Slashdot Mirror
British Police Identify Killer in Radiation Case
reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"
because not only is he interested in high tech assassination, he's also in favor of Open Sores.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What the hey does this have to do with Your Rights Online?
More like... nerdular nerdence!
Haha! Busted. He left a radioactive trail all over London, even in an airplane he travelled on. He's the only person who can be tied to all the locations they've found traces of radioactive polonium. Of course, he's claiming someone set him up by following him around and dropping the stuff wherever he went. We'll see if the Russians will hand him over. If they don't, it's gonna look mighty suspicious. If they do, he's gonna say Putin put him up to it, whether he did or not.
The UK may have to hand over a scummy billionaire who profited immensely off of the rush to privatize Russia, which would be cool: two scumbags busted for the price of one.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think this is a real test case of whether the notion of the UK as a nation holds any actual power in the World. The Russian constitution, as I understand it, obliges the Russian government NOT to render Russian citizens for extradition, despite the fact that in Britain the defendent will assuredly recieve a fair trial (either in the UK or by analogy to the Lockerbie case, in a third country).
If the Russian government DID sponsor an assassination within British territory, it is an affront to our sovereignty and should be exposed. If on the other hand it was NOT, then it is equally desirable that the Russian government be cleared of that.
If the UK does not take a strong, principled stand on this issue, then I feel that our identity of "British" is very probably meaningless.
10:1 this guy dies mysteriously or disappears.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
There was absolutely no need for the James Bond style assasination. Why not just shoot the bugger using a silencer? Advantages of using a gun:
1. Weapon doesn't decay.
2. Don't need to visit a nuclear reactor (which will have very restricted access on) to get one.
3. Doesn't leave a HUGE trail of everywhere you have been with it.
4. Less chance of target surving long enough to give full description of you.
This assasination was far too elaborate...
Could we change the Slashdot headline to say they have charged someone. Legally a representative of the police or any legal branch of a government, would not say "We've identified the killer". It is up to the courts to decide if he killed someone, not the police. The police can only supply evidence to the prosecutor and a jury will decide if he did it or not.
I suspect the Russian government knows full well that the British Government can't hand over Boris Berezovsky. That's why they're likely to make the request. It's not, on the face of it, unreasonable. Just legally impossible. But Britain's "refusal" to hand him over will mean that Russia has a better bargaining position. They can push Britain into offering an alternative of greater value.
A traditional staged mugging or hit and run style assassination doesn't send the same kind of message: "we've got radiological weapons and can deploy them in the heart of one of the West's greatest cities".
The method of this assassination was intended to create a specific kind of fear among people who pay attention to these sorts of things. Putin's transformation of Russia is nearly complete.
Should it even be a homicide investigation or a smuggling investigation? Why would anyone poison someone with many more times the amount required to kill them with a material that is so expensive and easy to trace? There are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier ways to kill someone. Ways that would garner much less attention.
Why poison the person multiple times when one time would be enough? We know it's multiple times because the police believe it to be multiple exposures. How would they know this unless the decay or signatures were different between exposures?
The amount is very puzzling. The amount is a huge amount of the material. It was so much that it left a blemish in the tea cup. Something on orders of 100 watts of heat from the Po-210.
I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but it seems to me there has to be much more to this story. What were these guys really up to?
Buy polonium 210 on the internet? I believe that, but I don't believe that they'll sell it to you in lethal quantities. I'll assume that you're referring to the united nuclear website (http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm). Just think - if you could buy as much polonium 210 as what was used against Litvinenko, do you really think that any postage service would want to deliver a radioactive package?
Actually, it was a perfect assassination. Did you see how the guy perished? All his hair fell out. He sat in a hospital bed for a tremendous amount of time. He suffered. He bled internally.
Why was it a perfect assassination? Because it involved radiation which inherently causes anyone to shiver, and it caused a slow, painful, agonizing death, which sends about as big of a message as publicly drawing and quartering the guy.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
I love this story, it should make an interesting made-for-tv-movie, one question though; which one is the white spy and which one is the black spy?
8^P
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
You arrest me, and I will irradiate you all! Muhahahaha... enjoy your sushi, judge!(disappears in a cloud of green phosphorescent smoke)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
with positive electrical charge. Soon to be subject to high voltages if sent to Texas, otherwise to be denied favorite occupation of irradiating people who yearn to be free.
Except, they have not yet charged him, they are requesting extradition and he's not in the UK or EU at present.
Sushi eaters everywhere are running scared, of course. Except on the West Coast of the US/Canada, where our rivers are filled with fish that have higher levels of Mercury than 10 years ago, so we're way more concerned about that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Already, the Russians are claiming that it's against their Constitution to allow extraditions. (Read the last paragraph in the article.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In fact, this is the whole problem: to Russia, the concept of an independent judiciary is not credible.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Apparently Lugovoi had been fed up one too many times with airlines constantly mixing up his luggage, which had been meticulously labeled "Andrei L."
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
One of my coworkers was a Soviet citizen up until the collapse of the USSR. When this happened, I asked him what he thought. Did Putin do it?
His reply was an incredulous look and "Of course he did it!" He thought it was idiotic anyone would even need to ask.
obTalkorigins link: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
polonium-218 radiohalos in granite found around the world
I'll bet you don't realize this, but that's been debunked.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sure, why not.
I'd like to see the talkorigin flimsy responses enter into something peer review, but they know better.
Gentry, R.V. 1968. "Fossil Alpha-Recoil Analysis of Certain Variant Radioactive Halos." Science 160, 1228. HTML
Gentry, R.V. 1970. "Giant Radioactive Halos: Indicators of Unknown Alpha-Radioactivity?" Science 169, 670. HTML
PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1971. "Radiohalos: Some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios and Unknown Alpha Radioactivity." Science 173, 727. PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1973. "Radioactive Halos." Annual Review of Nuclear Science 23, 347. PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1974. "Radiohalos in Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective." Science 184, 62. HTML
PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1975. Response to J.H. Fremlin's Comments on "Spectacle Halos." Nature 258, 269.
Gentry, R.V. 1977. "Mystery of the Radiohalos." Research Communications NETWORK, Breakthrough Report,
February 10, 1977. HTML PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1978a. "Are Any Unusual Radiohalos Evidence for SHE?" International Symposium on Superheavy Elements, Lubbock, Texas. New York: Pergamon Press. PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1978b. "Implications on Unknown Radioactivity of Giant and Dwarf Haloes in Scandinavian Rocks." Nature 274, 457. HTML
PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1978c. "Reinvestigation of the Activity of Conway Granite." Nature 273, 217. HTML
PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1979. "Time: Measured Responses." EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union60, 474. PDF
RTF
Gentry, R.V. 1980. "Polonium Halos." EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 61, 514. HTML
PDF
Gentry, R.V. 1982. Letters. Physics Today 35, No. 10, 13.
Gentry, R.V. 1983a. Letters. Physics Today 36, No. 4, 3.
Gentry, R.V. 1983b. Letters. Physics Today 36, No. 11, 124.
Gentry, R.V. 1984a. "Radioactive Halos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective." Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science 1, 38. HTML
Gentry, R.V. 1984c. Letters. Physics Today 37, No. 4, 108.
Gentry, R.V. 1984d. Letters. Physics Today 37, No. 12, 92.
Gentry, R.V. 1987a. "Radioactive Halos: Implications for Creation." Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, 89.HTML
Gentry, R.V. 1998. "Fingerprints
(Score:-1, Seen Way Too Much X-Files)
Some people actually think Berezovsky is behind the whole story with Litvinenko. His has a good motive - to discredite Putin's government at all costs.
Because at some point you need to put down the penguin and play with dangerous radioactive material.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Wow. Mod parent insightlful, please.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
you obviously didnt read my original post, as i, myself, made reference to the talkorigins page you linked. and no, its not debunked. its a very in depth area of studies, and its so easy for anyone to put up a page that says 'debunked', because there are so few people that could look at their research and know enough about the field to validate it -- in other words, peer review.
robert v gentry has no problem putting his data into peer review publications such as nature and science -- and trust me, if there were someone that could debunk his findings for sure, they themselves would have put it in nature or science because they'd loooove to be the person that debunks gentry in the same exact journals hes posted his work in.
but alas, nope. no refuting has been done in anything peer review. only on talkorigins, which is blatantly a anticreationist site with a deceptively named domain.
only on talkorigins, which is blatantly a anticreationist site with a deceptively named domain.
Wow, like Kool-aid much?
I hate to break it to you but creationism is not a scientific theory. NO respectable scientific publication could be described as anything but "blatantly anticreationist".
Life is too short to proofread.
We'd just disconnect their Belkin wireless connection from the beach at Felixstowe. Then theyd be fucked.
No more world domination for YOU.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Besides, I'd be more concerned about some Russian nut dribbling radioactive dust all over the countryside. What a wierd murder weapon. I don't think we'll ever find out what this was all about.
Strange why you guys are obsessed with the word "debunk" so much.
Strange that you apparently didn't read my post as the word "debunk" did not appear.
Try actually reading what I said, then replying.
There was one, central, key point in my post:
CREATIONISM IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY
I'll repeat that one more time:
CREATIONISM IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY
Get it now. That's the point right there. Creationism simply does not satisfy the criteria for a scientific theory any more than "I have an undetectable Nerf ball that floats above my head."
Creationism may be your personal belief, but that does not make it science. Science has rules, which you are trying to ignore.
Life is too short to proofread.
Without using the talk.origins links, I can say this: The fact that we cannot explain something is hardly evidence that God did it. It just means that we need to study it further.
So... Every single one of these is written by the same guy?
As detailed in Litvinenko's book (with Yuri Felshtinsky) published right after he was poisoned to death _Blowing Up Russia_, Russia's KGB (by whatever new name disguises it) has been working against the conversion to democracy, especially since KGB exec Putin replaced Yeltsin the drunken reformer. According to Litvinenko before he died (reported in the book), he was being chased and then killed for reporting on the faked 1999 "apartment bombings" in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia which the KGB staged to get Yeltsin to invade Chechnya on the pretext of "Islamic terrorism". The book is banned (and was confiscated) in Russia.
"Think. It ain't illegal yet." - George Clinton with Funkadelic
--
make install -not war
Moderators, kindly take your paws off my posts. I have enough karma to burn. The word "debunk" may not appear in your posts, but it's all over talkorigins.org website. What are you trying to deny here? I agree with you that creationism is not a scientific theory. I disagree with you because I also think evolutionism is not a scientific theory. Even though creationism and evolutionism appear to contradict, you can't justify one by proving another to be false. There is no theorem that says creationism holds if and only if evolutionism is false. It's funny how you accuse me of ignoring rules of science---I explicitly mentioned that scientific theories must predict something that is reproducible by experiment under controlled conditions. Evolutionist all like to accuse others of being unscientific. You guys are just as awful as Christian Science. My personal belief has nothing to do with this argument. Your attempt to drift discussion that way is argument ad hominem.
I once had a signature.
Are you wearing tinfoil hat? That's a conspiracy theorist and denialist argument.
Don't worry, I can relate to you because I've also been labeled that way by saying men never landed on the moon. I can also say you've been lied to all your life about moon landing. What justifies you better than I?
Your arrogant assertion is what pisses me off.
I once had a signature.
You can also buy anti-static devices with (potentially lethal) quantities of Po-210 embedded in them. But the Po-210 is embedded in metal foil, and is quite difficult to extract.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Real people; Real cases; Judge Judy.
80-year-old Elizabeth Windsor is suing 41-year-old Andrei Lugovoi for pain and suffering caused by the death of her dependent, Alexander Litvinenko. Andrei says: Elizabeth doesn't know what she's talking about.
http://outcampaign.org/
What are you trying to deny here?
That creationism is a scientific theory.
I agree with you that creationism is not a scientific theory.
So it would seem....
I disagree with you because I also think evolutionism is not a scientific theory.
I have not mentioned evolution.
There is no theorem that says creationism holds if and only if evolutionism is false.
So what! Who cares about creationism? We've already established that it is not a valid scientific theory, so of couse there's no valid scientific theory predicated on an unscientific theory. It's a freakin tautology.
It's funny how you accuse me of ignoring rules of science
Because you ARE! You say that creationism is not a scientific theory, but you fail to grasp the implications of that statement. Creationism is to be dropped when you admit that it's not scientific, to not do this is the very definition of being unscientific.
Your attempt to drift discussion
I've been VERY clear with my statements. Up until this posting I have made ONE SINGLE CLAIM:
CREATIONISM IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY
It is you who have been broadening the discussion.
Life is too short to proofread.
So 'Andrei L' killed 'Andrei L'. This is called suicide/.
First, a disclaimer. This is an opinion. Don't read it as gospel, but instead try to research a little and come to your own conclusions.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. I've read about the death of Litvinenko, and I've done a little homework into this guy's history that seems interesting. I'm not going to delve too deeply in the details, but it seems to me that it's quite probable that this whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Yeah, a guy's dead. But this guy has a history of being violently opposed to the current Russian administration. His history shows him trying a number of times to discredit and/or destroy the Putin-controlled government. He was involved with a number of groups with the same goal, particularly in London.
Now, honestly if you were a member of the Russian government who wanted rid of a thorny problem, how would you do it? Kill the guy with a bullet through the head, or use a traceable, unusual and likely highly public method of killing someone? It seems to me that the FSB would have been quite capable of putting a bullet in Litvinenko's brain pan at any time and suddenly this thorny problem goes away. Besides, it seems from my reading that Litvinenko was no more or less of a problem to the Russian government than most of his other brothers in his societies and groups in England. To say that Litvinenko was such a problem to the government that they'd want to kill him at all is I think inflating his importance.
Now, if you as a group wanted to make a statement that would have worldwide coverage regarding the inhumanity of Putin's government, how better to do it than to have one of your own lay down his/her life in a particularly odd and highly newsworthy fashion? And if you can show that your martyr has been moving around because his movements are particularly traceable then you've just scored extra bonus points.
Litvinenko's death was painful, slow and highly newsworthy. The BBC was all over it... I know. I live in the US but I still enjoy the BBC podcasts every day on my way to work... it was all over the BBC world service for weeks. It seems awfully convenient that a guy who has been extremely vocal in his opposition to Putin's government would meet an end that so amply demonstrates precisely the message he and his colleagues were trying to convey (if it's true, of course). The media coverage also somewhat reeked of an orchestrated media blitz, it was just too perfect.
Now, as for where they got the polonium-210... well, after the fall of the Soviet Union much of the nuclear material that had existed within the country's borders was probably sold off around the world in order to support the orphaned communities who suddenly had very few ways of supporting themselves. It's not such a stretch to think that a sufficiently organized group with enough funding could find a sufficient quantity of polonium-210 on the black market to take the life of one of their own in a massive political statement.
Now, I'm still a little on the fence on this one. I'd say 60% chance that the above is what happened, but I still maintain a 40% possibility that what the media told us about the FSB poisoning Litvinenko was true. Perhaps it was to make a statement to all of those colleagues of Litvinenko that they need to quiet down... but it seems to me that a handful of bullets and a few key members of the groups getting lynched would be cheaper, quicker, cleaner and send the same message effectively. The whole polonium poisoning thing just seems overkill for a government, but seems like a perfect way for a radical group to send a message. It's just a more sophisticated suicide bomber.
As I stated above, this is an opinion. Don't take it as gospel.
When you give it to somebody, it obligingly hides in the body so by the time it is identified, it's far too late to do anything. It is nearly a perfect poison.
The assassin seems not to have taken precautions to stop it spreading. Think about it. If it is intended to send a warning, why do something (spread radiation round London) that causes vast expense and will seriously annoy the UK Government? And if you want to try and put the blame of the Russian government, why do it in a way that causes people to say "Surely the real Russian security services are more competent than that?"
If Putin wanted to scare the oligarchs out of the UK - which would be understandable, especially if he's current shorting Foxtons, since his schtick is "You stole my country, I want it back" - demonstrating the ability to kill them anywhere without the slightest trace would be far more effective than leaving a trail everywhere.
Pining for the fjords
If you believe in the rule of law, then you respect the law even when it doesn't allow to happen what you would like to see happen, Rules of the Game. Russia does not have an extradition treaty with Britain, therefore not only does it not have any obligation to extradite someone, but does have an obligation to respect the rightsd of Russian cirizens not be extradited. Granted, Russia takes a rather arbitrary and inconsistent view of its obligation, both internationally and domestically, but in the final analysis the law is the law. The British courts have spoken and Berezovsky cannot be extradited to Russia for what he has been charged with. End of discussion, Get over it.
Or they could take a page from the Republican Handbook and have him declare that he is an alcoholic and disappear into rehab... forever.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Gentryfication.
Still, it's our own courts that did it on both occasions, even if they are being inconsistent.
Wikileaks, no DNS
robert v gentry has no problem putting his data into peer review publications such as nature and science -- and trust me, if there were someone that could debunk his findings for sure, they themselves would have put it in nature or science because they'd loooove to be the person that debunks gentry in the same exact journals hes posted his work in.
It would be nice if people fixedated on a dogmatic idea would even bother to read the refutal material that people provide to them. The first article in the link cites numerous published, peer-reviewed papers that directly refute various hypotheses by Gentry -- Collins 1999, Wakefield 1988 -- as well as numerous other published papers that are not directly attempting to refute him but provide evidence that contradicts with his ideas.
Maybe you should actually read the article next time before making claims that no one has refuted him in peer-reviewed journals. Also, Gentry has had little trouble getting published because he hasn't made wild claims about creationism in any of his works that have actually been published. He stuck to only a description of phyiscal evidence and has kept his conjectures about their meaning to the realm of non-peer reviewed publishing.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").