Ex soviet spy killed in London!
- Thread starter Brian R. VanCise
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This has been making the headlines for a few days now here, today it got more worrying for the public as anyone who was in the sushi bar when he was and who has been anywhere he has been has been asked to contact the medical authorities. He left a radioactive 'trail' everyone where he went after being poisoned!
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3
Yes that is really scary. Imagine what the physicians and nurses at the hospital where he was at are going through.
I have been following this story as well. There seems to be a lot of conflicting stories going on.
There are theories. The obvious suspect is the Russian government. But there is some reason to suspect certain business types that have shady connections. The main reason to not suspect the government is because is would be pretty damn stupid and deadly to international relationships to kill this guy on British soil.
I still think that they are the most likely ones to have ordered the hit. I am hoping for more information in the weeks ahead.
There are theories. The obvious suspect is the Russian government. But there is some reason to suspect certain business types that have shady connections. The main reason to not suspect the government is because is would be pretty damn stupid and deadly to international relationships to kill this guy on British soil.
I still think that they are the most likely ones to have ordered the hit. I am hoping for more information in the weeks ahead.
It looks like the radioactive trail he left was of a very rare element that can't really be gotten easily. Hence it looks like those that killed him had the resources you consider only a government having.
That is just completely stupid. The Putin government really could have done this in a manner that did point the finger at them so clearly. I wonder if they think their new influence puts them beyond censure and that this is a message of just how far they can go without fear. Everyone will know that Moscow called the shots, but if there is no real action by the rest of the world, people will be able to see just how blatent they can be in killing those that cross them.
That is just completely stupid. The Putin government really could have done this in a manner that did point the finger at them so clearly. I wonder if they think their new influence puts them beyond censure and that this is a message of just how far they can go without fear. Everyone will know that Moscow called the shots, but if there is no real action by the rest of the world, people will be able to see just how blatent they can be in killing those that cross them.
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Or, it could be a powerful Russian organized crime figure with connections and access to Soviet-era material who wanted this man and his investigations out of the way and figured using Polonium 210 would be sure to cause the world to blame Putin. I don't know which is more likely, or believable -, that OC murdered this guy or that Russian Intelligence did. If Putin ordered or allowed this then he is one stupid SOB. Foreign governments don't murder a British citizen on British soil and get away with it. Their Empire might be gone, but most of their backbone and pride remains.
In either case, this is scary stuff. We do NOT want or need a totalitarian, nuclear armed Russia.
The latest on this.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2019148.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2018721.ece
Btw this is a good newspaper for information as it's not pro any partyline. Some of our other newpapers are pro Labour or pro Conservative and spend most of their time angling stories to suit their bias.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2019148.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2018721.ece
Btw this is a good newspaper for information as it's not pro any partyline. Some of our other newpapers are pro Labour or pro Conservative and spend most of their time angling stories to suit their bias.
Blotan Hunka
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I agree, wouldnt logic dictate that if you wanted to whack a spy and NOT have it come back to your gvt. that you wouldnt use as complicated a poison as this? I would think that there are many potent poisons readily available out there that could have done the job more quickly and with less "issues". Unless there was a "message" in the method for others out there...
This is kind of why I still hold out some belief that it was not Putin. But if it was, then the message he wants to send out about how he can do things and no one can do anything about it chills me. Killing like this is not just to shut up the victim, but to make others think twice before they stand up to the killers. And there have been a lot of killings of people critical of Putin in Russia.
And I do not think that anything will happen to Putin. It may seem obvious, but there really is nothing to convict anyone in a court of law. And with Russia having veto power at the United Nations and holding the threat of a Gazprom cutoff over the EU, no one can take any action against them unless we get something like a tape of Putin giving detailed instructions on how to kill this guy. And whover did this probably is not that dumb.
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If he did it, then the world is as dangerous a place as it was on September 1, 1939.
I was thinking the same thing. I figured OC with access to government resources.
Traces of the rare element that they think killed the guy was found on a plane that does the London to Moscow route.
It may not be the government, but it really looks like someone in Russia was behind this.
It may not be the government, but it really looks like someone in Russia was behind this.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #14
They said last night on the news that potentially thousands of people may have been exposed to this radiation.
They said last night on the news that potentially thousands of people may have been exposed to this radiation.
Unless they ingest it, there should be no problem from what I read. Outer skin will stop it. This guy died because it was inside him, not because he walked by it.
OP
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- #16
You are right on that Don. Unless they ingested it or had an open wound and some found it's way in they should be okay. (let us all hope so)
This is what makes these cases so bizarre. Anyone in Russian intelligence and related operations would know that a radioactive poison would be detected, and while that might indeed send the desired message to potential `troublemakers', or oligarchs who were getting too uppity or whatever, it would clearly upset a large chunk of the population in the country where the poisoning was carried out. That could well backfire---people worry about radiation a lot. But OC doesn't necessarily care even a little bit about that sort of thing.
For several years after the end of the Soviet-era centrally-controlled and rigidly policed social order in Russia, all kinds of weapons, drugs and substances were traded on the black markety so openly that it would be more realistic to speak of a `grey' market. There was a period of, in effect, white collar looting, with no oversight or police activity---people were worried that the Russian mafia might actually wind up selling nuclear warheads on that market to anyone with the asking price. There are isotopes of polonium that have a half life of three years, and depending on how much this guy was exposed to, it's possible that the polonium involved was six years old or so---it could have been picked up at any time during that period and stockpiled. Without knowing the circumstances, and more information than we have about what the specific isotope was (others are much shorter-lived than Po208), it's going to be hard to work out the circumstances under which this stuff was acquired by whoever did it. My impression at the moment is, yes, it's a pretty hamfisted job, which of course could be deliberate---this is what will happen to you if you keep being a problem---but really, would a small-caliber round behind the victim's left ear be any less of a warning? Right now, like others on this thread, I still consider it not unlikely that it was an OC thing, maybe with connivance inside the Russian government, as vs. an intelligence operation OKed by Putin himself. Time will tell... maybe...
For several years after the end of the Soviet-era centrally-controlled and rigidly policed social order in Russia, all kinds of weapons, drugs and substances were traded on the black markety so openly that it would be more realistic to speak of a `grey' market. There was a period of, in effect, white collar looting, with no oversight or police activity---people were worried that the Russian mafia might actually wind up selling nuclear warheads on that market to anyone with the asking price. There are isotopes of polonium that have a half life of three years, and depending on how much this guy was exposed to, it's possible that the polonium involved was six years old or so---it could have been picked up at any time during that period and stockpiled. Without knowing the circumstances, and more information than we have about what the specific isotope was (others are much shorter-lived than Po208), it's going to be hard to work out the circumstances under which this stuff was acquired by whoever did it. My impression at the moment is, yes, it's a pretty hamfisted job, which of course could be deliberate---this is what will happen to you if you keep being a problem---but really, would a small-caliber round behind the victim's left ear be any less of a warning? Right now, like others on this thread, I still consider it not unlikely that it was an OC thing, maybe with connivance inside the Russian government, as vs. an intelligence operation OKed by Putin himself. Time will tell... maybe...
After I sent off my previous post, something else occurred to me (the isotope turns out to be Po210, not 208, so it probably would have been obtained far more recently... but the issue is still whether or not OC in Russia has the clout to get their hands on radioactive contraband for their own purposes; my guess is, it does)...
...and that is, this isn't necessarily anything new about Russia and the world. Russia has for centuries reflected a kind of contolled bounce from relative openness to severe repressiveness: the severely totalitarian nature of Russian society under Stalin was followed by the less pathological but still smothering closed societies of the Kruschev/Breznev/Andropov era, followed by the far more open Yeltsin era, followed by the comparatively wide-open era of Gorbachov, and now we're clearly in a pendulum swing in the other direction back toward Stalinism (though I doubt it'll get that far). The same kind of thing happened in the 19th c., and in previous centuries in Russia---it's a pattern they can't seem to break out of. I don't see radically increasing peril to the rest of the world from this, from the point of view of Russia's place in world geopolitics. But there's plenty of danger---and that's tied up with the nature of the crimes.
So far as I can tell, this is the first incidence of what you might think of as nonmilitary nuclear terrorism of the modern era. A tiny amount of radioactive material has left its footprints all over the UK, apparently, and there's suddenly a tremendous amount of anxiety over there in the general population who otherwise might not spare ten seconds on the fate of various Russian journalists, ex-KGB officers and political leaders. These incidents show how easily anyone ruthless and well-connected enough can bring radioactive materials into another sovereign country and create the impression of a potentially major health threat possibly implicating thousands of people. Anyone who was in any doubt about the reality of the dangers posed by nuclear terrorism should now be ready to give up any skepticism they harbored up to this point about the nature of the threat: you don't need even small nuclear weapons, all you need is some glowing dust, and you can probably induce something close to panic on a major scale throughout a powerful western country. That probably wasn't the intention of whoever is doing this stuff. But a lot of other interested parties, who do have such intentions, are going to get all kinds of ideas from the seamless way these operations have been carried out. Someone got into the UK with small but significant amounts of radioactive material and may have exposed thousands of people to (admittedly) low-level radiation from `hot' isotopes. Wanna bet that other groups who would love to do the same thing, on an even bigger scale, are going to be watching and learning from how smoothly this Russia-based operation went off?
...and that is, this isn't necessarily anything new about Russia and the world. Russia has for centuries reflected a kind of contolled bounce from relative openness to severe repressiveness: the severely totalitarian nature of Russian society under Stalin was followed by the less pathological but still smothering closed societies of the Kruschev/Breznev/Andropov era, followed by the far more open Yeltsin era, followed by the comparatively wide-open era of Gorbachov, and now we're clearly in a pendulum swing in the other direction back toward Stalinism (though I doubt it'll get that far). The same kind of thing happened in the 19th c., and in previous centuries in Russia---it's a pattern they can't seem to break out of. I don't see radically increasing peril to the rest of the world from this, from the point of view of Russia's place in world geopolitics. But there's plenty of danger---and that's tied up with the nature of the crimes.
So far as I can tell, this is the first incidence of what you might think of as nonmilitary nuclear terrorism of the modern era. A tiny amount of radioactive material has left its footprints all over the UK, apparently, and there's suddenly a tremendous amount of anxiety over there in the general population who otherwise might not spare ten seconds on the fate of various Russian journalists, ex-KGB officers and political leaders. These incidents show how easily anyone ruthless and well-connected enough can bring radioactive materials into another sovereign country and create the impression of a potentially major health threat possibly implicating thousands of people. Anyone who was in any doubt about the reality of the dangers posed by nuclear terrorism should now be ready to give up any skepticism they harbored up to this point about the nature of the threat: you don't need even small nuclear weapons, all you need is some glowing dust, and you can probably induce something close to panic on a major scale throughout a powerful western country. That probably wasn't the intention of whoever is doing this stuff. But a lot of other interested parties, who do have such intentions, are going to get all kinds of ideas from the seamless way these operations have been carried out. Someone got into the UK with small but significant amounts of radioactive material and may have exposed thousands of people to (admittedly) low-level radiation from `hot' isotopes. Wanna bet that other groups who would love to do the same thing, on an even bigger scale, are going to be watching and learning from how smoothly this Russia-based operation went off?
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You know what shocks me most about this? No one has jumped in and Blamed Bush yet.
But seriously... Exile, you are absolutley right... this is a good example of Terrorism, because even if only one person is "affected" by it physically, the worry it seems to have induced borders on "Terrorism" in the sense that it terrifies the populace.
But seriously... Exile, you are absolutley right... this is a good example of Terrorism, because even if only one person is "affected" by it physically, the worry it seems to have induced borders on "Terrorism" in the sense that it terrifies the populace.
That's just it, Cryo---the ultimate goal of terrorism isn't any particular act of destruction, but the panic and fear it creates. And that's what's happening now in the UK...
I have to say, like Han Solo, I've got a baaaaad feeling about this...
