http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21110431

The thought of conscription short of a full-on war boils my piss. If cnut politicians want soldiers then they can pay what's necessary. And don't even get me started on those people who think it's the answer to sorting out the youth of today...

democracy in effect boils your piss.. oh well.

I'm not talking about their vote, they can do what they want, I'm talking about the concept and those who enact it, generally.

if your not in employment or education what is wrong with the expectation that the youth participate in mandatory community service or "military service". Or we can just carry on and see some young people learn that not working or striving to do anything "pays".

I make distinctions between youth job schemes, community service, paid/unpaid internship, conscription etc.

I could only guess that giving weapons training to the people you're getting at might be a bad idea

So what should Spain do with more than 50% of its youth unemployed? They would rapidly have an army larger than the US. Then how would they pay for it? Would our government even pay them proper wages? it would screw up their austerity plans. What would they do if the austerity made things worse? Start a war to reduce the overheads?

I'll bet most people who voted to keep it wouldn't be affected by it in the future.

I would not be affected by conscription but would not vote for it.

Civil rights trump democracy.

democracies define what is a civil rights

It's a philosophy, not just something enforced in law. There are circumstances, such as this, where no body or vote, no matter how "democratic", should be able to infringe certain rights of the individual.

Forced labour is one of those very situations. Some people call it slavery.

Not always. Hong Kong did not have full democracy under British Rule but they had civil rights, as do many other nations.

In other words, Rights are a convention, derived from the prevailing moral opinion of the age. Nothing more.

Democratic societies routinely impose duties on their citizens. Some people don't want to pay taxes, or have their guns taken away - those people often claim they are victims of tyranny when they do so, which makes them look stupid. Some people would rather their children didn't learn anythig that isn't in the Bible at school, society won't allow that. The kids would often rather not go to school at all, they are forced to go anyway. Schools may be dreary places full of reluctant students labouring over odious texts (forced labour), but that is no form of slavery.

Likewise, claims of slavery and forced labour in regards to a conscription package that offers alternatives to military service seem overblown. Austrian conscription is not an arbitrary punishment levied against political activists, and it certainly does not convert a human being into an object to be owned by others.

The constitution of the People's Republic of China includes guarantees of democracy and free speech. People go to real forced labour camps for requesting enforcement of those articles.

Germany had conscription until 2 years ago, now it is optional (those against the armed forces did a year in social service (ambulance, old people's homes, shelters etc.). You can see the difference already.

Those doing national service are trained, taught discipline etc. for 1 year. They cannot be sent to a war zone, only regular soldiers can be sent out to combat situations.

In France it was stopped 10 years ago and I only did a 1 day assessment.
My dad was already working as a teacher at the time he was sent away for 18 months and he said that they use to teach some of the guys who barely could read and write on evenings. It also taught discipline to people who might never been trusted with any tasks needing any :S