connections to its communist origins. No one considered it at all bizarre when the current Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek proudly sang Bandiera Rossa (Italian for Red Flag) the famous communist propaganda song during an official event.

It culminated in absolute absurd levels very recently, where our publically funded national broadcaster alongside other mainstream media took an extremely biased view when it came to reporting on the Ukrainian crisis, with correspondents from Moscow reporting about the “western conspiracy in Maidan” trying to topple a legally elected government. All this while trying zealously to promote the pipe dream of modern socialism, though headline interviews with Venezuelan dignitaries, explaining to Slovene people in great detail how Chavez lead them out of poverty and US subservience. Or extended guest spots with prominent members of extreme European left like the Siriza member Aleksis Tsipras, a social demagog who is not shy of comparing Germany and IMF with the 3^rd Reich.

Of course people followed suit and turned it up a notch as only commoners can. It is pretty much “common knowledge” on the street of an average Slovene city these days that 9/11 was an inside job, that Americans, NATO (or both, depending on the conspiracy theory in question) are polluting our skies with chemtrails, that the world and all its intricate international goings-on are somehow connected to some American-Zionist conspiracy of choice, most probably connected to Illuminati or Bilderbergs or both. In short the whole country together with the media and government coalition turned into a crowd of Occupy-Wallstreet anarchic youth.

Finding external enemies we can demonize and blame for all our problems has always been our national forte. In modern times USA, EU, IMF, and other bourgeois enemies of our happy socialist brotherhood are a convenient target once more. The former communist regime was also a renowned seeker of external enemies, as makeshift distractions against domestic problems. In his long Fidel Castro inspired speeches Josip Broz Tito our local "dear leader" at the time - made references to people, who were out to "destroy our brotherhood and unity from the outside". He said all those things while never being shy of taking money from people he accused of such transgressions. Being true to its heritage, our current government despite its skepticism of the west has no trouble at all lending money from it, to temporarily patch up a ballooning public debt.

So here we are. A europskeptic american-hating nation in the heart of Europe, with crippling financial problems and a bunch of people who think the Jews, Americans and European landlords (not necessarily in that order) are all out to get them. All this happened to us in just a span of short few years. It was a scary transformation to witness. It is amazing just how quickly one can lead people astray. Public opinion is generated by the media – that is a very painful lesson Joseph Goebbels contributed to the history books. When dealing with a playground of two million closely connected people, an ethos of communist continuation, a failed transition and almost complete dominance of state-controlled media it is that much easier to do. Putin had to work way harder and be much more oppressive in his native Russia to achieve a similar effect. Slovenia as a failed state should be a lesson and a warning to the rest of the world. Yes it is that easy to drive people towards an absurd outlook on life. 

A while back first potential hints arose in scientific circles that our universe is not a 4 dimensional space-time manifold but rather a hologram on a 2 dimensional surface, like an infinite sheet of paper. This would mean our most fundamental concepts like space and time would be revealed as nothing more than an illusion. Astonishing. 

However it seems like mainstream media as well as the public have nothing to say about it. No philosophical discussions, no attempts at rethinking our place in the world. No one really cares. If a spaceship landed at Champs-Élysées with Gautama Siddharta, Jesus and Mohamed coming out proclaiming they're ancient aliens from the Orion constellation which came to revisit Earth, this wouldn't be half as astounding as the Hologram theory. I can't overstate enough how profound this insight into the potential nature of our reality is. Despite that most people would still rather read about Dennis Rodman visiting Kim Jong Un.

MY ANCESTORS ....

Human beings perfected the art of exploiting various special statuses they hold in society. Retired people will be heard bitching how "this generation has no manners" and how no one takes care of their needs these days, despite them giving their best years to provide for current generations, homosexuals will always feel persecuted, and would probably invent homophobia, if it didn't exist. Religious people are the champions of this art, one might even say they came up with it. A sure way to see an adult turn into a petulant child is by defaming their religious iconography. 

All of these pale in comparison to another expertise of social status exploitation that people masterfully incorporate into their every day life;  exploiting perceived historic injustices that got bestowed upon "their people" in the past. Black people will rave about their ancestors being slaves.  I call that the Spike Lee modus operandi. They will stipulate that these horrible things which were done to them in the past are for certain a reason enough for being especially socially sensitive towards their heirs in the present. Native Americans will tell you all about their people being murdered by colonizers through various ingenious methods accompanying the run-of-the-mil slaughter, such as chickenpox infested blankets. It goes without saying that even their present day offspring deserves to be pitied and compensated over their ancestors losing ancient lands of their people. Koreans will never forgive the Japanese for 2nd World-war atrocities  as Korean girls were forced to prostitute themselves to the Japanese soldiers. As such decdentants of these exploited sex workers should obviously get some kind of compensation for unimaginable suffering of their grandmothers. Modern day Jewish people will more than likely mention Holocaust at some point while you're having coffee with them. This plight affected their community so deeply that surely, even people who were born three generations after the Holocaust are still reeling from the consequences. 

Don't get me wrong, I would never deny terrible things that were done in the past. People are just evolutionary driven animals, who steal, cheat, connive and murder for their own self interest and interest of their local family, tribe, ethnic group or national state. There is no honour among apex predators. We have since improved as a species in general, mostly thanks to the humanism and renaissance movements in Europe as well as civil liberties that first got postulated during the French Revolution, liberties which today seem self evident, but before the great insights of such thinkers as Kant and Rousseau almost sounded contradicting and illogical. These advances will never erase all the horrors of the past, but maybe they will serve as reminders, so such things might never happen again. "Never Again" reads a monument standing where unspeakable horrors of Dachau once happened. 

However, what does all this have to do with modern descendents of people that got wronged in the past? Do they deserve to be treated with beyond-the-reasonable-norm respect and special social considerations just because they belong to a particular ethnic, political or religious group that at one point in history got wronged? I don't believe so. I fail to see a causal connection between an individual living in 2013 and his ancestor that got wronged on account on his race. If anything I see this as modern day people exploiting the plight of their forefathers. What do contemporary black people have to do with ancient slave trade? What do distinguished socialites in TelAviv have to do with people who died painfully of typhoid related causes in Auschwitz? Just about as much as I have to do with ancient long-forgotten indigenous tribes of the Balkans whose genes I probably carry, which probably got massacred by Slavic settlers long centuries ago. Pretty much nothing I would be justified to bitch about in the 21st century.

Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity. But don't ask for unwarranted respect for something you had nothing to do with. It does not concern you personally. You can be proud of your heritage, but don't go pleading for special considerations because of it. You want respect, go out and earn it. You are the only one that can make a purpose in your life. Not your ethnicity nor your culture or religion. Only you. 

RENAULT WORLD TOUR

I had this rather amazing idea to travel around the world with my venerable 97 Renault Mégane. I wrote to Renault about it and I an the middle of an amusing correspondence with them (which might still be going on, if they ever answer me)

This was my original letter to them:

Dear Sir or Madame,

My name is Mitja Iršič. I am writing to you in order to present you with a proposition for cooperation, but first, allow me to reveal a few important details about my love affair with your products.

My dad first bought a good old Renault 4 in the eighties, which served us well for nearly a decade before we sold it off to an elderly couple who still uses it to this day. He bought a second Renault – a used 1997 Mégane Classic – in 2000. I inherited it a few years later and it is still my daily vehicle of choice 13 years later. With 203.000 kilometres behind it – a lot of them in heavy duty stop-and-go traffic – the old girl shows no signs of letting go. The K series 1.6 liter 4-stroke under the hood is purring like a kitten just like it did almost 17 years ago when some lucky Frenchman first turned the key on the production line in Douai. In nearly two decades of service, I only changed parts of the exhaust, the battery, brakes, rear shock absorbers and the timing belt. Below the threshold of even normal wear and tear.

The clutch remains as is. Front shock absorbers, various pumps, seals, electronics, radiator grille; just about every part's manufacturing stamp is dated back to either 1996 or 1997. It never failed to start early in the morning, even in temperatures that would make Antarctica feel like a tourist resort in the Seychelles. It never left me on the side of the road somewhere in Germany, waiting to get picked up by an ADAC truck, with a bunch of smart-ass Germans telling me to buy an Audi. In short, you gentlemen made a fine product all those years ago.

Now that this is out of the way, let me tell you about my proposition. I want to take my Mégane  and drive it around the globe! I would start in my hometown of Slovenske Konjice in Slovenia and travel across Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, People's Republic of China, then hop on a ship to Los Angeles and drive all the way to New York after which I would take another ship to the Atlantic coast of France, driving to either Paris or Douai where the Mégane  was made back in the 90s and where its 3rd generation is still made today. As you can imagine, a trip like this is expensive and I have already contacted several local companies here – some from your own supply chain – who would partially sponsor me, and this is where you come in. I would like you to back me up as my main sponsor. Not only that – I would like to be actively involved in the marketing of your brand in Europe and beyond, even after my trip is done. I am after all endorsing your product, your build quality, workmanship and engineering prowess with my proposed adventure. In these days of plastic planes with exploding lithium ion batteries, freezing computers and failed spacecraft, what resonates more in the mind of the consumer than an Average Joe showing them that a product can last for decades of every day (ab)use? Of course, skeptics might say something in the lines of "but this is an old simplistic car without modern electronic gimmickry that always goes wrong". However, the way I see it – it is precisely because of cars like this that the story of brand reliability gets written. I am a graduated jurist, however I have been working in marketing for years and I therefore possess thorough understanding of the matters concerning brand image and awareness.

 After all, even today's Mercedes buyers often still cite their grandfathers W123 as their inspiration to get a new E class. Not to mention the K series engine which got its introduction in the Mégane  I would pull my stunt in is still used in your line of cars today as you well know (although with many modifications). The same men and women still screw together today's 3rd generation of the car as well as others in the model line-up. The same engineers design and extensively test it. The same corporate structure is responsible for its distribution and awareness across the globe under the same brand. So my Mégane  is after all a testament to your abilities. I want to promote these abilities. What is more trust inducing than the promise of good, solid nuts-and-bolts engineering that a brand can provide? Renault’s current advertising motto is "Quality Made", is it not? Let’s show that this always was and continues to be the case. Let me help you in this endeavour with my small contribution. Sponsor me. It will be more effective than a thousand ads with dancing robots and SUVs jumping over fake crests. It will be something real people can identify with.  Something which would make them purchase a brand new Renault instead of a Peugeot or a Ford because … “… did you see that old Mégane  driving through a dusty old gravel road in Kazakhstan? Now that’s quality.”

In conclusion, please find attached a few pictures of the car itself as well as my resume. I will disclose a detailed plan of my project in case you respond and are interested in my proposition.  I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Mitja Iršič

Renault surprisingly replied! I never expected anything more than a randomly generated message. This is what their girl Vanessa wrote: 

 

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Renault.

Thank you for your proposal regarding the sponsorship of your project, and for inviting Renault to participate in this initiative.
We regret that we are unable to take up your offer. Renault has decided to base its public relations strategy around core business themes : road safety, automobile sports, and environment. Although your project is interesting, our involvement would not be consistent with the PR strategy outlined above.
We appreciate your understanding, and wish you the very best of luck in the organization of this action.

The Renault.com Team
Vanessa Delettre
RENAULT
Corporate Communications

Since they were so nice I've decided to reply them back:

Dear Vanessa,

Thank you very much for your reply to my proposal. I was expecting either nothing at all or some randomly generated thanks-for-your-interest-in-Renault BS. Thus I really appreciate an actual response.

However I would like to point out some parts in your reply with which I have issues with in hope it might improve your PR strategy in the future. On the other hand you can take it as useless layman advice.


You said your "core business themes" are road safety, automobile sports and environment. Fair enough. But I would like to dwell a little further on these themes.


Road safety: Sure it is an important point of interest for any roadcar manufacturer, but at the same time it is not a selling point in this day and age when pretty much ANY car on the road gets 5 stars in the EuroNCAP. It surely is one of those outdated features of advertising, sort of like promoting a car that has electronic injection, is it not?

Automobile sports: Renault surely has a pedigree in the pinnacle of motor-sport ever since the 70s and it should be celebrated. However at the same time, is making it a core business theme for a brand which has always been renowned for making comfortable family cruisers really a sensible thing to do?

Environment: It is a sad fact that pretty much no one cares about the environment outside  of countries where they actually offer some financial stimulus for environmentally conscious vehicles. So targeting customers with environment is the same as targeting them with new laser welding techniques in production. They simply do not care.

I am not saying what you labelled as your "core business themes" are not be advertised at all but at the same time I am convinced your average customer would appreciate reliability above all of them, especially in these times of an ongoing financial and social crisis in Europe - which is your key market. It will also put me in an uncomfortable position, if -  while traveling around the globe in the Megane - I get interviewed by TV stations around the world and they ask me why I am not backed up by the factory that made it. I would not want to explain to them that reliability is "not one of your core business themes". Since you were kind enough to actually reply to my proposal I will just tell them I never contacted you.

Lastly don't take these issues that I pointed out as me trying to tarnish the work you are doing. I am convinced you are experts in your field and will continue to spread the message of the brand in EU and beyond.

Sincerely,
Mitja

I am still waiting patiently for their reply. I expect it somewhere between 2050 and the end of space-time.

 

AIRBUS

Ever since I can remember I always wanted to work for Airbus. With my profession that would be just about as achievable as winning the lottery five times in a row, but I still sent them a sappy CV as a long-shot. I'm expecting a call from John Leary any day now. :-)

The sappy letter:

As a child one of my favourite places to visit was the Maribor Airport. It was and still is a small-town airport. Then in the days of decline of Yugoslavia it rarely saw any traffic, with just one Swissair DC-9 doing touch-and-gos every other day as part of flight training. Yet that sole DC-9 and high-pitched spooling of its Pratt&Whitney JT8D turbines was enough to get my imagination going. I would imagine it going to exotic far away locations after each take-off, despite knowing it will just make a go around and land in a few minutes. I would put myself in place of those lucky engineers and line-workers  fortunate enough to assemble this marvelous colossal feat of engineering. It was then that I got hooked for life on civil aviation industry.

Why do I love it? Well it's a number of things. First it's an industry which allows common people to experience the awe-inspiring engineering perfection of modern state-of-the-art machines costing as much as 300 million euros for as little as 100 euros they pay for a ticket. It brings an average person closer to the cutting edge of human technology. In this aspect aviation is absolutely unique.  Hardly anyone has a chance to experience the acceleration of a formula 1 race car, yet almost anyone with 20euros in their pocket can take a no-frills flight, listen to the whine of a multi-million dollar turbo-fan jet engine as it spools up on take-off and see our world as it was never intended to see. There is no other activity in history of mankind that has been longed for quite as much as joining birds in the sky.  It seems like we have an inexplicable natural urge to see the world from above, despite our roots in the African savannah which placed us firmly on terra firma.  We gazed enviously at birds of prey soaring elegantly over mountains and canyons, until our endless drive to join them pushed us towards finding a way to subjugate the laws of science.

The way we managed to subjugate them, is in fact what I love about aviation the most. Many pioneers of flight were killed. First flight of the Wright brothers was in fact shorter than the length of a modern airliner. Yet we persevered. Steps were slow and painful, but we  overcame them one by one. Per aspera ad astra. Today's aviation knowledge, much like any other human endevour, stands on the shoulders of giants - not just of aviation, but of science as a whole. Extraordinarily sophisticated modern commercial airplanes like the Airbus A380 could never leave the drawing boards, if they didn't bring out something special in humanity. An understanding that giant industrial undertakings like this can only materialize if we work together.

An Airbus A380 was designed, manufactured and put into production by engineers from various European countries, whose grandparents and even parents slaughtered each other during the bloodshed of WW2 just six decades ago. Yet projects like these united them, their talents, dreams and visions into one singular drive towards perfection. Designers in Broughton, UK and Toulouse, France were working hand in hand with their peers in Hamburg, Germany, to create a monument of contemporary European Union. These men and women are a symbol of our true greatness, as a species. A small but significant peek into what we can achieve when we work together as brothers and sisters united in overcoming ambitious challenges  we set for ourselves. But also a glimmer of hope that these kind of international collaborations might pave the way to humanity of tomorrow - humanity that knows no ethnic, political or social prejudice and works together as one species. Thus I hope aviation and other human endeavours on the edges of scientific discovery will help us get that one step closer to this elusive multi-cultural dream which is so easy to embrace and understand, yet so horrendously difficult to achieve in a divisive world we live in. This is why I love the aviation industry. This is why I want to be a part of your team.

JOSIP BROZ TITO

Only two things can happen to an ethnic group which was subjugated for centuries by foreign oppressors. It can either grow tough and resilient (think Basques or the Jewish) or it could become addicted to having a »master« watch over it. A dear leader. A demigod which can do no wrong. Sadly Slovenes fall into the second category. 

30 years after our »dear leader« died people still worship this mass-murderer/tyrant/dictator like he was the second coming. »Everything was so much better when Tito was around« I hear people shout ignorantly. »We all had jobs, we all had cash, everybody was kind and generous, stress was nonexistent. I wish we had Tito back then everything would be absolutely fab, we'd all get laid twice daily, once in the morning and then right after dinner.«

Just for once take off your rose tinted glasses and remember the economic collapse of 1988 (what else would one expect with artificial full-employment and semi planned economy), the unjust taxes we paid to Belgrade, only a handful of (domestic-only) brands one could buy in small undersupplied town shops, paying for new (domestic-only) cars in advance, then waiting years to get them (often only to realize after recieving them, that they came preinstalled with many life-threatening deficiencies), being enforced with Serbo-croatian as the dominant language, the innate fear people had of the army and it's institutions of oppression. Sure we weren't really like North Korea or even like Soviet Union and it's satellites, but we were bloody well close in some instances (the army machine was no less ferocious and political opponents of the system would either end up dead or doing hard labour in prison camps).

All the »good« deeds people remember were hollow. Everybody had jobs? That's economically impossible to sustain in the long run . We were all equal? First of all... that's totally against natural order of alpha-male hierarchy where the capable individuals excel and lead the herd. Second of all... like hell we were equal. There always were and always will be people with vast privileges in any society. At least capitalism doesn't hide it behind the hypocrisy of promised equality. It's a baloon waiting to burst once. The working class was in charge of the economy? My ass. The communist party was in charge. And that was nothing but another manifestation of absolute power which was corrupted all the way to the top. Nepotism was the name of the game back then and for the most part, connections which emerged back then are still in effect even today. Third... hello? Smith's invisible hand pwns any idea of socialism/communism. It's been proven time and time again during history. Socialism is just an attempt at absolute power through means of diversion.

Sure Tito is a »layered« personality as some people like to put it. But all the so called »good« he did will never, ever excuse him of being a war profiteer, documented mass-murderer, tyrant and a person who was indirectly responsible for the slaughter that happened in the Balkans 25 years after his death. I'm sure he knew what would happen in this Slavic melting pot once his foreign-debt ladden fairy tale crumbled into pieces. It was an inevitable scenario. I have this personal theory that he started off as a devoted, deluded communist in the 20s but soon discovered he had a robust power to charm ignorant masses (like most charismatic dictators did/do) and he just took this cult-of-personality game as far as he could. Which was pretty damn far. And as we know... power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

So. People. Wake the fuck up and stop condoning (or heaven forbid even glorifying) this fucker. It pisses me off. Remember him as a 50 year long tragedy bestowed upon our nation. A tragedy which left us stagnant, forcefully drowned in Serbo-croatian culture, nationally raped and economically exhausted, with a 20-year old development deficit compared to western European countries. Every time you start wondering why an average Austrian earns 3000EUR a month while you live off 800EUR, remember him and go spit on his grave.