September 26, 2025

The well-hidden threat of Open AI
Karen Hao’s long, detailed and excellent book, “Empire of AI,” gets a long and detailed review in The Nation. She makes a strong case for her argument that the booming, profit-seeking former nonprofit’s ambitions are not merely about scale or the market but the creation of a global network of exploitation that rivals a colonial power of old. Via Portside

Abolition is About Making Things…
Mariame Kaba’s latest Substack dives into the power of imagination, reminding us that imagination is a collective practice and, though our current oppressive system was imagined into reality, we can also use imagination to achieve liberation. A question driving Kaba that she invites us all to consider is: What are the ruptures and breaks that allow us to pre-figure another way of living? Via Substack

Who’s Afraid of “Settler Colonialism”?
What has made [the term] settler colonialism such an object of both apprehension and dismissal? To its critics, the concept is analytically unhelpful since it evokes a fact about all societies; if you go back far enough, they all have original sins. In this argument, settler colonialism isn’t a scholarly tool so much as an unhelpful accusation of political guilt. What’s worse, critics fear that under the “political theology” at play, the scales of justice can only be made right by removing those excoriated as “settlers.” In the United States, this may be a farcical nonstarter, but for Israel/Palestine, it is ultimately what Adam Kirsch calls a “theory of a massacre.” Via Dissent

GI Resistance needs revival and support in era of Trump’s illegal orders
 …it is not enough for About Face and other movement organizations to be doing this work [support for troops disobeying illegal orders] alone. The GI resistance needs mass support, including support from elected officials. It is not enough for governors to declare National Guard deployments to be illegal and unconstitutional, like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has done. Elected officials also need to back up their words with actions that don’t leave military members to face illegal and immoral orders alone. They need to provide sanctuary, amnesty, and legal support for military members who wish to refuse those illegal orders. Via Truthout. Also see David Ignatius’ WaPo column on purging of “JAG” military lawyers with roles designed to check illegal orders.

Immigrant Defense is the Frontline in the Fight for Democracy
As repression increases, the need to be strategic increases as well. Bill Gallegos explains how the successful struggle to force marines and the National Guard out of Los Angeles provides an example of how to build a united front against fascism. See his article in The New Liberator

Labor Turning the Corner? It Will Take More Than Mobilization
Rebuilding the labor movement is similarly critical to the success of resistance to reaction and to developing transformative alternative politics. Michael Eisenscher, a longtime union activist, argues in an overview of the last few decades of union history that militancy alone is not enough, we need social justice unionism grounded in local union member engagement. “We need to build a labor movement that recognizes, articulates, and practices values that are fundamentally different from those of the market, namely values of solidarity, equality, inclusivity, community, and democracy.” from Portside