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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Another error in this article is the numerous times it says "beta gamma" decay or activity. Beta decay and gamma decay are two different types of radioactive decay. They are grouped here because the radiation is more penetrating, and thus easier to detect in this context. If you want to combine you should write something like "beta and gamma activity" or "beta/gamma activity".
I would also like to add my voice to those asking for better fact checking. This article should have had at least two technical sources, and you should have shown the finished product to either one of the sources or another person with the technical background necessary to catch these errors. This article is not up to Salon's standards.
You can't take his life, or the lives of his loved ones, because those are all well protected by the state.
The only thing Putin values that could be taken from him by others is his reputation as a world leader.
I'm not saying this is what happened, but if I were Jane Tennyson assigned to solve this case, I would take this into consideration.
There is at least one man in Russia who hates him that much, and he used to be the head of Yukos Oil but now thanks to Putin he's just another prisoner in one of the worst labor camps in Russia.
Khodorkovsky wants to run for President, but he won't get out in time for the 2008 election, and maybe not 2012.
He appealed own sentence, but the appeal was turned down in March. That must have made him feel quite desperate.
Most Americans think of Khodorkovsky as a law-abiding businessman screwed over by Putin.
However, the security chief of Yukos Oil, Aleksey Pichugin, is now serving 20 years for murdering a couple in 2002, and for the attempted murder of a government official and the manager of another big business.
1. He was poisoned using Polonium 210
2. Polonium 210 requires a fairly substantial nuclear reactor emiting large numbers of neutrons, or (with difficulty) a cyclotron to make. These are not a common or garden devices found even in most university Physics departments, but very expensive, limited access, special equipment.
3. Polonium 210 has a 138 day half life -- so it does not keep for long on the shelf. If you planned to poison someone you probably would have to make up the Po 210 specially.
4. It is fairly easy to determine how long ago the Polonium 210 was made by looking for certain isotopic abundances (i.e., Bi 210 and Pb 206).
5. Someone poisoned with Po 210 will tend to excrete it in sweat and urine -- most of the London locations contaminated appear to have been places the victim visited -- this may allow backtracking to determine when he started to excrete Po 210 and hence a time close to when the poisoning took place.
6. There is a Russian connection -- both because the victim is Russian and because the aircraft on which Po 210 was found have been on the London-Moscow run.
7. It seems pretty unlikely that one of the victims physician (or at least a radiologist) would not have recognised the symtoms of radiation poisoning at some point, and worked out that it was Po 210 -- so it seems likley, but not certain, that whoever did this wanted people to know how the victim was poisoned and how.
8. But against 7, who could have carried the Po 210 in such a way as to contaminate 4+ aircraft -- this is really astonishingly sloppy, unless the poisoners themselves ingetsed the Po 210 and were excreting it (which is also, it seems, sloppy.)
9. Knowing the schedules of the aircraft and perhaps localising the contamination by seat, it may be possible to take a stab at the identity of who occupied common seats on 2-4 aircraft.
10. This is really quite a bizarre way to kill someone.
11. No schlub off the street would have been able to secure enough Po 210 to do this.
The article is not that bad -- a bit simplistic, but it was an interview, and that may reflect the interviewer.
:-(
- Mario Scaramella, the Italian academic who met the poisoned ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, has tested positive for polonium 210.
Mario Scaramella had lunch with Alexander Litvinenko
"Significant" amounts of the rare radioactive element have been detected in his urine, it was disclosed today.
Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly, returned to London from Italy to undergo medical checks and to assist the police investigation.
- The assassins were so bungling that they dropped the polonium on the floor of a London hotel room, a senior government source told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
- Scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston are believed to have already identified the nuclear plant which made the polonium.
Merits (or lack thereof) of this article aside, I find this rush to defend Putin a little disconcerting. While I agree it's best not to be hasty in judgment and to take all possibilities into account before laying blame, this 'who benefits?' argument that's being used as a magic bullet to shoot down any criticism of the president ignores recent history and the precedent the man himself has set in dealing with political adversaries.
They're right on some points, of course - Putin is an intelligent man, intelligent enough to know that half the world - including all of Eastern and Central Europe - rely on him for energy. With no comprehensive European plan to diversify energy sources, he also knows his grip on the market will only tighten in the forseeable future. This gives him virtual carte blanche to treat domestic adversaries any way he sees fit, knowing that the foreign press will offer up little more than a few weeks muted grumbling before letting the matter fade into obscurity. For a head of state to publicly call out Putin would be putting that country's future energy supply in jeopardy, a thing no one, no matter how principled, is prepared to do.
Such a bizarre and dramatic move as poisoning a man with a radioactive toxin might seem counterintuitive for a president trying to keep his sordid reputation off the front pages, but Putin knows that while the press and general public may have short attention spans, his opponents do not. This very well could have been a message killing, the message being that no matter who you are or where you live, you will never be safe if you openly oppose the Kremlin's policies. Not only that, but your death will be exotic and painful, a much more effective deterrent than a simple bullet to the head. Creative cruelty such as this has a profound effect on the human psyche, and recalls the sort of paranoia-inducing techniques utilized in Stalin's time.
And of course one has to ask, what reputation would Putin be risking by such a brazen execution? This is the man whose country routinely ranks at the bottom of every list Human Rights Watch compiles, who shut down around 90% of Russia's NGOs since coming to power, who jailed their employees on trumped-up charges, kidnapped, tortured and executed family members, threw out the Peace Corps in 2003 (on charges of espionage!), routinely trades weapons to Iran and much of Central Asia, and created "Nashi", his own version of the Hitler Youth.
While I can find several compelling arguments indicating third party involvement in this killing, don't fool yourself over who we're dealing with in Vladimir Putin. The suspicion thrown on him is more than justified.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
