The Voice of the Turtle. Film appearances In 2012, he appeared in the National Film Board of Canada documentary Payback, based on Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He appears in the documentary film A Place at the Table which opened in the US on 1 March 2013. Honours and awards In 2007 he was invited to give the keynote address at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo graduation ceremony. He administers the organisation's website. In 2008 he was asked to testify on the global food crisis before the House Financial Services Committee in the USA. In 2009 he joined the advisory board of Corporate Accountability International's Value the Meal campaign. In January 2010 some adherents of Share International, following an announcement by Benjamin Creme, concluded that Patel could be the Maitreya. Patel denied being the Maitreya. Political views Patel is a libertarian socialist and has described himself as "someone who has very strong anarchist sympathies." In his book The Value of Nothing he praised the grassroots participatory democracy practised in the Zapatista Councils of Good Government in southern Mexico and has advocated similar decentralist models of economic democracy and confederal administration as templates to go by for social justice movements in the global north. He described himself in 2010 as "not a communist [or socialist] ... just open minded". Nonetheless, the analysis of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, published seven years later, locates its concept of "cheapness" within a Marxist framework. According to the authors, "Capitalism values only what it can count, and it can count only dollars. Every capitalist wants to invest as little and profit as much as possible. For capitalism, this means that the whole system thrives when powerful states and capitalists can reorganize global nature, invest as little as they can, and receive as much food, work, energy, and raw materials with as little disruption as possible." This extrapolates a key formulation by Marx: “The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities.” Quotes Personal life Patel became a US citizen on 7 January 2010. In an interview with The New Yorker'''s Lauren Collins, he considers himself an atheist Hindu. BooksStuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (2008)Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger