*Democracy village, week 13: we fight on until the soldiers come home!*

During the early hours of Tuesday July 20, under cover of darkness, Boris
Johnson’s hired goons perpetrated a serious organised crime. Symbolising all
that’s wrong with the politics of our age, they cut down at the root a small
flourishing tree.

Having violently uprooted the Democracy Village oak sapling, evicted our
community and trampled on our rights and our homes, the Mayor secured the
unsightly outcome he intended. A seven-foot high metal fence now prevents
anyone from assembling on Parliament Square. Londoners can’t see what’s
happening inside: everything’s now hidden behind a green plastic wall.

Yes, brute force can sometimes work. But in this particular case, for how
long? As the memory of Democracy Village inspires ever-increasing opposition
to the war – and as we promise to return in greater numbers than before –
when exactly will the Mayor dare dismantle his fence?

In this 13th week of the Village, and the ninth year of the War, the true
nature of the destruction of the lives of Afghan civilians has been revealed
through Wikileaks’ publication of raw US military intelligence. Hundreds of
people have been killed by NATO forces, their deaths uncounted and
unreported until this data was finally democratically revealed. US and UK
governments have systematically lied, evaded, and covered their tracks.
Their hypocritical propaganda in pursuing an invasion of a sovereign country
– supposedly to install ‘democracy’ – has failed completely to be
accountable to their own citizens. Meanwhile, this morning, we hear of a
whole coachload of people destroyed in Western Afghanistan, caught in the
crossfire of this illegal and immoral war. In Sangin last week, over 50
women and children are reported massacred in a NATO rocket attack.
Parliament has been forced by the Wikileaks revelations to open up an
investigation into civilian casualties. This shows us that it has been
necessary for citizens to ‘steal’ information that should have been
available anyway in order to get politicians to start behaving!

Democracy Village truly represents the majority of our population. Between
70 per and 77 per cent now oppose Britain’s military presence in
Afghanistan; the proportion is similar in the US. As the situation on the
ground unravels, casualties mount and NATO’s puppet government disintegrates
in Kabul, such support and resistance to state propaganda can only grow.

Democracy Village has now gone underground. We’ve declared ourselves on
strike. The village no longer exists as a physical entity, a collection of
tents on a patch of grass. But our community, our energy and our ideas live
on. We invite you to join our Assembly every Saturday in Victoria Tower
Gardens, from 1 pm. Soldiers, you need a proper trade union! Police, you too
have the right to strike! A strike means taxpayers withhold their taxes,
workers withdraw their labour, soldiers refuse to obey orders – and police
organise a mass sickie on pre-arranged days. Or how about a Lysistrata-style
sex-strike by women to stop the war!

The prospect now is of a military fiasco combined with a renewed financial
and economic crisis. Let’s recall what happened in 1989, when the Soviet
military faced defeat in the mountains of Afghanistan. We could see more
than just a wave of general strikes. As we fight back against the cuts,
events could trigger the biggest wave of ‘velvet revolutions’ – acts of
resistance and collective sovereignty staged by ordinary citizens – the
world has ever seen.

No taxes, no services, no work or collusion of any kind! Since its roots
have been torn off, we’re not optimistic that our damaged oak tree can
physically survive. May it live in other ways. To make sure it does, we’ll
cut off at the root all nutrients of support to any government, local or
national, which attempts to continue with immoral wars.

The Mayor of London and his partners in crime have just written their own
obituary.