Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
Tonight I will be appearing on the radio show Open Source with Christopher Lydon. The show airs 7-8 EST. The show is also podcast for those who can’t catch the live feed. The topic is “Georgia (and Russia) Off Our Minds.” NYU Professor Stephen Cohen and Edward Lucas, the Central and Eastern European correspondent for the Economist will be guests in addition to myself. I’m told that I will be on during the last segment of the show.
Tags: Russia|Georgia|Caucasus|international relations|nationalism|xenophobia|media|radio
Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
In the meantime, the politics of Politkovskaya’s death rumbles on. As Wally Shedd reports on his blog, Accidental Russophile, Exile editor Mark Ames has weighed in on the Western media’s sudden infatuation with Politkovskaya. Always looking for a chance to twist his pen into the sides of the American media, Ames reviews American press coverage of the murder. He also rightly asks, “Where is America’s Politkovskaya?”
If you ask me, what is most significant for us in the West about Anna Politkovskaya’s death, and her courageous life (btw, a big “fuck you” to our nationalist readers who don’t agree with this), is not so much what it says about Russia — it doesn’t say much new at all, to be honest, but instead is another chapter in an increasingly depressing story that started under Yeltsin.Rather, what is significant about her death is this: Why doesn’t America have ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
Kommersant reports that police investigating Anna Politkovskaya’s murder have settled on a dominant theory about who killed her. Police have descended on the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk because they suspect that the killer is linked to former policemen there. Kommersant reporter Sergei Mashkin writes,
“Information received from Khant-Mansiiskii police was the reason why investigators from the General Prosecutor and operatives from Russian MVD Criminal Investigation Department departed [to Nizhnevartovsk]. One of the police there saw someone who looks like their former colleagues—Mayor Alexandr Prilepin and Colonel Valerii Minin. Presently there is an international search for them for crimes they committed in Chechnya.
However, the investigators have been unsuccessful in finding the mayor or the colonel. Possibly the police informant was mistaken or former colleagues warned the fugitives beforehand. As a result, the investigators had to be satisfied with interrogating Prilepin’s and Minin’s comrades and even their ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 24, 2006
Reporters Without Borders has released its annual index on worldwide press freedom. The questionnaire the group used to calculate the index can be found here. According to the report Russia ranks 147th, where it is sandwiched between Singapore and Tunisia. Last year, Russia was ranked 138th. RWB explains the reason for the drop as follows:
Russia, which suffers from a basic lack of democracy, continues slowly but steadily dismantling the free media, with industrial groups close to President Vladimir Putin buying up nearly all independent media outlets and with passage of a law discouraging NGO activity.
Each year several journalists are murdered in Russia with complete impunity. The person who ordered the July 2004 killing in Moscow of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, remains publicly unknown. The murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in early October 2006 is a poor omen for the ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 22, 2006
Central Bank of Russia First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov’s killers have been caught. Or so we are told. On 16 October, Kommersant published a rather detailed tale of how Kozlov and his driver Alexander Semenov were victims of three hired killers, Alexey Polovinkin, Maxim Proglyada and Alexander Belokopytov. The three are 35 year old citizens from Ukraine, but form the description of events provided by Kommersant, the three are hardly experts in the field of contract killing. If their story is true, they were duped themselves. The mysterious intermediary that hired them for the job didn’t pay them. This led one of the suspects to voluntarily contact the police out of fear for his life.
Yet, despite their confessions, police believe that Polovinkin, Proglayada, and Belokorytov have more to tell. Their description of the “intermediary” sounds like something right out of X-Files or All ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 22, 2006
Cyrill Vatomsky has become a regular commentator on this blog over the last two weeks. In appreciation for his interesting comments, I want to point readers to his radio show Embassy of the New World Order on KSCO AM 1080 Santa Cruz, California. The show airs every Sunday, 11:00 to 1:00 PST. Vatomsky also podcasts the show for those who can’t listen at the live broadcast.
I must admit that I’ve never listened to Embassy but I figured that since Vatomsky gives us his thoughts, we should give him a listen. I know I will, starting today.
Tags: Radio|Russia|media
