Russian Defector Poisoned

Alexander Litvinenko a former Russian security service agent that defected to the UK was poisoned with the toxic heavy metal thallium. Alexander Litvinenko is a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko was purportedly investigating government connections to the assassination of government watch dog journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Mr. Litninenko was having lunch with an Italian informant named Mario Scaramelia at a sushi restaurant celebrating the sixth anniversary of his arrival in Britain when he was poisoned. Scaramelia is believed to have connections with Russian intelligence.



Well Russia back to USSR. I understand when a Russian tells me that Russians aren't well suited for American style democracy but we're not talking democracy any more this is just plain good old KGB style tactics. Does anyone here believe democracy stands a chance in Russia anymore?

Related News Links:
uk.news.yahoo.com
www.thisislondon.c o.uk

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[edit on 24-11-2006 by UM_Gazz]

Yes democracy stands a perfect chance.

Did democracy not stand a chance in america back in the 1950's because we were overthrowing a democractically elected government, trying to assassinate Castro, and then in the 1960's having things like COINTELPRO?

Sorry but If this leads you to believe russia cannot have a true democracy then the US has already lost view of democracy a long time ago.

But what does democracy have to do with the military concept of thing? An assassination of people critizing and trying to bring down putin some how says democracy doesn't work?

Man then the US is not a candidate either.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
Yes democracy stands a perfect chance.

I guess I'm not as optimistic as you.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
Did democracy not stand a chance in america back in the 1950's because we were overthrowing a democractically elected government, trying to assassinate Castro, and then in the 1960's having things like COINTELPRO?

I'm sorry I don't find relativism a convincing arguement. Equating US attempts to remove a brutal dictator with the assassination of a political dissident doesn't wash with me.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
Sorry but If this leads you to believe russia cannot have a true democracy then the US has already lost view of democracy a long time ago.

When was the last time the US covertly attempted to assassinate a political dissident? Comparing the US to Russia or even Bush to Putin is just ludicrous imo.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
But what does democracy have to do with the military concept of thing? An assassination of people critizing and trying to bring down putin some how says democracy doesn't work?

Would you think the same if Bush had tried to kill Cindy Sheehan? Last time I checked in any democratic government a person has the right to criticize without the fear of reprisal.

Originally posted by grimreaper797
Man then the US is not a candidate either.

I guess that depends on your philosophy.

Originally posted by danwild6
I guess I'm not as optimistic as you.

depends on what you consider democracy. I think democracy has a perfect chance so long as the US represents democracy.

I'm sorry I don't find relativism a convincing arguement. Equating US attempts to remove a brutal dictator with the assassination of a political dissident doesn't wash with me.

no but COINTELPRO does. Go read it. It consists of assassinating leaders of political groups like the black panther and other. Those group, under COINTELPRO, were suppose to be falsely accussed of crimes, made out to be enemies, and their leaders to be assassinated by the US government.

COINTELPRO didn't look at the people and their personal crimes, but a group and its political dissent. Martin Luther King Jr. was listed as one of the leaders of the politically dissenting groups which they monitered during COINTELPRO.

He was killed and his wife fought since then for the innocence of the man they say killed MLK. So tell me, how does it make the US that different? They monitered political dissenters and had unclassified documents of plans to assassinate politically dissenting leaders.

When was the last time the US covertly attempted to assassinate a political dissident? Comparing the US to Russia or even Bush to Putin is just ludicrous imo.

Well unclassified would be the 60's and 70's is when they had plans to assassinate political dissenters. Unfortunately sooo many documents are classified that we probably don't know who was assassinated by the government, or if there is even any paper trail anymore to prove it.

Im not comparing bush to putin, nor did I even name bush at all. I don't think bush is the problem, I think our system as a whole is the problem.

The CIA has done so many crooked things, that you could call them the american terrorist because of it. They overthrew Irans democractically elected government and put in a brutal dictator for some 25 years until 1979 when they overthrew that pro US dictatorship. Guess what we did, sold weapons to saddam and attacked them. We are more crooked then half the nations out there simply because we have the money to spend to be corrupt to begin with.

We didn't try to invade cuba and assassinate castro because "he was a brutal dictator", we tried to assassinate him because he had ties with russia and that meant he had to go. He was a threat to us, so we tried to off him.

The only difference between the russian government assassinating the critics and the US doing it is the US did a better job of keeping most of them under wraps. Making them look like car accidents, muggings, and random crimes rather then poltically motivated hits.

Thats the only difference, is we kill them and try to make it look like an accident. Russia is still use to the days where it could openly kill them and get away without being accused.

Would you think the same if Bush had tried to kill Cindy Sheehan? Last time I checked in any democratic government a person has the right to criticize without the fear of reprisal.

Well this guy wasn't a citizen, he fleed and wasn't a citizen anymore. He was a problem, and they got rid of him. If you think the US doesn't do the same thing, just more quiet, your trying to throw on the rose glasses.

I guess that depends on your philosophy.

Yes, and that is if the US stands for democracy, then russia is right there pretty much. If you consider democracy as the ability to speak freely without consequence, well then good luck trying to find it in the US or Russia. If your standing on a street corner saying how much the US government sucks in the US, you get the same result as if you were to yell on a russian street corner how much the russian government sucks. If you start a real fuss the russian government might decide to off you if you are really starting to get onto something or organize something.

Fact is that the US does the same thing, they just make it seem like an accident.

I mean how many political dissenters must get into random car accidents for no known reason before you start to wonder "was it really an accident?"

Sure maybe if one ran off the road, hit a pole because he was going to fast, fine.

When you have a police officer hero from the oklahoma city bombing, who believes it was a controlled demolition, die by being cut mutliple times, including a cut to the jugular, then some how managed to walk a mile, climb over a fence, then shoot himself in the head, something isn't right.

He slit his writs multiple times, and had a slit on his throat, but some how walked a mile, climbed over a fence, so he could shoot himself in the head? Sorry but I dont buy it, especially when his wife confirmed he was fearing for his life because of what he was investigating.

You can live in the "everythings perfect" US that doesn't exist, but Ill keep questioning and wondering what happened to the country that was made to be the land of the free.

It is strange the things that happen to the staunch critics of Putin isn't it?

Shall we look at who else has met such fate?

There is no evidence that President Vladimir Putin is personally complicit in the tragedies that sometimes befall his enemies, but vocal opponents of his policies do have a habit of being caught up in often extreme "personal difficulties".

Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter with an undisguised hatred of the former secret service agent, was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow apartment block in October.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch who tried to set himself up in political opposition to Mr Putin, is now contemplating the consequences of his actions in a prison cell in Siberia.

Boris Berezovsky, a man who was once a powerful Kremlin kingmaker, had to flee Russia when a raft of charges that he said were trumped up were levelled against him. The Russian state media now portray him as an enemy of Russia.

Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's pro-Western President, has also had a rough ride. He angered Mr Putin in 2004 when he beat Russia's preferred presidential candidate on a wave of anti-Russian rhetoric. His face remains disfigured from a mysterious dioxin-poisoning incident.

Less controversially Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel commander known as "the Butcher of Beslan", was killed in what the FSB called "a special operation" earlier this year. He was a terrorist. Then there is Mikhail Kasyanov, Mr Putin's former prime minister turned arch critic. Starved of Russian media coverage and lampooned as a Western puppet, prosecutors have tried to portray him as a criminal.

And there is the tale of Leonid Nevzlin, an Israel-based oligarch and a fierce Putin critic. He has an international arrest warrant for murder hanging over him and Moscow is trying to extradite him. The circumstances surrounding many of these "personal tragedies" are often so complicated that it is genuinely impossible to unravel the truth; both sides choose whichever version suits their own ideological corner.

Mr Putin's critics tend always to see the dead hand of the Kremlin while the Russian government writes such claims off as anti-Russian conspiracy theories.

news.independent.co.uk...

That article does start with the statement "There is no evidence that President Vladimir Putin is personally complicit in the tragedies that sometimes befall his enemies".... But then again you have to wonder... and that list is just part of the list of critics of Putin who have met similar fates.



[edit on 20-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by grimreaper797
Yes democracy stands a perfect chance.

Did democracy not stand a chance in america back in the 1950's because we were overthrowing a democractically elected government, trying to assassinate Castro, and then in the 1960's having things like COINTELPRO?

Sorry but If this leads you to believe russia cannot have a true democracy then the US has already lost view of democracy a long time ago.

But what does democracy have to do with the military concept of thing? An assassination of people critizing and trying to bring down putin some how says democracy doesn't work?

Man then the US is not a candidate either.

Grimreaper, i think you need to do some serious research before you make such claims, because first of all if any Cuban in the island tried to kill castro, and the list is very long, the Cuban regime would claim "it was done by the evil Capitalists of the U.S."...

Anyways, this topic is not about Cuba...it is about what is happening to critics of Putin.

BTW, here is another article about what Litvinenko has been critisizing about Putin, and the circumstances of his poisoning "incident".

Alexander Litvinenko claimed in a 2001 book, banned in his native Russia, that the Kremlin's security service had created a secret unit to hunt and kill those considered a danger to the state.

Alexander Litvinenko claimed in a 2001 book that the Kremlin's security service had created a secret unit to hunt and kill those considered a danger to the state at home or abroad.

As he lay critically ill under armed police guard in a London hospital yesterday, after apparently being poisoned, the former KGB lieutenant-colonel's allegations seemed grimly prophetic. In an assassination attempt as laden with high politics and low treachery as a Cold War thriller, Mr Litvinenko fell ill on the sixth anniversary of his arrival in Britain, after meeting an Italian KGB expert in a sushi bar near Piccadilly Circus.

news.independent.co.uk...

Originally posted by Muaddib
Grimreaper, i think you need to do some serious research before you make such claims, because first of all if any Cuban in the island tried to kill castro, and the list is very long, the Cuban regime would claim "it was done by the evil Capitalists of the U.S."...

Anyways, this topic is not about Cuba...it is about what is happening to critics of Putin.

no you need to do some serious research. Its pretty much known the CIA tried multiple time to kill him, assassinated.

It had nothing to do with their claims of us trying to kill him.

Is it possible for people to stay on topic instead of trying to make every topic they see fit a bash against the United States?...

FYI, I am Cuban and have a little bit more knowledge than you on the subject of Cuba.

Anyways, let's stick to the topic at hand.... How critics of Putin tend to find themselves poisoned, or incarcerated, or shot in the head, etc, etc....


[edit on 20-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
Is it possible for people to stay on topic instead of trying to make every topic they see fit a bash against the United States?...

FYI, I am Cuban and have a little bit more knowledge than you on the subject of Cuba.

Anyways, let's stick to the topic at hand.... How critics of Putin tend to find themselves poisoned, or incarcerated, or shot in the head, etc, etc....


[edit on 20-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Your residency has no relevence when concered with facts.

Now your right, back to the topic.

[edit on 20-11-2006 by grimreaper797]

Originally posted by grimreaper797

Your residency has no relevence when concered with facts.

Now your right, back to the topic.

[edit on 20-11-2006 by grimreaper797]

That is kind of a funny statement coming from a 17 year old kid who is still in high school, and has most probably never gotten out of his own state, or has never been out of the U.S.

You think you have the facts because you read a book or a website?... Books, and websites don't always tell the facts or the truth, i can show you 20 different books, and websites all with different "facts", yet the "real truth and facts" might be quite the oposite of what these sites and books claim.

Anyways, are we going to discuss what is happening to Russian dissidents or are we going to continue back and forth trying to prove who knows what?....

[edit on 21-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
That is kind of a funny statement coming from a 17 year old kid who is still in high school, and has most probably never gotten out of his own state, or has never been out of the U.S.

You think you have the facts because you read a book or a website?... Books, and websites don't always tell the facts or the truth, i can show you 20 different books, and websites all with different "facts", yet the "real truth and facts" might be quite the oposite of what these sites and books claim.

Anyways, are we going to discuss what is happening to Russian dissidents or are we going to continue back and forth trying to prove who knows what?....

[edit on 21-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Well just because you live there doesn't give you any unique incite as to what happen behind closed doors in the government. If anything, you were less aware at that time because restriction of freedoms and such, so you couldn't find out as much.

But thanks for making that reference to my age as a reason not to take me serious, you get to be a third person in over a year that I get to ignore. Only people I ignore are those that make excuses about age, because that is the greatest ignorance of all. And to think you won a WATS?? what happen to denying ignorance?

bye

See, this is part of your problem, you seem to think that knowledge from a book or a website, which you have no idea whether or not is telling you the truth, has more relevance than actual experience.

In your own ignorance, you were trying to downplay wisdom, or experience for what is written in some website or book.

Yet the fact remains that "wisdom" is acquired through experience, and books and websites can hold anything and everything a person wants to write in it, and they don't "have to be the truth or the facts".

You want to put me in ignore? go ahead, now your feelings are being hurt for me downplaying how much experience you have in the world, when you yourself downplayed the experience of people in such regimes.

Anyways, back to the topic, and this is the last time I will respond to anyone trying to derail the issue, in Russia dissidents who criticize Putin often get themselves poisoned, shot in the head several times and then the Kremlin claims it was suicide, or imprisoned....humm that reminds me of something, perhaps Putin is reliving the good old days of the Communist block, as he has said several times he misses those days.

Television stations are once more part of the state, and any program or news station that has tried to criticize Putin has been shut down or taken over by the State. Yet some people want to claim this is the same as what happens in the U.S.?....

Not only that, but not too long ago I posted a thread about signs appearing on the Russian border to another country, saying there are mines on the Russian border. But i guess it is a Democratic and free country...

[edit on 21-11-2006 by Muaddib]

Its just broken that Mr. Litvenenko has died. Doctors now doubt that it was due to injesting thallium or another heavy metal. Radiation poisoning was theorized but has also been dismissed by doctors. So what killed this guy?

Interesting and compelling question danwild6.

This is a strange story to say the least...



[edit on 23-11-2006 by UM_Gazz]

And today they say the three mysterious objects that was revealed by x-rays yesterday is nothing but misreadings.


There's more to this than the story tells.

Will reports of autopsy be published?

[edit on 23-11-2006 by khunmoon]

This is very strange, I don't know if there's some political coverup going on because Britain doesn't want to be in the position where it's proven someone was killed by the Russians on their territory or if it truly is a total mystery. It does seem there was quite a long gap between the time he thought he was poisoned and when he was first hospitalized, so I guess it is quite possible that some poison was given to him but became undetectable in his system by the time he was tested.

Hopefully the autopsy will shed more light on it, but I'm not holding my breath.

[edit on 11/23/2006 by djohnsto77]

Originally posted by Muaddib
in Russia dissidents who criticize Putin often get themselves poisoned, shot in the head several times and then the Kremlin claims it was suicide, or imprisoned....humm that reminds me of something, perhaps Putin is reliving the good old days of the Communist block, as he has said several times he misses those days.

Of course, It is equally as possible that elements within the FSB had decided to take him out, without the knowledge of Putin, or anyone else for that matter. Mr Litvinenko was a part of the KGB before defecting, and then proceeded to throw dirt at his former masters.

He has extensively criticised the regime of President Vladimir Putin, particularly its position on Chechnya. One of the highest-profile defectors from the FSB, he was on the wanted list in Moscow.

In the book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, Litvinenko alleged that agents from the FSB co-ordinated the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people. Russian officials blamed the explosions on Chechen separatists. In the book Gang from Lubyanka (Лубянская преступная группировка), Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin was personally involved in organized crime during his work in FSB.

In a July 2005 interview with Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri, along with other al-Qaeda leaders, was trained by the FSB in Dagestan (a republic neighbouring Chechnya) in 1998.

In April 2006, a British MEP for London, Gerard Batten (UKIP), cited allegations by Litvinenko that Romano Prodi, the Italian Centre-Left leader (now Prime Minister) and former President of the European Commission, had been the KGB's "man in Italy". Batten demanded an inquiry into the allegations. He told the European Parliament that Litvinenko had been informed by FSB deputy chief, General Anatoly Trofimov (who was shot dead in Moscow in 2005,) that "Romano Prodi is our man (in Italy)". According to Brussels-based newspaper the EU Reporter on 3 April 2006, "another high-level source, a former KGB operative in London, has confirmed the story". Among Litvinenko's most serious claims is that Prodi assisted in the protection of KGB operatives allegedly involved in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Source.

[edit on 23/11/06 by Implosion]

We may have an answer to what killed this guy now. Apparently specialtists have detected a radioactive substance in Mr. Litvenenko's urine. The substance has been identified as polonium-210. This element does occur naturally in small amount withuin uranium and has a half life of about 130 days. Due to its extremely short half-life it releases very high amounts of Alpha radiation in a very short period of time.

BBC

Ok, here is my wild and wacky theory for the day....

It doesn't seem to make sense when you look at in from an assasination point of view. Takes too long, guy has a chance to talk, make up stories etc etc... There could have been 1001 ways to bump off someone that would be much more efficient than this.

Now, what if the guy was practicing what he preached. Maybe he was maing some sort of dirty bomb to antagonise someone into attacking someone else.

Polonium is found in Uranium. You can make it out of Bismuth, but you need some funky gadgetry for that.

Maybe, he was working on a dirty bomb of some kind, but ended up being poisoned himself.

Just a thought... But you heard it here first......

Conspiracy Theory Copyright Stumason 24th November 2006.