War Commentary Issue #2

Corona Virus Special

No one expected this. The entire capitalist world system has just been knee-capped by a super-flu bug that respects neither borders or laws. Less than a month after a state-imposed quarantine, COVID-19 collapsed the US economy, put millions of out of work, and revealed to the public how weak capitalism truly is.

Oakland’s a ghost-town, especially downtown, and our entire social lives now revolve around the corner store, the supermarket, the gas station, the take-out counter, and whatever other local businesses are allowed to stay open. Surprisingly, the path around Lake Merritt was popping, given it’s one of the only places to people-watch while remaining six feet apart. Not anymore. All the parks are banned, all the hiking trails are closed, and people were finally spending time outdoors at a time when pollution is at a record low.

With all this new free-time at their disposal, most people don’t know what to do. Sitting at home gets boring, so some people wander outside, sometimes with their romantic partner, who they now see 24 hours a day. Now that nothing’s open except what’s essential, everyone can see just how unessential capitalist reality is. All that’s left is talking with strangers on the street, being careful to remain six feet apart, although most people clearly aren’t, especially in the grocery line.

Millions of people with idle time are now asking how they’re going to pay their rent, their mortgage, their debt, and their utilities. The obvious answer is to simply stop paying any of these things and wait for the government to bail out the entire population. Rather than be satisfied with a one-time payment of 1200 dollars, the US population should demand the 2000 dollars a month the Canadian state has been forced to provide. Once they get that, they should ask for more. If enough people straight-up refuse to pay their rent, mortgage, debt, or utilities, not only will the government be forced to socialize massive segments of the economy, the entire capitalist economy will collapse. All the truths of this corrupt system are now being revealed by COVID-19 and there’s no returning from this crisis. Capitalism won’t recover. The flu killed it.

On April 1, 2020, potentially thousands of people will have participated in a rent strike against their landlords. By the time you read this article, there will hopefully be millions of people refusing to pay anything back to capitalism. The call for a rent strike across the US might prove to be the first act of direct resistance taken by the population against a system that has outlived itself. A full general strike of all remaining workplaces, the next logical step of any rent strike, would bring the government to its knees, putting us in total control. We wouldn’t need to do anything other than refuse to participate in what remains of the economy and build power ourselves.

All of this might have seemed crazy a year ago. Even a few months ago, no one would have believed that a flu-pandemic would bring down capitalism. Now that we’re on the verge of an immense and irreversible transition, these simple words you’ve just read are most likely understatements, just as they’re probably out of date by the time you read them. We’ve left this newspaper in the few remaining sites of social activity and hope our words inspire you to build a better world amid the chaos of this quarantine. Link up with your community, build networks of sharing, and make the state irrelevant by providing for yourselves directly. The world is yours. Go build it.

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Viral Humor From The Town

I was walking down San Pablo the other day when I see this dude selling toilet paper on the sidewalk. He was charging 5 bucks per roll, Corona Virus Special. I keep walking and see this other guy selling hand-sanitizer for 20 bucks a bottle, and I’m talking about the tiny bottles. Same shit, Corona Virus Special, so I just keep walking. Then I see this other dude up ahead, has all his shit spread out on a blanket, and he’s selling garlic for 10 dollars a head. Corona Virus Special, he says. Supermarkets are all sold out of the stuff, chewing it keeps you healthy, but I don’t believe him, so I keep walking. That’s when I see the next Corona Virus Special spread out on a rug, some dude selling axes for 100 dollars a pop. I ask what these axes are for but then he just looks at me all serious and says: THE FUCK YOU THINK HAPPENS NEXT, BRUH?

An unknown person tagged a wall along Grand Avenue with the phrase RENT STRIKE! Apparently this person was a foreign agent challenging a native custom.

A man from Oakland walked into a Walmart in San Leandro, claimed to have the Corona Virus, and walked out with $800 worth of canned energy drinks because no one wanted to touch him. Although he was arrested, this man created a new method of shoplifting for all to enjoy.

In brazen defiance of the quarantine, a young man attempted to sell marijuana from his car in “the 30s” region of East Oakland. As a consequence of the free-market, a rogue agent decided to rob the weed seller at gun-point and fired off a few rounds as the dealer sped away. One person was wounded and taken to a COVID-19 infested hospital to await treatment.

Just before the April 1 rent strike, the governor of California, in a fit of desperation, imposed a state-wide moratorium on evictions. In other words, the 30 day notice to pay rent or quit has been graciously extended to 60 days.

Thanks to the Corona Virus, many people have realized their top three hobbies are restaurants, bars, and non-essential businesses. This is the common existential revelation of our current moment: capitalism is boring as fuck.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, six county governments have decreed that all public parks, sports fields, and hiking trails are now banned. Now that people are finally getting healthy and enjoying a natural world free from capitalism’s daily pollution, the government wants people inside, in front of the screen, and letting their immune systems get compromised from innactivity. To put it simply, governemt is chaos, anarchy is order.

In another act of extraordinary benevolence, the state of California is attempting to release 3500 prisoners in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in their carceral system. These 3500 prisoners were due to be released within 60 days anyway, but now these lucky few will soon escape what a prisoner described as a a Nazi Germany death camp. They basically locked them all in the ‘sick’ dorm and are only taking guys out with a high fever. As ever, the State’s generosity knows no bounds.

In other news, @L0gg0I reveals that Elon Musk has opened a new biz. It’s called FaceMusk. This comes hot on the tails of the Tesla factory in Fremont being deemed a non-essential business and ordered to shut down. Now that his electric-car line has been suspended, Musk is pivoting to the production of the now essential face-mask and ventilators in order to keep his Fremont facility open. There has surely never been a more un-selfish act in the history of humanity.