Daily Archives: December 11, 2006

Last Wednesday, the PEN American Center held an event “The Writer’s Conscience:

Remembering Anna Politkovskaya & Russia’s Forgotten War” at the CUNY Graduate Center to commemorate the journalist’s murder. Speakers included Musa Klebnikov, the wife of slain Forbes Russia journalist Paul Klebnikov, Kati Marton, Dana Priest, Francine Prose, New Yorker editor David Remnick, and Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Natalia Estemirova from “Memorial” Human Rights Center.

I stumbled up on a broadcast of the event on CSPN-2 Sunday evening. I don’t know if there is a rebroadcast planned, but you can listen to it in its entirety at PEN’s site for the event. The evening began with a segment from the documentary Democracy on Deadline that featured Politkovskaya. Unfortunately, this segment isn’t online for viewing and a DVD of the documentary costs an unbelievable $450 to buy ..read more

I don’t have time nor much interest in continuing to comment on the recent developments of the Litvinenko Affair. Suffice to say that it has become so complex that one would have to only concentrate on it to successfully wade through much of details. The Daily Telegraph has been kind enough to provide a Who’s Who of the affair. A Google News search will reveal literally thousands of articles.

Among the cacophony of news, I was grabbed by the headline “Brits Are Not Looking for the Truth – Ex-KGB Officer” in Kommersant. The article features a short interview, reproduced below, with one Viktor Afanasyevich (he wouldn’t give the paper his last name), the vice president of the KGB veterans’ organization, Dignity and Honor. Founded in 2003 and hosts a membership of 3000 ex-KGB agents, Dignity and Honor was dragged ..read more