Glowing planes

[Paddy]

No, I am from Siberia: not everyone who happens to be "core" citizen of the Empire agrees with the injustice that the Empire was causing, not just to satellite states, but to the core citizens to begin with.

"From Siberia." That explains it, a Siberian separatist . I once had a business meeting at Tomsk University. My Business visa covered me for all of the CIS. Tomsk being a recently closed city looked at the visa and said. “You are thousands of miles from Moscow, don’t think they have the same authority here even if they say so.” “You must re apply locally here.” After standing my ground they let me off providing I paid the local residency tax for the duration of my stay

[AtW]

No, I am not a Siberian separatist.

I was born in a "closed" city actually, most of them are open but in your case they just wanted a bribe - the reason does not really matter, for drivers it could be supposedly high CO2 emissions or what not: this is one of the things I hate them for because this corrupt culture is supposed right from the top: the difference is that Putin & Co steal in tens of billions of dollars, but local police operate in tens of bucks.

The matter of fact is that the Communist party is no different from Nazi party, and KGB is no different from Gestapo and SS: there should have been another Nurnberg trial for crimes against humanity to make these organisations illegal and make sure no former members of KGB can take up any Govt positions - it was big mistake not to do it in 1991 when it was possible.

[AtW]

Those widely quoted seller of polonium-210 online posted this message: "You would need about 15,000 of our Polonium-210 needle sources at a total cost of about $1 million - to have a toxic amount."

Note - fatal poisoning can takes much longer period of time, it is still fatal but slow, if you want something fast you might need a lot more than the doze above.

Seems to rule out anything but serious special services that have complete cooperation with the nuclear industry.

[expat]

It is possible (strange as it may sound I am not expert on radioactive materials, this course was optional in the Kiev's Military Academy), some experts say that death was too quick - they suggest some other bits were added to polonium to achieve this effect

Wasn't there a news item about 3 other things ("objects"?) being found in the man's body? they weren't identified and the news item seems to be gone....

[AtW]

Wasn't there a news item about 3 other things ("objects"?) being found in the man's body? they weren't identified and the news item seems to be gone....

It was said to be shadows from the treatment against tallium that he was given, ineffective since it was not tallium afterall.

[expat]

In fact it now seems to me that KGB chaps were not even expecting it to be detected in the first place - I also think they underestimated value of CCTV in investigations.

Or to put it another way, we now have so much surveillance that it took even the KGB by surprise!

[AtW]

Or to put it another way, we now have so much surveillance that it took even the KGB by surprise!

I think KGB was out of touch with this topic, simply because they have not been active in London for good 15 years, and I think CCTV really came into prominence during about that period, and now after 7/7 attacks police have got good experience in dealing quickly with tracing things, I am sure this was seriously understimated as well as the fact that polonium-210 will be detected in the first place - most likely they expected an "unexplained" death and after some years the element would disappear, so no traces.

KGB probably expected data to be deleted fairly quickly - 3 weeks is a long time, but I think in the UK, especially after last year, data is kept for way more than 24 hours, I think at least a month or so.

Kudos to British police - they are making very rapid progress and I hope they will get the bastards!

[Ardesco]

I think KGB was out of touch with this topic, simply because they have not been active in London for good 15 years, and I think CCTV really came into prominence during about that period, and now after 7/7 attacks police have got good experience in dealing quickly with tracing things, I am sure this was seriously understimated as well as the fact that polonium-210 will be detected in the first place - most likely they expected an "unexplained" death and after some years the element would disappear, so no traces.

Kudos to British police - they are making very rapid progress and I hope they will get the bastards!

Or it was a cunning way for the government to show off how amazing the police are, make air flight look unsafe and scare the general populace even more before trying to push some new legislation through parliament that give Liebour even more power. It also has the added benefit of putting a big dent in Russia's credibility on an international level.

Would Russia really have taken out such a high profile target...

Has anybody considered that MI6 (or similar) could be the ones behind this?

It was quite conveient that they had no idea what it was and within a couple of hours of Litvinenko's death they knew what they were looking for and had already found traces of it....

From my understanding a test to see if you have it in your system takes 2 days and cannot be done any quicker!!!

[AtW]

MI6 or the West does not need to try to put a dent into Russia's credibility, or try to undermine trust in it: historically this was the task best accomplished by the Russian (formerly Soviet) leaders.

Doctors did not know what to do because no one was expecting such poison - heck, in most countries it would have never been found out because no one would actually consider looking for alpha emitter, it is just too exotic, which is precisely why this kind of stuff used by KGB's folk: they did it in the past many times, and in the last 5 years there were a fair few strange poisonings in Russia itself, now they just exported it here, but it seems they have miscalculated a fair few things.

[Ardesco]

I'm not disputing that the doctors didn't know what it was, and i'm not implying that they should have known what it was.


What I am saying is that the source of poisoning seemed to be known the second he died, when previously nobody had a clue....

Maybe the west doesn't need to put a dent in Russian international relations, but lets face it after the Iraq war we aren't looking so good on the international front and Russia is looking a lot better, and at any case the main reason would be to promote fear in this country so that more of our rights can be slowly stripped off us!!!