Two a penny

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AFP - French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on Monday appealed for the release of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been jailed and put on trial at a notorious Yangon prison.

The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the Myanmar government to free the 63-year-old pro-democracy activist in an open letter made public by the Elysee presidential palace.

We now know that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate, once again risks being sentenced to a prison term which, given her state of health, would be life-threatening for her, wrote the first lady. .

The 41-year-old model-turned-singer said she wanted to be the voice of all those in my country who find the fate awaiting this woman to be intolerable.

The man, John Yettaw, earlier this month swam across a lake to her residence where she has been kept in virtual isolation for most of the last 19 years.

Aung San Suu Kyi is facing a five-year jail sentence on charges of harbouring an American at her home in violation of the terms of her house arrest.

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi comes just days after she was taken from her lakeside property and imprisoned at a guest house inside the Insein prison compound.

This decision is all the more unacceptable given the Nobel Peace laureate’s state of health which has deteriorated over the past several days, they said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and human rights minister Rama Yade last week issued a joint statement saying they condemned in the strongest terms Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi - Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

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Krisitn Dunne-Powell believes Tony Veitch’s team tried to “break” and intimidate her with a smear campaign to dig up dirt and discourage her from giving evidence.

Veitch, who was earning $500,000 a year in his high-profile broadcasting roles, amassed a powerful team to defend the assault charges, hiring a private investigator, a top media adviser and a senior legal team, including a $900-an-hour Queen’s Counsel.

“And when they found that wasn’t going to happen and I was holding my ground, he blinked first.

“I believe they wanted me to break, they wanted me to pull out, they wanted me to not make depositions on Monday,” Ms Dunne-Powell told The .

Team Veitch comprised lawyers Stuart Grieve, QC, and Doug Alderslade, celebrity media minder Glenda Hughes, and former police officer turned private investigator Brian Sloan. . Six other assault charges were dropped in a plea bargain.

Veitch pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of injuring Ms Dunne-Powell with reckless disregard after he kicked her as she lay on the ground, breaking her back.

“I did some investigating and I went and I dug and I went through records and I went through disclosure and you know what .

Veitch confirmed he investigated Ms Dunne-Powell as he prepared to defend the charges…

Asked if he was digging for dirt, he said he was seeking “evidence”. I had a good time and I found stuff,” he said.

He cited “legal constraints” for not doing so.

“There are things that I believe haven’t been made public that probably should have and there’s things about that night that I would love to be able to tell you,” he told TV One’s Close Up.

Ms Hughes said yesterday that the investigation was “standard practice”.

Team Veitch subpoenaed Ms Dunne-Powell for her 2008 phone records. What we were obviously examining for in the evidence is inconsistencies in her story.

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“We obviously went through all the evidence and we checked it, and that’s what the investigation was about.”

Ms Dunne-Powell said it was a “horrible feeling” to have Mr Sloan snooping around digging for dirt.

“There is a huge difference between what is normal process and snooping around and dirt-digging.

“It did feel intimidating.

She stopped going to her favourite haunts after he was seen there.”

But she is adamant she was not running scared.”

But she is adamant she was not running scared. “I was going ahead for depositions and I was prepared for what they were going to do to me.

“I had had to accept that it was going to be public and it was going to be humiliating and just devastating. But I was going to do it.

“That was really about me accepting that nothing I’ve ever done, nothing I’ve ever done in my life, was that bad and nothing has been deserving of this.”

She said she accepted the plea bargain because it was important to her that Veitch admitted the assault.

“Him saying he was guilty was much more powerful to me [than the judgment of a jury of 12 strangers] because he was there.”

Auckland journalist Stephen d’Antal, who had spoken to Ms Dunne-Powell about the case before she complained to police, was served with a court summons by Veitch’s defence team.

He believed Team Veitch was running a campaign to intimidate Ms Dunne-Powell and her supporters.

A private investigator had knocked on his door at 9.30 one night to deliver a court summons and he believed another court witness was visited even later at night.

“It just seemed very deliberate to me,” he said.

“I think it was trying to unnerve and unsettle the prosecution and Ms Dunne-Powell to try and get her to back down.”

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Daughter gives voice to silent struggle

By KIM KNIGHT - Sunday, 08 February 2009

Sunday Star-Times
HEROES: John Whittaker with his daughter Alix. The pair are fighting to retain the 35-hours a week home help John relies on for meals, cleaning and social contact, after his community services card expired and they discovered he wasn’t eligable for a new one.

Alix Whittaker's hero can't talk; can barely walk. When he cries, it's silent until he presses an electronic larynx to his throat: "Sorry," he says to his 19-year-old daughter.
One of his big toes has been amputated, he needs kidney dialysis three times a week and he is blind in his left eye.
His daughter Alix was preparing to quit work to care for him.
Last Thursday, Aucklander John Whittaker, 52, was a desperate man, fighting to keep the 35-hours-a-week home help he relies on for meals, cleaning and social contact. Now, following inquiries from the Sunday Star-Times, the pair have been told they will be visited by Work and Income New Zealand and Ministry of Health officials who will conduct financial and support needs assessments.
Stephanie Julian, lead media adviser for ACC, said, "we are extremely mindful of the situation and are wanting to make sure he gets the care he needs and is eligible for".
"All parties are working together to ensure Mr Whittaker receives the appropriate support he is eligible for," said Harvey Steffans, acting deputy director general, health and disability national services. "No one knows where to place me," says John.
But the Whittakers have lost faith.
"He's just asking for a continuation of the services he's been provided with for the last six to seven years. And Alix is tired of dealing with bureaucracy. We just want him to maintain the quality of life that he has already. We just want him to maintain the quality of life that he has already. Last month, she penned more than 20 letters to politicians, government departments and the media, seeking help for her father after his community services card expired and they discovered they weren't eligible for a new one. She is the stage manager for an upcoming outdoor Shakespeare production. Because he's so strong. She did it she says "because he's awesome."
Alix, an only child, was 11 years old when her diabetic father slipped into a coma. Because he's my hero. "It was all I knew how to cook. She had just made eggs and toast for tea. Her father had fallen out of bed and the nightmare had begun." Later, she heard a thump. Accident Compensation Corporation pays John $30,000 annually following the tracheostomy that saved his life but froze his voice. Accident Compensation Corporation pays John $30,000 annually following the tracheostomy that saved his life but froze his voice. The payment puts him $7634 above the income threshold for the community services card that qualifies him for $18,000 a year worth of home help. .
"Winz don't want to take responsibility for me because I get ACC," says John. "ACC don't want to take responsibility because I have other health problems outside the ACC claim."
What's it like to literally have no voice? John raises the nine-volt battery-powered wand to his throat. "It's the thoughts that make you who you are. It's what you think. So you've just got to think positively, basically."
The man who was once active in community theatre, who used to play rugby, cricket, badminton and tennis, now spends his day watching sport on television. He can stand up for just a few minutes at a time. He has a heart condition, and the diabetes he was diagnosed with, aged four, has damaged his kidneys and left him with little feeling in his legs.
"My life exists from TV to hospital, from TV to hospital. It's not much of a life."

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Spied on since she was 10

By MARTIN VAN BEYNEN - Thursday, 29 January 2009

/The
I SPY: Activist Marie Leadbeater, 63, discovered that she has had her own SIS file since was 10-years-old.

You are never too young to be regarded as a potential subversive, a Security Intelligence Service file shows.
Maire Leadbeater, now 63 and a long-time activist on peace issues, was an early target because of her Christchurch parents, Elsie and Jack Locke, who were prominent members of the New Zealand Communist Party and community activists.
One of Leadbeater's siblings is Green MP Keith Locke, a former Trotskyist and member of the Socialist Action League who has also received his SIS file.
Elsie Locke left the Communist Party in 1956 when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, but her husband stayed.
The next item refers to her membership of a junior drama group that the file says was connected with the William Morris (a Fabian socialist) Group, regarded by the SIS as a front for the Communist Party.
Leadbeater's file, which she received late last year, begins when she was 10, with a note that she delivered the Communist Party newspaper, the People's Voice, to the mother of twins in Bangor St, in central Christchurch. Elsie Locke performed in the group. "They lost me for about 13 years," she said.
The file continues to track Leadbeater's life, although the SIS lost track of her when she married and took her husband's name.
"I find that the hardest to accept," Leadbeater said.
Her file, like most of the others released, contains material from private meetings.
"It's pretty shocking really. "That small groups of people gathering together in private homes and offices should have someone planted in the meetings. It's potentially very bad for democracy because it makes people anxious about involving themselves in free discussion of ideas and has a big impact on trust if you have to think to yourself `one of us could be a source'. It's potentially very bad for democracy because it makes people anxious about involving themselves in free discussion of ideas and has a big impact on trust if you have to think to yourself `one of us could be a source'.
“It's all wrong anyway,'' Leadbeater said.
Her file contained references to the state of her parents' marriage, which the SIS thought would be strained by Elsie's departure from the party. . “It's unpleasant, inaccurate speculation about highly personal family issues.
"Does this mean that snooping is less or done in a different way?'' she said.
Leadbeater's activities on behalf of the Fiji Coalition for Democracy, the anti-bases campaigns and the Ahmed Zaoui campaign are not mentioned in the file. He had yet to view his file and was not prepared to comment.
Keith Locke confirmed he had received his own file, which was thick, and his mother's biographer was in possession of his mother's file.
He was not sure the SIS kept a file on him, but said he would feel a bit insulted if it did not.
Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, who was once prominent in a number of radical movements, said he would be travelling to Wellington to uplift his file as part of a TV3 news programme. I suspect they would have got a lot more detail if they had just read my book Bullshit and Jellybeans,'' he said. I suspect they would have got a lot more detail if they had just read my book Bullshit and Jellybeans,'' he said.
Shadbolt said he had led at least five radical organisations, including the Radical Students Association and Auckland University Students for the Prevention of Cruelty to Politically Apathetic Humans.
"If they figured out what [the latter organisation] was about, then good luck to them because we never could,'' he said.

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Gangs having a gunfight when Jhia died, court told

The Wednesday, 19 November 2008

A witness has described a "shootout" outside the Wanganui house in which toddler Jhia Te Tua died.
The Crown alleges that Jhia, whose father was a Black Power member, was the victim of a drive-by shooting from a bullet that went through a window and the back of a couch where she was sleeping.
An anonymous witness said in the High Court at Wellington yesterday that around the corner from Jhia's house, another shot was fired into the air from a car, bringing down a powerline.
The Crown says the fatal shot came from one of three cars of men with links to the Mongrel Mob, who drove past. .
Some neighbours have given evidence without their names or faces being known, saying they saw a vehicle trying to run down Black Power members outside the Te Tua house, the vehicle being pelted with bottles and in a later incident, shots fired. He heard five shots.
Both sides started shooting but he could not say who shot first.
He agreed with defence lawyer Paul Keegan that the "shootout" came half an hour or more after the people outside Jhia's house had been attacking passing cars with bottles and pieces of piping. The first two sounded like a slug gun and the last three were much louder, he said.
One witness said that around the corner from Jhia's house he saw someone leaning out the front passenger window of a car that sped past.
Witnesses differed about where they saw the flash of a gun being fired from a car window, with both front and rear passenger-side windows being suggested.
In court last week, Jhia's father, Josh Te Tua, denied knowing that anyone of the group that had gathered outside his house had a gun.
One shot was fired down the street and another into the air, bringing down a powerline.

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He had asked associates to the house after earlier incidents in which cars linked to the Mongrel Mob had driven past