Fascisms and other addenda
This week’s post for coffee buyers
It begins as below:
As you know, I have been delayed in writing the next in my series of special articles, which focus on the evolution of cultural and social intelligence -- and now technological intelligence. Ray Kurzweil believes that singularity is coming sooner than we think. I get the feeling though that he thinks that nothing will really change, except for a new extension of human capabilities.
That begs the question of what it means to be human.
What you see below is just part of a lonnnnnnnnnnng discussion with an LLM, which despite a tendency towards irritating flattery, was actually helpful..
It’s long but you may find it interesting. After all, it is your future.
*Buy a coffee to access it if you are not a registered supporter.
Things that add to recent analyses
Linguistic fascism
If you read my article on the weaponization of language in Ukraine, you might have thought I was exaggerating the issues. Linguistic fascism is still fascism.
Ukraine’s ombudsman has demanded a tenfold increase in fines for speaking Russian.
Ukraine’s Language Ombudsman, Elena Ivanovskaya, has demanded a tenfold increase in fines for repeat violations of language legislation. She outlined her initiatives in an interview with the local publication “Levy Bereg,” TASS reports .
Media fascism
I am always writing about the way Western propaganda propagates Ukrainian lies, without any regards for truth, Again, I was not exaggerating.
Sick and tired of “propaganda”?
Armchair Warlord@Armchair
So for weeks now we’ve been getting told by the commentariat at large that the Ukrainians have been launching a big and fairly successful counterattack in West Zaporozhie. Their sources? Vibes and Ukrainian propaganda on Telegram.
Today their hype video dropped. And, uh..
Apparently this “grand counterattack,” which was being hyped up as having secured dozens of square kilometers and several villages and towns from the Russians by war mappers on all sides, consisted of two AFU vehicles getting into the western dacha district of Stepnogorsk during very poor visibility conditions sometime in the March-April timeframe and dismounting about a squad of infantry (fig. 1). These infantry have never been heard from since, but if you look at Sentinel imagery of Stepnogorsk during that timeframe (fig. 3; imagery from May 12th, anomaly highlighted) there appears to be a large bomb crater around where they were geolocated in town (fig. 2). You can connect the dots on that one yourself.
It’s rather noteworthy that the Ukrainians, in a bizarre OPSEC measure considering this was a video they themselves decided to release to the public, took the measure of HEAVILY blurring most of the scenery visible in this video. This may have been an effort to keep people from drawing the exact same conclusions as I did, or perhaps simply an attempt to present their operation as being more successful than it actually was. In any event my old heuristic - Armchair’s Second Law, I guess - that the Ukrainians always show the best footage they have and then cut it to make themselves look as good as possible, seems to be a good guide here.
Now the absurd thing about this entire affair is that the war mappers (including Russian ones like DivGen!) handed this entire area over to the AFU a while ago and with no apparent critical examination of the evidence they had - which at that point consisted largely of Ukrainians going “trust me bro” on Telegram. Meanwhile General Gerasimov was accused by these same people of lying to the public about the status of Borovaya until the Russian Army produced video showing Russian troops operating in town - at which point the obviously enraged mappers drew the tiniest, most conservative little control zones around the exact geolocations they could pull off a similarly weeks-old video of Russian troops. Obviously that’s not the actual front line trace and everyone knows it, but apparently the Russians have to have a Victory Day parade and establish a bus route to get some red on the map.
I want to underline this here. There is exactly as much hard evidence right now that the Russians control Borovaya as there is for the Ukrainians controlling Stepnogorsk - one video of an infantry detachment in the general urban area, sometime in March-April when the snow had melted but the leaves were still off the trees - but one map update is “realistic analysis” and one is “insane cope.” And this, by the way, is not how pro-Ukrainian mappers are behaving - it’s how allegedly pro-Russian ones are. DivGen hasn’t even marked up Borovaya yet, they’re apparently too busy hallucinating Ukrainian attacks in Kupyansk. Rybar has the AFU south of Stepnogorsk and attacking Kamenskoe!
I am increasingly sick and tired of these people.
Robotic anti-fascism
In many capitalistic societies, robots, AI and similar technologies are used to empower elites. This is sometimes called “techno-fascism” or “techno-feudalism”.
But such technologies can be used to for the public good, to empower ordinary people, as seems to be the case in China and also Russia. Below, a followup to previous articles. — as I have written about before. AI might actually be antifascist!
China plans to fill labor shortage with millions of humanoid robots.
Barclays Plc analysts predict that millions of workers in China will be replaced by robots.
Text: Elizaveta Shishkova
Active automation will help offset up to 60% of China’s expected labor force losses by 2035, Interfax reports . Over the next decade, the country’s potential workforce could decline by 37 million due to demographic pressures.
Such a decline could seriously hinder the development of the industrial sector, which accounts for about a quarter of the Chinese economy. Standard productivity gains will only cover a small portion of the labor shortage, making the reliance on robotics inevitable.
Reducing the number of people in factories will create a huge domestic market for new technologies. Under an optimistic scenario, the number of working anthropomorphic machines will reach 24 million units by 2035.
“The current decade is the decade of robots, and it belongs to China,” Barclays Plc analysts emphasized.
As Vzglyad newspaper reported, analysts predicted a 60 million-person population decline in China over the next ten years.
Chinese authorities have planned to accelerate the introduction of anthropomorphic robots within the framework of the fifteenth five-year plan.
In the first two months of this year, the volume of industrial robotics production in China increased by a third
American fascisms
American fascism is never one thing. It’s like hamburgers, chicken or beef or fish, with cheese or without cheese, fries or not. There is a fascism for every taste. So it “invisible fascism” . A hamburger is still a hamburger.
Which is why you have the governments you do, each as bad as the previous one.
As you know, I have written a lot about Trump’s threats to level Iran and then his failure to follow through,
The Punditocracy of course tries to ascribe rational motive - usually just one. But in ordinary life, people rarely do anything for just one reason. Yet, somehow we always want to reduce things to a singular motive.
So, today Moon of Alabama ran an article quoting an article run by Yves Smith who had written and a long and convoluted article on why Trump was postponing his threatened attack on Iran —so he could capitalize on the stock market. Smith’s blog is Naked Capitalism.
Another big attack on Iran, and Iran’s inevitable retaliation, would likely lead to a market crash and sever personal losses for Trump.
That may well be the one and only thing that is holding him back.
This,B, is is a little short-sighted, You can actually profit in a market crash — if they know it’s coming. As I wrote before, Trump appears to have been making money from market volatility, knowing that he can cause the market to react in one direction or another with some insanity on Truth Social.
So Bernard’s reasoning and Smith’s is not quite right. “Naked” indeed.
OK… I just couldn’t resist. I have been looking for an excuse to post this
Leaving aside eye-candy, there other reasons.
Trump’s stated reason on UnTruth AntiSocial is that the UAE and Qatar begged him not to attack Iran., which I am sure that they did because:
Iran has said it will destroy vital infrastructure vital to the continued existence of the UAE and Qatar, including access to data.
And, there is no protection from the US;
Another reason is that Iran is clearly hoping the US will attack so it can respond and devastate US forces - and, of course, Israel is not doing well in Lebanon.
Not that Trump pays attention to details. But some in the Pentagon do because they are the ones who will be blamed in the end.
Sorry Yves, sorry B., sorry Larry, there are just so many reasons for this situation going on and on and on…
That is not to say that Trump will NOT attack some time in the future. This genius is unstable.
Help Ichi and Chappy and their ‘pet by buying us coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/julicow.
Thank You Julian... A fresh look on fascism. But my cent is on the Frozen Assets by EU-Belgium Euroclear. Robbing is a typical Fascistic habit.
I mentioned last Alexander Mercouris Video to GROK (AI in 'X').
->https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRPwqWA0rAw&t=1200s <-starts at the right point.
GROK:
Thanks for sharing the transcript from Alexander Mercouris' video (19 May 2026, starting ~20:00).
This picks up right after the major Moscow Arbitration Court ruling on 15 May 2026, where the court upheld the Russian Central Bank's claim and ordered Euroclear to pay roughly 18.2 trillion rubles (~€200–220 billion / ~$250 billion) in damages over the frozen Russian sovereign assets.
Euroclear immediately rejected the ruling as without merit, lacking jurisdiction under EU law, and said it will appeal — while confirming the assets remain frozen and its operations are unaffected.
Your auto-generated transcript has the usual speech-to-text glitches (common with Mercouris' rapid delivery), but I can reconstruct it clearly based on the context, standard legal terminology, and the known facts of the case.
Here's a cleaned-up, accurate version of what he said:
ALEXANDER:
"The key thing about the decision of the Moscow arbitration court is that it now opens the way for the Russians to bring further proceedings in other jurisdictions against Euroclear.
And also it seems that they might now invoke the power available to them as a result of certain commercial treaties they have entered into with Belgium, which allows the setting up of arbitration tribunals not subject to appeal, and whose decisions override those of national states or indeed of supranational entities like the European Union
— whose decisions are binding and, as I said, are not subject to appeal —
and which can be set up within the framework of these commercial treaties and which can be established in all sorts of third-party jurisdictions.
Many are suggesting Singapore or other places, and well the Russians can also bring cases probably based on this decision of the Moscow arbitration court directly, relying simply on this order, in some jurisdictions as well. Hong Kong is an obvious possibility. Just saying.
I think that the intricate legal battle between the European Union and the Russians and between Euroclear and the Russians has just begun. We could be looking at several years of litigation.
And as I've said in many places and already based on my own understanding of law, I think that the Russians have always had a strong case here. But I also believe that the various debates and arguments that took place in Europe last year about the confiscation of the frozen Russian funds has strengthened that case considerably, maybe even immeasurably.
And well there must also be concerns within Euroclear that even if after a long series of debilitating legal battles probably taking place in many jurisdictions, even if Euroclear and the European Union ultimately win, it might actually be a dangerous victory in that it would establish a precedent for third parties that if they place their funds on European Union territory and the European Union chooses to freeze them, then these third parties will lose their money and will never see it again — which might act as a massive disincentive for them to place their funds on the territory of the European Union anyway.
So an interesting step, obviously a much anticipated step. This story is only at its beginning. A great deal is now going to happen over the next few years. We will see where it goes."
GROK:
Why this matters (and why Mercouris is largely on point):
This isn't just Russian posturing. The Moscow ruling itself has zero direct enforceability in Belgium or the EU — Euroclear and every Western source correctly dismisses it on jurisdictional grounds. But it serves as a powerful domestic "hook" and public record of Russia's claimed losses.
The real game-changer Mercouris highlights is the 1989 Belgium-Luxembourg–USSR Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) (which Russia inherited).
This Cold War-era treaty is unusually investor-friendly and lacks many of the modern carve-outs for national security or public-order measures that newer BITs include.
Under this BIT: Russian "investors" (the Central Bank of Russia or state-linked entities can plausibly qualify) can bring investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) claims against Belgium itself for alleged expropriation, unfair treatment, or denial of free transfer of funds.
Disputes go to neutral international arbitration (often under UNCITRAL rules or Stockholm Chamber of Commerce), not national courts.
Awards are final, not subject to appeal on the merits, and enforceable in 170+ countries under the New York Convention — including Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and many other third-party jurisdictions where Euroclear or Belgian state assets can be targeted.
This is exactly the mechanism Mercouris describes: arbitration tribunals whose decisions "override" national courts or even EU measures in enforcement proceedings abroad.
Russia (and private Russian investors) have already been laying the groundwork with notices of dispute against Belgium. The Moscow judgment strengthens their factual narrative of harm and could be used as evidence in those arbitrations.
The bigger picture and risks Mercouris flags, Years of litigation ahead:
Absolutely. ISDS cases routinely take 3–7+ years. Even if Belgium/Euroclear "win" most rounds in the EU, enforcement battles in friendly third-country courts could drag on indefinitely.
Russia's case strength: The EU's own internal debates in 2025 about using the assets (initial plans for full principal use were scaled back precisely because of these legal risks) have handed Russia strong arguments that the freeze goes beyond temporary sanctions into de facto permanent deprivation. Belgium has publicly called the BIT risk a "Sword of Damocles."
The precedent problem:
This is the most under-appreciated point Mercouris makes. Euroclear is one of the world's largest securities depositories. If third-country sovereign wealth funds, central banks, or major institutions conclude that parking assets in the EU exposes them to permanent political seizure with no reliable recourse, they may quietly shift business to Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai) or other hubs. That would be a slow but real erosion of Europe's financial centrality — exactly the "dangerous victory" he warns about.
We've discussed the Euroclear freeze before, and this is the logical next phase Russia is forcing.
The Moscow ruling doesn't "unlock" the money immediately, but it escalates the legal pressure in precisely the venues (international arbitration + third-country enforcement) where the EU has the least control. It's classic asymmetric legal warfare:
Russia uses Western-created tools (old BITs, New York Convention) against the West.
We'll see how aggressively Russia actually files the ISDS cases and whether they target Euroclear's global footprint. Belgium and the EU will fight hard (sovereign immunity arguments, public-order exceptions, etc.), but the process itself creates uncertainty and cost.
This story is indeed only beginning. Let me know if you want me to dig into the specific BIT text, past ISDS precedents, or how enforcement in Singapore/Hong Kong would actually work !
END GROK.
Just saying.
Cassandra
Ukrainian counter offensives: When 200 KIAs/day is not enough