the end of the occupation

Seven views of Bristol's magnificent College Green.

This was the loaction for the disgraceful 'Occupy' camp which was finally evicted a few weeks ago. This was a vile Third World shanty town full of rich kids, drug addicts, the mentally ill and violent perverts. It was presented as some sort of 'protest' camp, which is hilarious considering the reality. The scum that were 'living' here promised they'd pay to make good the site, but of course vanished back to their posh homes before their names and money could be taken. So the bill falls on the ratepayers of Bristol, but I reckon it'll be worth every penny.

After clearing all the used needles, broken glass and filth around the site, the land is now being prepared (giving a worm feast to the seagulls, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good!) and turves will be laid soon. The site will be available to the REAL people of Bristol again in April,  just as Spring kicks in.

So what was this visitation that descended on our fair city just a few short months ago? A bunch of reactionary students pitched tents, immediately churning up the grass, followed shortly by all the dregs of Bristol, the homeless, the mentally ill, the drug takers and the sex offenders. My own stepdaughter was pestered by one of these bastards.

We were then subjected to being banned from using OUR own green space in the city by these outsiders and dregs. This lasted almost three months. Our weak council and even weaker church just let them get on with it, whilst 99% of Bristolians seethed! We had our very own No-Go area in the middle of OUR city. Interestingly when the long overdue eviction order was issued all these cowardly scum vanished, no doubt before they were asked to pay for the damage their decadent indulgence had done.

And what were they 'protesting' about? Everything and nothing it seems. They supported a strong state, jobs for all and pensions for all - but also supported the destruction of the system that provides all this! They supported extreme left wing communism whilst also supporting 'freedom' for everyone - as long as you were prepared to live in a future where a strong state decided where you worked and lived, who you'd marry and how you'd fill your spare time.

They seemed to have no idea of Climate Change or Peak Oil or the real issues that face all of us. They knew NOTHING of economics or human nature. They were the ultimate outsiders, upper middle-class bureaucratic socialists who just want to be coddled from the cradle to the grave, whilst at the same time removing the very system that provides the excess wealth to alllow this to happen.

They also did two things that would disgust any right thinking person. They claimed to represent the majority, indeed the '99%', reducing all of us individuals to a percentage, robomen perhaps? In reality do any of us really know anyone who is actually like this? Perhaps in the 1960s, not now. In reality the 99% are hard working anti-Occupy types who are desperate to keep their families fed and well and would fight to the death to preserve capitalism. The '1%' are these freeloading, unthinking, unwashed retard scum.

And secondly they tried to paint revolutions around the world, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, as part of the Occupy 'movement'. Greece, oh that was Occupy. Libya, that was Occupy losing their lives on the streets of Tripoli, Syria, Occupy again, even the English riots of 2011 - Occupy of course! They even stretched back into the pre-Occupy past and tried to claim those events as Occupy inspired!

In reality this was a nasty, small minded attempt to wind people up. There was no philosophy behind it, no interface with reality, no substance. A few people who should know better stupidly tried to jump on the bandwagon, ranging from brain-dead linguistic upper middle-class retard Noah Chomsky to Martian refugee Ed Milliband. All with their own agenda, taking advantage of the chaos Occupy were trying to spread.

So Occupy is now dead, not just in Bristol but everywhere. Of course. Without substance they have just withered away. I'd recommend they get drug-free, start businesses, learn some post Peak Oil skills, get married, start families and start becoming part of the community, rather than parasites on it. We shall not see their likes again, the last decadent, reactionary fling of the Oil Rich Age.

redundancy

I've aimed a lot of vitriol at the faltering Occupy middle-class movement, and it's not difficult to explain why. They are trying to present themselves as radical, even sustainable, but in reality they are desperately trying to hang on to the past of plenty, where people like them breezed through life, enjoying free education (often in a useless subject), getting their own home in their twenties and having a job for life, followed by a pension through their dotage. They are so tied up in their middle class world that they've missed the fact that the world is totally changing and leaving them miles behind.

I can write, but sometimes others can write better than I can (and it's so much easier to cut and paste). This is the brilliant Bill Bonner on normality. If you're a member of Occupy you'll probably be far happier not reading this. But for the 99% of you out there that don't have closed minds, here goes ...

*** What if the entire period from the invention of the steam engine to the invention of the internet were not the normal thing, but the abnormal thing?

What if the ‘lost decade’ we have just gone through is actually the mean... the usual... the normal thing? And what if – after nearly three centuries – we have just now reverted to it?

Until about two weeks ago, we thought human beings had only existed for 100,000 years. Now, archaeologists are guessing that we’ve been around as a species for twice as long.

You know what that means? It means that our mean rate of growth – already negligible – is actually only about half what we thought it was. In other words, it took not 99,700 years for humans to invent the steam engine, but 199,700. And now, what if we are not going on to something new, but back to something old? What if the new age is really more like the old age... where growth and progress were unknown.

Let’s see, the typical person in 1750 lived better than the typical person in say 100,000 BC. The person in 100,000 BC lived in a cave or maybe a wigwam. The typical person in 1750 lived in a hovel. There were some great houses too, of course. By the 18th century, humans had been building with arches and columns... and domes... dressed stone with elaborate decoration... for thousands of years. But most people had no access to those monuments. They lived in whatever they could put together – usually of wood or mud.

They lived on what they could grow... with their own hands, or with the help of domesticated draft animals. They hunted wild animals... or got their calories from their own herds and flocks.

The person from 100,000 BC was a hunter-gatherer. But his life was not all bad. At least he got plenty of fresh air and didn’t get caught in traffic jams or have to watch television.

But the progress between 200,000 BC, when mankind is now thought to have emerged... to 1765, when Watt produced his first engine... was extremely slow. In any given year, it was nearly negligible... imperceptible. Over thousands of years there was little progress of any sort, which was reflected in static human populations with static levels of well-being.

Then, after 1765, progress took off like a rocket. Over the next 200 years, the lives of people in the developed countries, and the human population, generally, changed completely.

It took 199,700 years for the human population to go from zero to 125 million. But over the next 250 years it added about six billion people. Every five years, approximately, it added the equivalent of the entire world’s population in 1750. ‘Progress’ made it possible. People had much more to eat. Better sanitation. Better transportation (which eliminated famines, by making it possible to ship large quantities of food into areas where crops had failed). The last major famine in Western Europe occurred in the 18th century when crops failed. After that, the famines in the developed world at least have been intentional – caused largely by government policies.

Progress abolished hunger. It permitted huge increases in population. And it brought rising real wages and rising standards of living.

By the late 20th century, people took progress and GDP growth for granted. Governments went into debt, depending on future growth to pull them out. So did corporations and households. Everyone counted on growth. Spending and tax policies were based on encouraging growth. The enormous growth in government itself was made possible by economic growth. After all, as we’ve seen in our Theory of Government, beyond the essentials, government is either parasitic or superfluous. The richer the host economy, the more government you get.

Today, there is hardly a stock, bond, municipal plan, government budget, student loan, retirement programme, housing development, business plan, political campaign, health care programme or insurance company that doesn’t rely on growth. Everybody expects growth to resume... after we have put this crisis behind us.

Growth is normal, they believe.

But what if it isn’t normal? What if it was a once-in-a-centi-millenium event, made possible by cheap energy?

lack of focus

Amazing that the Occupy protest in Bristol is STILL going on.

There is one HUGE problem with Occupy, and it is the reason that the whole thing is falling apart. They have stupidly aligned themselves with the left. The left has a TINY amount of support in the UK, about 1%. So the Occupy movement is doomed from the start for this reason.

And why has Occupy aligned itself with the left? I suspect it is because of the total lack of imagination of the people behind this. They really do believe that this is some sort of crisis of capitalism when the opposite is of course true. The bail out of banks and car companies, insurance and finance set ups was 100% SOCIALIST, in a peculair attempt tp preserve jobs and ailing businesses. Capitalism would never allow this. For capitalism to progress, and if nothing else it is a fantastically progressive economic system, companies that are failing HAVE to close, so that new, leaner businesses can take their place. This is in reality the SECOND CRISIS OF SOCIALISM (the first was the collapse of the Soviet Union of course).

So what Occupy are proposing is more of the same thing that has caused the situation in the first place! This makes them probably the most reactionary and pointless 'protesters' ever seen.

In reality of course there is already a quiet evolution going on as we are faced with zero or falling growth and the end of cheap oil. The true evolutionaries are all involved at different levels in this process. Whether it's restoring closed railways, pushing permaculture, starting cooperatives, building and installing alternative energy set ups, relearning old craft skills or starting community initiatives.

I suspect you've seen the danger here. Believe it or not once, back in the eighties, the Green Party was a genuinely radical party, yet today it is just a watered down version of New Labour, with a tiny patina of green awareness. Result - all the radicals and progressives left. Some of us kept going with proper projects (such as the New S&D), others probably left politics altogether. I have heard that some in Transition are trying to set up a dialogue with Occupy - this would be a disaster if it happened. Occupy's agenda has nothing to do with the future, it is firmly set in old politics (socialism/communism) and assumes that there will always be a strong nanny state providing jobs from cradle to grave (so 1950s!). Occupy is the last fling of the old fogeys, the Empire Loyalists, New Labour, One Nation Tories, the BNP, every half thought out, of it's time, lack of vision 'movement' that was in reality just an agenda thing for a tiny minority interest group.

If Transition, or any other progressive movement, gets tainted by association with Occupy - which will be a laughing stock everywhere within months - it will be finished, which isn't fair.

To conclude, Occupy is simply a last gasp of the old world, a nostalgic hankering back for the big welfare state of the post war time of plenty, a fan club for the Baby Boomers, cornucopians who will refuse to get their hands dirty - in short the chaff that will not survive Peak Oil.

Harsh I know, but can anyone actually prove otherwise?

nazis swarm

The Nazi 'Occupy' movement continues to splutter from one disaster to another. Gaining the nickname 'Too Thick to Fail' hasn't helped their cause one bit, neither has the indifference of 99.9% of the population, who think they are a bunch of spoilt middle-class brats. And the St Paul's debacle brings shame on the whole country.

But what is really sinister is their method, and the madness behind it. We are in the middle of the Second Crisis of Socialism, as the money being pumped into failed banks is still not doing the job. The stupid corporate types who are the vanguard of weak capitalism should actually be hanging from lampposts, not being bailed out by their fellow socialists in government. This started with George Bush and is now spreading around the world.

What are they scared of? Why have they abandoned capitalism? Why suddenly do people like Bush, Obama, Cameron et al suddenly think that socialism will work when it never has before? Why don't they just trumpet Schumpeter and let creative destruction run its course?These banks MUST fail, then we can start rebuilding the economies of the world. Instead socialist measures like nationalisation and currency debasement are still being tried.

This is the real problem of democracy. Because politicians depend so much on their 'jobs' of being politicians, they have to appease the people, so they will continue to vote for them. So they offer these easy fixes, rather than tackle the problem. All it does is put things off, and when the shit really hits the fan it will be that much worse. With luck the politicians will be able to blame other politicians. They are a bunch of morons.

So where do our dear little middle-class 'protestors' fit into all of this? Well, they are thick as shit, so probably couldn't tell you why they are doing it. (The bright ones are out building businesses and communities of course). I suspect they are all Daily Mail readers, and really believe the lies and propaganda they read. And then they try the old Nazi trick of 'Us and Them'. 'We are the 99%,' they bleat. Really? I don't know ONE person that believes in any of this. 99% of people couldn't care less, and the other 1% hate them. I have even seen Nazi-style cartoons depicting 'capitalists' as fat, Jewish looking 1930s types, wearing top hats for fuck's sake! This is the level these idiots have already sunk to.

Fortunately the cold weather is coming, and the little loves will soon be sniffling into their Gucci mufflers and running out of chilbain ointment (they are all so delicate!) They will finally do the decent thing and let St Paul's reopen, and the squalor where once they were will soon disappear.

Luvvies - you are 40 or 50 years too late. Socialism failed in 1990 and is now in its final death throes. The future will be strong capitalism, single-person businesses in small communities, working through Peak Oil and Climate Chnage. There'll be no big states, no central government, no huge bureaucracy to try to create a command economy, no snazzy posters reaffirming your membership of the 99%, no more racist cartoons, no benefits, no rich parents. You'll all have to fucking work! And it's that thought that keeps my smile big and broad as I hear about your latest anti-social exploits on the news. Babies.