so, i got the first part done. and, i'm sure it's going to piss them off, but bring it on....

it's the churches and mosques that are going to end up being the problem and that are going to need to get shut down by force, not the concerts and bars.

we're stupid.

it's that simple.

what they're doing is scapegoating young people, with irreligious lifestyles. it's bizarre.

it's like something they'd do in iran. 

it's like public shaming. 

i've got my hands full. i hope that a few bars around town stay open in protest, and i hope there are civil rights groups pushing back on the fines.

if i had a bar, i'd stay open, get fined and take the government to court over it.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/27/coronavirus-south-korea-cults-conservatives-china/

khomeini, khamenei - i feel like that skit's been done.

well, there's some good news, anyways.

how old is khomeini, nowadays?

no, he's dead. the other one is 80. let's hope it gets him....

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/iran-reports-113-virus-deaths-containment-concerns-mount-200315180552632.html

if they were logical, the very first thing they would have done was put a total ban on all religious gatherings, period. that's where this is living.

but, they shut down the bars, full of healthy young people, instead.

because they're stupid.

'cause you know where all the lonely people (where do they all come from?) are going right now, don't you?

i shouldn't complain. good riddance to them. maybe this is the final nail in the coffin of the church, so to speak.

enjoy your diseased wafers; your magic water won't save you.

they should shut down every church, chapel, mosque, temple and synagogue in the country under the threat of heavy fines, until further notice.

listen, i can make you a promise.

i've got 90% of a 26er of vodka in my cupboard, and i won't touch until the bars open. i won't smoke, either.

you can be pretty sure i'll be pretty straight edge for as long as this goes on, because i hate being fucked up alone, and i only really enjoy marijuana in the presence of live music. if i get back to work soon, i'll be recording, and i am pristinely sober, then.

but, i really don't want to miss a 4/20 weekend that includes squarepusher and rachmaninov. that was fucking amazing.

again: if they wanted to cancel something, they should have canceled religious services. that's what happened in south korea, it was a church at the centre of the outbreak. that would have actually made sense...

but, we live in a supremely backwards culture that blames alcohol (a mild disinfectant) and provides exceptions for organized religion (the root of the problem).

we are, collectively, incredibly stupid.

and, we're about to pay for it....

no....i can't file a motion to put the thing aside because it doesn't fit the exact rules.

i'm going to try to file without notice first and see what happens.

yeah, i'm pissed off.

there's no logic underlying this, at all.

it's just panic-stricken, hysterical backwardsness.

welcome to the fucking third world, guys. it's here.

sorry. i meant to say...

let's just hope they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.

you have to have faith in something, right?

shutting down bars will have no effect.

let's just they fucking die fast so we can get on with this.

and, keep your fucking pot away from me, i don't want it.

so,

1) i need to file a motion to vary the order

2) i need to file a motion without notice to add the reply factum

that's the first part of this.

the motion itself just instructed me to ask for consent, implying i didn't need to file anything.

looking through the rules, the registrar can't file it (because reply factums aren't in the list of things she can do) and i can't file a consent motion because i can't sign a consent order.

so, i have to file it without consent.

even though i have consent...

rather than file without consent, which could take 14 days, i'm going to make a request to change the court's order, because i do technically have consent, i just can't sign a consent order. then, i'm going to file under 37.07 (2):

(2) Where the nature of the motion or the circumstances render service of the notice of motion impracticable or unnecessary, the court may make an order without notice.  R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, r. 37.07 (2).

that's what we need, here.

this is not science based.

i'm deeply embarrassed by this, but i didn't expect much from the province.

it's the feds that i'm more disappointed by.

*sigh*. it's going to be a shitty couple of months, i guess :(. with the bars closed, there's nothing to do except sit inside and read....

https://nationalpost.com/news/ontario-government-moves-to-protect-workers-affected-by-covid-19

so, i need to file a motion in writing, with the whole shebang.

this should be an administrative decision. but, whatever.

the consent motion needs to certify that no party is under any legal disability.

i live on disability. i can't do that.

it's more the context than anything else.

my draft order is going to be two lines. 

but, this is what the court is demanding.

this is so remarkably stupid.

i need to file a draft order, and get the parties to agree to it. why can't i just get a judge to make an order?

i'm suing these people. i'm not their friend. i don't want to agree with them on anything, i want to annihilate and destroy them. i want to argue. i want to fight...

this is supposed to be an adversarial process, but it's designed with this insistence on cooperation that is intensely pissing me off.

i hate being nice to people that i hate. it makes me uncomfortable. and angry.

actually, there's a list of specialized motions that might be useful, here.

but, if the fundamental problem is that the coordinator doesn't understand the rules, and i respond by producing more esoteric rules, don't i just run the risk of producing the same problem?

perhaps.

but, i feel the urge to double down, given that this is going to the appeals court now, anyways. i've made complaints about the coordinator, i've made complaints about the judge. i have leave to appeal.

so, i'm going to really fuck with them on this by being as obtuse as i can, in an attempt to embarrass them in the next court up.

they made this choice, it's their own fault.

so, i'm going to produce a series of ridiculous motions designed with the intent to make them look like idiots.

they weren't important, and they're digitized.

but, why?

that's three motions coming.

1) a consent motion to include the reply factum.

2) a motion to rule on the applicability of 38.06 (1) - the rule i filed under

3) a motion to order the coordinator to find the affidavit that was filed on or around feb 10th.

i will continue to escalate as is necessary.

and, i want to know why some cops came in here and stole some court documents.

to be clear about the complaint...

i filed a motion under 38.06 (1) back on january 31st:

38.06 (1) The notice of application shall be served on all parties and, where there is uncertainty whether anyone else should be served, the applicant may make a motion without notice to a judge for an order for directions. R.R.O 1990, Reg. 194, r. 38.06 (1) 

i was told i need to serve the respondents and file an affidavit. she was wrong, but i did it anyways.

then, she sat on it for months without scheduling it.

she eventually scheduled it on the 10th of march, and claimed there was no affidavit. but, she told me on the 10th of february that she received the affidavit.

so, the coordinator badly, badly fucked the thing up, to the point of lying to the justice. then, the justice responds to the motion by telling me to file an affidavit.

i filed a fucking affidavit; the coordinator refused to attach it to the motion.

so, i responded to the motion with the facts, expecting the coordinator to be forced to refile the thing.

initially, i was told that issue was before an administrative judge and to call back today. but, then i get a second ruling basically telling me to obey the ruling of the judge.

for the first run through, you can't blame the judge. if the coordinator files a false motion, you have to get the facts to the justice. but, when the justice refuses to listen to evidence and upholds the lie instead, that's a problem, and the basis of my claim of misconduct.

so, i'm going to also produce a motion to order the coordinator to find the affidavit.

so, i got the complaint about the justice in.

regarding the reply factum, i called them and asked them how to do this, and they told me to file a leave for appeal.

it finally gets in front of a judge and they're telling me to ask for consent to file. i got it, unexpectedly.

it's not clear in the order, but the coordinator doesn't return calls and seems to be rather brutally negligent in her responsibilities, and fairly classist on top of it, so i'm going to file a motion for consent and blame it on the coordinator if it's superfluous. she needs to be more reactive in her communication. i've been leaving repeated messages for weeks. yes, i'm demanding, and that's too fucking bad. do your damned job, or fucking quit, if you can't.

i'm also going to go ahead and file a motion with the justice asking for the validity of the rule i tried to file under before i try to file it again. i'll do that with notice. that's fine.

so, i need to get on that for tonight. i thought this was dealt with for a while...guess not....

bizarrely, somebody seems to have come in here and stolen documents that were sent to me from the divisional court.

i know exactly where i put them.

as mentioned: i don't understand what they're looking for. that's a clue, at least.

i'm going to have to file a complaint against the judge, next.

it is deeply disappointing to see this government abandon science in favour of an embrace of mass panic and backwards thinking. we were doing well on this. really.

but, we should expect this terrible decision to be followed by an increase in cases, as people seek ways around the restrictions, and evade the authorities in doing so.

when will we learn that banning things never works, but always makes things worse?

when will we learn that authoritative action and strong leadership is always ham-fisted, and always backfires?

when will we learn to stop buying into panic and listen to the science?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbsa-border-airports-screening-trudeau-covid19-coronavirus-1.5498866

the feds didn't sink the market with a stimulus measure. 

stimulus is always good, but people are liquidating because they want cash on hand to spend, and there's nothing anybody can do but wait it out.

bernie sanders is often incoherent, as he will argue for an expansion of human rights and against "rugged individualism" in the same sentence, which makes absolutely no sense, and i've long deduced that he hasn't read much of this stuff, directly, but instead relies on colloquialisms and common sense fallacies to frame most of his arguments.

people tend to shrug it off because they haven't read any of it, either.

people that move too far towards collectivism, and reject the individual outright, are not anarchists (who seek a synthesis between individualism and collectivism via dialectical reasoning), but are rather called fascists - and include stalinists and nazis. they draw mostly from hobbes, ultimately. mussolini called himself a corporatist, and these words - corporatism, fascism, collectivism - are really all the same thing.

it's the exact thing you want to be very careful about, on the left; when you hear them start ranting against the individual, that's a red flag to step back and realize they aren't socialists, they're fascists. it's the exact thing you want to avoid; it's exactly when you know this is bad news.

the types of socialism that you want to associate with will not do that, but will insist on the concept of human rights, even as they reshape the discourse to include things like shelter and reject things like property. human rights are the pinnacle of liberal individualism.

marx followed bentham, a tory, in his rejection of human rights as "anarchistic". proudhon, bakunin and kropotkin did not. and, that is itself a key difference in their approaches to socialism.

marx was a liberal. that's how he self-identified. he was into rugged individualism as much as any other liberal. and, so was kropotkin.

but, these people didn't think in terms of contrasting individualism with collectivism, or in terms of opposites clashing against each other, at all. these people were hegelians, and they insisted on dialectics as the means of resolving contradictions in thought.

so, to talk of individualism as being in opposition to collectivism is language that would be very weird to any early socialist, including kropotkin. they would have all wanted to speak of a synthesis between individualism and collectivism, and find ways to resolve the contradictions through an application of dialectical thinking - following hegel, but stemming from aristotle.

the idea that you can line these ideas up in contrast with each other is really uniquely american, and comes right out of the cold war. it's vulgar. really.

actual leftists do not talk like this - they don't line up collectivism v individualism or socialism v capitalism or masculine v feminism or anything else like this but rather try to find ways to unite the ideas into holistic concepts that eliminate the conflict within them.

that insistence on dialectical thought is really the foundational point of socialism as a philosophical system - as mentioned, coming directly from hegel.

the closest thing to mutualism in the context presented is actually a labour contract. it's crude, because you're ramming the square peg of mutualism into the round hole of capitalism and coming up with a busted mess, but it's true.

it's broadly difficult to speak about mutual aid in the context of a capitalist society because it really provides very few opportunities for it. when people are in the position for a reciprocal exchange, it's almost always framed in the context of a market interaction; when people require aid, it's almost always charity.

as is so often the case, the difficulty is really rooted in the existence of property. mutual aid is usually spoken of in the context of societies that existed before property was invented (where everything was shared, collectively), or in the context of a future system where property no longer exists.

trying to just do mutual aid in the middle of all of these capitalist relations around us is rarely going to make any sense, for these reasons - you're going to end up doing charity work and/or are just going to end up taken advantage of.

the issue with service workers sharing wages in an economic slowdown works precisely because it breaks the market relation. all of a sudden, there's no labour and, for the proletariat, that means that the rules of capitalism are temporarily lifted.

but, helping wealthy old people walk their dogs or delivering them food for free doesn't fall into that paradigm. it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. but, you should avoid abusing the language, please.

the idea being expressed in that article is closer to the idea that young people should honour their elders by paying tribute to them than it is to a concept of mutual aid, which is historically closer to a type of conservative value system.

mutual aid is an anarchist term developed by kropotkin.

the scientific term, in english, is reciprocal altruism and came about a bit later, but does have origins in kropotkin's work.

i'm being lazy in sourcing from wiki, but this is fine for an easy concept like this:

In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. The concept was initially developed by Robert Trivers to explain the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the strategy of "tit for tat" used in game theory.

the reciprocity is key. if there is no expectation of altruism in return, it is not mutual aid, it is christian do-gooding.

and, what is the expectation that these people will receive something in return? there is not one. they're donating their time, in a market economy - and one in which labour is scarce. this is an affront against the working class!

if people are going to do these kinds of behaviours for strangers in a market system, they should expect a pay check for it. it is labour. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

examples of mutual aid would include service workers pooling resources (money. shelter. labour.) to help each other get through the lack of work, or recovered patients donating resources back into the system to help the next wave of sick people.

and, there's a concept of mutualism attached to helping your parents or grandparents or other relatives, who raised you and fed you as children. 

but, "random acts of kindness" are not mutual aid and should not be confused for it. that's an abuse of the language that needs to be corrected immediately. anarchism will collapse under any kind of kantian system of ethics; it's not sustainable. and, i'd argue it isn't desirable, either.

this is one of the differences between christianity and socialism.

this isn't actually mutual aid, it's more like charity work. mutual aid is a type of reciprocity, and the people being helped here don't really have anything to offer.

as with any kind of charity, it also runs the risk of developing dependence. are you going to keep walking the dog when this is over?

anarchists should actually argue that many of these activities should really be treated as labour and associated with some kind of compensation, especially in a scenario where work is likely to be scarce for a while. mutual aid is not equivalent to free labour for the bourgeoisie.

so, don't confuse misguided christian do-gooding with socialism or anarchism. this is a co-option of the language that does not align with the theory and should be opposed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-campaign-launched-offering-help-to-those-self-isolating

i want the next "coronavirus myths busted" article that google tries to force me to read to include "flattening the curve", travel bans and "social distancing" as debunked concepts that won't work.

every moment spent distracting from the need to ramp up hospital capacity is a lost opportunity. and, when all of these hokey attempts at containment fail, these public officials are going to have to take responsibility for their refusal to properly look at the evidence and prepare when they had the chance.

and every moment spent talking about solidarity and sticking together is a moment distracting from the need to look at specific types of patients, and create policies that are properly targeted at the people that require them.

but, you can't convert a population of scientific illiterates on such short notice. and, ignorance and bad policy is likely to be the norm, moving forwards.

i'm not suggesting that canada is immune to anything.

i'm pointing out that, because we didn't restrict travel, and we offer easy access to free medical care, we probably have many fewer untraceable cases.

they are saying that there is some local transmission happening.

but, there is not currently any evidence of the kinds of things that are happening in the united states.

so, washington state and new york state just put a ban on congregating in bars. i need to present my own backlash - this is the kind of conservative scapegoating that makes me mad. no, boomers, the kids drinking at the bar didn't infect the people at the old folks home. this is a low impact, evidence-free step that makes conservatives feel safe, and has unfortunately become the norm as to how the democratic party acts and legislates, from outlandish conspiracy theories about russian election interference to anti-science, authoritarian reactions to pandemics.

but, is that going to work? no.

i would simply expect an increase in the number of house parties, or perhaps some gatherings in outdoor spaces. and, if the cops want to show up and shut them down, i'm actually in solidarity with the drinkers - because there's not any actual science underlying the dictate that they go home. it's panic. it's hysteria. it's control. and, it will backfire.

if people start drinking at houses or underground venues instead, they're going to end up drinking higher potency alcohol. nobody is going to refuse them service. and, they might end up driving home in situations where bartenders would have insisted otherwise. you're also likely to end up with people in closer contacts, people smoking indoors, people congregating in dirty basements and other various behaviours that will increase the spread of the virus, not decrease it.

you're releasing a string of expletives at the screen. you're shocked. why won't they stay home?

you're angry. but, there's no science underlying your anger - it's irrational panic that's been pushed down to you by the media.

so, how do you stop young people from socializing?

lol.

there is a long history in this world of governments fucking things up with boneheaded authoritarian responses that make things worse via micromanagement. 

and, there's usually a smart analyst around that explains why they're morons.

shows are indeed cancelling in michigan, but i had cleared out the month, anyways. i'm not missing anything. worse, i may find myself with an uncrossable border within a few weeks and find myself without any choice but to stay in. 

but, a large percentage of the cancelled shows are just moving to underground venues. and, i'll keep an eye out for that, as it happens.

i like house shows. they're cheaper...