** Becky and Palestine:
I often wondered, what with her apparent friendship with local Rabbi Chayim Levin, what her take on Palestine was and how that would sit with the general anti-IDF contingent here in town, given their common ground on the sleeping & camping bans. But as she's never (to my knowledge) crossed over and made an appearance at a pro-Palestinian event, I've not had the opportunity to go there.

** Norse and the Nazi salute:
You're splitting hairs, here. Yes technically he was charged with trespassing (am I right?) for failure to leave the council chambers and not for the salute itself, but we all know that this order to leave a public meeting was given solely because of the Nazi salute. Fitzmaurice said so on the video here on the site.

Norse had every right to remain at that public meeting. Arresting him for tresspassing is just an escalation of their reaction to the root cause.

While the Nazi salute can be criticized as unnecessary speech similar to a hearty "Fuck y'all!", I question the right of a public official on public time at a public meeting on public property to ban a silent gesture.

A requirement of orderly conduct at a public meeting is fine - no point in letting it become a vulgarity-strewn shouting match. But a silent gesture? Fitzmaurice's original complaint was only that it was "an insult to the dignity of this body". He needs to get over himself.

Krohn called the salute disruptive - Norse disrupted nothing, and the flow of the meeting didn't stop until Krohn called for a recess so that Norse could be arrested with Public Access TV's cameras off. That's slimy.

Gotta side with Norse on that one. They screwed him, and the courts predictably supported the screw job. Any money the city wasted on defending against the lawsuit, is their bad choice. They should have admitted fault and found dignity in a little humility, not fought the suit.

Though had Norse won, I agree that taking money from the city would be wrong. Krohn wielded his power inappropriately, and should have been held personally responsible. Hiding behind the skirts of "the city", which is really supposed to be just "the public" anyway, is lame. Let every man and woman be held directly and wholly accountable for everything they do, and nothing they don't do. (To that end, Krohn only gave the order - it was Baker and Brandt who enforced it. They should have been sued - but the idea of personal accountability has been forgotten by this society, and would certainly tear apart the bureacracies that have grown fat by avoiding it.)

** Paul Lee on Norse -
Wow, I have that book and never bothered to read it. What a gem of a quote! I lose journalist points for not finding that.

** Norse and unemployment -
I keep hearing this - so what if he lives off a trust fund or stock dividends or whatever. Would you, if you could? How does his financial independence become a valid point of criticism, unless you subscribe to some weird southern Baptist St-John-The-Worker philosophy that the only moral form of self-support is labor?

As long as his money was earned honestly - no slave trading, no non-competative govt contracts, no S&L bailout swindles - if it's his by rights (even if by right of inheritence), get off your working-class high horse and admit you're just jealous. B-)

I admit that his tactics seem conveniently self-glorifying. So he's not a saint - who here is? As a journalist and sysadmin, I readily admit that Im in it for the glory too. So long as I get the job done, why should anyone else care? And even if I fail, my desire for self glorification is not necessarily the reason.

I'll admit as well that his abrasive and combative approach to his opponents may well backfire in many cases. But I understand the approach - it's no better or worse than the foolishly peaceful approach that many others take.

Civility may be more humble, but too often that lack of a strong front backfires as well and you get ignored, lied-to, and walked all over. You can encounter many opponents in this world who respond to nothing less than a threats, hostility, and a show of force.

To take the debate of the effectiveness of Norse's actions any further, Im afraid that a real quantitative analysis of his successes and failures would be necessary, and surely none is available. But without it, we can't honestly judge his effectiveness - only react to his approach based on our own personal preferences.

Life is like an avalanche - no 1 snowflake has any real say in anything. It takes a co-incidence of forces before anything significant ever happens.

-Van