Clearly someone wanted this done publicly. In that respect it does sound like the ‘poisoning’ of the Ukrainian.

Is there any similarity to what happened to Sharon or Arafat? Isn’t it curious they died (is Sharon dead) so soon together?

Is this what WWIII looks like — a nuclear war without bombs going off?

Without any way to track down who dunnit they’re unaccountable and that means we’re living in a semi-anarchic era. Of course, the people who are being attacked, blackmailed and controlled know what the game is and who’s really in charge or challenging for the top spots.

Real politik apparently doesn’t need us peons to know what’s happening. It’s all a battle between kings and their barons, common folks need not know what the deal is.

It’s something like the American slaves who watched the business of White folk and how their lives occasionally spun out of control because of things they were completely unaware of. We, on the sidelines, watch and wonder, but aren’t actually involved (for now).

God, and perhaps a handful of other people, know who has nuclear materials or bombs and how they’re being used today.

By the way, how is the evidence coming along for your silky cigarette hypothesis?

Any lung/radiation specialists in the FDL house? Are Litvinenko’s symptoms consistent with a radioactive inhalant exposure? Is there a hospital device which could oxygenate blood as substitute for lungs? (L was not on a respirator) Did L even smoke at all?
If it was a cigarette, then the tracking evidence does make a little more sense. Cig tobacco or ash is more likely to spread around a few unsuspecting people seated at a cafe than, say, soup or sushi juice, right? It can get on fingers when one puts out the cigarette, then to light switches, or drop onto the hotel floor, or rub off on luggage or one’s wife, etc.

Final thougtht: hate to lay a suspicious eye on who may have been an innocent victim, but we’d expect that the perpetrator would likely have exposed him(her)self to contamination in the process. So Scaramella’s behavior at the sushi place seems a bit odd. Who goes to a sushi house and just orders water?

One need only ask, “who benefits?” But you won’t see US newspapers doing even that.

Ditto Professor Foland – nice to hear from someone with experience working with radioactive materials.

Today’s NYT columnists, from behind the firewall:

Thomas Edsall, “The Purse Changes Hands.”
http://select.nytimes.com/2006…..amp;emc=th

http://select.nytimes.com/2006…..amp;emc=th
Maureen Dowd, “What’s In a Name, Barry?”

While I patiently wait for Trex to look up my post from the last thread and offer me the information I requested, I’ll try my best to entertain those of you whose “toes curl with geeky delight” with science information.

Bullshit indicator #2 from the “reader” whose words lead off the last post (Bullshit indicator #1 I offered in the last post thread), is the comment that “It (pollonium) is a chemical analog of oxygen, but is a metalloid (somewhat like mercury).”

Mercury, in fact, is not a metalloid, but is a transition metal. Though I do not know much about polonium, I know a fair amount about mercury and basic chemistry. I fail to see how pollonium is “somewhat like mercury.”

Heck, I’m a biochemist. I don’t’ even work much with stuff on that part of the periodic table and even I know enough to realize that the “reader” is half-baked. Certainly, someone who doesn’t know the difference between a metalloid and a transition metal should not be separating pollonium from uranium, as the reader claims.

I have a whole bunch more bullshit indicators from that piece, but I will spare you the tedious science drivel unless you just can’t get enough. At this point, I suspect this “reader” gathered a bunch of half-accurate b.s. from web sources, which were then swallowed whole and presented as the lead in to the last post. That’s my best and fairest guess at this point.

Some of the main pagers on this blog have had exposure in national forums (CNN, Olbermann show, and probably elsewhere for all I know). Is ANYONE else here troubled, as I am, by the fact that this kind of information is being slung here? Or is it only a problem when goopers do it? In other words, if the mighty Hammond tells you something, is ok, but you will not accept the mighty Wurlitzer. Or is it ok because the post is “art” and its ok to offer something that is only slightly better than made up out of whole cloth if it serves as a good set up to one’s “art?”

I know some of you probably think I am just nitpicking, but this “reader” presenst himself/herself as an expert when I think there is cause to suspect that. This blog should not be giving a forum to someone like that.

I don’t follow all of that, but I share your suspicion about the lead article for the previous thread. Either polonium kills via chemical means or by radiation, probably not both. Everything else that I’ve read has indicated that it kills via radiation damage to cells producing leukemia-like symptoms.

The handwashing cracks are serious comments that refer to the continued elimination of the substance from the victim since the time of exposure. That would explain the trace amounts in so many places better than crediting sloppy professionals.

As always, this is just my understanding of what’s been discussed and just another opinion among many.

The wikipedia article on polonium is actually pretty good. Most articles in the MSM contain at least one major technical error, and most more.

One thing I’m curious about from your previous post. The reader implies polonium is impossible to contain. Yet both antistatic brushes and sample “buttons” (used in advanced university lab courses for physics undergraduates every day around the country) have encapsulated polonium that is safe to handle. So clearly it is possible to handle and transport polonium safely.

Also, I wanted to make a note that radiation sensors are insanely sensitive. A good counter would have no trouble picking up even emission rates as low as a dozen or so a second. (Incidentally, I don’t know if they are swabbing, and looking for alphas, or “fishing” with a Geiger-like device looking for the rarer characteristic gammas.) It takes many trillions of emissions to pose any danger to someone. Our ability to detect is very sensitive; a microgram of the stuff would contain something like 100 quintillion atoms, and I imagine it wouldn’t be so hard to detect the presence of as few as a trillion (i.e. contamination of about 0.0000001%.) So the fact that it’s being found everywhere doesn’t necessarily reflect that huge amounts were used, or even that the tradecraft was particularly poor. And as has been noted, exposure to the contamination would not be particularly dangerous as long as you didn’t ingest or inhale it.

Thanks for that perspective.

The author of the previous article seemed to be writing from a 1950s perspective. From what I’ve been able to google up on this stuff, polonium hasn’t been used in nuclear weapons for decades. And, I ran into one article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main……son130.xml that indicates polonium isn’t so all that deadly.

When I read the Wikipedia entry on polonium it indicates that polonium kills via radiation damage to cells. But per the article at the top of the previous thread:

Secondly, Po is a very very strange element. It is a chemical analog of Oxygen, but is a metalloid (somewhat like mercury) It has very low vaporization points and other strange properties. When it gets into the body, it targets oxygen bearing materials, particularly the blood and bone marrow. Because of size differences, it does not cross the alveoli wall in the lungs as well as oxygen does.

That sounds like a chemical poison, i.e., killing via chemical bonds, etc.

Also, per the Wikipedia article:

Notably, the death in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko has been announced as probably due to 210Po poisoning. [26] Generally, Po is the most lethal when it is ingested. According to Nick Priest, a radiation expert speaking on Sky News on December 2, Litvinenko was probably the first person ever to die of the α-radiation effects of Polonium.

But, I was told in mid-october, well before the Litvinenko news, that Cyrus Hashemi had been killed via polonium poisoning.

BTW, when I google on “polonium poisoning”, all of the hits are articles prompted by the Litvenenko affair.