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Saturday, September 22, 2007

Critic Robert Fulford wrote of legendary civic preservationist Jane Jacobs that she “came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and corporations.” With certain alterations, the same could be said of author and journalist Trisha Posner, who penned the popular Health Watch column in Miami’s Ocean Drive magazine.

Posner was fired for expressing her opinion on a YouTube video about regulations affecting her South Beach neighborhood. Like many rejuvenated communities in the United States, Posner’s historic south Fifth Street has become the Tribeca of Miami, a fashionable, trendy nightspot with a maelstrom of growth in hotels, restaurants and boutiques that have out-priced many long-term residents.

Local activist Frank Del Vecchio asked Posner if she would appear in the eight-minute Close the Loophole video, directed by Emmy award-winning documentarian Robyn Symon, to state her belief that a loophole that allows popular local restaurants such as Prime One Twelve and Devito South Beach to exist in her residential neighborhood should be amended to limit the amount of seats in the establishments in proportion to their number of rooms. Her segment began, “Hi, I’m Trisha Posner. I’m a journalist and columnist for Ocean Drive magazine. I am married to Gerald Posner, the author.” Within a few hours after her appearance, she was fired by Ocean Drive publisher Jerry Powers.

Posner was aghast and bewildered. Attractive and comely, as a health columnist she is an unlikely candidate as a civic instigator; but those qualities belie Posner’s buffalo stance on doing what she feels is right for her community. “I hate being in the public eye and I prefer to be low key,” Posner told Wikinews in an interview. “To do the video I was nervous. Only in person do I feel comfortable.” Wikinews reporter David Shankbone recently spoke with Posner.

DS: What were the circumstances surrounding your dismissal?

TP: In South Beach and in Miami there are neighborhood associations like South of Fifth Neighborhood Association, which [Posner’s husband] Gerald is President of, and they all try to work together to make living in the neighborhood synergized with the nightlife and the restaurants. This issue involved another, Frank Del Vecchio, President of 301 Ocean Drive condominium association. Frank asked me to be part of a video against a loophole where restaurants can have so many seats that they effectively become a nightclub. On the video there are five others besides me. An entertainer, a school teacher…and then I’m sitting there on a bench. At about 4:40 we wrapped up and I left. When I got home there was a phone message from [editor-in-chief] Glenn Albin saying, ‘Trisha, Trisha, Jerry is running around the place…’ and I thought it was a joke. I started laughing. Gerald said he didn’t think it was a joke, but I had not done anything. Then I received an anonymous e-mail: Jerry Powers had got a phone call from a hotel person that said ‘one of your representatives from the magazine is down here bad mouthing nightlife, hotels, etc.’ The magazine’s publicist panicked and called Powers, who then runs all the way down to City Hall and asks ex-Mayor Neisen Kasdin to let him speak before the City Council. He says that Trisha was not for him, and that Ocean Drive is for entertainment and hotels in South Beach. Then he said I was fired as he left.

DS: Did you receive a call from Jerry Powers?

TP: I never heard from Jerry Powers; he never phoned me, e-mailed. I still have never heard from him. I phoned the office the next day, and [Managing Editor] Eric Newill tells me my services would no longer be required. I had one piece ready, and one piece in the issue. The saddest thing is that I lost my friendship with Eric. Eric was my friend before he was my editor. He is friends with Jerry Powers. Eric wrote me an e-mail that it had played out too publicly and that he wished me good luck in my future endeavors. What kind of friendship is that?

DS: Had you informed the magazine of your appearance beforehand?

TP: Eric knew I was doing a video, and I did it in my friend’s hotel. I don’t remember if I told them what it was for. But the video wasn’t a secret. In the future I will ask permission. But it’s childish. I can’t believe Jerry Powers took this and made it an issue. Nobody would have known about it, and now I’m all over the place. He made Trisha Posner a star. I can’t go anywhere without people saying, ‘Yay, good for you!’ And they still have not paid me for my last piece. I sent them another e-mail on the 17th. They owe me $1,000. They have not written back to me, they have not phoned me. Why are they being so childish?

DS: Did you ever have any other problems at the magazine?

TP: No, I never had an issue and I had the best working relationship with this magazine. I have nothing bad to say about the magazine. I had a fabulous relationship—a unique relationship with my editor. I had never worked so well with an editor of a magazine my entire career. It was so easy, he is so smart, cerebral…it’s unbelievable. But they also got a lot out of me. They got Tina Brown through me. Bill Maher. I have an incredible track record. It was not hard for me to phone people and get them for the magazine. And I never used them for my advantage at all; I never used the magazine to get into restaurants or events. People say you never went to the parties, but I’m over that. I used to be a Studio 54 girl. I just really enjoyed my health column. They allowed me to write in my own voice.

DS: Why do you think Powers fired you?

TP: It’s all advertising driven, but I’m interviewing people for a new book who have advertised in his magazine. It wasn’t a big deal for anybody. The very next day Miami Magazine picked me up. He had a knee-jerk reaction. He didn’t even phone me. Wouldn’t you think he would phone me and say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and I would have been like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize.’ Besides, I was crazy about my editor! Why would I try to hurt him? I hope one day I can work with Eric again.

DS: Has any other employee of Ocean Drive appeared publicly before and been identified as such?

TP: As far as I know I’m the first one, that’s why I made history. But I wasn’t talking about Ocean Drive. I hadn’t thought that under my name were the words ‘Columnist for Ocean Drive’. I didn’t see anything. Later I had e-mails from Tina Brown, everybody…they were really supportive.

DS: Your husband, author Gerald Posner, wrote a piece in The Huffington Post about your dismissal. Several of the comments to it state that since Ocean Drive is a large glossy magazine dependent upon advertising from the entertainment industry, that you bit the hand that fed you. How do you respond to such criticism?

TP: That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard, because it had nothing to do with Ocean Drive. There is another world. I’m not against development; if you listen to my statement I talk about how much I love the nightlife, how I love entertainment. But we all have to learn to live together. I know South Beach is party town, but we can live together. Let’s clean up our shit, take our garbage out, be respectful to our neighbors and also to the entertainment industry.

DS: Some of the comments that were made in HuffPo were that even though it was despicable that you were fired for expressing your opinion on a civic matter, that you should have expected it. Do you think comments like that are par for the course of apathy in the United States today, where people disagree with something, but shrug their shoulders instead?

TP: I think we live in dangerous times because of corporate America—people are really scared to speak out about anything; it is really dangerous. Freedom of speech. I came to live here in this country because it was for freedom of speech. I love America, and it has everything I could have dreamed of: the most incredible husband, friends, everything. But they are chipping away at it. One company is one company, but it shows how dangerous it is. What happens when the Rupert Murdochs own everything? They are trying to gag us. It is very dangerous. Whether it is the film industry, the music industry, D.C., they are trying to strangle all of us. All these regulations of what we can or can’t do. Does it mean if I have an opinion that I have to be gagged or not say who I am or what I think? What can and can’t I say? Maybe I’m just too black and white. I think we need to just chill out here. It wasn’t about Ocean Drive or Jerry Powers. It was about my home and my friends. I was helping out Frank. It was about the loophole and the Bijou [hotel]. I think what really freaked them out was that the video was professionally done.

DS: Another comment said, “The magazine itself sounds like a total contribution of everything that [is] wrong with America right now. Instead of promoting smart growth and longevity, it prostitutes itself to every new development, even at the cost of other developments (advertisers) who will lose out when this new one opens.” What are your thoughts on the magazine?

TP: I have an opinion about Ocean Drive. I used to say I don’t know who reads my columns, but I know they look good and I have an excellent following because people would stop me on the street or give me tons of e-mails. I understand what they are saying, but it is South Beach and that magazine works for South Beach. It’s been around for 13/14 years. I think that it’s healthy there is competition coming in. But the demographics for the magazine are people in their mid-twenties and early thirties. I didn’t realize that.

DS: What are your feelings about Jerry Powers?

TP: This man is a bully, and he wanted to bully me. He is not going to scare me. I’ve been in this business 20 years, and there is only one man who scares me: my husband.

Monday, June 12, 2017

On Friday, Japan’s parliament, the National Diet, passed a law to allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate. The law gives Akihito three years to become the first emperor to abdicate since Emperor Kokaku in 1817, two hundred years ago.

The newly passed law, made in response to the country’s Imperial Household Law’s lack of abdication provisions, applies to only Akihito, aged 83. It prohibits Akihito’s successors from abdicating.

Akihito ascended to the 2,000-year-old Chrysanthemum Throne when his father Emperor Hirohito died in 1989. Having a cardiac surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, Akihito in a televised address last year said age and health were interfering with his duties. Per Japan’s current constitution, an emperor cannot make political statements, so Akihito did not explicitly mention abdication.

When abdication happens, under new law, Akihito’s son and heir apparent Naruhito will ascend the throne, becoming the country’s 126th emperor. Besides Naruhito, Akihito has another son and a daughter.

Emperor Akihito’s heir apparent Naruhito, born in 1960, graduated from Oxford University and married a Harvard University graduate Masako Owada in 1993. Portland State University professor Kenneth Ruoff told the BBC that, while Akihito and his wife have been active in social causes, Naruhito and Masako have done little in this regard. A Kyoto Sangyo University emeritus professor Isao Tokoro said Naruhito “has been educated,” is born, and is qualified “to be emperor[.]”

In 2006, the National Diet debated on allowing female ascendance, as the emperor lacked grandsons at the time, due to the current male-only royal ascendance laws. Then Hisahito, now 10, was born, and the debate lapsed.

Naruhito has only one child Aiki, 15, while his brother Prince Akishino, 51, has three children, including his only son Hisahito. Per current law, Hisahito is qualified to ascend after his uncle Naruhito and his father.

The royal family has 19 living members, including seven unmarried princesses and five males. Female royals, if marrying a commoner, would have to give up their royal status, leaving the royal family, while males would still be allowed to retain their royal status after marrying a commoner. Akishino’s daughter Princess Mako announced her plans last month to relinquish her royal status and leave the royal family in order marry a commoner Kei Komuro, a graduate student and law firm worker, both of them aged 25. In 2005, Mako’s aunt and Naruhito’s sister Sayako, formerly Princess Nori, married a commoner Yoshiki Kuroda, a town planner, and was forced to relinquish her status and leave the family.

A Temple University Japan professor Jeff Kingston said a national succession crisis has people raising concerns about female princesses leaving the royal family when getting married. Kingston added the family “[has] a shortage of male heirs.” Kingston also said ousting a female royal for marrying a commoner is “a very old-fashioned approach, totally out of sync with 21st-century norms” to many people around the world, including in Japan.

In a survey by Kyodo News conducted in May of about 3000 people at least 18 years old, 68 percent said the Imperial Household Law should be amended to allow future emperors to abdicate. 25 percent favored separately legislating each abdication. Four percent said abdication of emperors should never be allowed.

On questions involving female royals, 86 percent said to allow empresses; 59 percent supported both empresses and established branches of female lineages. 62 percent supported establishment of separate branches for princesses retaining their roles while marrying commoners; 35 percent opposed. 61 percent said female ascendance should be debated only after the abdication, while 28 percent said it shouldn’t wait for the abdication.

Early this year, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe considered giving imperial status to branches of those who left the royal family. In the survey, 22 percent supported the idea; 72 percent opposed.

The Abe government has avoided the debate of female ascendance but recently passed a non-binding resolution attached to the newly passed abdication law to consider how to strengthen female royal status, possibly including allowing them to retain their royal titles and continue their duties, to compensate for the declining royal population.

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

An election news report in the U.S. features an error hearkening back to the infamous 1948 “Dewey Defeats Truman” incident – reporting the wrong candidate won the California state election primary.

Candidate Joel Anderson, a member of the California State Assembly, won the Republican Party primary for the California State Senate 36th District being vacated by termed-out politician Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, on Tuesday. With 100 percent of the election precincts reporting, Anderson won over 45 percent of the total votes cast in the Republican primary.

However, The Valley News, a news publication based in Riverside, California, mistakenly reported that Anderson’s opponent, Jeff Stone, had won the Republican primary. The Valley News later deleted its own article and reposted a new one with the correct information about the election results, without posting a correction.

California political journalist Barry Jantz reported that the mistake was due to the publisher of The Valley News only having examined the election results for Riverside, and not the entire election district. The Republican primary won by Anderson encompasses an election district, which includes both Riverside County, and San Diego County.

Jantz noted, “A new story has now been posted, without a trace of the incorrect report or a correction.” He referred to the erroneous article subsequently deleted by the Valley Press as, “the story that was…and wasn’t…and now never existed”. The San Diego County publication, East County Magazine, commented on the incident, and characterized it as “an error reminiscent of the infamous ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ headline.”

“Dewey Defeats Truman” was an erroneous front-page headline by the newspaper Chicago Tribune published November 3, 1948, a day before U.S. President Harry Truman won the 1948 presidential election against New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

Anderson will be the Republican Party candidate in the November general election for California State Senate. His opponent will be Paul Clay, a Democrat and teacher based in Riverside County. The district primarily consists of registered Republicans.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Wikinews interviewed Australian painter Pricasso on his unique artwork created using his penis, and how his art relates to freedom of expression and issues of censorship. He is to be featured at the upcoming adult entertainment event Sexpo Australia in Melbourne this November 5 to November 8.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Transport company Metronet, the firm responsible for upgrading three-quarters of London tube system, is facing administration following a preliminary decision from rail arbiter Chris Bolt which limits the amount that London Underground (TfL) is obliged to pay for cost overruns to £121 million. The company had asked for £551m.

The arbitrations follows a row over who should pay for the overspend, estimated at between £1.2bn and £2bn in total. Metronet have claimed that the costs are due to changing requirements from TfL. This was disputed however by TfL and the Mayor of London, who has said previously that the costs were due to “management incompetence”.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has previously stated that he will not give Metronet one penny more than he is legally obliged to, and that if they go into administration TfL will step in and take control.

The company was awarded the tube contract under a Public-private partnership arrangement, which was a central policy of the Labour government, but fiercely (and legally) contested by the London Mayor.

The Metronet board have said they are considering their position and will make a statement later today or tomorrow.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

According to Pakistani officials, at least ten suspected terrorists were killed in North Waziristan by suspected US drone strikes earlier Wednesday. This is the second US drone attack in the span of two days.

Conflicting media reports say that the first strike consisted of either four or five missiles launched from an unmanned aerial vehicle. They hit a vehicle and a suspected rebel compound in the town of Hamzoni, killing three people.

In the second attack in the Maizar Madakhel area, another five people were reported dead. Pakistani officials say that the area is controlled by Taliban commander Hatiz Gul Bahadur.

Although the US government does not usually confirm drone strikes in Pakistan, analysts say that they are the only ones in the vicinity with access to machinery capable of carrying out said attacks.

On Tuesday, a similar double drone strike killed eight suspected rebels from the same group in the Datta Khel region of Pakistan.

According to the BBC, the US has increased drone strikes recently, and that such attacks have killed several hundred people since August 2008.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A 20-year old male turned the tables on an abusive police officer in St. George, Missouri after he was pulled over inside a commuter parking lot by officer Sgt. James Kuehnlein of the St. George police department.

The St. Louis, Missouri man, Brett Darrow, 20, had installed a hidden camera inside his car, much like the way some police officers do, and caught the entire incident on tape. Darrow then posted the video on the internet on places like YouTube.com.

In the beginning of the nearly 13 minute video, the police officer states that Darrow was being pulled over because his vehicle “seemed suspicious.” Officer Kuehnlein claims that high crime rates in the lot caused Darrow to be pulled over.

Kuehnlein then asks Darrow to step out of the car and asks to see his ID. Darrow then asks what he did wrong and Kuehnlein then blows up on the boy saying “do you want to try me? Do you want to try me tonight? You think you had a bad night? I will ruin your fucking night. Try me young boy.”

Kuehnlein then threatens to send Darrow to jail for “some fucking reason I come up with” and we’ll “see who knows the law better. Don’t ever get smart mouth with a cop again or I will show you what a cop does.” Kuehnlein then begins to threaten Darrow with a list of false charges such as resisting arrest. He can also “come up with nine other things” for every one thing Darrow can come up with. Kuehnlein then tells Darrow that he was being ticketed for not using a turn signal to turn into the lot, but the video clearly proves the officer wrong.

During the entire incident, Darrow barely spoke a word as the officer threatened him saying “I just had a bad night.”

Darrow is then allowed to go, but only after Kuehnlein notices the camera, and not before threatening Darrow some more saying “I don’t really care about your cameras, ’cause I’m about ready to tow your car, then we can tear ’em all apart.”

After the video was posted on the internet, people from all over started to call the police department and complain about the officers actions.

“I was very displeased when I saw the actions on the video. My officers are not trained and taught to act like that,” said Scott Uhrig, chief of the St. George police who added “someone either violated the law or they didn’t. You don’t say, I’ll lock you up and then come up with why afterward.”

Darrow states that he did not take the video to the police chief because he thought the whole thing would be forgotten and “swept under the rug. I wanted everybody to see that this kind of stuff does happen.”

Pending an investigation of the incident, Kuehnlein was suspended without pay.