yeah I wills tart. I simple wiki search recalls already explains you that radiation of Po210 is alpha... meaning dead easy to stop .. anybody could deal with it  using a little bit of care and some centimeter of lead or concrete.. not very diffciult really.

Unfortunately youc an not use too much because it heats too much and maybe the guy could notice... it should be low doses and clod food.. or a higher dosis and warm food....

If I were to use it I would use of the order of 0.1 grams, big enough to catch it with simple protected hands, not warm enough or bright enough to call the attention...0.01 seems too small to carry in an easy way.. 1 gr.. well is too much light to put in food. Myabe he coudl take it ina weird dring.. this si true... but still 1 gr is even too much .. you wnat to go around for a couple of hours without being worried about an overdose.

A pleasure

My guess.

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Litvinenko was, as I read it, under the protection of British secrutiy services - a safe address etc. He himself frequently changed mobile and email such that even his close friends had difficulty staying in touch.

But the man was in touch with many people in his campaign of exposure of the services and methods he used to work for and with. He had even travelled to Georgia. So it would only be a matter of time before one of these interfaces with the shadowy world he moved in would enable those who wanted to get rid of him to get a fix on him. It could have been Organized Crime in Russia (one of his areas of expertise), other officials in the FSB (he was in the FSB anti-corruption unit), or Government departments connected with anything from Chechnya to Oligarchs.

The choice of assassination tool however is the key. It is a warning.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Broken link to Soj's diary... This is the correct one.

Does Soj still have front-page rights on ET? Why isn't their diary cross-posted?

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

One would have thought that those nasty russkies would poison the poor twat with the other chemical elements, say, #44 Ruthenium or at least #105 Dubnium.

If #71 Lutetium had been used then the French would've been in charge (those from the Parisienne branch of  state criminals).

CIA would've used #95 Americium or #98 Californium

But #84 Polonium's usage shows without doubt that the Poles are responsible for the case.

Beware, Boris Berezovsky!
Polish twins have  more crap just for you  -
# 96 Curium will be brought into your house and put into your bog by some humble Polish plumber (ex-PhD in chemistry from Warsaw University)

;)

I meant to comment of yesterday's Evening Standard but, it being 24h old already, it's probably somewhat out of date. It's still interesting.

The front page screams 'Murdered by the Kremlin'. I only now realised the quotation marks, but the quotation is unattributed. Maybe it comes from the "Russian exiles in London" in the first paragraph of the story. The front page also claimed that "Yard probbe leads to Moscow".

The article points out that Litvinenko was employed by Boris Berezovski, who "was in no doubt about what killed the ex-spy". As the paper was printed before the Po 210 claims surfaced, the paper just talks about the initial hypothesis of Thallium poisoning, but also that as late as yesterday the doctors were considering "natural causes". I am personally rather baffled that it took until after his death for polonium to be detected in his urine. He was admitted to hospital on November 1 already!

Anyway, here's what wikipedia has to say about Polonium...

A very rare element in nature, polonium is found in uranium ores at about 100 micrograms per metric ton (1:10^10). Its natural abundance is approximately 0.2% of radium's.

...

Polonium is so exceedingly rare that only about 100 grams is believed to be produced each year.

...

Polonium has 25 known isotopes all of which are radioactive. They have atomic masses that range from 194 u to 218 u. 210Po is the most widely available.

...

Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter that has a half-life of 138.376 days. A milligram of 210Po emits as many alpha particles as 5 grams of radium. A great deal of energy is released by its decay with a half a gram quickly reaching a temperature above 750 K. A few curies (gigabecquerels) of 210Po emit a blue glow which is caused by excitation of surrounding air. A single gram of 210Po generates 140 watts of power. Since nearly all alpha radiation can be easily stopped by ordinary containers and upon hitting its surface releases its energy, 210Po has been used as a lightweight heat source to power thermoelectric cells in artificial satellites. A 210Po heat source was also used in each of the Lunokhod rovers deployed on the surface of the Moon, to keep their internal components warm during the lunar nights.

Polonium is really only dangerous if ingested, then as

Because of their charge and large mass, alpha particles are easily absorbed by materials and can travel only a few centimeters in air. They can be absorbed by tissue paper or the outer layers of human skin (about 40 micrometres, equivalent to a few cells deep) and so are not generally dangerous to life unless the source is ingested or inhaled.

However,

the amount of material required to produce a lethal dose of radiation poisoning would be only about 0.12 micrograms (1.17×10−7g). [...] the effective half life in humans of polonium is 37 days. The biological halflife is 30 to 50 days in humans.

So, continuing with the Standard, it had another background piece which is a veritable gallery of unsavoury characters. According to this story, Mario Scaramella met Litvinenko to give them "a hit list" on which both their names appeared (allegedly Scaramella came to London out of fear, and to ask Litvinenko's advice). Although the Standard claims that they got to see the documents yesterday, and that the papers bore "the name of a man [Litvinenko] knew wanted him dead", we're not told who this man is. Here's the interesting bit...

The papers ... name a group called Dignity and Honour as a potential threat. A man closely connected to it, Mr. Litvinenko knew, was his mortal enemy.

The organisation, which operates out of Moscow, is made up of ex-KGB spies who offer themselves for hire.

So, the papers don't actually bear the "name" of who wanted Litvinenko dead, or do they? And is this how the probe "leads back to Moscow", which on the front page was insiuated as Moscow = Kremlin = Putin?

"They are old-fashioned spies who couldn't give up the game", a Moscow security source said. "Technically, they are all retired. But most people see them as an extension of Putin's secret service."

Mr. Litvinenko's friends believe rogue elements in Dignity and Honour may have been involved in the decision to assassinate him.

Notice the rogue.

The group has close links to Russia's [...] Federal Security Service, the renamed KGB, and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) [...]

The organisation was instrumental in freeing a Dutch doctor, Arjan Erkel, who was kidnapped in Daguestan in 2004. ...

This contributed to a suspicion in security circles that the old spies were being used by the FSB and SVR to do their dirty work. The Moscow source said: "If it's dodgy and it goes wrong, the government can say 'it wasn't our guys'..."

Vladimir Putin, a former head of the FSB, is said to be an admirer of Dignity and Honour. One of its leading members is believed to have been Putin's station commander in Dresden...

Interesting, but I can't help but notice the unnamed sources, and the interveaving of (much) hearsay and (few) facts. Here comes the interesting bit (linking up to the "rogue elements within D&H" above

If the murder of Mr. Litvinenko was not directly ordered by the Kremlin, or overseen by its security apparatus, it would explain why it took place at an embarrassing time for Mr. Putin. He was at the Asian summit agreeing the terms of Russia's entry to the World Trade Organisation with President Bush. A rogue hitman would not be directly answerable.

"An embarrassing time", just like Politkovskaya was murdered on Putin's birthday.

The documents Prof. Scaramella showed Mr. Litvinenko also linked Dignity and Honour to the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya...

And then the piece turns to the internal struggle among Russian expats, and within Russia

London, [those close to the world of Russian exiles] say, has become a battlefield in a new Cold War being fought between an increasingly authoritarian Russia and a new generation of dissidents and others it sees as enemies.

The city has long been a haven for such people. The most famous refugee from Mr. Putin's Russia is Boris Berezovski, the billionaire oligarch the Russians have been trying to extradite for alleged fraud.

...

... Mr. Litvinenko was on Mr. Berezovski's payroll, but he was only one man in the former oligarch's campaign.

Part of his strategy is to hit back with high-powered PR. He has recruited Lord Bell, the doyen of London's public relations executives...

Indeed, Mr. Berezovski believes the Kremlin spin machine will suggest he was somehow involved in the murder. If it makes Putin look bad, the reasoning goes, it makes Berezovski look good.

In this dark new combat, the Kremlin has its own PR Batteries. The Russian government has signed a multi-million pound contract with the American PR firm, Ketchum. They are using two heavyweights in London: Tim Allen, a former Downing Street spin doctor, and Angus Roxburgh, a former BBC correspondent in Moscow. ...

The Kremlin won [the Yukos] battle, but Mr. Nevzlin, [the dollar billionaire who worked with Misha and] who now lives in Israel, has not abandoned the fight. ...

One man who has kept himself out of the fray is Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club. Although Mr. Putin describes him as one of the oligarchs who "took advantage" when Russian state assets were wold in the early Nineties, he was allowed to sell them back at what was believed to be a market price, leaving his estimated £7 billion fortune intact.

Alexander Litvinenko said, shortly before he was poisoned, that Mr. Abramovich has a special relationship with the Kremlin. "He is Putin's accountant," he said.

The Standard chose to highlight this one statement in a large-type inset in the middle of the page, though amusingly (or anoyingly) it went on to say

It's the kind of statement, without supporting evidence, that Mr. Litvinenko often made.

Oh, goody.

It's all very interesting and introduces what might be a fairly complete gallery of characters, but the journalistic style [measured by the highlighted text and the headlines] is sensationalist and borderline dishonest.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

I have some Polonium in my basement. There is a brand of anti-static photographic brush which includes a strip embedded with Polonium to help dissipate the charge on the film as it is dusted:
http://www.2spi.com/catalog/photo/statmaster.shtml

I have no idea how much material is included, but it is safe enough to ship the strips through the mail. They last about 18 months and then need to be replaced. So I assume that the person who administered the poison got it from a source which manufactures it on a regular basis. This would be a commercial on state-owned facility with access to a nuclear reactor. This seems to imply state participation.
 

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Back to the "human elements" in the Litvinenko poisoning - Scaramella's back in the story, This Is London has a somewhat bemused interview including most unlovely pic, also sniffed around his highly radioactive precedents and bemusingly sleight-of-hand credentials... worth reading.


"Ignoring moralities is always undesirable, but doing so systematically is really worrisome." Mohammed Khatami

Ooops, bad link. Try this

"Ignoring moralities is always undesirable, but doing so systematically is really worrisome." Mohammed Khatami

Stuff has been pretty fucked of late, it's like the whole planet has turned into Italy.

Yesterday I read about Conrad Gerber, the boss of tanker tracker Petrologistics. What friends
he had, and what friends his friends had! Jesus Christ, follows those links and the sub links, what a network.

Anyway, it's pretty funny in a dark sort of way if they have to ship that dead russian ex-agent to Sellafield to do his autopsy in a hot cell.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Seen on Booman...

The Independent: Litvinenko: police probe claims he may have killed himself (26 November 2006)

Detectives investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko were last night examining the possibility that the former spy killed himself to discredit Vladimir Putin.

Increasing concerns over the reliability of the Russian dissident's death-bed testimony have prompted police to check every detail of Mr Litvinenko's version of events on 1 November, the day he said he was poisoned.

The Russian dissident's death on British soil has triggered an unprecedented investigation headed by Scotland Yard's anti-terror branch and involving forensic experts and nuclear scientists from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. They are still trawling through hours of CCTV footage and conducting detailed searches of the places he visited on the day he fell ill.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

Just astounding... With a critical assay to soj... and a whole untangling of radioactive isotopes, now a gang of ET Scoobies emerges... I'm going to let this sink in. Slowly, and with a cup of mango tea.

Besides, the fact that kcurie manages to post a diary with her own handle in the title is gold in itself. I should start writing about nomads...

I can see is how you'd get the dose just right.

I don't believe the Po210 was in a powdered form on documents because if you were the perp it would be impossible to guarantee your own safety. You'd be spreading it everywhere and you'd have no way to be sure that you wouldn't give yourself a nasty, possibly fatal dose. You'd need a double- or triple-sealed envelope and a suspicious 'Open this at home' to work that one.

I'm more convinced by poisoned vinegar or sauce. Or some other liquid. But there's still the problem of exactly how you apply it, and exactly how much. The difference between one drop and three drops is the difference between almost instant death (with high risk to you through aerosolisation if someone is splashing the liquid around) and minimal effects.

But it's hard to see how you could either swap in poisoned sauce and guarantee the right dose. It's easier to see how you could drop 1mg on someone's food and hope it mixed in. But unless someone ingests it immediately you'd be exposed to beta radiation yourself until they did eat it.

You could drop it in someone's tea or drink, but it will sink right to the bottom immediately and won't dissolve as easily as in vinegar.

And so on. It's really not a simple way to kill someone, and it's potentially very risky indeed for the perp and for bystanders.

The perp might be considered dim and expendable. But poisoning a lot of people is usually considered a bad idea. And the risk of a number of fatalities makes this a dangerous strategy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6185514.stm

I am tempted to think he may have been poisoned by US agents using Baloney.

I know this is not in good taste, but he started it.

You can't be me, I'm taken

How many samples do one have to get from this or this source to get a lethal dose? Are more subtantial amounts commercially available?