The News Today

Can you tell I'm avoiding doing French? I thought I noticed you noticing.

There are a few different sources for Danish news in English. I can read enough Danish to make my way through a newspaper (if you can read 20% of the words, you can generally figure out who did what to whom, if not necessarily why) but I would rather be able to speed through all the news websites that I usually check on a daily basis, so it's the Copenhagen Post and Jyllands-Posten in English. Some of the articles are the same and some aren't, but try finding news about Denmark on CNN.

Anywhat, there was an article today (maybe posted yesterday or even the day before... the plan to check all news websites daily is more a goal than a reality) regarding Danish military conscription. My dear husband was conscripted. The man can't see more than a meter in front of him without glasses, but they found him "fit for fight" (heh). He was miserable. Someone would yell, "now run over there and shoot that target" and he'd think to himself, "why? The target never did anything to me. And if the target were an enemy, it's very unlikely that it would just stand there and wait for me to aim this overly large rifle at it and shoot it. Can we talk about this? Perhaps reach a two state solution that does not involve running and shooting at immobile targets?"

In the upcoming apocalypse, he'll be organizing the first democratic government and I'll be in camouflage, under the bush, waiting for your dog.

Ahem. Returning to conscription, I think if you are going to conscript you have to conscript everyone. Or at least everyone needs to be eligible for conscription. Because if everyone faced the threat of the draft, it would be a hell of a lot harder for the government to draft us all for war. People are mighty complacent when their ass isn't on the line. But then, I'm not a big fan of conscription. I mean, would I want to go fight a war where not only myself, but the guy next to me ended up on the front because we were both so unlucky as to have our numbers drawn? Doesn't really inspire confidence. I think volunteer is the way to go. And if you can't get enough people to volunteer, perhaps you should take a long hard look at yourselves and see what's wrong with your policies.