Jenna’s Model Life

Three-hundred New Zealand police officers and members of the armed offenders squad (the kind of NZ police officers who carry guns) arrested 17 people on terrorism and firearms charges yesterday. They seem to be primarily members of Maori separatist and environmental groups, and they’re all being charged under brand-spanking-new terrorism legislation.

Tumeke, a blog attached to a magazine of the same name, has been covering this story and has links to numerous other news sources’ stories. Tumeke is co-run by the only New Zealander convicted of sedition in 40 years, and an old acquaintance of mine, a journalist who goes by Bomber, but I consider it a pretty reliable source.

When the Terrorism Suppression Bill was under consideration in parliament — ostensibly it was put forward to toughen NZ’s defenses against foreign terrorists who might seek to attack the country — Maori protest groups said they felt it was just a matter of time before they would be targeted under its provisions. It appears they were right; although from what I’ve read the police seem to have ample reason for concern over at least some of these groups’ activities.

But that “terrorism” appellation irks; I’m not sure if, philosophically, this case will move the legal threshold between civil disobedience and terrorism a little closer to the former, and I’m not sure if, practically, the terrorism case is going to be a necessary or easy one for the police to make. (In NZ, the police arrest and prosecute all cases; there are no “district attorneys” and there is no civil court system.)

It definitely appears that these groups have violated the firearms act, a longstanding but thorough piece of legislation. Most of the sites raided had, the police say, small arsenals of illegal guns and, in come cases, bomb-making equipment. (The raids were prompted, according to the police, by the practice detonation of a napalm bomb eight days ago at one of the groups’ headquarters.) In NZ, where gun ownership and use is subject to a raft of restrictions, these kinds of violations, if proven, could send anyone to prison for a long time.

The terrorism charges seem to rest on reports of threats made against the Prime Minister. That’s serious enough, especially when coupled with the presence of illegal weapons. But why are the police so keen to have a terrorism test case against a whole bunch of environmentalists and disgruntled Maori, when they already have an open-and-shut case on the gun charges? What legal precedent are they trying to establish in regards to the Terrorism Suppression Act? It’ll be very interesting to see how the police play this in court.

Some very prominent activists are now in custody, including this guy, Tame Iti, of the North Island’s Tuhoe tribe.

By profession he’s an interior decorator and restaurateur. And it’s actually an old photo; When he turned up to his bail hearing, he was wearing a mohawk.

I’ve always thought of Iti as a perhaps sincere activist with a consuming flair for media stunts (the man designed and sold Tuhoe passports, set up a “Maori Embassy” in Wellington, and has a habit of mooning the police) more than as any kind of seditious element.

I suppose we’re about to find out which it is. His bail was denied, for now.

In other weekend news, I turned into a sobbing mess, and then a tear-stained frantically blog-scanning mess, when I broke Peter’s camera. I somehow accidentally pushed it off my bed, and it fell onto the hardwood floor. I didn’t think it had had that bad of a knock — it fell with more of a solid thwuck than a brittle or sickening smack — but when I slid back the lens cap, the barrel wouldn’t budge, and the machine would make only pathetic little bleeping noises at me. The LCD screen was undamaged and showed me the normal start-up image — a nature photo with a bird and the words Canon PowerShot — before fading to black with the ominous message E18.

Turns out that is code for any problem when a Canon’s lens won’t extend or retract, and they are so common there is a cottage web industry devoted to defeating the scurrilous E18. Enchanted by strangers’ stories of resurrecting their cameras by attaching them to their TVs, by recharging their batteries, by pressing down on their lens barrels until they clicked back onto their tracks, by hitting them on their AV/USB hookup side while their lenses tries to move, by running a spatula around the gap between their lens barrels and their body casings, and by taking them apart step by step to manually re-calibrate their lens barrels’ motors, I tried all except the latter (too scary. And I might, like, break a nail trying to loosen those teeny, tiny screws!).

Nothing worked. So I’m afraid I have no pictures of the Montmartre wine festival I went to on Saturday, not of the charming fair I found there, full of stalls representing each of France’s départements, not of the delicious things I ate and the foie gras I almost bought and the terrible, terrible rosé I drank, and not of the fireworks I watched, with my friend the Scientist and a couple hundred other people, from the steps of the Sacré Coeur. (To be fair, the Canon probably wouldn’t have captured the fireworks, it tended to freak out when shooting at night.) But still. Having no pictures is bad news.

I was also disappointed by the Alsatian stand at the food and wine fair that filled the streets around the church. When Limousin brings the boudin with chestnuts, and Languedoc brings the cassoulet cooked in goose drippings, and Brittany brings the damn crêpes, where does Alsace get off thinking it needn’t provide a big vat of choucroute garnie à l’alsacienne? No offense to my Uncle Doug, who makes a pretty mean sauerkraut, but it’s a simple fact that Alsace makes the best sauerkraut — or “choucroute” — in the world. They fill it with all the right parts of the pig and add three kinds of sausage and spice it with juniper berries, cloves, onions, black peppercorns, bay leaves, goose fat, apples, and white wine, and it takes days to make and it’s just unforgettably, heartbreakingly good. I’m sure choucroute garnie was one of the main reasons France wanted Alsace back so badly after the Prussian war; it’s just that delicious. If I’d been chowing down on the stuff since 1648, I’d certainly miss it badly enough to feel scrappy.

But Saturday, the Alsatians were withholding. I had to go south to Savoy and console myself with a tartiflette — a kind of cheesy scalloped potato recipe flavoured with a hint of cloves, dotted with fragments of ham, and served with a big sausage. I mean it was good. But it was no Alsatian paradise-food.

Sunday I spent most of the day trying to remedy the camera situation. First step: Online research to find a replacement. (Easier to fess up to Peter if I can show him a link to his new camera!) I went to this site and then this one and then I found this one and I spent a while jumping screen-to-screen and finally I asked my friend Nick. Nick’s a photographer.

We talked for a while about Leicas we lust after and DSLRs and the Pentax MZ-50 I had and loved in high school and about Nick’s new Olympus point-and-shoot (which is so tough he can take it snowboarding). Finally we found The One.

It was a sweet moment.

Now I just have to book some more jobs so I can afford it. Last week was slow — the shows hangover — but tomorrow I’m back up to speed, kind of, with three castings.

I really missed having a camera today, when I sat and waited for my sole casting on a banquette upholstered in zebra. Real zebra. Mane and all. Zebra is itchy, in case you were curious. But ordinarily I’d consider Zebra also photoworthy. Sigh. My first paycheque can’t come soon enough.