world's greatest Ph.D.

curiosity & compassion

i wrote this article for citybeat magazine in cincinnati . it's about found magazine, i think it turned out pretty well. tell me what you think. and have a good christmas.

i want to believe

this whole ukrainian story just gets more fascinating. i'm reading the 12/13 new yorker article "orange alert" by andrey slivka. he writes about the official news media's reaction to the election results from last november and how although they are controlled by the state, the journalists began to form their own dissent:

"The sign language interpreter who was supposed to be repeating the victory announcement on UT-1 instead signed, 'The results are rigged.... Do not believe them.'"

so at least deaf people and their friends and families knew what was up.

installment plan III

The new Agora headquarters was designed in 1998 by a group of ultra-modern Polish architects, part of a larger trend in Poland to reconnect with Western and especially European style. Prior to 1939, Polish architecture did not differ dramatically from the rest of Europe. And while Polish artists have always recognized themselves as peripheral to the great artistic capitals of the West, they have also always followed these trends closely, even adding their own local flavor. The destruction of Warsaw during World War II demanded that the state rebuild the city from the ground up. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, socialist realism architecture was obligatory throughout the Soviet bloc. Design was monumental and classical with a touch of modernist style from the inter-war period. The Palace of Culture and Science stands in the middle of Warsaw, an elaborate testament to this style. But after the death of Stalin, Polish design was allowed to reconnect with European trends and essentially departed from socialist realism. However, lack of funds prevented Polish architecture from keeping pace with contemporary developments and, as a result, buildings were quite simply constructed, usually of poor quality. As a result, large rectangular slabs populate most of Warsaw today, serving as either apartment complexes or business office spaces. The effect is usually imposing, gray, and gloomy. While the fiscal crisis of the 1980’s brought even this construction to a stand-still, the events of 1989 opened a floodgate for foreign investors interested in new construction throughout Poland.

As early as 1990, Gazeta Wyborcza’s parent company Agora dreamed of a newly constructed headquarters, though at the time they envisioned a skyscraper in downtown Warsaw. But as a couple of different plans for a new headquarters failed, Agora’s consultant architect persuaded them into a low-slung building more conducive to organizational interaction. In particular, they were interested, as a model, in British Airways' headquarters near London, designed by Norwegian architect Niels Torp. The headquarters consists of six buildings connected together by a glassed-over street, a central nerve of the overall design and a site for social interaction and diverse activities. According to Torp’s design firm, “Interiors are designed as light, open, airy spaces, with the main emphasis on stimulating internal communication.” As opposed to the typical Polish workspace built during the communist era which were full of rather dark, stale, enclosed spaces, the inspiration for Gazeta Wyborcza’s new space represented a radical departure in terms of communicative possibilities, information access, and transparency. Their new building embodied the spirit of the paper and its democratic ideals.

(BA headquarters)

But furthermore, it is not insignificant that in 1990 Agora prepared to build a skyscraper, a symbol of might, while in 2000, when construction began, they had changed their minds and opted for an open and airy space full of transparency. This shift in design taste mirrors the emergence of transparency in the political arena in the realms of anticorruption initiatives, information access law, and investigative journalism. All three realms emerged as strong forces in the late 1990’s, the same moment when the JEMS Architekci won its 1998 bid to design the Agora headquarters.

it was the KGB chief in the parlor with the candlestick!

this whole Ukranian drama is just too unbelievable, which is really typical of an eastern european political conspiracy situation. in the latest installment, the nytimes reports that yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin, it had been unclear up to now whether he was truly poisoned and if so, which poison had been used. but here's a great aside that the nytimes wrote about:

In a famous case, a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi I. Markov, was killed with poison in 1978 by the Bulgarian secret service, apparently to silence his broadcasts on the British Broadcasting Corporation. At a London bus stop, an agent using a spring-loaded umbrella injected into Mr. Markov's leg a platinum pellet that contained a dose of ricin. He died after three days of intense fever and vomiting

installment plan: II

But at the offices of Gazeta Wyborcza, Michnik still commands a great deal of respect. The paper is more than a company, but a group of friends and family, sharing a special ethos.

Already knowing the Rywin story, talking to Piotr Stasinski in Michnik’s office, the site where the scandal originated, was like having a meeting with Woodward and Bernstein at their meeting place with Deep Throat. After I sat down and we chatted, I asked if I could record our conversation. “Yes, of course,” he said. “You know, this room is quite famous for recording interviews.”
I said, “This is the place where… “ while making some hand gestures, “right?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, openly pointing out to me the places where they had hidden the microphones to record the conversation. One in the bookshelf and the other underneath a coat next to the desk. We sat in the same places that they sat.

“You know,” I said, “that in America, you really couldn’t record this interview legally. You are supposed to tell someone they are being recorded, the tape would never stand up in a court of law.”

“That’s funny. That’s funny really. You wouldn’t have any evidence then [of the bribe offer].”

“But I recall, when the pentagon papers were leaked ,that they [the U.S. government] entrapped the guy who leaked them. They recorded him secretly and they were surveilling his phone calls. And fortunately, all of that information was thrown out of court because it was captured illegally. So it turned out they had no case without that evidence. But I suppose in this case, the ridiculousness of the legal findings, that there was no group [referring to the “group that holds power”] and the whole fiasco of the yearlong – “

“Sort of fiasco. Formally, it is. No, but the truth is there. I mean, everyone who watched it, nearly every commentary on that. All publications in general, except for some smaller exceptions, they showed that there must have been some people [behind it]. And also the most serious of the reports, the Nalecz report, which is the president, the chairman of the commission, is saying there are people who must have sent him [Rywin]. Otherwise, it cannot be logically explained. It cannot. So, fiasco, yes. In formal procedures. But in the very sense of the perceptions of this case, it’s not a fiasco. It’s not a victory, but it’s not a fiasco. It’s a knowledge, public knowledge that people have.

“So, it was a good thing in a sense?”

“What?”

“This kind of thing [a corruption scandal] has happened before, but –“

“Exposing, yes. Exposing it was good.”

“The exposition of how high levels of power work.”

“Yes. This is the most important part of that. And I think it’s really valuable for democracy here, for the workings of democracy. For people to know how the authorities work: illegally.”

But what struck me as most peculiar in that particular situation, sitting in the very place where a giant conspiracy began to unravel, was the built environment of Gazeta Wyborcza’s offices, full of glass and transparency. Adam Michnik’s office is not a remote or secluded bunker for secret affairs, but a transparent and central location for open meetings. Even if less opaque materials cover the glass that looks directly upon the editorial workspace, there were two ways that co-workers could bear witness to Rywin’s presence on that Monday meeting in July of 2001. First, His presence was conspicuous. Rywin would have walked directly through the journalist’s workspace and have been recognized. Second, one of Michnik’s wider walls is completely glass, overlooking a small courtyard. A catwalk allows people to enter the editor’s office from other adjacent offices. And part of the conversation actually took place outside, there on the catwalk. From all of my experiences talking with and building relationships with journalists at Gazeta Wyborcza, the Rywin-Michnik meeting felt like an idiosyncrasy. Rywin operated in a manner of politics-as-usual in Poland, acutely unaware that his transparent surroundings were much more than surface decoration, but foundational to the paper’s very spirit of operation. After countless interviews in offices throughout Warsaw, the Wyborcza office stood out to me as a uniquely open environment, in tune with the social environment of the paper’s staff and democratic ethos.

For several years, the paper’s first headquarters was housed in a nursery school. A famous story told to me recounts that editorial meetings took place in the outdoor sandbox, where editors would draw the next day’s paper in sand. In 1992, Wyborcza moved into an office building from the 1950’s. While the building was not a model for socialist realism architecture, it was neither as gray and repetitive as much of Warsaw’s built landscape. It held many qualities in common with the numerous government buildings I encountered, full of interior hallways stretching the length of the building with symmetrically even closed doors on both sides. The effect, as in those government buildings today, is nothing less than Kafkaesque.

the o.c.

you're officially pop culturally irrelevant and uniformed if you're not watching this tonight. not that i'm sure it's a bad thing, but just in case you didn't know, now you do.

installment plan

this is the story i've been talking about, but just a clip of it. bear with me please:

In May of 2004, I visited the offices of Gazeta Wyborcza (Newspaper of the Election) for the second of three extended interviews with the assistant editor-in-chief Piotr Stasinski. Wyborcza is Poland’s largest daily newspaper, first founded in 1989 by underground dissidents allowed by the Round Table discussions to provide information to Polish citizens concerning their first democratic elections. When I arrived at Stasinski’s office that morning, he led me away from his space and into the editor-in-chief’s office where we could have more privacy. In fact, Stasinski’s office is almost a hallway, approximately ten foot by twenty foot, with two doors allowing passage through and walls of full glass. A table in its center allows for daily editorial meetings. Editor-in-chief Adam Michnik is one of the most well-known people in Poland, famous there and internationally for his central role in the underground resistance movements KOR (Committee for the Protection of Workers) in the 1970’s and Solidarity in the 1980’s. In 1989, he took a position in Parliament, but soon decided he preferred other forms of political activity over legislation. Having been a political radical for so many years, it was difficult for him to play the role of statesman. Rather, he pursued a type of role more consistent with his true character, a purveyor and supporter of progressive civil society and culture. Millions of Poles, especially the younger generation, deeply admire Michnik for his selfless sacrifice during his underground days, having spent many years in jail in defiance of the communist state. In turn, the respect earned by Michnik and his old friends, now co-workers at the paper, from the days of resistance carried over to Gazeta Wyborcza, hailed and respected as the guiding light of a more democratic system and society.

However, in recent years Wyborcza’s good name has been tarnished, mainly by the revelation of what is easily the biggest scandal in the Third Republic’s brief history, referred to as either “the Rywin affair” or “Rywingate.”

(click on the link below to read the rest of it)

In 2001, the government’s National Brodcasting Council (KRRiTV) began a campaign for a new law that would effectively limit media monopoly in Poland. If the law was passed, no organization could own more than one radio station in a market and the owner of a nationwide daily newspaper would not be allowed to also own a nationwide television station. The only exception to these rules would be the state-owned public television station Telewizja Polska (TVP). While the law appears sensible enough, it should be noted that there was no impending danger of media monopoly. The only nationwide daily owner was Agora, which publishes Gazeta Wyborcza. Agora was interested, at the time, in purchasing a television station called Polsat. It should also be noted that Gazeta Wyborcza did not share the political viewpoint of the party in power, Alliance of Left Democrats (SLD).

On Monday, July 22, 2002, film producer Lew Rywin, who co-produced such well-known films as Schindler’s List and The Pianist, visited the office of Gazeta Wyborcza editor Adam Michnik, the same office where I conducted my interview with Stasinski. A week earlier, Rywin had approached Agora president Wanda Rapaczynski and vice-president Piotr Niemczycki concerning their interest in purchasing Polsat and their feelings about the potential new law. In not so many words, Rywin hinted that a bribe could make possible Agora’s acquisition of Polsat. After that meeting, Michnik contacted Prime Minister Leszek Miller to ask if he was involved in this bribery scheme, but Miller denied the accusation. On the 22nd, Michnik secretly recorded his conversation with Rywin. During the meeting, Rywin openly attempted to solicit a bribe of $17.5 million dollars from Michnik and, in return, the bill would change in the interests of Agora. The idea for this bribe, according to Rywin, came from a vaguely referenced “group that holds power,” which most believe referred to Prime Minister Miller and his cronies, as well as Andrzej Zarebski, a former KRRiTV member who was at that time an independent media advisor, and TVP president Robert Kwiatkowski, who wanted to privatize TVP2 and purchase it with the money from the bribe.

The story is shocking enough up to this point, but from here, things get really weird. Gazeta Wyborcza did not publish any part of the story until December 26, 2002, six months following the incident. Further, discrepancies existed between the tape of the conversation, posted online, and the transcripts of the conversation published in the newspaper. Longtime critics of Wyborcza, particularly those on the political left and ex-communists, used the delay and the discrepancies as evidence that the newspaper edited the tapes and the entire story was simply political manipulation. According to its editors, the paper withheld the story because its release might have harmed Poland’s delicate negotiating situation with the European Union accession committees, which took place during the summer and fall. Later, Michnik admitted it was a mistake to delay publication of the story, but he claimed to be acting in the public’s interest.

Following the release of the story, parliamentary hearings were broadcast on TV to a huge national audience. After years of political analysts and sociologists noting low voter turnout and a general apathy towards Polish political life, viewership for the investigations were much higher than anyone expected. More Poles tuned in to the hearings than voted, evidently proof that they are not so indifferent to politics after all. But the hearings also turned into a soap opera with many witnesses refusing to incriminate themselves and little being revealed or solved. At one point, a junior SLD senator questioned Adam Michnik for several minutes concerning the color of his socks; she implied that homosexuals wore red socks, while he noted that it was common for dissidents to wear colored socks during the communist era. More than anything, politicians used the hearings to gain greater recognition for themselves and their political parties.

Rywin finally went on trial and was found guilty in the Spring of 2004, but the state refused to try any other officials. Officially speaking, the “group that holds power” was a fiction. But in public opinion polls, a majority of Poles believe that there was a conspiracy involving officials at the very highest levels of government. And while most of the public outcries are directed towards the corrupt dealings of those inside the government, Michnik has also received a great deal of criticism and, for many, seems to have fallen from his respected position as a moral voice in Poland today.

re: commentary on the order of writing

as per chris's comments on yesterday's post, i've been searching for a good ethnographic scene from which to start my chapter. There are a few things this story should elicit, but I am uncertain that I have a first-hand account that would fit well. Rather, I am strongly considering a brief synopsis of a giant corruption scandal that concerns the passage of a media law because 1) it ties in with the previous chapter on corruption, 2) it raises issues of information flows, investigatory revelations that follow the emergence of a scandal, 3) the secrecy involved in the machinations of power and the widespread cynicism that results and possibly 4) the difficult and changing nature of citizenship represented for the first time as a nielsen rating rather than a democratic right. but perhaps this story is too unwieldy and not capturing the international angle I am planning to write about. I will read the Jack Katz article Chris mentioned, but if anyone out there has also read it, please - give us your thoughts on it.

peace in thailand

In order to quell violent protests by Muslims claiming the Thai government is discriminating against them, the government decided to bomb the insurgents with 120 million paper origami birds of peace. If this works, someone has to call up Bush with Plan C for Iraq.

the order of writing things

so, i assembled a long rambling chapter on FOI history in Poland and internationally, with a bit too much about the US probably. and now i'm trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together in a way that seems either natural or logical. does anybody know a rule to this or a personal observation at the very least? my first run through, i wrote about the history of FOI internationally and in the US and then moved on to Poland. But Angela pointed out pointedly that I should probably start with Poland's history with information access, which I think I should highlight as a movement from some censorship and secrecy to more openness - and from there I can move to the international scene. And then maybe I'll move back to Poland and write about the failings and successes of FOI law in Poland as of my fieldwork experience. But it's not just juggling Poland and the international, it's also just a matter of what needs to be introduced first. Historically? that seems logical enough. But what if there is a specific fact or set of facts - such as the history of the passage of the law or other specific events - and then there are longer facts - such as the way that politics in Poland is not the same as in the rest of Europe where you have the Left and the Right, political positions are much more complex - and then combined with personal biographies of individuals involved in the law's passage.

maybe this is just a reason to procrastinate when I should just go ahead and try a combination, then see how some readers react. i'm working on it...

rabbit rabbit

it's customary to say "rabbit rabbit" on the first of the month, as the very first thing you say. i apologize for not telling you on the 30th, but its better to start on the new year then never.

why rabbit rabbit? i actually have no clue, i blindly believe in it. it hasn't paid off too well, but i also firmly believe that you can do really well if you just have one day of good luck every 3 years. a really good day.

also, when i go to a fast food restaurant and i take the straw out of its paper wrapper, i tie the wrapper in a knot and keep pulling. if, when ripped, the knot comes out, it means someone is thinking of you. results cannot be verified.

in any case, i will be needing this luck as i struggle through my 2nd chapter. the chapter on corruption is mostly complete. but the next chapter on freedom of information is a total mess. it's all mud and no clarity. i have alot of random observations. i'll make a list of these tomorrow or monday, maybe y'all can help me out. till then, good luck.