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"I Spoke with President Putin and congratulated him on his re-election as the President of the Russian Federation. We agreed to work together to further deepen and expand the India-Russia Special & Privileged Strategic Partnership in the years ahead."I know the quote does not relay any fragility between nations that have been in good standing for decades. Still, the elites running our feudal/capitalistic system in the West - well, they can still dream. And speaking of neo-feudalism, a new book by the brilliant (if sometimes quirky) Yanis Varoufakis, speaks mightily on what's really going down in the West vs. East geopolicy wars we're in. The book, entitled Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism proclaims capitalism as dead amid "an epochal shift" backwards in time. Varoufakis argues, his points about the technocrats and their fiefdoms by creating the parable below. Insert the first name "Mark" where Jeff is mentioned, and you'll see the truth of the Greek economist's theory:
"Imagine the following scene straight out of the science fiction storybook. You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything looks normal. Until you begin to notice something odd. It turns out all the shops, indeed every building, belongs to a chap called Jeff. What's more, everyone walks down different streets and sees different stores because everything is intermediated by his algorithm... an algorithm that dances to Jeff's tune."The man who should have been Greece's Prime Minister years ago uses Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) to illustrate how we peons and surfs produce value for technology companies simply by tweeting or posting. In Bezos's case, Varoufakis points out that the Amazon founder does not produce capital, but he simply charges rent. He says this isn't capitalism, but feudalism, exacted upon a citizenry unaware of what's happening. I suggest you read The Guardian story about the book here.
"It is extremely important for us now, when we're dealing with what happened last Friday, to rely on these values of creativity, humanism and mercy," Putin said. "They unite us in supporting all victims, in our determination to stay strong and together."Artists and educators have a special role in preserving and promoting those values, by influencing the mood of the public and shaping the future of the nation, the Russian president added.
Comment: It's perhaps no coincidence that some billionaires have been found to be dumping their stocks, whilst Western governments escalate their belligerence across the planet on their multiple hybrid warfronts: