Monthly Archives: November 2006

ABC News is reporting that Polonium-210 can be purchased over the internet:

Polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, is easily available on the Internet, but it could take $1 million to amass a lethal amount, according to leading authorities.

Polonium-210 isotopes are offered online by a number of companies, including United Nuclear of New Mexico. The company sells polonium-210 isotopes for about $69 but says it would take about 15,000 orders, for a total cost of over $1 million, to have a toxic amount.

United Nuclear today posted an online clarification to answer concerns they are selling weapons of assassination.

Read on . . .

I wonder if $1 million was within the assassin’s operational budget?

Tags: Polonium-210|Litvinenko|Putin|Russia|media|terrorism

RIA Novosti is reporting that doctors have “deemed” that Yegor Gaidar was poisoned, but the nature of the poison has yet to be determined. What is interesting about this report, is that it quotes no doctor, only Gaidar’s press secretary, Valery Natarov. The report reads:

Doctors deem poisoning cause of Gaidar’s illness – press-secretary

30/11/2006 20:33 MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) – Doctors say the illness of post-Soviet Russian reformer Yegor Gaidar was caused by poisoning, but have not identified the poison, his press secretary said Thursday.

“This is not poisoning by spoilt food products,” Valery Natarov said.

Gaidar’s daughter Maria said her 50-year-old father and former acting prime minister started vomiting and fainted at a conference in Dublin Friday, and remained unconscious for three hours. Gaidar was taken to a hospital in Dublin and later ..read more

I wonder if the “famous people always die in threes” applies in Russia because it appears that according to some the Litvinenko poisoning is beginning to inspire a rash of mysterious illnesses among Russia’s rich and famous. Or so implies the Financial Times in regard to the “mysterious illness” that has befallen Yegor Gaidar.

One should say that FT didn’t come up with this all on its own. The Litvinenko connection is being fed to the press by Anatoly Chubais. “It is unquestionable for me that a mortal construction of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar, which did not come into being by miracle, would have been exceedingly attractive for supporters of unconstitutional scenarios envisioning a change of power in Russia by force,” Chubais noticed.

According to reports, Gaidar fell violently ill after eating breakfast at a Dublin hotel.

“I ..read more

I have no idea what to make of this report. That is except that this whole affair is getting stranger and stranger . . . and if true, scarier and scarier.

Litvinenko ‘smuggled nuclear material’

By Cahal Milmo, Peter Popham and Jason Bennetto

Published: 29 November 2006

Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.

Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko’s death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.

Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on ..read more

In his speech to the 8th Komsomol Congress in 1928, Nikolai Bukharin called for new methods for fighting bureaucratism in Soviet institutions. While there were already groups like the “Group for the Struggle Against Bureaucratism,” the “Help Groups of the RKI (Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate)”, and a variety of “shock brigades” to fight bureaucratic red tape, corruption, and mismanagement, for Bukarin, these “didn’t take a such a large scope.” Bukharin suggested something a lot more focused and voluntary. “From these groups it is necessary to organize a Light Calvary of the RKI.” The Komsomol, he declared, would be on its “front line.”

What was this Light Calvary? They were a “secret shopper” of sorts, though with the power to denounce and weed out “class enemies.” They were to pose as ordinary citizens and not representatives of Soviet power. “These ..read more

The English language press is obsessed with the who, what, where, when, why, and how of Alexander Litvinenko’s death. A Google news search turns up thousands of articles, whether they are original compositions or reprints of syndicated reports. And with that the web of connections between Litvinenko and the numerous players in the game of Russian politics grows wider. The question is how wide does it grow and how do we separate the real players from the wannabes and those simply guilty by association?

Take for example these few reports. There is the apparent “Yukos connection,” which I mentioned in an earlier post. Except that now, it is generating speculation that Litvinenko was an Israeli double agent, “who sold trade secrets to different parties in and outside Russia, among them some of the Russian oligarchs living in exile in the West.” ..read more