huh?!?

I once left New Zealand for seven years and came back to find that nothing much had changed; now I go away for 5 days and find that it all has.

I don't know what worries me more: that the police could be using anti-terrorist laws against Wellington activists who I - even though I don't really love their politics - couldn't in a million years believe would be planning violent acts; or, that there really might have been a group of Maori Sovereignty (?) activists plotting armed rebellion in the Uraweras.

[Update: just changed the wording of the last paragraph; now I think it is closer to what I think I want to say. Also, one other thought: the threat from armed activists is not so much, I think, from the actions that they might try and undertake (how long do you really think it would take the army to flush them out of their hiding places) but more what they might achieve in terms of further polarising race-relations in this country. I'm not a member of the 'Balkans here we come' school of pessimism on race relations; however, I think we might all be surprised just how quickly we could find ourselves living in a much tenser country in the wake of a few acts of race related violence.)