Lots of reaction to HRMs forcible eviction of the Occupy Nova Scotia protesters. The best piece of actual reporting comes from a blog post by Bethany Horne, news curator for the recently launched indie website Openfile Halifax. A recent King's grad with a progressive sensibility, Horne didn't flinch from describing some of the incipient problems at the encampment: [I]f the events of November 11 hadn’t happened, I’m not sure how much longer the gathering would’ve lasted. At the November 9 general assembly, tensions were high. The camp’s reputation for accepting anyone, giving them shelter, food and a makeshift community was attracting more...

17 November, 2011

Contrarian reader Dana Doiron writes: I remember listening to Peter Kelly giving early warning that the occupiers would have to leave the Grand Parade to accommodate Remembrance Day and seasonal activities. He spoke of respect for the rights of the occupiers and the importance of dialogue on issues confronting us collectively. I was impressed with his search to accommodate the occupiers elsewhere and then with the assistance provided to relocate them to Victoria Park. I visited the assembly at Victoria Park and was pleased to see the civil interaction with other Haligonians and, particularly, with police officers. I also heard the Mayor of...

16 November, 2011

HRM District 14 Councillor Jennifer Watts has issued an apology for her role in Saturday's forcible eviction of Occupy Nova Scotia. She still believes the parks bylaw trumps Charter guarantees of free speech and the right to assemble peacefully, but she now regrets the Remembrance Day timing and the failure to explore alternative resolution methods. Her silence on those issues, "was a serious error in judgment on my part for which I sincerely apologize." Full text here....

16 November, 2011

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald and AllNovaScotia.com, ranking arbiters of mainstream opinion in Nova Scotia, lent editorial support Monday to Mayor Peter Kelly's forcible police removal of peaceful Occupy Nova Scotia protesters. The Herald, in a bracing throwback to its days as the fusty Old Lady of Argyle, approved the eviction in every detail: violence, secrecy, sneakiness, double-dealing, rights-violation, and even Remembrance Day timing. AllNS tried to have it both ways. A commentary* by former-Managing-Editor-turned-United-Church-minister Kevin Cox quibbled with Kelly's timing and secretive decision-making, but endorsed His Worship's position that a vague and rarely enforced municipal bylaw should trump Sections 2. (b), (c),...

15 November, 2011

Lots of reader mail on HRM's use of force to evict Occupy Nova Scotia protesters camped out on the grassy strip known as Victoria Park.  To start with, Juanita Mckenzie (writing on Facebook): I think it was very distasteful to do this on Remembrance Day...

12 November, 2011

Jennifer Watts has sent irate constituents a note explaining her position on HRM's violent eviction of peaceful protesters yesterday. After paying lip service to the principles espoused by those outraged at the mayor and council's behaviour, she reverses course and endorses Kelly's position that a petty bylaw should trump constitutional rights. I have received many emails from residents who are very concerned and angry with the enforcement of the municipal park bylaw in relation to the Occupy Nova Scotia protest. Many of these concerns include the decision to remove members of Occupy Nova Scotia on Remembrance Day, the right of peaceful...

12 November, 2011

Here are the events that led to today’s arrests in Halifax. A group of protesters exercised their right to assemble peacefully and petition their government for redress of grievances by camping out in the Halifax Parade ground. City burghers found the demonstration unruly, distasteful, and inconvenient. Seizing on the central role the Parade Grounds traditionally plays in Halifax's Remembrance Day observances, Mayor Peter Kelly demanded the protesters vacate the area before November 11. Showing more strategic accumen than one might have been inclined to expect, the OccupyNS protesters negotiated respectfully with veterans’ groups and HRM officials, and voluntarily withdrew to Victoria Park, a...

11 November, 2011

Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out that last week's flood of Steve Jobs hagiographies mostly tiptoed around one inconvenient facet of the Great Man: he took LSD. He not only took it, he regarded having taken it as one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. Greenwald: Unlike many people who have enjoyed success, Jobs is not saying that he was able to succeed despite his illegal drug use; he’s saying his success is in part — in substantial part — because of those illegal drugs (he added that Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once”). An excellent...

09 October, 2011

A report last week in the prestigious scientific journal Nature revealed that the hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic was the largest ever recorded—comparable for the first time to the man-induced hole that appears every year in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. But when reporters asked Canadian scientist  David Tarasick, who was involved in the study, to explain its findings, Environment Canada refused to let him speak. [caption id="attachment_8689" align="alignright" width="150" caption="David Tarasick, muzzled by Environment Canada"][/caption] Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick, whose team played a key role in the report published Sunday in the journal Nature, is not being...

08 October, 2011

Early last month, Contrarian revealed that Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer had deliberately made her latest report of political donations harder to use by publishing them in an image-based PDF format whose text could neither be searched nor copied and pasted into another document. With help from hacker-readers, Contrarian republished the data in the searchable, text-grab-friendly format McCulloch used for previous years' reports. I'm not done with this topic. Several generous readers have converted the open PDF file we published into an Excel database file, thus enabling much broader use of the interesting political data it contains. I will post that Excel CSV...

03 October, 2011
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