Activism | Kamiel Choi

Mixed revolutionary ramblings

Every day now I become more averse to the system. I observe how my own mind struggles, and how it always shouts the word "local" in both my ears as the key to a solution. A local community is larger than a Greek oikos (etymological origin of the word economy) or household, but smaller than ...

Monsanto Creates Plant That Grows Money

Creve Coeur (MI), April 13th, 2011. Biotech giant Monsanto (NYSE: MON) has reported that they have for the first time created an organism capable of growing money. The plant, MON1971$, and the undisclosed technologies involved in creating it, have been patented in the US. Technically, the invention is based on the insertion of a gene ...

Healthy competition

One assumption most people accept is that competition is always a good thing. When we talk about competition, we assume a scarcity of resources that can't be shared and are fought over by individuals or groups. In this sense, competition is the natural state of organisms, from which they can only evolve if there is ...

Permaculture (2 little ideas)

We hope to buy our own small piece of land, so we can start permaculture in modest proportions. We want to experiment with herb spirals, greenhouses, keyhole beds, guilds of crops, sheet mulching, low-till, swales, gravity irrigation, drip irrigation, natural pest control, reuse of greywater, rainwater catchment, and so on. I've been studying the system ...

It is what it is?

Working relations are about power. You sell your labor (remuneration is essentially the primary reason for working) or else... Or else you could be reprimanded, suspended, or even - fired. That infernal metaphor is a powerful aid in the manufacturing of the worker's worry, that are designed to last until all productivity has been sucked ...

Ecobook Introduction (Draft)

Below is a draft of the introduction to a collaborative e-book (e.co.book) that I instigated on Facebook. This needs work, but I shared it here for the purpose of inviting constructive criticism. Over the last few years, many of us have been active on the Internet sharing information about the damage that the current system ...

The Ought that haunts others

"Can I even express the quiet horror that debilitates my mind when I experience the utter vacuity of this work, of these pointless tasks I perform every day? Can I communicate this torment? Why would I? Perhaps because there is a statistical probability that I'm not the only one experiencing this, that there are many ...

Infinite gross, revisited

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that we cannot grow the material economy indefinitely on a finite planet.* Such growth however, is exactly what is needed to keep the economic system from falling apart, as many studies have shown.**

What about the "service economy"? Could it be the solution to grow an economy indefinitely? Of ...

Alex Jones. The Right To Arm Bears

Alex Jones. Now here's a man who says that the "second amendment is sacrosanct". As with all individuals alluding to the sacred to support their cause, I feel some suspicion. Watching him agitate void of manners vis-à-vis CNNs Pierce Morgan didn't put that feeling to sleep. But let's give the bawdy badger some credit, after ...