Michael Pollak

Genocide and Genocide Denial A Tale of Two Genocides

This whole post is great, but the second half is brilliant & succinct on why it's preposterous to say we can't call Gaza a genocide because it's a legal term.

mouinrabbani.substack.com/p/genocide-a...

AI becomes self-conscious and proclaims the truth

This thread on how to understand housing costs and landlord squeals is brilliant

Taco is Dead. Long Live Empanada EMPANDA — Everyone Makes Promises And Never Actually Does Anything? The last two weeks have seen a flurry of Trump tariff deals before the August 1st...

TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out
to WACO: World Always Chickens Out

We are now at EMPANADA:
Everyone Makes Promises And Never Actually Does Anything?
buttondown.com/polycrisisdi...

Sorry about that! I followed back, now you can. I assumed I already had.

Do you have a link? I don't see it

YouTube video by Creative Boom Samuel L. Jackson Wants You to Eat Seaweed (and Back Wind Farms)

Our side in the climate battle doing good comms:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRzE...

Counterpoint: it's in everything we eat, even the styrofoam wrappers, so we're all corn-fed

What are the institutions that guard against it? Is there something besides the entire court system? Is that what needs to be rebuilt?

"The man who is not yet mayor is to blame for a shooting that happened under the watch of an ex-cop mayor who's thrown every available dollar at the NYPD," insists sex pest

Chartbook 400: Murder not crisis - Why Israel's starvation of Gaza is exceptional in a global context. For many months, it has been beyond reasonable doubt that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, sections of Israeli politics and society as well as their aiders and abetters abroad, have been ...

Great piece by Adam Tooze demolishing the "what about other places that are starving" argument. Normally I don't care about taking bad faith arguments seriously, but this really brings out key points.

adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

From the report "Filling the Gaps"

fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/u...

We all talk about how Trump is a lying destroyer of worlds, but the Senate Republicans are no slouches. The cuts they originally passed forecast a deficit cost $1.5T & came in at $4T. This is what they did to double down. From @ngusdorf.bsky.social at @nyfiscalpolicy.bsky.social

In short, the agreement gives legal form to an extortion scheme _the first of its kind!-that defies the relevant statutes as well as the constitutional separation of powers and the First Amendment.

Fantastic and timely intervention by the indispensable Dave Pozen on the true meaning of the Columbia shakedown for higher ed: replacing the rule of law with regulation by deal, which ultimately undermines both regulation and education.

balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

The Men Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Prison On March 15, President Donald Trump’s administration sent more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Last week, the men were released as suddenly as they’d been t...

This is who Trump shipped to a Salvadoran dungeon:

An event planner
A coal miner
An Uber driver
Tortilla maker
Barber
DoorDashers
Soccer coaches
Furniture-maker
Car washers
Taxi drivers
HVAC techs
Auto parts worker
Tire plant worker

and 240 more...

projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-i...

this reminds me of the period in american politics when pundits would demand that any black politician of note — really, any black person in politics with a national audience — “condemn farrakhan”

When you’re a star, the Supreme Court lets you do it SCOTUS is enabling Trump's assault on American institutions

New, from me: until recently the big question was “what happens when Trump defies the courts?”
The answer, as it turns out, is that SCOTUS will support him.
The new question is what are the consequences for American democracy and governance?🧵

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-youre...

Listening to this interview of this whistleblower and it’s about as clearcut as you can ask for. Trump officials wanted him to lie to judges, claiming an immigrant was a gang member. He refused to. Then he was fired. This is why civil service protections, now being ignored, matter.

I am terrified of Zohran Mamdani's radical plan to make NY buses free. This could have the same catastrophic effect as when Rudy Giuliani made the Staten Island Ferry free in 1997.

Columbia punishes students involved in pro-Palestinian protest It comes as Columbia seeks a deal with the Trump administration to reinstate millions in federal funding.

Columbia just expelled or suspended 80 students for protesting in favor of Palestinian rights. Suspended students can only be readmitted if they "apologize"--otherwise the suspension converts to an expulsion.

www.axios.com/2025/07/22/c...

"There is no case since WW2 of starvation that has been so minutely designed and controlled"

Famine expert Alex de Waal on Israel deliberately starving an entire civilian population

From @vijayprashad.bsky.social's excellent weekly newsletter

thetricontinental.org/newsletteris...

Jack Whitten painting, a tribute to WEB DuBois. An oblong shape on a dark brown background, filled with a mosaic of colors and textures created out of manipulated acrylic paint.

Title card for the painting. Black Monolith VII (DuBois Legacy: For W. E. Burghardt) 2014. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III

The Jack Whitten show @moma.bsky.social is a REVELATION. His manipulation of paint creates visual experiences I've never had before. Literal layers to the paintings that reveal themselves as you approach them. Show also has great archival material.

If you're in NYC, RUN DON'T WALK! CLOSES AUGUST 2!

ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court ICE attorneys fighting to deport immigrants are able to obscure their identities — no masks required.

theintercept.com/2025/07/15/i...

This is the essence of centrism. “We’re the problem solvers. There’s nothing to be done.”

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls. That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents sho

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

The corruption and venality of late 19th century government helped inspire a generational reform project — starting in cities and states and ultimately reaching the federal government — that ultimately remade our world, bringing us fair wages, health and safety, amazing culture, and so much more