Slashdot Mirror
Former Spy Poisoned By Radiation In UK
An anonymous reader writes "BBC new is reporting the death of the ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with a major dose of radioactive polonium-210. But nobody knows how it got there. Suspicions have fallen upon the Russian security services (who deny involvement). The task of the pathologists now is to unpick what really killed him and how it was administered. Quite what techniques they will use to solve this puzzle is unclear." From the article: "A post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko has not been held yet. The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination. But Roger Cox from the HPA said a large quantity of alpha radiation emitted from polonium-210 had been detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine."
......found this curious comment:
"Mr Putin himself has said Mr Litvinenko's death was a tragedy, but he saw no "definitive proof" it was a "violent death"."
Clearly the term "violent death" has a different definition in Russian than it does in English.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Shades of Georgi Markov, a Soviet expatriate/dissident who was also assassinated in London. He was stabbed in the leg with a special spring-loaded umbrella that subcutaneously injected a metal pellet contaminated with ricin. They didn't even find the pellet until he was already dead, and it took some work to find out just what had killed him.
I wonder how they got the polonium into him. For a death this rapid, he'd pretty much have had to ingest it.
The delay is believed to be over concerns about the health implications for those present at the examination.
If they're concerned, they're too ignorant about science to be qualified to do the exam. The rule of thumb is that alpas are stopped by air. Even if the guy's body fluids got on you, the alphas wouldn't get through your epidermis -- and I assume people doing autopsies are going to be wearing latex gloves, a mask, etc., since they don't want to get exposed to AIDS, etc.
Find free books.
Heartburn, Nausea, Indigestion
Upset Stomach, Diarrhea!
Trolling the trolls who troll the trolls since '92
Hands up who's not worried by this?
Lots of talk of what Al Qaeda might do, but these are the people with their hands on thousands of nukes, much of the energy supplies and they are now poisoning people with radioactive isotopes because they say they are scheming murdering psychopaths.
Do we really need another bunch of homicidal f*ckwits in the world?
When it comes to things to avoid eating, apparently, he forgot Polonium!
He's been labelled a heckler, when he may well have a genuine issue at hand. The same thing, perhaps a little more dramatic, happened at a press conference regarding the demise of the Kursk.
When Russia (yes, even modern-day Russia) gets its hands near an investigation, the result is usually indeterminate or irrelevant, never indisputable.
WANRING: This warning is misspelt.
here is a funny thought (going off that whole thing), you think they put it in the wasabi?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Who's to blame? Poland, obviously.
You can't exactly buy Polonium-210 at every corner drugstore ... (but you will be able to in 1985).
-b.
Other than in nuclear weapons?
I don't understand why of all things, they were using Polonium-210 to kill him. Since that's not exactly something you buy over the counter, wouldn't there be "better" ways of killing him by poisoning without drawing as much attention? Only about 100 grams of Polonium, any isotope, is estimated to be produced yearly and it's extremely rare in nature. It's hard to imagine a better way of drawing attention to the government.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'm unsure if all the above applies to this specific isotope, but further down there's this:
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Ok here's a creepy thought.
What if this guy blaming Putin is a red herring and that ACTUALLY he managed to get his hands on radioactive material and managed to smuggle it and sell it to someone...sort of like the drug couriers who swallow condoms full of cocaine or heroin, and have an unfortunate accident. Scary eh?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
to cover up most dishes: Curry. I had so much curry as a child I now need it to survive. Mmmm, kidney pie.
"She poisoned my with sci-ence"
If you thought that was bad I could have posted an obligatory Simpsons reference: "Mmmm, Polonium. D'OH!"
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Red fox, this is blue panda. Please repeat your 3AS, over.
The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 1011 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid. The maximum allowable concentration for soluble polonium compounds in air is about 2 x 10-11 microcuries/cm3.
From: there
Soluble in acidic environment.
Apparently he was repeatedly invited by by an unkown russian person to drink tea....
A little sourness in tea with a few milligram of metal dissolved.
Bingo.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
He wasn't poisoned by radiation in the UK, he was poisoned in the UK by radiation.
The former implies that it was the radiation present in the UK that poisoned him; the latter makes it clear that he happened to be in the UK when he was poisoned by radiation.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
If he was dying, don't you think he'd have dropped a hint so that doctors might be able to treat him? If he was truly a self-serving criminal, he'd likely value his life over protecting his "associates."
-b.
A couple of things are really, really strange.
First, if SVR/FSB wanted the death to look accidental, why would they use such deliberate method? Polonium poisoning just screams of a well-funded agency doing the job. Not covert at all. The only explanation is that they wanted it to be obvious, as a lesson to other guys. Then they might just admit "yeah, we did it", but they are denying everything.
Second, why it took so long for British to recognize obvious symptoms of radiation sickness? Nobody tried to check Litvinenko with a Geiger counter while he was alive, but after his death he was diagnosed instantly. This is just weird.
Both sides don't tell all they know. This is to be expected in a spy scandal, though.
Perhaps you are...I don't think anyone would willing choose to die of something as horrifically painful as radiation sickness.
It's worth pointing out that even if Putin has ordered his execution it's not necessarily illegal since under Russian law anyone considered a danger to Russias security can be killed regardless of whether they are on Russian soil or not.
This is obviously a vital law to protect innocent Russians in the face of this awful wave of worldwide terrorism, certainly no other countries are passing similarly effective legislation ( which has the totally unexpected side effect of allowing them to do what they like to further their own personal agendas ) so I think we should all lobby our governments to offer us the same level of protection as the Russians are now enjoying.
Sounds like all our Russian "friends" needed to do was to visit the local camera store's going-out-of-business sale.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You can actually buy small amounts of the stuff OTC, in the form of a "Staticmaster" brush for removing dust from film negatives or other sensitive surfaces.
l
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/photo/statmaster.shtm
The alpha particles emitted from the source ionize the surrounding air, and neutralize any electrostatic charge holding dust particles to a surface.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I've been wondering why his symptoms sounded so much like acute radiation poisoning since I first heard about this, and I don't even have any medical background. In a really suspicious case like this, one would think it would be obvious to test for radioactivity early on. It would have been really easy and completely non-invasive. Geiger counters sensitive enough to detect something like this are easy to come by, and hospitals have plenty of film badge dosimeters, etc. for ensuring the safety of radiomedicine workers. So why didn't they check him? It seems like this finally got discovered in a general urine test they conducted to try and identify the poison, rather than any attempt to measure radioactivity.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm
Sounds like a teaser for the local news.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
If he was dying, don't you think he'd have dropped a hint so that doctors might be able to treat him?
;)
You can't save a patient that has this level of radiation poisoning. Impossible. Maybe he knew it, so he decided to play for the maximum political advantage. If people can fly aircraft into buildings, they can do this. Anyway it's just a creepy thought, probably not true at all - where would he get it? It will be interesting to see what the cause of the radiation is at the sushi bar. So long as it's not coming from the sewer
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, you only live twice.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I can't believe no one has said this. If this were a Dan Brown novel, the big mystical secret that it would take a university-trained "symbologist" to decipher is that the true culprit, the maleficent agent behind the poisoning was, not Russia, but ... (wait for it) ... Poland!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
And it is a 1uCU of Po210. How many of these would you have to buy to get a dose that would be fatal in the a week or two?
Also the PO 210 in that is sealed. It would difficult to get it out.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Interesting question - what if he's found to have some other terminal disease at the autopsy? What if he knew he was going to die within a few months anyway and decided to suicide in a rather spectacular manner that would embarrass the fuck out of the Russian government? Wild speculation here of course.
-b.
Not under Russian law maybe, but British law tends to frown upon murder on British soil. If whoever did it is caught, they'll be spending a long stretch in a small dark hotel room...
-b.
We are certainly not amused however I suspect whoever is responsible is by now far far away from our shores.
Offcourse it might just as well be a setup. Someone who wants to make it look like it was Putin.
Frankly I don't know enough about the guy to make a guess wich one is the case but the use of an obvious method of execution is not that hard to explain. Because if it was Putin then so what. Will britain go to war over this? Even a mere trade war? Most likely not. If it was Putin this was a show of power. Basically saying,"we are still here and don't you forget it."
Offcourse the other option, that this is a setup to frame Putin is less likely but far more intresting. Russia is screwed up enough that Putin has lots of enemies in Russia itself and with its security system all messed up someone getting hold of a rare material is not that unimaginable.
So the question is, why would Putin want this guy dead so badly (more acuratly why would Putin want the world to know that he wanted this guy dead and succeeded) OR who wants to make it look like Putin killed this guy.
Ah, were is 007 when you need him?
Elect putin in 2008.
He's a guy i'd like to have a beer with.
And some polonium pretzels.
I could have thought of 200 better ways to off someone discretely just by watching the Sopranos or The Wire. With all the poisons in the world, they pick an exotic and rare poison yet whose symptoms are ubiquitous and unique. What is the cover story? He moonlights as a nuclear technician? I think the spies have watch too many James Bond films. It would have been better to have taken him to an abandon house, clipped him, and then pour lye over him to removed the evidence. Or here is a better thought, stop doing bad things. Russia should try to be more civil and stop offing dissidents and take a more American approach- brand them unpatriotic.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6175424.stm
there's not much mention of these 'three objects' that they've found inside him.
i'm no expert - maybe they're not important? -- but i'm sure they'll get to find out when they do the post mortem.
I know you're making a joke but this isn't as far fetched as I bet you think it is....It COULD have been done that way. The CEDE for ingested polonium (comitted efective dose equivalent) is an astounding 2,000 mREM/microcurie or 2,000 REM/millicurie (a lethal dose of radiation to 50% of people is only ~500 rem). He would need to ingest only .5-1 millicurie of Po-210 to get a lethal dose and each anti-static brush contains how much Po? .2-.5 millicuries per brush apparently.... I'm not saying that's how it happened, I'm sure the KGB has access to far larger amounts of Po that they would have used but it does give an idea of just how incredibly tiny an amount is needed to do harm. Even a THOUSAND TIMES the lethal dose of .5 mCi would be a mere tenth of a milligram.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
The 'three unknown objects' in his bowel were remnants of the barium used for medical imaging....old news....and over-sensationalized.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251 .shtml?id=1760111n
There's a video there of Putin kissing the 5 year old boy's stomach. This started a lot of speculation and I have read that the KGB gathered video from a hotel room proving that he was from years ago. When Putin headed the KGB all these videos obviously disappeared. There is stuff about it on teh web if anyone needs to do some research. I suspect it's true.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Yes, but a useful one.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
On the news here (one channel at least, I can't remember which - was around 6pm so the BBC iirc) in the UK they claimed that the statement read out on the news was dictated by Litvinenko as he was dying last night, however at the end of the statement the guy reading it quoted it as being dated 21st November 2006, last night was the 23rd. I'm not sure why the discrepancy and realistically I don't think it's related to any kind of conspiracy, I think the news editorial probably misunderstood and that the statement probably was put together on the 21st however all the same I just thought I'd point this out in case anyone could offer perhaps an alternative explanation ;) ?
Barbarians compared to the US of course who indulge in no such activites..
Like rigging elections, assasinating democractically elected heads of state they don't agree with, invading countries for suggesting they might prefer to sell oil in Euros thus causing a huge run on the already weak dollar, selling arms and torture equipment to countries with appalling human rights records, wire-tapping their own citizens on a scale undreamed of by the most autocratic of regimes, collaborating with despots for profit, operating an institutionally rascist judicial systm, atempting to deny women rights fundamentally accepted as basic by the entire western world, accepting graft as a proxy for politic.. yadda yadda yadda..
I'm not saying the rest of the western world's any better.. the brits, the french, the israelis.. they're all doing their bits to help out f ck it all up.. but really.. it's the sheer bare-faced hypocrisy of the US that disappoints the most.. still.. we seem to be growing up slowly..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6180262.stm
What if rogue clowns from some other planet drove their flying space armadillo to the UK, abducted this guy and used an anal probe to implant the polonium in his ass?
Seriously, have you never heard of Occam's Razor?
I've seen a few posts here asking "why use such an obvious method of killing someone?"
The answer is: it's very, very far from obvious. The mere fact that it's taken so long to work out what the poison was indicates how subtle Polonium poisoning is.
1. Based on the Wikipedia entry for Polonium, the dosage required is incredibly small. We're not talking milligrams, here; we're talking micrograms, or less. Just detecting such a tiny quantity distributed throughout the victim's body is going to be incredibly hard.
2. The poison won't produce discernable radiation outside the victim's body, either, because alpha radiation is so readily absorbed by tissue. (That's also what makes it such a good poison, of course.)
3. The thing with poisons is that you have to actually look for them. Polonium is such an unlikely poison - given its rarity and inherent handling hazards - that even considering it is far-fetched. The fact that the victim's urine contained helium was the only clue the pathologists had, and I think they deserve a huge amount of credit for getting from that result to polonium as the cause.
They most definitely do not use it in smoke detectors, the half-life is far too short to be useful.
What truly puzzles me here is why exactly any secret service such as the FSB would be stupid enough to poison some Kremlin critic with a really hard to acquire substance such as Polonium. It should be assumed that the British WILL find out what killed Litvinenko, and when it is something as obscure as Polonium, it's got to be the Russians. You're practically implicating yourself by being too good at what you do.
The guy is far more valuable to his cause as a confirmed martyr than some loud-mouthed expat living in Britain. If I were Putin, I probably wouldn't bother, and if I wanted to bother, I would want it to look like a traffic accident or a random mugging. The tinfoil hat guy in me actually is willing to believe this was a CIA job that wants to implicate the FSB. Let's face it, if you want to make Russia look bad, this is what you'd do.
Unless, of course, I REALLY wanted to make a point of Russia's reach, but in that case, Putin's guys are simply miscalculating...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
I don't know. The methodology sounds much more "George Smiley" than "James Bond".
It must be the state of the world today. Actually, the state of the world for the last ten million years. Murder happens every day, and 99% of it doesn't count as news. This, however, is an "interesting" murder.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Unfortunately for your theory, Putin is not involved in the "Russian Mafia" - which should read as "the Russian-Israeli Mafia" since some seventy of the Russian oligarchs that Putin chased out of Russia now have Israeli passports (whether they were ever "Jewish" or not, apparently.)
Read Justin Raimondo's analysis of the case at Antiwar.com. He makes a good case for Putin being framed for this by US and other neocons and oligarchs trying to restart the "Cold War".
It works the same as Syria being framed for the Harriri (and now Gemayel) murders in Lebanon - since the real beneficiary of all this is Israel, who is known to have assassination squads operating in Lebanon for several years.
Personally, I think in 2008 we should run Putin for US President - with either George Galloway or Segolene Royal as Vice-President. At least we'd get a smart President and either a smart and/or good-looking (Segolene makes Hillary look like Ernest Borgnine - and he's been dead for years) Vice President - instead of getting another neocon or the Democratic equivalent in both slots.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I'd really believe it was Putin who ordered someone's assasination if it was Mr. Berezowski who was all of a sudden dead... Seriously this guy has been a thorn in Putin's ass for much longer than either the journalist (of whom no one really knew or read anything by in Russia before her death) or this Litvinenko guy...
;)... admittedly the Russian's did mess up the extradition request... but alas... with all the hard talk about the anti-terrorist war from Tony Blair it still seems very strange.
I could of course believe that perhaps some secret service was involved... but believing that everything in Russia is done upon Putin's order is like saying that Bush is directly responsible for every law that is passed and every corporate deal in the US...
Anyways, Litvinenko is directly linked to Berezowski who is directly linked to the Chechen mafia (criminals aka terrorists)... so I wouldn't be too surprised if it's rather that group of people who are directly involved in his death. Btw, I still find it amazing that one of the Chechen terrorist leaders, who was directly responsible for recruiting and training British citizens to become terrorists on Chechen territory is still walking freely around London, especially in the post-London-tube-bombing situation. The guy's name is Zakaev and he is often shown on British TV
So what countries have the ability to produce Polonium-210?
Russia's current president is an ex kgb president. he is a thug, as well as the big-money who is now running the country are mobs, mafia and thugs, who are suppressing russian people and being harmful not only to russian citizens and to the world.
i see russia more dangerous than north korea while mafia placed presidents/governments, especially ones with kgb or such background at the helm.
Read radical news here
Even a THOUSAND TIMES the lethal dose of .5 mCi would be a mere tenth of a milligram.
At 9196 kg/m^3 ~= 9 mg / mm^3, that's about a hundredth of a cubic millimeter, assuming it was given in elemental form.
The sheer quantity of alpha radiation it produces also explains why it's used in satellites - "The power density of polonium is unique and made it attractive as a power source. One pound of polonium-210 occupies a volume of approximately 3 cubic inches and produces heat at the rate of 3.6 x 10^8 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per minute or about 64 kilowatts of electric power."
For some synthetic elements (like Pu, Np, etc.) the abundance of isotopes in the material can be an identifier of the production site, and in some cases, of the particular reactor that made the material. Is anyone here enough of a nuclear synthetic chemist to know if what is nominally Po210 actually has enough other minor Po isotopes that one might identify the production site by the mix, or secondarily, by looking at the decay product mix?
Wimp. I know who did it, and I plan to provide definitive evidence to authorities in three countries, as well as to various rival crime organizations (just to be sure of some action), but I'm darned if I'm going to post as an Anonymous Cow%.@# NO CARRIER
Why would I use polonium?
/. : the majority of the people seem to assume the Russians to be behind it, just for the reason that this kind of substance was used.
To make it seem like the Russians were the guilty ones.
As can be seen from
Qui bono, I mean really?
One side to benefit from making Putin seem bad, is USA&UK. We remember that in the Caspian and Caucasus area there is, surprise surprise, oil, on which both sides are eyeing. So it would be beneficial for the Bush&Blair to weaken the political power of Russia even a little.
Just thinking this for the sake of balance, and not to forget this possibility.
Well, sure, as long as it's boiled[*] or fried in batter! (And w'out any of that funny-flavored rice or wasabi, mind you.)
[*] Me gran calls it "poached"
The guy was ex-KGB. I think he could buy pretty much anything if he made a few phone calls.
The thing that's so weird about this is, why kill the guy in this way? As you said, it's not easy to get your hands on this stuff, so that narrows down the list of subjects considerably. Why not just a double tap with a Makarov to the head, like when they did that journalist a couple weeks ago?
Poster's theory is the first answer to that question that actually makes sense to me. Of course, it's just a theory...
Shawn
What's interesting about this is that it means that almost anyone could have committed the crime, not just people with close associations to governments with access to nuclear material. Even Litvinenko himself could have done it to embarrass Putin et al, if he were sufficiently mentally unbalanced, which isn't that far-fetched for an ex-KGB spy.
I just looked it up on my periodic table t-shirt with the radioative elements marked with glow-in-the-dark radioactivity symbols.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Ltivinenko was involved with his ally/boss BAB in a number of issues with Russia and Ukraine (business, politics). now it's obvious that he was killed and that in some kind people from this governments and businesses are linked to this event. But there are to much possibilities that to say that Putin is behind this is to say nothing
already years is Litvinenko active in propaganda from London. nothing happened, until he was writing about the "truth" on russian special services nobody cared. but elections are soon now, and it looks like his activities became more subjective and he was in some kind involved in some new stuff.
the difference between how he told the story of his last contacts (something linked to Politkovskaya death) and how the person he met told this (some termination list) makes it look like as he was trying to make some loud accusations and was trying everything to produce a 'sensation'.
now this, and the fact that BAB financed the PR company around his poisoning and his death makes everything look very suspicious to me.
I would be very interested in facts that could be revealed during an investigations on his and BAB-s last activities
maybe another book, that would be written by someone like Paul Khlebnikov (now dead), but as always - this happens many-many years after this events took place
Smoke detectors do not use polonium. Smoke detectors use americium. Why do you hate Americium?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The thing that I can't understand is method of execution. One of the possible reasons cited for Litvinenko's murder is that he was speaking out on the murder of one of Putin's other critics, journalist Anna Politkovskaya. When she was killed, she was shot in the head with a Makarov pistol, which was then dropped next to her. Now, my extensive knowledge of espionage, gained by watching many hours of '24', tells me that this is how a pro commits a political hit. But to kill Litvinenko with an extremely had to get radioactive isotope means that the list of suspects is darn short. Is it possible that Litvinenko obtained the stuff himself, through the type of black market contacts that one would assume a former KGB agent has, and kill himself with it, just to give Putin a black eye? It's a somewhat nutty theory, but this is a nutty story. Can anyone else come up with a reason why this rather unusual method was employed? Shawn
That last point is not completely stupid, considering Iraq. But the whole "selling oil in Euros" thing is only part of the equation. Another part is that Bush is deluded enough to think that Saddam was the one trying to kill Bush41 during Gulf War 1.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Personally, my favorite theory is that the spy did it to himself because he was close to dying anyways and so ate the polonium to do political damage to Putin. Not that Putin wouldn't've done it himself...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
He was a KGB defector. Oh forget it you'll never figure it out.
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
"and if they don't do it it's because they don't have the technology"
That was kind of my point..
And as for the Euro thing... consider the effect on the US economy if the OPEC nations decided to convert to the euro.. wholsale conversion of currency reserves (mainly chinese held) into the euro.. max exodus of capital out of the states and into harder currencies such as Sterling and the Euro.. crippling debt for the States as repayments are converted from the relatively weak dollar to much stronger european currencies.. check out the buying power of your average brit in New York this christmas.. the US economy is in a very precarious position right now.. the recent downturn almost a direct consequence of more mature nations deciding to consolidate trade relations amongst their own power blocks as EU, Chinese and Indian economies prove more attractive to do business with than an increasingly theocratic seeming US (although recent political events give great hope). They know the US is going to heal itself but they're not going to waste a decade of profit waiting for that to happen. Coming out the other side of this history will see the Bush presidency as the point at which the world started to realise the US was only *one* of the important trading nations and a new power balance based on the expanding economies of the Chinese, a unified Europe, India, an emerging and an increasingly independent South America will emerge. Economic power in this kind of situtation will return to the diplomatically skilled countries like the UK and France. The US will be increasingly side-lined..
There are many interesting points about this case, another is the method of murder that allowed the victim to live long enough to talk to the news media. He was on the front page of cnn.com twice in recent days, once concerning the rare, radioactive poison he had injested, and again announcing his death.
Tag lost or not installed.
I believe in this case Mr Putin used term "nasilstvennaya smert'" which basically means someone else killed that person. While "nasilstvennaya" has the same root as "nasilie" = violence, the meaning is "forced upon someone" versus "estestvennaya" (which would mean "natural causes" i.e. old age or an illness). Means of inflicting premature death could be violet (hacked with a saw) or not-so-violent (sleeping pills poisoning) but in both cases it would be an "unnatural cause of death"/"nasilstvennaya smert'".
Of course it's way more fun to use "violent" in articles, as it paints Russian President as a fierce person who doesn't think that deaths not involving excessive violence are worthy of an investigation.
Frankly I personally don't know what to think about this whole story. It's some sort of James Bond in real life. If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means? Why not just shoot him during "robbery" or "accidentally" run him over with a car? To give him enough time to make an accusation? Did perpetrators they take into account his hate toward Russian government and simply used him for their own purposes? Or they knew we'd think that and reality is even more twisted? I don't think he'd do it on purpose -- sacrificing one's life is a very high price for a political statement to make.
So my only option is to wait for the final results of the autopsy and then hope that source of the radioactive material will be found quickly, to prevent any other radiation poisonings.
Hyperom.com
The Kremlin Pedophile
By Alexander Litvinenko
A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin walked from the Big Kremlin Palace to his Residence. At one of the Kremlin squares, the president stopped to chat with the tourists. Among them was a boy aged 4 or 5.
'What is your name?' Putin asked.
'Nikita,' the boy replied.
Putin kneed, lifted the boy's T-shirt and kissed his stomach.
The world public is shocked. Nobody can understand why the Russian president did such a strange thing as kissing the stomach of an unfamiliar small boy.
The explanation may be found if we look carefully at the so-called "blank spots" in Putin's biography.
After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute's graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin?
Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute.
The Institute officials feared to report this to their own superiors, which would cause an unpleasant investigation. They decided it was easier just to avoid sending Putin abroad under some pretext. Such a solution is not unusual for the secret services.
Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, which showed him having sex with some underage boys.
Interestingly, the video was recorded in the same conspiratorial flat in Polyanka Street in Moscow where Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Skuratov was secretly video-taped with two prostitutes. Later, in the famous scandal, Putin (on Roman Abramovich's instructions) blackmailed Skuratov with these tapes and tried to persuade the Prosecutor-General to resign. In that conversation, Putin mentioned to Skuratov that he himself was also secretly video-taped making sex at the same bed. (But of course, he did not tell it was pedophilia rather than normal sex.) Later, Skuratov wrote about this in his book Variant Drakona.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Folks don't poison others with Polonium very often because 1) Po is exceedingly rare and 2) once it's determined that it was used, it really narrows down the range of suspects because of (1). If you want to obtain Po, you'll very likely need connections at a government laboratory like Oak Ridge or Los Alamos... or, say, a weapons lab in Russia.
Of course, any would-be assassin would also want to be very careful with the stuff since it is more than 10^11 times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide, which one might imagine makes it pretty dangerous to handle.
If he was diagnosed with the early signs of some type of cancer (leukaemia perhaps?) then surely the effects of the Po210 would cover this up in a post mortem?
Well, he didn't really have much to say, he didn't know any real "intelligence secrets", he workd for the KGB branch which worked against ogranized crime. He was just exposing the corruption inside the agency.
I passed the Turing test.
um... what I meant is that if it is in fact Krelmin that is behind Litvinenko's death, it is so much more outrageouns because he was not killed to prevent some secret information leakage, but for the revenge sake only.
I passed the Turing test.
Po 210 is the last steps of the U 238 decay cycle towards Lead 206, at least according to my old reference book. And higher energy then even U 238. Working backwards, Bismuth 210 has a low beta decay and short half life (5 days), Lead 210 has a long half life (22 years) and also a low beta decay. What are the chances that this was exposure and not poisoning? And why is a man in a black suit knocking at my door?
The Russian government has often assassinated enemies with stupidly obvious methods like exotic poisons delivered through micro-machines pellets. The whole point of killing with these methods is to send a signal and leave little doubt who was responsible.
o mbings#FSB_involvement) than before. The allegations seem quite credible. It's very much like a 911 conspiracy, i.e. Stage a terrorist outrage as an excuse to start a war. However, unlike 911 conspiracies, you find that you are not rolling your eyes with this one.
However, killing him has probably backfired since more people know about the FSB bombing allegations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_b
Ha ha ha.. you can run but you can't hide from Putin!
The Russians were stupid to use polonium-210. Its so rare and hard to get, it proves a government did it.
You need massive resources like a ton of uranium and a nuclear proccesing plant to get 100 micrograms of polonium. It also has a half-life of 138 days so you don't have too long to use it either.
I guess they were completely banking on the fact that no-one would think of looking for it in a post-mortem. Now the Brits found it, the Russians are completely in the sh1t.
For this reason, I strongly doubt that Putin ordered the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko. He was on Western soil (i.e., Great Britain), and, by the terms of gentleman's agreement, was in the "safe" zone. If he had been in Russia and continued to be a Russian citizen, then Putin would have killed him, regardless of whether he is a permanent resident of Britain.
Someone outside of the official Russian government killed him, but who would want to kill him?
Currently, many reports claim that the Russian government is in chaos. It has numerous renegade factions that actually support criminal elements and that coordinate assassinations. These factions operate outside of the control of the official Russian government lead by Putin. These factions are likely implicated in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.
In my opinion, one of these factions orchestrated the murder of Litvinenko because he was aggressively investigating the murder of Politkovskaya. Putin would never have killed him; Putin is a veteran of the KGB and clearly understood the gentleman's agreement.
By the way, I despise Putin. This despot is currently broadcasting Russian propaganda via a satellite-delivered broadcast called "Russia Today". When Moscow tried to brutalize the Georgians, "Russia Today" omitted broadcasting the Georgian point of view. "Russia Today" is almost as biased as Al Jazeera.
It's not exactly hard to come buy. The public can buy it over the internet. http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm A few hundred dollars buys you a nice lethal dosage.
I think someone might notice when you call up United Nuclear and try to order 1,000 of their 0.1 uCi Polonium sources. (And I'm not even sure if 1,000 of them would be enough to poison someone. That's a really minute amount they're selling.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You know what they say if it isn't preparted properly...
Carey Sublette has calculated that several thousand anti static brushes would be needed to provide a sufficient dose.
Yes, I have heart of people visiting the "liquidators"(people who were sent to clean up the mess) from Chernobyl. Some had gotten so much radiation, that they got cooked alive -- their flesh had lost all feeling was just coming off the bone like you see on an overdone turkey. Pretty sick, doctors just prescribed wine and vodka and waited for them to die. All my mom's plants on the balcony turned yellow, I wonder if my children would have to heads...
The poster you're replying to does sound a bit...out there...but he/she is right in one thing: there are a lot of non-Jews from former Soviet countries that went to Israel in the 90s. Organised crime, drug and weapons smuggling, and forced sex trafficking in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv are serious problems--and most of it comes from criminals who came to Israel under the mass exodus from the USSR (who the governments were happy to be rid of) and who probably think "kosher" is a mispronunciation of "kasha." I don't really see how it can possibly be linked to neoconservatives or Bush unless you include those insane evangelical organisations in the USA like "Eagles' Wings" and "Christians for Israel"1 that pretend to want to help people in former Soviet blocs escape persecution and send them to Israel, but only because they want to try and fulfill the Armageddon prophecies of the Bible by restoring the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In other words, to a lot of fundamentalist Christians support of Israel is merely a means to an end--quite literally. By the way, as polemic and full of assumptions without anything to back them up as the parent was, throwing in the comments about the World Trade Center bombing et al was a bit unfair. Regardless of the poster's real feelings on the subject, the parent wasn't explicitly making anti-Semitic comments (in fact, anyone who assumes that every Israeli citizen must be Jewish is the one making the generalisations and shows they've obviously never been to Israel) and throwing things in that they never said to ridicule wasn't the best (or even an acceptable) way to go about replying.
1. From the About Us section of http://www.c4israel.org/ :
brandelf: invalid ELF type 'KEEBLER'
Do you want the answer ?
Because they can. (And because most others cannot).
It's as simple as that.
After heading for a democracy, Russia is falling back into old ways. When I was there one woman earnestly asked me what I thought of Putin, and: "He is a strong leader isn't he"? Perhaps there is something in the Russian pysche that wants a strong leader more than a moral leader.
Their treatment of Georgia and other nearby states is not good lately, and this suggests that there are powerful and nasty organisations still calling shots there.
Please, Russians, don't go down the same road again!
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I disagree, George Smiley was a gentleman (even when his wife was having an affair). It was Karla that was the ruthless whatever and he was KGB in the books heading up a department at 'Moscow Centre'. Interestingly enough Karla is supposed to be based on Markus Wolf who headed the East German Stasi.
See my journal, I write things there
BTW communists were not gentleman - they might appear to follow agreement for their propaganda purposes. Communists are gone (mostly) now and there is no reason Putin would pursue old days agreements.
The Finnish Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published yesterday a letter from the Russian film director Andrei Nekrasov. (Coincidentally, mr. Putin was also visiting Finland yesterday as part of the Russia-EU summit.) The letter is a scathing analysis of the present-day Russian society.
It is extremely unlikely that Po-210 killed Litveninko. It is in the oxygen family (Oxygen, Sulfur, Selenium, Tellurium, Polonium). No stable isotopes are known. There are two possibilities: Dose him enough to get chemical poisoning; and dose him with a radioactive sample that's hot enough to cause radiochemical poisoning. I really doubt if its the latter case. Any alpha emitter would do and there is no reason to choose Polonium. He would be extremely hot. This is notr consistenmt with styatements to the effect that "traces" of Po-210 were found. And as far as chemical poisoning with Po, Someone correct me but I really doubt if the chemical properties of Po make it a very good candidate for metabolic poisoning. My guess is that this is counterspy spin.
Interesting idea, that Berezovsky was behind it all (did you forget to prefix his name "that Jew", which many do when criticising). In truth, Berezovsky originally behind Putin and met with him before he came to power (at Berezovsky's villa at Sotto Grande). However Putin seemed to align himself with the military/security service interests.
You are right though to link this to Politkovskaya. There is fundamentally about Chechnya and the alleged use of agent provocateurs. In Russia, there may be corruption, but I've heard people tell me that it is much, much worse in the military. Those who have been to Chechnya tell how bad it is there, but there are plenty of opportunities for business. Look at how well some of the senior officers are living, and what is their official salary? A war in Chechnya is convenient for many, which is perhaps why it is taking so long to contain it.
Yes, there are many friends of Russia here, but to be a friend of Russia doesn't mean being a friend of certain interests that may be connected with the Kremlin. What upsets me is how far Russia is going backwards. There was one major success of the soviet union and that was universal education. Outside the military, there is little industrial devlopment (not even in the poorly run oil/gas sectors). I know businessmen scared to let their companies grow for fear of state intervention. I know others who have been forced to leave their companies to allow state appointed directors to take over. Why is it so much easier for me to outsource to India or even China than Russia?
Why is it that Russia is being held back and who is doing that?
See my journal, I write things there
Although I hate political correctness, I have nothing against Jews in general, or against any other nation. I think the problem is in culture, not nationality.
:) - it costs the same as outsourcing to west Europe. Much cheaper is to outsource to China or India.
And regarding Russia, the problem is - all we know about it, we know from sources, that belong to someone who wants to manipulate us in some way regarding the subject.
And regarding the outsourcing, there is no problem in outsourcing to Russia. If you want to have some good contacts, visit CeBIT next March in Hannover - a part of the exhibition is related to outsourcing. I have some contacts, but the problem is
Along with the other oligarchs, Berezovsky did some very unfortunate things. Many Russians say "he is Jewish" and leave it at that. However, the 'Siloviki' just seem to be replacing the old Oligarchs with new ones, in the process reducing any notion of private ownership. Before Putin, the view held by many in the Russian markets was that the Oligarchs had stolen their bit during privatisation, but overall they needed things to settle down for them to realise their investments. In such an environment, ordinary people could have investments, insurance policies, pension funds or whatever. The attack on Yukos and Khordokovsky was a lesson that Russia wasn't ready for transparency in business or government.
Actually it remains a lot cheaper but only if you go direct. Someone who is going to get a stand at CeBIT is generally to expensive, i.e., a large amount of cost is the payoff because your company is big enough to be 'noticed' and there is probably also a local company taking a hefty margin (yes I know some Russian/German companies). India is extremely expensive for an onshore/offshore project, the major vendors ask a blended rate of around 500 Eur/day for on-site and still 300 or so Eur a day for a senior person in India. However, despite the infrastructure issues in India, it is perceived to be a much lower risk by major customer, particularly in the area of financial systems.
People die all the time in India, from starvation or whatever. There is even terrorism as well. However, it is seen as being a much safer bet than Russia. High profile assassinations make people uncomfortable. So does the fact that the army/MVD can hang around Pulkovo airport and arbitrarily and illegally 'fine' foreigners with impunity.
See my journal, I write things there
I think perhaps in all the very, very politically correct talk about how the United States is really just the same morally as other countries like Syria, Uganda and Russia is how incredibly _evil_ the KGB was/is. It is just not politically correct to say bad things about the ex-Soviet Union.
However, having been to Berlin a few days after the Wall came down, and having talked to people from the former Soviet Union, I can tell you that this remote academic theorizing is so much ear's wax, and some people really need to get outside more. In some ways it is fitting that the last of the ugly huge Lenin posters, etc, are by Chernobyl.
Pretty much everyone knows that PC conceals truth. What's the truth?
Putin rose to head the KGB because he's the chief scum of some extremely evil scum. They were the enforcement arm of a political system that killed more people, and enslaved more people, than any other this world has ever known.
The Soviet Union, which crashed Dec. 25 1991, has become a Third World country. I have friends who have left that place because they were under death threats to pay up or be killed. Another friend tried to set up an export business but was stopped by the Russian Mafia. The Museum of Soviet Spaceflight was burned to the ground because it could not pay off two rival "protection" gangs. The Buran "Space Shuttle Clone" sits in a park as a plaything.
So, do I think Putin would off this guy with polonium? Yep. It had a good chance of not being detected.
Has the KGB offed other people who gave them a bad time in England? Yep. They whacked Georgi Markov in 1978. He had a radio show that intensely annoyed them.
Did the KGB try to whack the Pope with a Bulgarian hitman? Yep. The East Germans were notified of this pre-whack try to cover themselves; this was found in their files.
It is within a pattern of consistent behavior for Putin and his KGB/NKVD/FSB buddies to whack this guy. People on this list are supposed to be rational. Pattern recognizers. If a Unix system kept popping the same output at the same time of day each day, you'd say, "Cron is doing something". If the KGB keeps killing people, you'd say, "Gee, that KGB keeps killing people."
But amazingly, given the evidence, people keep saying, "Why, no, that KGB has changed from its institutional roots, from the sociopath Laventina Beria under Stalin to now, and is now peaceful, cuddly, and furry."
Crap. They're killers.
-- thank you, have a nice day.
David Small
From http://unitednuclear.com/about.htm:
United Nuclear was formed in 1986 by Los Alamos scientist, Bob Lazar.Bob Lazar? This Bob Lazar? Yes.
I think you're missing the point. The method of killing was obviously intentional -- nobody goes to that much work without thinking about it -- so what does it suggest? Not that they wanted to prevent him from giving up some key piece of information, because obviously he had time to sing like a canary on his deathbed.
So what's the benefit of killing someone in some excruciatingly slow, mysterious way? How about that it's scary as fuck? If you were someone in Russia, thinking about criticizing the Putin regime, the act that they managed to poison somebody who had basically defected and was living (ostensibly protected) in a Western country, ought to give you a lot of food for thought. It's basically saying "there's no place that you can run where we won't get you."
I don't see this killing as much of a threat to anyone outside Russia; it seems more like a way to scare dissidents within the country, by making it clear that they can't be protected by anyone on the outside.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I agree with you. I guess I meant the kind of story it would be in... and I couldn't think of who wrote Bond. The poisoning in this manner was a definite message, with enought subtlety that it would be more La Carre than the Bond author.
Alec Guinness's portrayal of Smiley - so superb!
Funnily enough, we saw Karla in the television adaptation of Smiley's People, when he is blackmailed into defecting and Karla is played by a much younger Patrick Stewart who was probably quite fresh out of playing a devious imperial guard, Sejanus in I, Claudius.
See my journal, I write things there
You can't walk 10 meters without being filmed by one camera or two.
They get shoplifters with this for gods sakes, there is no way such actions would go unnoticed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Good point.
Our CIA had a lot to do with supporting the "Russian Mafia" during the Cold War... perhaps there are still ties. It's one of the reasons that the CIA got involved in the drug trade here in the US -- so that no foreign nation could. If it didn't, how could it be possible with all the enemies our country has had, that no foreign government has ever assasinated a US politician? (Except of course, for JFK, but that's another story and was our own doing). So I don't necessarily HATE that the CIA runs our drug trade -- just that why is this stuff illegal at all? If we cannot stop foreign infiltration of this lucrative crime, cannot stop its use without a worse police state, then why stop drugs at all? So our drug trade has corrupted the CIA and has now corrupted our own government.
Our standing military complex, has influenced politicians, and so has created MORE wars that the US finds necessary. When there is more war -- they get more money, it's that simple.
Now Afghanistan is exporting a lot of Opium again, and that is being passed from our Afghani allies (who were just the drug lords who the Taliban crushed in the first place), to our special forces, and then is passed on to the Russian-Israeli Mafia... at least according to www.waynemadsenreport.com which is my pick as "BEST SOURCE FOR WHAT IS GOING ON."
Wayne Madsen is all over this story, and it seems it is another attempt to discredit Putin. The NeoCons are hip-deep allied with the Russian-Israeli mafia, and because of election-rigging in the Ukraine, and other Oil Resource Wars, are now no longer friends of Putin, it stands to reason that making Putin look bad will be the story line for Western (NeoCon fascist-controlled) Media, and other friendly NeoCon states.
But before I get into that,.. I find it interesting WHY he was poisened this way -- HOW is going to be too tough of a question, he hung around with a lot of people who traded nuclear material. I remember reading that during the cold war, the Russian spies liked to put radioactive elements on shoes and in people, to allow them to track movement. If this guy had so much radioactivity in him, either it was to send a message, or to create a person who could be tracked from space. But most likely, to silence a person who knew too much, was expendable, and make Putin look bad.
Here's what Wayne Madsen has to say;
"
November 28, 2006 -- In addition to Russian-Israeli Mafia, Litvinenko radiation poisoning now linked to Iraqi oil business and military occupation. British police have discovered traces of polonium 210, the radioactive substance sued to kill former Russian FSB and KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, in the office of wanted Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. London sources confirmed that traces of the radioactive substance were found at 7 Down Street in London's Mayfair district, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.
An Internet search shows that the Interpark House office building at 7 Down Street also houses the headquarters of the coal, oil, and energy hedge fund firm Starsupply Tullett Energy; offices of Metro International, the global media firm; Nichiei, Ltd., a Japanese consulting firm; and Capital Corporation plc, which owns three London casinos, Crockfords and the Colony Club in Mayfair and the Cromwell Mint in Kensington.
Although British police were on guard at Berezovsky's office, the Russian-Israeli businessman who is wanted for a variety of crimes in Russia, told the Guardian, "I don't know anything about police at my office," and refused any further comment on the case. Berezovsky was a colleague of Litvinenko and were working jointly to topple the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian President has made it a hallmark of his administration to crack down on the Russian mobsters and oligarchs who looted the Soviet and Russian treasuries, consorted with Chechen terrorists and engaged in "true flag" bombings involving Chechens in Moscow and other Russian cities, and then fled to Israel.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
That's because they've been very busy being, very, very bad.
... so I wouldn't throw those in. The WTC... heck, Marvin Bush took over the security company that started "securing" the WTC buildings that year... what's the worst that could happen?
If I blamed a crime spree on a bank robber who robbed like twenty banks... would that be whinning?
The only controversy here, is that these people haven't been arrested or even investigated.
I don't know if anyone could prove the idea about the New Orleans levees... but if you wanted a rhetorical argument, you should have thrown in Big Foot... that always seems to be just far fetched enough to make people think that our Crim Lord in Chief wasn't involved. The bombings in Spain and England do have some possible connections to NeoCons, however
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
You're right about Borgnine - I must have been thinking about his last wife.
Still, he's always LOOKED dead, which was the point.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I follow Wayne Madsen as well.
Now it turns out from another source that Bob Lazar, the Area 51 UFO guy, runs a company that sells chemicals and he can sell you polonium for $69 from his Web site. Apparently the stuff is hard to produce, but relatively easy to obtain as it isn't tracked as a hazardous substance that you need authorization to buy or is surveilled by any agency.
So much for it being hard to get and thus requiring a state to do this form of hit.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Well, as far as the WTC is concerned, the Zim company moved out shortly before it occurred - after a decades-long presence there, and foregoing a $50,000 penalty. And one of the bigger stockholders happens to be the State of Israel.
Not to mention that Mossad agents were known to be shadowing the WTC conspirators (as "handlers", perhaps) for months before the attack - and only bothered to alert the US - in vague terms - perhaps a month before the attack.
Not to mention the Israeli agents caught filming the WTC attack - and their "employer" in New Jersey who fled to Israel when questioned by the FBI.
Oh, by the way, the company that runs the video monitoring systems in the London Underground - which allows anyone associated with them easy access to the Underground - is Israeli.
All the above facts are readily available to anyone who bothers to check.
Any more questions?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!