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Anna Politkovskaya chronicled the killings, tortures and beatings of civilians by Russian servicemen in Chechnya in reports that put her on a collision course with the authorities but won her numerous international awards.

She also wrote a book critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.

In "Putin's Russia," Ms. Politkovskaya wrote of the war's effect on the country.

"More than a million soldiers and officers have passed through the Chechnya experience. Poisoned by a war on their own territory, they have become a serious factor affecting civilian life. They can no longer simply be left out of the social equation."

Saturday, she was found shot dead in an elevator in her apartment building in central Moscow — the victim of what prosecutors say could be a targeted killing over her investigative reporting.

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Anyway,I'll go no further,
Instead I must say that people should not immediately jump to conclusions,especially when they don't know intricacies of Russian politics.
Suffice to say,Putin is not a dictator, i.e he does not control the entire country. There are many groups that still have spheres of influence in Russia, as the recent murder of the head of state bank might show.

There are at least two other individuals who were interested in this poor journalists' death.
dont be hooked by Western press right away - ask yourself, who benefits?

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Some of Ms Politkovskaya's colleagues and supporters say they believe she was killed because of her work on Chechnya.

They are angry that Mr Putin did not speak about her murder for three days.

When he did, he said it was an "appalling" crime "that cannot go unpunished", but he also dismissed her work, saying her influence was "insignificant".

Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has denied ordering the journalist's murder.

"Chechens do not go in for violently settling scores, certainly not with women. And she was a woman... I do not kill women and I have never killed women," he said.

A recent article by Ms Politkovskaya suggests she might have contested that claim.

On 11 September, she wrote: "In Chechnya the Kadyrovtsy [Mr Kadyrov's militia] beat men and women... and cut the throats of their enemies."

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Originally posted by BetterRed:
Welcome,quart....
Looks like that you agree with the belief that countries that have economic and military rivalry with the enlightened US/UK alliance are all hopelessly undemocratic.

Anyway,I'll go no further,
Instead I must say that people should not immediately jump to conclusions

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You mean like the conclusion that you jumped to. US and UK are killing people in Iraq but what relvance does that have to this thread? Why even get out of bed if I can't say that Putin kills and jails his political rivals without some tangenital reference to "Amerikkka" in every post.

Secondly you are simplifying in the extreme to say that Putin's Russia "has an economic and military rivalry with the enlightened US/UK alliance" in the first place. Politkovskaya made quick work of that herself in her writing, if you've read it. The West benefits enormously from several aspects of Putin's regime, trade policies and the odd kind of stability that it lends to their anarchic environment, but that's a whole other thread entirely.

But instead I was told:
"BAH TROLL! YOU ARE A CHEAP PAWN OF THE USA THE THE UK AND YOU CLAIM THAT ALL OF THEIR RIVALS ARE 'HOPELESSLY UNDEMOCRATIC'"

I guess I'm new so everyone jumped on me, we're a lefty forum, that's understandable.

But who else benefits from Ms. Politkovskaya's death? Putin. This woman was the leading critic on his brutality in Chechnya. In interviews she has said that she has almost been killed more times than she can count in the past few years including once by her state-appointed protection. This was after an uncharacteristic stall in getting bodyguards and surveillance from in the first place. She herself had documented cases where Putin knew about assasination attempts on other dissidents and did nothing, or was directly involved. Ironically it will be harder to tell what happened to her now that she's gone and it's amazing that anyone in Russia wants to be a journalist at all anymore.

If you read what she has said below, you've gotta admit that she had most courage that a person can have, and her death still remains an outrage:

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"...each time I go there [Chechnya], people tell me things. They do so in the sincere hope that, if I record what is actually happening, it will lead to change, to peace. Obviously, I am not to blame for what is going on, but the more I think about it, the more I would be betraying these people if I walked away. The only thing to do is to take this to the bitter end, so that no one can say that when things became difficult, I ran away."

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[ 10 December 2006: Message edited by: quart o' homomilk ]

Very briefly, Litvinenko was a Russian expatriate living in London, who was apparently poisoned by the radioactive element polonium-210.

The story has been covered a lot in the mainstream media in the month or so since it began, but the North American media hasn't gone into it in much detail. This post by skdadl at pogge.ca provides a good overview.

The story has also been talked about at the discussion boards Bread and Roses and En Masse (the En Masse discussion started out as one about an alleged Russian spy in Canada, but developed into being mainly about Litvinenko).

I certainly don't rule out the possibility that Litvinenko's death was ordered by Putin or by people working for him, as a way of chilling dissent.

At the same time, I don't rule out the possibility that it was carried out by other domestic Russian forces with their own agendas -- mafia, rogue FSB agents, pro- or anti-separatist Chechens, or Putin's political opponents (in an effort to damage his political capital in advance of the 2008 election, in which he will presumably field a handpicked successor, if indeed he doesn't change the rules to run again himself).

Any time a lapsed member of the Russian secret police is murdered by uranium isotopes, the likely culprit is Russian. We can very likely discard "marital dispute" and "barroom quarrel" as the motivating factors.

I remember that, when Chileans started to disappear under Pinochet, he always said "Oh maybe they just moved to another country without telling their friends!"

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I would think that a government-sanctioned killing would be much more effective and far less grandiose.

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quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:

Any time a lapsed member of the Russian secret police is murdered by uranium isotopes, the likely culprit is Russian. We can very likely discard "marital dispute" and "barroom quarrel" as the motivating factors.

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Well by all appearances, it certainly sounds like an open and shut case. The Russians have egg on their faces again. It's very bad luck for yet another oil and gas rich country.

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I remember that, when Chileans started to disappear under Pinochet, he always said "Oh maybe they just moved to another country without telling their friends!"

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quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Any time a lapsed member of the Russian secret police is murdered by uranium isotopes, the likely culprit is Russian.

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As to Uranium isotopes, uranium-235 (the only uranium isotope that can sustain a chain reaction) has a half-life of 704 million years, so Polonium-210, at 138 days, is about 1.9 billion times more unstable than Uranium-235.

Polonium 210 is very dangerous to handle in even milligram or microgram amounts, and special equipment and strict control is necessary.

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Damage arises from the complete absorption of the energy of the alpha particle into tissue. (Alpha particles are weak, and do not pass through tissue like gamma radiation.)

Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter with a half-life of 138.39 days, meaning it is highly radioactive because it is highly unstable.

The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium-210 is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 250,000,000,000 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid. The maximum allowable concentration for soluble polonium compounds in air is about 2 x 10-11 microcuries/cm3.

The most natural isotope, Polonium 209, has a half-life of 103 years, being more stable. Twenty five isotopes of polonium are known, with atomic masses ranging from 194 to 218.

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Uranium-238 will eventually decay into Polonium-210 but it takes 4.5 billion years. Polonium-210 quickly decays into lead-206, stable.

[ 11 December 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by quart o' homomilk:

This is what happens when you speak up in Putin Land.

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quote:

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I remember that, when Chileans started to disappear under Pinochet, he always said "Oh maybe they just moved to another country without telling their friends!"

So, keep the apologetics to a minimum, please.

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Look, as you're a lawyer, I would think that presumption of innocence would be one of your beliefs. Instead, you jump in with the right-wing press and declare Putin guilty for both deaths before the facts are in.

Just read the pogge.com article first.