The radical left magazine Adbusters, who first proposed the idea of Occupy Wall Street, has admitted that OWS is a total flop.

Via Newsbusters:

Burned out, out of money, out of ideas... seduced by salaries, comfy offices, book deals, old lefty cash and minor celebrity status, some of the most prominent early heroes of our leaderless uprising are losing the edge that catalyzed last year's one thousand encampments. Bit by bit, Occupy's first generation is succumbing to an insidious institutionalization and ossification that could be fatal to our young spiritual insurrection unless we leap over it right now. Putting our movement back on track will take nothing short of a revolution within Occupy.

The Next Big Thing? "Flash encampments" will take down the system...you just wait and see!

...The new tone was set on Earth Day, April 22, in a suburb bordering Berkeley, California when a dozen occupiers quietly marched a small crowd to a tract of endangered urban agricultural land, cut through the locked fence and set up tents, kitchens and a people's assembly. Acting autonomously under the banner of Occupy, without waiting for approval from any preexisting General Assembly, Occupy The Farm was notable for its sophisticated preplanning and careful execution - they even brought chickens - that offered a positive vision for the future and engendered broad community support. While encampments across the world were unable to re-establish themselves on May Day, this small cadre of farm occupiers boldly maintained their inspiring occupation for nearly four weeks.

Unfortunately for the chickens (I have no pity for the occupy folk), that spit of land they are occupying is part of a Department of Agriculture research project.

Columnist Chip Johnson from SFGate.com:

...George Chuck, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher whose work is literally grounded on those same 2 acres, sees it much differently.

...For the past decade, he's worked on mapping corn genes to identify which ones produce energy. His work adding corn genes to switchgrass has more than doubled the yield of biofuels produced by the hybrid crop. His findings were published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

...That research, which has the potential to increase alternative fuel sources sounds more important than the desires of two dozen or so people growing 2 acres worth of anything.

"What's worse is that when I tried talking to (some of) these guys, they just started spouting slogans someone else told them," Chuck said.

And as far as the group's efforts to grow crops on land Chuck said is not yet ready for planting, "They have no idea what they're doing," he said.

Since protesters arrived, they've managed to destroy a fruit tree that was the subject of a research project, created a waste pile, built a rickety chicken coop and left the gate open allowing wild turkeys to escape or be killed by predators that entered the unlocked facility, he added.

Given most left wingers' aversion to actual work - much less the physical labor involved in actually growing your own food - I suspect that this version of OWS will not be very popular.

The titanic irony of green supporters destroying bio-fuel research places this "flash encampment" effort in the pantheon of the radical left's most childishly destructive protests. One wonders what they'll do for an encore?