I Don’t Care If The Democratic Party Never Holds Office Again
Left Critique Daniel Woods Left Critique Daniel Woods

I Don’t Care If The Democratic Party Never Holds Office Again

It is undeniable that our economy has tightened, that we are astride a violin string which is being pulled ever more taut beneath our ragged feet. We watch as far away the pegs turn, hear as the cords beneath us creak and groan in protest to the burden of our weight and the insistent yanking from beyond. Around us the people fall, crashing freely into the void below, the safety net we long ago built now so full of holes as to be nonexistent.

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Occupied Palestine = Slaveholder America
Left Critique Daniel Woods Left Critique Daniel Woods

Occupied Palestine = Slaveholder America

The dream of the Zionist is an ahistorical Palestine that they can romanticize into a brave, but anachronistic people who were minor elements in the Manifest Destiny of an Israel that occupies all the land “between the Sea and the Jordan.” Now the occupying power has been forced into a choice, reaping the gruesome rewards of their hybrid reservation-plantation system of exploitation; seeing that the only way to ensure their dominance in the region, to halt resistance to their injustice, is to eradicate the indigenous population entirely through either bombs, poison, or exile into the Sinai Peninsula.

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The Radio and the Machete: Mass Media as a Tool of Apartheid and Massacre
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

The Radio and the Machete: Mass Media as a Tool of Apartheid and Massacre

The game being played on the US population is an old one, a tried and tested method of manufacturing consent and enabling the worst actors to bring their most vile ambitions to fruition. Genocide is a reset switch for Capitalism, a failsafe which (successful or not) often leaves the same people/parties in power while conveniently allowing enemies and dissenters to be culled from the ranks of society generally, the masses to release the pressures of extractive society on their neighbors rather than the ones who maintain the bonds on their wrists, ankles, and throats.

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Stage 1 Ceasefire In Gaza: What Comes Next?
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

Stage 1 Ceasefire In Gaza: What Comes Next?

We all know Trump and how he operates. Look to North Korea, a purely optical win for the President at the time, and see how this ceasefire agreement could ultimately be another similar stunt purely for the cameras and fame – without the intent or wherewithal to enforce down the line. This move by the incoming-President is not one of empathy, but one of petty politics with no intent of US enforcement after the coming week(s). Trump is concerned with legacy as much as – if not more than – Biden; as a media diva he knows exactly the routines which Liberal Democrats are now enacting as the Mummy President is soon to be wheeled from the Oval Office for the final time, well aware that the waning days of the 46th President are being used to build a wall of credibility, competence, and achievement around Biden. We all know Trump’s pettiness isn’t going to let that slide.

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Convict, Hotshot, or Municipal Firefighters: Which Side Are You On?
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

Convict, Hotshot, or Municipal Firefighters: Which Side Are You On?

It is understandable and reasonable that many of you feel slighted by the overwhelming attention that convict crews are getting. As many of you have mentioned, it isn’t uncommon for news media to focus almost exclusively on these populations and it can feel like they are doing so intentionally despite the clear needs of non-convict crews – and I assure you, we hear you on the Left as much as we hear the convict crew even if you don’t have the informational streams to hear us talking back. But I implore you, please, look at this structure for what it is: worker manipulation and disempowerment.

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The Looting of Los Angeles
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

The Looting of Los Angeles

There is a truth here that many are desperate to ignore: this is a class war. The rich who were able to mobilize private armies of fire fighters to protect their homes and businesses while everything their neighbors owned burned around them are turning around to point at Black and Brown young men minding their own business or seeking to save their own lives and loved ones. The politicians who were happy to allow private interests to subsume public resources as their own, who refused to stop the theft of our water, land, and opportunities in favor of those like the Wonderful Company (hope your pistachios taste like burning rubber) who have stolen some 90% of Californians’ water through underhanded manipulation of municipal levers and officials.

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Mangione and Palestine: Two Faces of the Imperial Polyhedron
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

Mangione and Palestine: Two Faces of the Imperial Polyhedron

Luigi Mangione is an example of just what happens whenever the strictures of expansionism abroad translate to real deprivation at home, the continued over-investment of resources in external affairs allowing for a complete degradation of affairs here. The pressure has mounted across the country, building against the banking, housing, education, manufacturing, service, and healthcare industries with little to no release as US legislators focus almost exclusively on the maintenance of empire and the intentional distraction of their constituencies which this necessitates.

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So You Want a Definition of Fascism
Commentary Daniel Woods Commentary Daniel Woods

So You Want a Definition of Fascism

Slavery existed before we named the system; the idea of stolen labor a fundamental principle to the ideology of the capitalist, yet predating the invention of the definition by millennia. In fact, it was chattel slavery, the reduction of human beings to a class of livestock, which truly sowed the seeds for what Capitalism is today. Indeed, the East India Trading Company was established in 1600 and what, if not capitalist, was it if not the seizure of the means of production and distribution from the commoner for the benefit of the lords and financiers of Europe? What was the Slave Triangle if not the express theft of the means of production in its rawest form for the use of landed elites in both the Old World and New?

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Anti-LGBTQ+ Arabs? Sounds Sus.
Left Critique Daniel Woods Left Critique Daniel Woods

Anti-LGBTQ+ Arabs? Sounds Sus.

If you wish to opine on the state of rights in Arab nations and countries, you should first recognize the material realities of the world in which they exist, the struggles which demand the vast majority of their daily energies and attention. Their can be no pro-equality movement while an occupying country bombs your neighborhood, steals your water, and limits the availability of food and medicine at will; no protections for the most vulnerable when all are stood naked before the same wall for execution.

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