KEY POINTS:
Crikey. The police swoop on alleged terrorists running guerilla training camps in New Zealand certainly got our attention. It was enough to take your minds off the All Blacks.
Seventeen people arrested and charged with a variety of offences, among the detained activist Tame Iti, and murmurs that some of them will be charged under the anti-terrorism laws - if the police can convince the Solicitor General that the people concerned pose a threat to the security of the country.
Anybody who was anybody in the activism world seems to have been scooped up in this most egalitarian of police operations. Peace activists, tino rangatiratanga advocates and environmental protestors were all included in the haul and for many, this would be a career highlight.
I bet Penny Bright is gutted she's still walking around a free woman. Protestors love publicity and many bemoan the hegemony of the mainstream media that refuses to allow their voices to be heard. Now they have a captive audience and I bet they make the most of it.
It's hard to see these people as a danger to society. Irritating, yes. Dull, as all ranters are. But murderous? A couple of them appear to be little more than a compelling reason to reopen Carrington Hospital.
I remember growing up in smalltown New Zealand, and almost every tiny town we lived in had a nutter who would dress up in army uniform and pretend to be a soldier. Everybody knew that he'd never been in the army. And so dressing up in camo gear became one of the first indicators that here was a person who was a special soul.
I loved the comment from an unidentified woman who met the Tuhoe team at their training camp, thinking she was going to learn more about genealogy. She was most disconcerted to be picked up by burly blokes in army fatigues and balaclavas and taken to an undisclosed location. She was unimpressed by the theatrics, told them to take off their bloody balaclavas and declined to have anything to do with their silly group.
Still, it's not for me to decide whether these chaps are dangerous. Some of the conversations between those arrested, as read out in court by the judge with four letter words and all, should have definitely attracted the attention of the police. And the police would have been remiss in their duty if they hadn't picked up these utterers. And I guess staging a country-wide operation is jolly good practice, even if the Solicitor General declines to approve charges being laid under the terrorist act. Certainly, lessons will have been learned from this one.
Like, you can't mount a politically correct anti-terrorist operation. I don't know whether it's true that Helen Clark instructed the police to speak Maori when they raided the homes in Ruatoki but if it was so, it might pay to get frontline officers who can actually speak the language rather than those who've done a crash course. Besides, I would have thought, "Put your hands on your head and get on the ground" would be a universally understood command. We've all seen enough action movies to know what to do when armed men come crashing through the door.
And as to the police setting back race relations 100 years - what tosh. Pita Sharples can no more claim to speak for all Maori than I could claim to speak for all women. Maori do not, and never have had, unanimity of viewpoints on issues. Besides, Tuhoe's relationship with the government has always been uneasy at best. There was no relationship to set back.
I can't help seeing them as a form of boys playing games - the protestors, the police and the politicians posturing and taking pleasure in the spotlight. Whether it turns out to be something more serious remains to be seen.
