It’s nice to see this piece in The Independent today from Gordon Brown remembering Anna Politkovskaya.  I’m trying to figure out the timing of this move, given that it is not the anniversary of Anna’s death, and given also the author of the piece: the former UK Prime Minister.  It comes just as Russia turns its nose up at current UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s eager (many say over-eager) cries for a no-fly zone over Libya, and as US Vice President Joe Biden leaves Russia, following a rough dismissal of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with a veiled dig at his tandem structure of rule with President Dmitry Medvedev.  Putin had suggested that Biden would have the clout needed in the White House to push through a no-visa package.  Biden’s curt response, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a real difference between being president and vice president,‘ surely counts as Biden’s exercising his freedom to feign unknowing in order to get in a palpable hit.  In other words, ‘Maybe in Russia the Prime Minister can do what he likes, but in the US we have certain rules.‘ 

Anyhow, I digress.  Here’s an excerpt from Brown’s attentive piece, in which he draws attention to some of Politkovskaya’s more terrifying brushes with aggression and urges us not to forget that she was essentially fighting for the freedom of information.