«No emprendas ninguna acción a la ligera ni fuera de las reglas que llevan el arte a su plenitud». ~ Marco Aurelio, IV.2

THE ART OF THE 'SCREW YOU' DEAL Piece of cake: how Circus Ringmaster turned Europe's century of humiliation into an inter-galactic howler. Brussels mutts: - Slapped 15% tariffs by the US. US gets zero tariffs. - Will invest $600 billion in the US. - Will buy zillions of over-inflated US weapons. - Will buy $750 billion in US LNG, as in $250 billion for the next 3 years, because that's "better" than via Nord Stream. Return from US: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

On 26th July 2025, delegates from over 25 countries convened in London for the inaugural conference of the Global Alliance for Palestine (GAFP). This new transnational initiative seeks to transform rising global solidarity for Palestine into coordinated political action. As a member of the steering committee, I was asked to explain why we need this Alliance. middleeastmonitor.com/202507… Here was my message to participants. Greetings from me, Yanis Varoufakis, to all of you who have gathered so that we work, together, toward a Global Alliance for Palestine. We need a Global Alliance for Palestine because the West, its governments and big business, constitute a Global Alliance in Support of the Genocide of Palestinians. But let me be a little more precise. -The West says it wants a Two State Solution -Netanyahu’s life project, like that of the vast majority of political actors in Israel, is to use intense violence to make the Two State Solution impossible -Hamas responds with its own violence -Israel reacts by calculatingly raising its violence to the Nth power -The West then ritualistically condemns Hamas & backs Netanyahu -Inevitably, the West’s claim to want a Two State Solution withers into a tacit support of Israel’s genocide -Thus Israel secures the backing of a Global Alliance in Support of the Genocide of Palestinians. Isn’t it time that we, people who oppose genocide, who mean it when we say NEVER AGAIN – isn’t it time that we formed a Global Alliance for Palestine? I believe it is! Let’s do it then.

A video-text summary of my argument that we now live in the age of TECHNOFEUDALISM (in 16', 2000 words): Wherever we turn, we witness the triumph of capital. Capital has prevailed everywhere: in warehouses, factories, offices, universities, public hospitals, the media – in space but also in the microcosm of genetic engineering. So, how do I dare claim that capitalism has been killed? By whom? The deliciously ironic answer is that capitalism was killed by its own hand… by capital! If I am right, the issue is not what AI will do to us in the future but what has already happened: Capital became so dominant that it mutated into a variant so toxic that, like a stupid virus, it killed off its host, capitalism, replacing it with something far, far worse. This new mutant capital, that killed capitalism, lives in the proverbial cloud – so, let us call it cloud capital. What is cloud capital? What makes it so different? Cloud capital, of course, does not really live up in the cloud. It lives down on Earth, comprising networked machines, server farms, cell towers, software, AI-driven algorithms – and of course it lives on our oceans’ floors where untold miles of optic fibre cables rest. Unlike traditional capital, from fishing rods to the steam-engines of the Industrial Revolution to today’s modern industrial robots that are produced means of production, cloud capital does not produce anything – it comprises machines manufactured so as to modify human behaviour. That’s what Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant or Apple’s Siri is: It is a produced means of behavioural modification. It is a machine, a piece of capital, which we train to train us to train it to determine that which we want. And, once we want it, the same networked machine sells it to us, directly, bypassing markets. As if that were not enough, the same machinery succeeds in making us sustain the enormous behavioural modification machine network to which it belongs with our free voluntary labour. We are sustaining it as we post reviews, rate products, upload videos, rants, photos - we help reproduce cloud capital without getting a penny for our labour. In essence, it has turned us into its cloud serfs! Meanwhile, in the factories and the warehouses, where waged proletarians work under increasingly precarious conditions, the same algorithms that modify our behaviour and sell products to us directly – those algorithms are deployed, usually by digital devices tied to the workers’ wrists, to make proletarians, workers in the warehouses, in the factories work faster, to direct and to monitor them in real time. I started by saying that wherever we turn, we stumble on the triumph of capital. But it is cloud capital that is the real winner. It is amazing how it performs, at once, five roles that used to be beyond capital’s capacities: Cloud capital grabs our attention. It manufactures our desires. It sells to us, directly, outside any traditional markets, that which is going to satiate the desires it made us have. It drives proletarian labour inside the workplaces. And it elicits massive free labour from us, its cloud-serfs. Is it surprising that the owners of this cloud capital – let’s call them cloudalists – have a hitherto undreamt power to extract? To extract gargantuan surplus value from proletarians; untold quantities of free labour from almost everyone; and mind-numbing cloud rents from vassal capitalists – from sellers? Is it a wonder that they are vastly more powerful than Henry Ford or Rupert Murdoch could ever be? “Hang on”, I hear you say. “Is Jeff Bezos really different to Henry Ford? Aren’t they all a species of monopoly capitalists? Monopolists?” No, amazon.com is not a monopolistic capitalist enterprise. The moment you enter amazon.com you have exited capitalism altogether! Sure enough, the place is teaming with buyers and sellers. So, yes, it is an enormous trading platform but, no, a market it certainly is not! One man called Jeff owns everything. But he is much, much more than a mere monopolist. Jeff doesn’t own the factories that produce the stuff sold on his platform by traditional capitalists who have to use it to ply their trade. What he does own is more important: Jeff owns the algorithm that decides which products you see and which you don’t – the very algorithm that you have trained to know you perfectly so that it matches youwith a seller, whom it also knows perfectly well, with a view to maximising the probability that every such match, transaction, will generate, for Jeff, the highest rent that Jeff can charge the seller for what you buy: up to 40% of what you pay is pocketed by Jeff, the cloudalist! The mind rebels at the enormity but also the radical novelty of this kind of exploitation: The same algorithm that we help train in real time to know us inside out - that same algorithm both modifies our preferences and administers the selection and delivery of commodities that will satisfy these preferences. If you and I were to type “electric bicycles” or “binoculars” while in amazon.com, you and I would get totally different recommendations. In a traditional market or shopping mall it would be as if you and I were walking next to each other, our eyes trained in the same direction, the same shop window, but we were to see different things depending on what Jeff’s algorithm wants each one of us to see. Everyone navigating around amazon.com – except Jeff Bezos of course – everyone in amazon.com is wandering around in algorithmically constructed isolation as if in a Panopticon where, unable to see each other, we only see Jeff’s all-seeing algorithm or, more accurately, only what his algorithm allows us to see with a view to maximising his cloud rent – which is, of course, today’s version of the ground rent that the feudal lords used to extract from their vassals and their peasants. This is not capitalism. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to technofeudalism! How did cloud capital kill capitalism? How did it rise up? Who paid for it? Capitalism, lest we forget, had two pillars: markets and profit. Of course, markets and profit remain ubiquitous. Nevertheless, cloud capital has evicted both markets and profit from the centre of our socioeconomic system, pushing them out to its margins, and replacing them: Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by cloud fiefs – digital trading platforms like amazon.com or Alibaba which, as we saw, look like, but are not, markets. And Profit? The fuel of capitalism? Well, that has been replaced by its feudal predecessor: rent. But, specifically, a new form of rent, a cloud rent that must be paid for access to those cloud fiefs or digital platforms. But how did cloud capital emerge?It began life in the late 1990s when the original Internet, which was a Commons – it functioned as a capitalism-free-zone – that original Internet, Internet 1.0 if you want, was privatised by the emergent Big Tech. Who paid for the trillions it cost to manufacture and to accumulate cloud capital so quickly in the hands of so very few cloudalists? The startling answer is: The G7 countries’ central banks, mostly! How did that happen? Well, by accident, or – to be more precise – by… crisis! After the financial sector collapse of 2008, our central bankers printed up to $35 trillion to bail out the bankers at a time when the governments were subjecting our peoples to harsh austerity. Capitalists were clever enough to foresee that the many would be too impecunious to buy their stuff. So, instead of investing, they took the central bank money to the stock exchange and the bond markets, where they bought shares, bonds – along with yachts, art, bitcoin, NFTs any ‘asset’ they could lay their hands on. The only capitalists who actually invested in capital were Big Tech owners. For example, 9 out of every 10 dollars that went into creating Facebook came from these central bank monies! That’s how cloud capital was financed and how the cloudalists became our new ruling class. As a result, real power today resides not with the owners of machinery, buildings, railway and phone networks, industrial robots. These old-fashioned, terrestrial capitalists continue to extract surplus value from waged labour, but they are no longer in charge, as they used to be. They have become vassals in relation to the owners of cloud capital, of the cloudalists. As for the rest of us, we have returned to our former status as serfs, contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labour — in addition to the waged labour we perform, when we get the chance to do it. But surely, someone will say, this is still capitalism, isn’t it? So, you are still unconvinced? I know, it is hard to part with the term, with the word, capitalism. It is not just liberals who think of capitalism like fish think of the water they swim in – as natural. Socialists too need to feel that our purpose in life, the reason we landed on this Earth, is to overthrow capitalism. The news that I bring that capital beat us to it, and now we have something worse in capitalism’s place, that news is hard to accept. Indeed, it is mostly my fellow-travelling leftist friends who try to dissuade me – to convince me that, yes, cloud capital may be important but “this is still capitalism mate”. Let’s call it rentier capitalism or monopoly capitalism, they suggest. But that simply will not do! Cloud rent is not like ground rent, because it requires massive investment in new tech. And it is not monopoly rent either, because Bezos and Zuckerberg, instead of monopolising markets to sell their manufactures (like Ford and Eddison did), Bezos and Zuckerberg have replaced markets and have no interest in manufacturing anything (unlike Henry Ford and Thomas Eddison). How about surveillance capitalism? Again, no, it won’t do. Cloudalists do not simply use algorithms to brain wash us on behalf of advertisers in an otherwise capitalist setting. No, cloud capital reproduces itself through our free-labour, it directly exploits waged labour, and it squeezes cloud rents from vassal capitalists in trading platforms that are not markets. This is not capitalism folks! Any kind of capitalism. But what about the observation that technofeudalism is parasitic on the capitalist sector within it? Yes, it is true. Were the conventional capitalists to die out, cloudalists would perish, unable to skim off cloud rents from the manufacturers. So what? After capitalism overthrew feudalism, capitalists were also parasitic on landowners, in the sense that, without private land producing food, capitalism would wither. Similarly, now: While the traditional capitalist sector feeds technofeudalism, it is cloud capital and cloud rent that dominate. Does it matter whether we call it technofeudalism or some form of capitalism? At this point, it is important to recall Marx’s maxim that the point is not to interpret but to change the world. So, does it matter if this is still capitalism or whether we call it technofeudalism? I think it does. Recognising that our world has become technofeudal helps us grasp the enormity of what it will take to organise the victims of exorbitant power, the exploited who, now, include not only waged labourers but also the hordes of cloud serfs who are reproducing the very cloud capital that keeps them in a state of deepening precarity. The concept of technofeudalism drives home the point that organising auto-workers and nurses, while still essential, is insufficient. It elucidates what it will take to organise the movements against the fossil fuel cartel when our means of communication are run on cloud capital primed to poison public opinion. It explains how the shift to electric cars caused German deindustrialisation, as profits due to precision mechanical engineering are being replaced by rents extracted by owners of the cloud capital keeping tabs on the drivers’ routes and in-cabin habits. Elon Musk’s decision to buy Twitter suddenly makes a lot more sense. Twitter for Musk is an interface between his mechanical capital stock at Tesla and SpaceX and cloud capital. The New Cold War between the USA and China, especially after the war in Ukraine, is explained as the repercussion of an underlying clash between two technofeudalisms, one whose cloud rents are denominated in dollars the other in yuan. Isn’t it mindboggling? It took mind-bending scientific breakthroughs, fantastical neural networks, and imagination-defying AI programs to accomplish what? To create a world where, while privatisation and private equity asset-strip all physical wealth around us, cloud capital goes about the business of asset-stripping our brains. To own our minds individually, we must own cloud capital collectively. Once we have reclaimed our minds, we can put them collectively to work out a way to create a new cloud capital commons. It will be damned hard. But it’s the only way we can turn our cloud-based artefacts from a produced means of behaviour modification to a produced means of human collaboration and emancipation. Cloud serfs, cloud proles and cloud vassals of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our mind-cloud chains! US Edition: penguinrandomhouse.com/books… UK Edition: penguin.co.uk/books/451795/t… Greek Edition: patakis.gr/product/677047/pa…

⭕ Press Release No. (908) Issued by the Government Media Office: 🔴 The famine is getting more ferocious and the occupation continues its crimes of genocide: Only 73 trucks entered today, and the air drop operations fell in dangerous combat zones The Gaza Strip is suffering from a fierce famine that is expanding and worsening at an unprecedented rate, affecting 2.4 million people, including 1.1 million children. To date, 133 martyrs have died of starvation, including 87 children, amid suspicious Arab and international silence. In the last two days, media outlets have circulated reports of several countries and entities intending to bring in hundreds of trucks to break the famine in the Gaza Strip. However, the reality is stark: only 73 trucks have entered the northern and southern Gaza Strip, and most of them have been looted and stolen under the watchful eyes of the occupation and its drones, amid its clear desire to prevent them from reaching distribution warehouses, as part of its policy of engineering chaos and starvation. We have witnessed three airdrops, totaling only two trucks of aid. Their cargo landed in red zones—according to the occupation's maps—that are prohibited to civilians, rendering them completely useless. What is happening is a farce in which the international community is colluding against the starving people of the Gaza Strip. This is done through false promises or misleading information issued by major powers like the United States and its president, who have lost even the slightest degree of credibility. The only radical solution is to urgently and unconditionally open the crossings, break the unjust blockade, and allow the immediate entry of food and baby formula before it is too late. The world faces a historic responsibility. With utter condemnation and denunciation, we express our strong rejection of the international community's silence and its complicit and indifferent response to the worsening famine, the systematic starvation policy, and the crimes committed by the occupation against starving civilians in the Gaza Strip. We hold the "Israeli" occupation and its partners in this crime, primarily the countries directly involved in the crime of genocide—the United States, Britain, Germany, and France—fully responsible for the worsening famine and the expansion of the humanitarian disaster, which is becoming more dangerous and bloody with each day. We call on Arab and Islamic countries and all countries of the world to open the crossings immediately, and we call on the media to stop spreading rumors and false information. The famine is still ongoing and is expanding, worsening, and becoming more dangerous and brutal, in light of this horrific conspiracy against the civilian population. ✍️ Government Media Office 📍 Gaza Strip - Palestine 📅 Sunday, July 27, 2025

🚨Gaza Government Media Office On Aid Entry into Gaza on Sunday: ▪️ Only 73 trucks of aid entered Gaza today—far below minimum humanitarian needs (600 ) ▪️ Airdrops landed in active combat “red zones,” putting civilians at risk. ▪️ Much of the aid was looted under Israeli watch, with occupation forces deliberately blocking aid from reaching distribution centers. ▪️ Across three airdrops, the total delivery was less than two truckloads. ▪️ Officials called the operation a “farce,” accusing the international community of complicity through false promises and misleading claims.

The IPC Famine Review Committee concluded on March 18, 2024, that famine thresholds had already been crossed in northern Gaza. On March 2, 2025, Israel cut off all food, fuel, medicine, and electricity for 2 million Palestinians. Barack Obama waited 21 weeks into a U.S.-enabled starvation campaign before acknowledging a “need for action.”

🚨Now in Dimona: Israeli pro-genocide protesters block aid trucks on their way to Gaza

Israeli-made apocalypse in Beit Hanoun. To those who didn’t know this area in northern Gaza, Beit Hanoun was full of orange orchards and beautiful fields. During the spring, the whole area smelled of sweet orange and lemon flowers.

The Israeli military had a message to the Handala freedom flotilla. @huwaidaarraf had a message back to them, explaining international law and their rightful and just mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza with a civilian vessel ‘Handala’.

It is clear the memo went out in recent days among Western leaders to once again try to appease public fury at the genocide they're collectively responsible for, trotting out in front of cameras to do their best impression of human beings. Nobody's fooled. See you in the Hague.

We will never slow down, we will never stop, until the genocide is over We will then continue at same pace until Zionism is dismantled and Palestine is free

"A mother pressed a final kiss to what remained of her 5-month-old daughter and wept. Esraa Abu Halib’s baby now weighed less than when she was born." "The baby was brought to the pediatric department of Nasser Hospital on Friday. She was already dead."

We’ve passed Madeleine’s last point by over 100km and are now nearing Gaza, which under brutal siege and starvation by the Zionist occupation. SPEAK UP!

Even as @HillaryClinton, one of the most cynical, complicit blood-stained war criminals on Earth says *something* about Gaza, it’s notable and hardly surprising that cold-blooded psychopath @BarackObama, who so many delusionally think well of, maintains his stony silence.

People in Gaza are fighting for their lives. Never give up on them. Never!

Breaking: An Israeli airstrike just killed Adam Yahya Abu Harbid, a cameraman for Al-Quds Al-Youm channel, along with all members of his family, after targeting their tent in Al-Yarmouk market in Gaza City.

NEWS | Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is deliberately misrepresenting the state of talks to serve Israel’s aims. His comments follow Witkoff’s claim that Hamas was not “acting in good faith” and the announcement that the U.S. would pull its team from negotiations. “The negative statements of the U.S. envoy Witkoff run completely counter to the context in which the last negotiations were held,” Naim told AFP. “He is perfectly aware of this, but they serve the Israeli position.” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed Witkoff, calling Hamas “the obstacle” to a captive deal and declaring that Israel and the U.S. are now exploring “alternative options” that bypass a negotiated agreement.

🇶🇦🇪🇬 NEW: Statement from Qatar and Egypt on Ceasefire Efforts; — Doha | 25 July 2025 The State of Qatar and the Arab Republic of Egypt affirm the continuation of their efforts on the mediation file in the Gaza Strip, in order to reach an agreement that leads to ending the war, alleviates the humanitarian suffering in the Strip, ensures the protection of civilians, and enables the exchange of detainees and prisoners. The two countries note some progress in the recent round of intensive negotiations, which lasted for three weeks, and affirm that suspension of the negotiations to hold consultations before resuming the dialogue again is a natural matter in the context of these complex negotiations. The two countries call for not being swayed by leaks circulating in some media outlets in an attempt to downplay these efforts and influence the course of the negotiation process. They stress that these leaks do not reflect reality and are issued by parties unfamiliar with the progress of the negotiations The two countries also call on the international media to uphold responsibility of their profession and journalistic ethics, and to shed light on the unprecedented suffering taking place in the Gaza Strip, rather than playing a role in undermining efforts to end the war on the Strip. The two countries, in partnership with the United States, affirm their commitment to completing efforts to reach a comprehensive ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip. Ministry of Foreign Affairs – State of Qatar Department of Media and Communication

🔴 NEW: The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling for protection of Anas Al-Sharif, Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent, who faces escalating threats from the Israeli army. IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee has falsely labeled him a Hamas operative in multiple videos, after Al-Sharif was seen crying on air while reporting on starvation. CPJ warns this smear campaign is “a real-life threat” and could be laying the groundwork for his assassination.

🇺🇳NEW: UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed that UN teams were able to collect food aid—mainly flour—from the Kerem Shalom (south) and Zikim (“Erez West,” north) crossings yesterday, but it is “woefully insufficient to curb starvation or sustain life-saving operations.” ▪️The UN reiterated the reasons for why it is unable to bring enough aid into Gaza. 1. It points “a number of interdependent factors, including bureaucratic, logistical, administrative, and other operational obstacles imposed by Israeli authorities” 2. “Ongoing hostilities and access constraints within Gaza” 3. And incidents of criminal looting, as well as shooting incidents that have killed and injured people gathering to offload aid supplies along convoy routes” Taken together, the UN said, “these factors have put people and humanitarian staff at grave risk and forced aid agencies on many occasions to pause the collection of cargo from crossings controlled by the Israeli authorities.”