"The Darkness in Russia"

What a fitting article title--yesterday I saw my first frost in Bethel. I suppose there might have been an earlier frost when I was on vacation for a week, but it's the first one for me.

The Japan Times ran a piece today on three recent high-profile homicides in Russia. The killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya has received a lot of attention. The killer had the audacity to leave the weapon at the scene, which makes it look like there's no reason for anyone to fear prosecution for this crime. And since 12 Russian journalists have been killed in the past 6 years, and none of the cases have been solved, that's a pretty safe bet. You have to be mighty brave to be an independent journalist in Russia these days. Scary stuff indeed.

The other recent victims were: Andrei Kozlov, first deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia who took on corruption in the Russian banking industry (I know a thing or two about that industry, and "corrupt" is a charitable term), and Enver Ziganshin, chief engineer for Rusia Petroleum, partly owned by BP and in the process of being muscled out of the giant Kovykta gas field project by Russian energy behemoths Gazprom and Rosneft. Three unrelated killings, lest I sound like a conspiracy nut, but part of a disturbing pattern nonetheless. Sigh.