Unemployed Swedes Could Be Forced Into Wars Abroad

[Magda Hassan]

I could see this coming. I expect it to be rolled out everywhere. Lock up your sons! The recruitment advertising is very deceptive. I mean, does anyone really think the Norwegians are going to cross the border and invade Sweden?

Unemployed Swedes Could Be Forced Into Wars Abroad

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com rwrozoff

Sat Sep 11, 2010 7:29 am (PDT)



http://www.thelocal.se/28860/20100908/

The Local
September 10, 2010

Swedish military turns to jobless to fill ranks

Job-seekers with a military background could be required to accept a vacancy as a soldier when the Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen - AF) begins recruiting professionals for the Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) in the autumn.

Since the abolition of compulsory military service on June 1st 2010, the Armed Forces have been tasked with attracting recruits for a professional military.

The Armed Forces have contracted AF, which operates 320 job centres across the country, to aid them in their search for 4,000-6,000 suitable recruits to enter basic training.

Once admitted to the military soldiers will be obliged to bear arms and required to fulfil overseas operations on demand, according to the Armed Forces homepage which details the job requirements.

Under existing regulations jobseekers who refuse to accept an available job run the risk of losing unemployment benefits....

The Local reported in June that the Armed Forces had met criticism of its new recruitment campaign for allegedly painting a false picture of life in the military.

The three advertising films - for the army, navy and air force respectively - feature soldiers battling a forest fire, chasing Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and pilots scrambling their jets to meet an incoming threat to Sweden's borders.

Fredrik Svahn at the Swedish Armed Forces told The Local in June that the films should not however be seen as a recruitment drive for a military career but should be seen more as a "discussion with the Swedish people".

"National service ends on June 30th and will be major major change with the first voluntary recruits admitted on August 15th. We want to open a discussion and invite opinions on the purpose of the Swedish Armed Forces," he said, while adding that the campaign website can also be used to apply for a job.

The centre-right Alliance government decided on June 19th 2009 to end 99 years of mandatory military service, which on average had lasted about 11 months, and move toward a professional military.

[Ed Jewett]

Similar concepts and draft legislation exist in America. The Empire must have materiel, and the First Lady is campaigning for improved physical fitness; the canon fodder must be of a limited caliber.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby's scheme). I died in hell -
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.


At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
For, though low down upon the list, I'm there;
"In proud and glorious memory" ... that's my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
I suffered anguish that he's never guessed.
Once I came home on leave: and then went west ...
What greater glory could a man desire?

Siegfried Sassoon, Memorial Tablet, November 1918

[Ed Jewett]

O, I wish Guy Dushanek were still with us.

Guy was my high school English teacher. To him, I owe debts I can never repay. He was a great and revered teacher (not just by me), a good baseball coach (though I never got the chance to play for him), and a great spirit. He taught me much about writing, encouraged me to do more of it, and taught me those old English poems from the Great War. A remembrance of our impromptu skit in which Walter Crankit and Harry Unreasonable interviewed Nanook of the North hung over his desk for years. When, after graduation and the first months of my collegiate stint in the voluntary ROTC unit called the Bay State Special Forces was at its peak, I returned to my old high school in spit-polished jump boots, brass buttoned green dress uniform, and black beret, and stopped in his office between classes to see him.

He shunned me. He quite literally would not speak to me.

Decades later, I wrote him the letter to thank him and tell him that he quite literally may have saved my life and my soul.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot... :beer:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ed - thanks for sharing those memories of an inspirational teacher.

I too was taught those WW1 poems at school.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The old and enduring lie.