Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb. Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence. Read on at the NYT here Interview with Alexander Lebedev from KGB operative to owner of The Independent. Here
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Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb. Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence. Read on at the NYT here Interview with Alexander Lebedev from KGB operative to owner of The Independent. Here
Jonathan Raban in the New York Review

Gordon Brown; drawing by John Springs
Trying to follow the impending British general election from afar, I've been reading The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour by Andrew Rawnsley, chief political commentator for the Observer. Eight hundred pages long, and crammed with "inside" political gossip (or credible intelligence, if you prefer), it's a book as hard to admire as it is to put down. Though the text is bespattered with authenticating footnotes (many say no more than "Conversation, Cabinet minister"), it reads like airport fiction. Its flawed (and credible) hero is Tony Blair, its cardboard villain Gordon Brown.
The End of the Party seems to have gone to the printers in November 2009.
Continue reading... Did the Gravediggers Arrive Too Soon?.
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