Democracy Village, a ragtag community of peace activists, pro-democracy campaigners and the homeless in central London, is about to be torn down.

It was born on May Day this year, when an anti-war march from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square stumbled a few hundred yards further to hang effigies of the party leaders on a gibbet in Parliament Square. And ever since it has lended something of a fresh look to the seat of British power.

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, went to the courts to have the protesters evicted, on the grounds that Parliament Square was "becoming an eyesore".

They appealed, but on Friday their appeal was denied, and now the end is nigh. Some have already left; others are waiting for the police to remove them.

On Saturday afternoon the camp seems like a carnival ebbing to its end. There are 20 tents, some homemade signs and a sailing boat near a sound system which the inhabitants use to make speeches and read poems. It is not, as the mayor and other critics have claimed, filthy, but it does have a chaotic, never-to-be-seen-again curiosity: a campsite surrounded by the Treasury, the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey. A three legged dog lies on the grass.

It is perhaps inevitable that the homeless have come here; for the security, the fellowship and the money donated by passers-by. They sit in a circle of chairs but they do not wish to be interviewed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/18/democracy-village-demolished

I agree with you Gus - but why?

Why are we citizens of most, if not all western Nations, being continually media hammered with the absolutely false claim of  true "democracy" when such a description of any contemporary civilization does not exist?

With the expertise of both you and John, surely you must see that the abuse of this once perceived real and inspirational type of civilization has long since been bastardized until only the archaic attitude of "Might is Right" is still plaguing the world as we know it. Natural survival selfishness?

This even translates into a neo-Monarchal "Lords and gun fodder" existence for any people who, even to this day, even in this country, are finding it hard to have an equal chance at education depending on your status at birth?  Labor tried it under Gough Whitlam, who may well have given educations to the worst of all Liberals like the Howard/Costello “New Order”. And they established their claims to the “elite” by destroying the very principle which led to their free introduction to the  "magnificent" minority.

IMHO, there are many ways of misinforming the public under the misuse of propaganda - whether it is for the benefit of any regime that controls the media and irrespective of its methods of government.

The only difference that I can understand is that Dictators will always be the “Allowed Government of a People and therefore what they deserve” when the fact is that the unelected media Barons elect all “ democratic” governments because they can.

I consider that the US/UK misconception of true democracy has been and still is, merely an excuse to steal the natural resources of militarily unprepared and uneducated people, whose right to exist on this planet, far exceeds the destructive and undisciplined modern methods of Genocide and Holocausts.

I believe that our world civilization has been forced into a situation of being “a nation that is only entitled to that which it can defend”.  I have believed that since the disgrace of the US/UK betrayal and murdering of their allies in Iraq and that leader Saddam Hussein.  Whatever he was, the people had water, electricity and basic human needs – not so now – a civilization with thousands of years of history has been destroyed. Even G.W. Bush's father was shocked.

Will history show that the US/UK/Zionist alliance with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - was the lowest - yes the lowest - of those who we hope were victims of uncontrolled human greed and fear of the US/UK/Zionist alliance, be at least honest about our fellow citizens of a diminishing planet

Do I believe that the Big Eight intend to make sure that the starving and uneducated population in Africa will be the beneficiaries of their largesse.  Of course not.

God Bless Australia and may we Australians at least, including our new citizens, try to ensure that we do not succumb to the media propaganda. The Howard/Reith treatment of "we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come" seems reasonable until you factor in the Tampa and the SIEV X where 353 people, men women and children, were allowed to drown to further Howard's dictatorship of "Stopping the Boats". NE OUBLIE.

Yes Ernest....

Yes, we do see the abuses perpetrated on the system — and by the system — and here, on YourDemocracy, we expose these abuses as much as possible. The way we, John and I, decided to do this, was to use satire as an entry point — satire being an old weapon against political tightarsing... One of the major difficulties is that we all come from different "walks of life", different religions, different upbringing, we have done many things and we are at different stages of life.

Some young people for example may not care much as to who is running the country as long as they have their iphones or their mugs on facebook... Some people want everything for nothing... Some don't realise that much of what we have now came through a complex historical pathway, a lot of hard work, ingenuity, knowledge and dedication — and some luck in our idiosyncratic system of governance.

For some people, hard work is trying to loaf as much as possible or suck the system which at times can be over-generous and at times too scroogey. And sometimes the system can be discriminately both at the same time: the system gives more to the people in less need, like tax concession to the rich.

Many women who fought to get equality via the feminist movement are starting to despair at the growing numbers in the younger generation of women for whom looking pretty is achieving full life potential. They despair at the relative flimflam coming also from their own sex, from the Miranda Devine, the Prue Goward and many others... Too many females who "betray their sisters" in various ways.

In any population there are at least four per cent of people who are 100 per cent sociopaths, in a proportion of three per cent for men and one per cent for women. The way the system's organic leadership selection works, it often rewards the sociopath for his/her ability to climb over other people without caring much — rather than reward dedication and ability of good or excellent work. In the higher echelons of leadership we often find a concentration of sociopaths (sometimes full blown psychopaths). Not all leaders are so — many leaders care. Some have no ability whatsoever to understand the complexity of their position but will maintain that position by bullying and damaging other people's reputation of honest work. Most sociopaths have the ability to lie cleverly.

I would suggest we all possess the seeds of sociopathy. We all possess the ability to lie, including lying to our self. Some other people may have a "percentage point" of sociopathy, a situation-related sociopathic viewpoint or a lower upper limit in the ability to care for others. Once we stop caring about say a colleague or a work "mate", in order to achieve our own promotion, we fertilise our own sociopathy. Sure we will find some great excuse for doing so — as we may be less skilled than the other persons, but since the opportunity can be captured, we will overvalue our abilities and puff like a toad on a pond-lily leaf...

The hardest part in leadership is to keep the eyes on the ball of human beings — at all times. Often when we see statistics of this and that (including that of sociopaths) we can just be forgetting the human factor — the tragedy of the processes — the human beings. A person becomes a consumer... A person becomes a client... a number. The relationship can become skewed because we need something from someone else, whom we see as a money supply... Should we show genuine emotion while being in leadership, the necrophiliac media will pounce on us for being "soft".

Much of the capitalist system (it is not a system of governance though — as opposed to communism, neoconservatism or liberalism) encourages this remoteness far more that it encourages the human understanding and genuine care. It can have pluses, in the sense that capitalism allows an illusionary freedom in the "I don't need to know what you think, all I need is your money" mantra... This of course is a simplified view, as often there will be an added subterranean manipulation of thoughts — desires, wants and needs — via media and advertising in order to get "more of your money" — and as much as possible without killing the goose. We individually kill our own goose usually.

"In god we trust all others pay cash" has been superseded by "all others pay with future cash, now". We pay for things with cash we don't have, as the system has allowed the provision of IOUs in the form of credit. The system has allowed more "flexibility" of repayment of debts in gambling the values of these debts. At the moment, it would take 1000 years of hard bloody work to repay all the gambles. I am not joking. The derivative market has gone feral. It has gone 100 per cent sociopathic...
Sociopathy is a disease that strangely enough is not hard to detect, but hard to demonstrate to others that someone is a sociopath, as sociopaths can be very nice upfront but knife you in the back — and they will claim to others they did it out of kindness, very convincingly... or that it was your own fault...

I believe in your life, Ernest, you would have seen many situations such as these.

And the zionists have a greater tendency to greater sociopathy, in which they will claim to be the victims when they inflict pain to others... Some of their opponents are sociopaths too... Thus the deep root of conflicts is difficult to defuse unless someone is prepared to call all bluffs... But are we going to denounce our "friends"?

Written by Chris Floyd

In the first year of his presidency, the first year of the "hope and change" he promised to bring to the conduct of American affairs, Barack Obama countenanced -- and abetted -- a coup in Honduras that ousted a mildly reformist, democratically elected president and replaced him with a clique of thuggish elites who now rule, illegitimately, through repression, threat and outright murder.

Since the installation of these throwbacks to the corrupt and brutal 'banana republics' of yore, Obama's secretary of state, the "progressive" Hillary Clinton, has spent a good deal of time and effort trying to coerce Honduras' outraged neighbors in Latin America to "welcome" the thug-clique, now led by Porfirio Lobo, back into the "community of nations." Let bygones be bygones, Clinton says, as Lobo's regime murders journalists (nine so far this year), political opponents and carries on the wholesale trashing of Honduran independence (such as sacking four Supreme Court justices who opposed the gutting of liberties and the overthrow of constitutional order). After all, isn't that Obama's own philosophy: always "look forward," forget the crimes of the past? Every day is a new day, a clean slate, a chance for a new beginning -- indeed, for "hope and change."

In other words: let the dead bury the dead -- and the rich and powerful reap their rewards.

In her assiduous backroom efforts to "rehabilitate" the killers and crooks that she and Obama have helped foist on Honduras, Clinton might profitably paraphrase a wise old saying of her great hero, Franklin Roosevelt, when he was needled about his support for the murderous Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."