To the
CEO of Domino’s Pizza
Mr. David Brandon

Dear Mr. Brandon,

Domino’s earning announcement yesterday was a bit discouraging:

Net income was down 55.2% for the third quarter

and:

Net income was
negatively impacted versus the prior year by increased interest expense as a
result of higher borrowings under the Company’s new debt facility.

Additionally you said :

"The price increase in the pizza category .. was not implemented fast enough by [the] U.S. franchisees, who also faced lower store traffic"

Let me start with the implementation issue:

Printing new menus with higher prices takes some time and, with such slow franchisees, may not be rapid enough to keep up with the desired price increases.

Back in 1923 my German ancestors had a similar problem and developed a nifty solution. When the Reichsbank found that the paper of the freshly printed one-thousand Mark note had gained a higher value than the note’s denomination, they simply ordered the printshops to add the line ‘Eine Milliarde Mark’ (one billion mark) without reprinting the original bill.

Likewise, Mr. Brandon, you could advise these slow franchisees of yours not to reprint the complete menus, but to simply overwrite those numerics following the $ signs. That’s a quick solution for timely price increases and may prevent another 55% drop in profits.

On the issue of the higher borrowings that led to increased interest expense and lower profits I am a bit confused. Borrowing to buy what?

I’ll come back to this point.

Afore let’s look into the decision to buy-back $200 million worth of the companies own public stock.

So far the company spent $18 million for buy-backs, paying an average price of $17.08 per share. Given the current share price of $14.63 that’s a loss of some $2.7 million. Was that somehow unavoidable?

There are 63 million Domino’s shares left in circulation. The unsettled part of the buy-back will eliminate another 12 million of these ($182m / $14.63). If the company value stays constant, the ~20% decrease of share float will result in a share price increase to some $19.40 per share.

Mr. Brandon, you own some 1.16 million (FY 2006) of (yet unexercised) options of Domino’s shares to be vested at a fixed price. The buy-back, done by the company under your command, will increase your personal wealth by about $5.500.000.

Good to know that you are diligently working in the shareholders interest.

On to those higher borrowings. I am not entirely comfortable with these:

• What exactly is the company buying with the additionally borrowed money?
• If the company would borrow less, could it not avoid those higher interest payments that are lowering profits?
• How would this effect the product pricing?

Which leaves the problem of lower store traffic. My first hunch is that this has something to do with the customers value proposition.

Maybe there is a lack of olives on Domino’s products? I am sure your new expensive creative agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will be able to thoroughly analyse this issue. On a second thought – could the new prices be relevant to the customer?

Pondering the above one might suggested that:

• your company borrows for generally unprofitable share buy-backs
• the short term beneficiaries of buy-backs are option owners, primarily you and the board members
• the increased debt raises costs and lowers profits
• to keep profits up prices were raised, but the implementation of this was lacadaisical
• the price increase resulted in less sales, further lowering profits
• the scheme endangers the long term health of the company

But that custom-made suit really looked good on CNBC.

With best regards

Ascrew D. in Vestor

If you don’t comment Hillary will win …

News & views …

To find a libertarian politician in Europe one would have to consult a paleontologist. Bismarck’s social reforms extinguished that race for good. No party in Europe can win a double digit percentage by campaigning, for example, to abolish social security. While there are various neo-lib parties here, none of these argues to cut away major state functions.

But the U.S. is different and libertarians seem to be on the way up. (Even I have at least three of these on my blogroll: Antiwar’s Justin Raimondo, IOZ and Marc Parent.)

Much of the renewed attention to libertarians is due to Ron Paul’s campaign as a presidential candidate for the Republicans (and maybe even as an independent candidate.) It is easy for him to distinguish himself in the current field. The other candidates are competiting to be more loyal Bushies than Bush himself. While they call for more wars, Paul is strongly anti-war which much better fits the general public tendency.

But what else are libertarians and Ron Paul about? As I don’t really know for lack of these creatures around here, I’ll have to ask the MoA barflies.

The bit I understand is that they want less state involvement. On some issue that certainly has my sympathy and support. They are more or less isolationists – fine with my believe in Westphalian sovereigenty. They ain’t crazies, at least compared to Giuliani’s foreign policy consultants, and one might learn this or that from them.

But are they really against medicare when they personally lack money and need serious surgery?

How far would they go in de-socializing society?

What is their history, philosphy and organisation?

How big is their voter potential?

I don’t know. But I am sure you do and that you have an opinion about them. Tell us.

The twelve Army Captains who wrote today’s op-ed on The Real Iraq We Knew will certainly be lauded by the ‘liberal’ press and left-leaning blogsphere. They call for retreat from Iraq (alternativly the draft) and that is fine.

Few will notice a falsehood the Captains are spreading with either willfull ignorance or out of slightly camouflaged racism.

They write:

The inability to govern is exacerbated at all levels by widespread corruption. Transparency International ranks Iraq as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And, indeed, many of us witnessed the exploitation of U.S. tax dollars by Iraqi officials and military officers. Sabotage and graft have had a particularly deleterious impact on Iraq’s oil industry, which still fails to produce the revenue that Pentagon war planners hoped would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction. Yet holding people accountable has proved difficult.

That’s a ‘blame the victim’ argument if I’ve ever seen such. The ‘inability to govern’ was certainly demonstrated when the Prime Minister tried to kick out Blackwater. The U.S. just would not let him govern. But the corruption charge is even worse.

Cont. reading: 12 Army Captains – Falsehood About Corruption

by b real
lifted from a comment

(As an introduction consider reading b real’s earlier series Understanding AFRICOM: A Contextual Reading of Empire’s New Combatant Command)

The first press briefing for Gen. Ward since being named the commander
of AFRICOM was held on Monday. The occasion was the announcement of a
new effort at presenting a multilateral face on the U.S. naval presence
in the Gulf of Guinea, a hoped-to-become-permanent mission entitled
"The African Partnership Initiative," focused on ‘promoting maritime
security and safety.’ The DoD transcript is here.

It was a little rough for the commander, who sounded at times wooden
and awkward in his responses, yet he stayed mainly on message in spite of
fielding some direct and informed questioning on AFRICOM’s motives,
reception and obstacles on the continent (which surprised me a
little, as, after reading through so many of these transcripts, the press
generally sticks to throwing softball questions within the talking points
outlined in the briefer’s opening statements.)

One of those messages today was "we’re bringing value-added" to
investments in Africa. Foreign investments, primarily, which is what
the "partnership" in "The African Partnership Initiative" really is
about.

Last week the Corporate Council on Africa, a U.S. business lobby centered on creating and retaining wealth in Africa through private enterprise, hosted their second annual U.S.-Africa Infrastructure Conference: Building on Stability
in Washington DC, bringing together players from private enterprise, government and
military, to network and discuss infrastructure development
opportunities throughout Africa.

One of the plenary sessions was titled
"AFRICOM And Its Potential To Safeguard And Encourage New
Infrastructure Development In Africa," of which the description
promised attendees:

Cont. reading: AFRICOM – “Value Adding” To Whom?

Rice’s current foreign trip is a display of incompetence and unwillingness to understand the other side of the table. But in this she is only a sample of the general U.S. foreign policy establishment. There is little hope that the next administration’s policies might be in better shape.

Rice’s visit to Russia, together with SecDef Gates, was a low point as it resulted in exactly zero.

Unprepared and without any item to negotiate about, Rice allowed Putin to run PR rounds around the U.S. team. Only on the second day some hastily improvised package on missile defense was offered. As this was in no way thought through and did not contain any compromise, Russia rejected it.

Rice’s lack of self awareness in her comments about a presidency with too much power was slightly amusing. But her personal lowest point must have been a meeting with the chairwoman of a Russian human rights organization:

Cont. reading: Rice’s Non-Diplomacy

Laura Rozen points to the 2006 USA Today report that unveiled the phone companies illegal cooperation with the NSA. She asks:

Is Congress so venal and inept as to not fully learn and explain what is going on with telcos helping the government snoop on their constituents’ phone calls more than a year after this article came out?

Dear Laura,

yes.

b.

Though I dropped this into the OT thread earlier, I can’t really get over the "nuclear Syria" piece in today’s NYT.

It is on page 1(!) of the print edition and the website and was written by Sanger and Mazzetti with the help of three other named journalists.

The problem is that there is simply nothing in it.

Let’s start with the headline: Israel Struck a Nuclear Project in Syria, Analysts Say

What is supposed to be the news here? That some Israeli "analysts" claim so was reported by the NYT and the Washington Post some four weeks ago. So where is the news?

Let’s read the first graph:

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

That "judgement" of some nuclear site was reported before. What may be new here is a "partly constructed nuclear reactor". Why is this said to be a reactor? How does it look like? Some concrete on the ground? What makes it "apparently modeled" on one in North Korea?

Unfortunatly, the article doesn’t even attempt to tell us.

But in paragraph three the say-so "judgement" of some anonymous analysts has morphed into "the reactor project". In paragraph five the "project" seems finished and it is "the reactor". All this based on nothing.

Cont. reading: Baseless “News” on Page 1

"Banks May Pool Billions to Avert Securities Sell-Off" reports the NYT. There is talk about a $75 billion bail out fund for mortgage packages owned by Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs). The Wall Street Journal puts the possible fund size at $100 billion – some serious money even for a group of mega-banks.

As WSJ explains:

Cont. reading: Citigroup Bailout

In press releases by the Multinational-Forces in Iraq a regular line is:

Coalition forces killed X terrorists and detained Y suspected terrorists …

I searched and have yet to find one recent and original MNF-I press release that includes a ‘killed suspected terrorist’.^* There are only ‘killed terrorists’ and ‘suspected terrorists detained’.

But looking around I stumbled across this:

MANDATORY STYLE GUIDANCE FOR MNF-I PRESS RELEASES

MULTINATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ
BAGHDAD, Iraq

by order of Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner
Deputy Chief Of Staff, Strategic Effects, Multinational Force-Iraq

Cont. reading: ‘Killed Suspected Terrorists’ – An Oxymoron?

News & views …

While the page views per day at MoA is fairly constant, the number of comments per day seems to be down.

That’s sad as the blog and I are living off your comments. So I wonder why there are less and less.

Politically my writing moved a bit further to the left – content wise it got a bit more international? Could those be reasons for less participation?

What to do better? What themes should get more emphasis at MoA, what should be covered less?

Please check the archives of the last months and let me know.

I’d love to post more stuff from other writers here. If you’d like to publish on MoA please send your piece to the email address on the ‘about’ page.

Thank you all for coming here.

What has Gore done for peace?

Yes, climate change is certainly a war and peace issue, but it was on the international agenda before Gore started to occupy the theme.

To prioritize this years prize on climate change is fine. But R K Pachauri and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change alone would have been better in emphazising the global challenge. Gore’s prize makes this an U.S. centric theme. 

More in general: Can’t we think of people who have done more – and sacrificed for peace.

Best guess for the motive:

The committee wanted to give Gore a push to run for U.S. president. Maybe not a bad idea, but why (again) demean the peace prize for it. Anyway, may he live up to it.

Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

… or how the Republicans will win the presidential election …

Seymour Hersh talks (video) with his magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Remnick, at the New Yorker Festival.

A part of the talk is about Iraq and the presidential election. I transcribed this leaving out Hersh’s usual rambling and jumping around the various topics.

Some 80% into the video and in relation to Iraq Remnick asks:

Have you seen a Democrat make a reasonable argument about what to do?

Hersh:

I think the Democrats are going to lose the elections if they don’t wake up. And I’ll tell you why [..]

The Democrats push is: We have got to reduce by next year. We want the numbers to start reducing.

Bush’s option is next summer: To come in with a real low number. What he’s saying: "Coming under 100,000 troops. We can cut another 50,000 because we are winning the war." [..] 

Let me tell you what they are talking about on the inside [..] which is: Surprising the Democrats by coming with a big low number.

This is how they keep the Republicans at the war: "We are coming with a low number – maybe even 70-80,000. We need the war in the next summer and you can campaign on it. And you can kill the Democrats on it because they are all up there in the lala and talking about getting some troops out."

This guy will come in and slash the numbers of troops. This is assuming that we can stand up enough Iraqi military units. [..] They think maybe they can do it. [..] Stand up the Iraqi units, concede the South, only worry about the central part, keep doing the ethnic cleansing, stabilize it enough: "We can cut troops an awful lot and say we are winning."

Why not?

Yes, why not? I’ve been thinking about this for a few hours now and believe it is doable.

• What is your opinion?
• Could this work?
• How could the Dems defend against it?

Back in May, I wrote about Nahr al-Bared and a new U.S. Air Base. The short version:

• The Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared lies right next to
  the road that connects the harbour city of Tripoli some 8 miles south
  to the currently unused Rene Mouawad Air Base 7 miles north of it.
• There are rumors that the U.S. is interested in using the air base
  for its own purposes. The major logistics for the base would come
  through the Tripoli port.
• A Palestinian camp with some 45,000 frustrated and mostly young and
  poor people right on top of that ‘line of communication’ would be a
  substantial risk to such a base.

Now commentator Hannah H. O’Luthon points to a recent DEBKAfile report that confirms at least parts of my writing (do they read MoA?):

The US plans new military presence in Lebanon including big air installation close by Syrian border

The air base, according to DEBKAfile’s military sources, will be located at Kleiat in northern Lebanon roughly 75 air miles from Damascus, …
…
The first stage of construction will reactivate the small defunct air base at Kleiat as a joint US-Lebanese venture. Prime minister Fouad Siniora will explain that the four months of bloody fighting to crush the Fatah al-Islam revolt in the northern Nahar al-Bared camp demonstrated how badly the Lebanese army needs an operational air base in the region. US Air Force engineers and technicians have begun work on the new air field. At a later stage, it will be expanded for American military use.

DEBKAfile is a Israeli intelligence disinformation service. Some of its reports turn out to be credible, others do not.

If you check the Google map of Kleiat, Lebanon which Debka mentions you will find that it is the same place I linked to as Rene Mouawad Air Base.

It took the Lebanese army 15 weeks to smoke out a few rough fighters from Nahr al-Bared. Maybe the army is really that incompetent. But they quite deliberately destroyed the ‘camp’, a build-up city for 45,000 people, with their extensive use of heavy artillery.

The NYT today reports about Nahr al-Bared: Desolation Awaits Returning Palestinian Refugees. In addition to the destruction, the camp has been looted.

The first 500 Palestinian refugees returned here on Wednesday to find many of their shell-shattered homes unlivable, a month after the Lebanese Army ousted a jihadist splinter group from the camp.
…
“We saw houses burned from the inside, the appliances gone, and even a stolen refrigerator blocking a stairwell,” said Greg Ross, a Scottish volunteer from the nonprofit group Nabaa, who accompanied refugees.

Some refugees have seen their furniture and televisions on sale in local markets, he said. The military denies that it allowed soldiers or outsiders to loot the camp, but the accusations have heightened tensions between the military and the Palestinians.

The camp will be rebuild ‘as a model’ the Lebanese government says. A process that is expected to take 2-3 years.

But that is if you believe that it ever will be rebuild at all. Maybe a few thousand Palestinians will be allowed back into it. Maybe not.

To the U.S. and its Lebanese puppets the air-base and the safety of its logistic line are likely more important than those pesky refugees.

UPDATED below

An earlier post this week described a new supply line for the U.S. troops in Iraq that allows them to avoid the Shia south of Iraq if needed. It now evolves that the U.S. is systematically abandoning all of south Iraq . Time Magazine asks Has the US Ceded Southern Iraq?. The answer seems to be yes:

Small contingents of U.S. soldiers enter Karbala and Najaf only for brief visits with local officials these days, and much of the rest of southern Iraq has no American troops at all. Focused on saving Baghdad, U.S. forces keep up a regular presence with patrols and combat outposts chiefly around the southern reaches of the capital. Meanwhile, the drawdown of British forces in Basra … leaves yet another southern city .. unattended by the U.S.-led coalition. That means virtually all of the vast, populous and oil-rich territory stretching from Karbala to Basra is up for grabs.

‘Up for grabs’ is certainly the wrong expression. Two Shia fractions, al-Sadr and SIIC (former SCIRI) were fighting about the south but with help of Iran have now agreed on some kind of armistice. They rule south Iraq and anyone who wants to grab there will have to fight or agree with them.

The process sketched above amounts to an adjustment of frontlines possibly in preperation of a U.S. attack on Iran. Closure of the Street of Hormuz, attacks on the main supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad and lonely outposts of sparse U.S. troops in South Iraq would have been deadly options for Iran to retaliate against an attack.

With the south ceded by the U.S. and a new supply line from Aqaba, those options are gone.

There are two risks left for the U.S. in Iraq. One is the reliabilty of the Sunni tribes. But as long as the money is flowing to them, they are unlikely to abandon their current friendliness towards U.S. troops. The other problem is Turkey which is currently again shelling north Iraq in retribution for PKK attacks in Turkey.

One more successful attack of the PKK with a high number of casualties and the Turkish premier Erdogan will have to pull out the stops he currently still puts on his military. A new war in the north with Iran possibly joining a Turkish incursion could easily again unbalance the situation.

UPDATE (via an Uncle $cam comment):

Seymour Hersh in a talk (video) at The New Yorker Festival has a different explanation for the U.S. ceding south Iraq (watch at some 80% into the video).

Rough transcript:

"Democrats will lose this election if they do not wake up. Democrats run on reducing troops in Iraq. Bush will act by next summer. Bush will surprise the Democrats by slashing troop numbers to 70-80.000. He will cede the south and say we are winning."

In comments here I have often highlighted news on Sudan that questions the perfunctory black and white picture the ‘Safe Darfur’ crowd is painting.

They don’t touch the reason for the conflict (local climate change), all the parties involved (farmers versus stock-breeding nomads, various criminal freelancers, a tribal government) and they only achieve to make the mess bigger than it already is.

Ken Silverstein points to a good essay by Brendan O’Neill of spiked who gets to basic motives of the ‘movement’.

Darfur: pornography for the chattering classes

Western agitation for action in Darfur, .. , is divorced from real events in Darfur or Sudan. This is not really surprising, since ‘Save Darfur’ activism – from Hollywood celebs calling for Western military action to the growth of campaigning commentary on the conflict – has not really been about Darfur. Rather, it has been about creating a new moralistic and simplistic generational mission for campaigners and journalists in America and Europe.

The Save Darfur brigade has effectively transformed Darfur into a morality tale, in which it plays the role of a pure and virtuous warrior force against what a columnist for the UK Daily Telegraph hysterically describes as a warzone ‘comparable to the death camps in Nazi Germany’. And as with all morality tales, facts are less important than feelings, and the truth comes a poor second to creating a childishly simplistic framework of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
…
Increasingly, commentary on Darfur is not intended to clarify what is happening there but rather to indulge and flatter readers’ sense of self-serving anger. In deed, campaigners and writers have demanded Western military action to end a conflict that has actually been in decline since 2005 (although there have been renewed outbursts in recent months); and now they have got what they wanted, in the shape of the 26,000-strong UN force. Every bit as cynically as the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq, these activists have sought to turn someone else’s country and conflict into outlets for their own moral self-gratification.

…
In Africa, Western do-gooding can prove deadly indeed. Save Darfur activism is one kind of porn that really has given rise to violence in the real world.

The same process is visual with the outrage about the protests in Myanmar. Again people don’t know the cause (a price hike for gasoline, expensive food), nor do they know about the parties involved. Every monk in some saffron coat is thought of as peaceful (these people should read up on Lozang Gyatso, the fifth Dalai Lama). Every police action against the demonstrators is regarded as brutal and no thought is given on what could happen if the police would not interfere.

Unfounded rumors about brutalities are constructed as news -pornography of violence- and used for selfsatisfying ‘calls for action’. Sanctions are demanded and, if there are possible hydrocarbon profits involved, ‘western’ politicians will duly implement them. The plight of the people, but not of their rulers, will increase.

The only way to break this is through more and better information. But that’s a difficult, laborious and thankless task. Doing such one is immediately accused of downplaying the issue and via the black and white mechanism branded as helping the perceived perpetrator of the issue at hand.

People just hate to interrupt their masturbation.

There is a German-Iranian football player who excused himself from playing with the German junior nation team against Israel for personal reasons. It was hinted that there is some fear of retribution against near relatives of him who still live in Iran.
The national trainer and team management as well as his club trainer and management accepted this.

Now the Israel lobby in Germany is virtually lynching him with an extensive media campaign:

Ashkan Dejagah, the young team’s striker, who comes from a German-Iranian background, refuses to come to Israel to play against Israel in the Under-21 European Championship qualifying match set to take place on Friday in Tel Aviv.

Dejagah’s decision has sparked angered reactions throughout the Jewish community in Germany, in the German political arena and even in the media. "There can be no such thing as a player on Germany’s national team initiating a private boycott of Jews," said Dieter Graumann, the vice president of the Jewish community.

"It would be scandalous if Germany’s football association does not take punitive measures. If the player has reservations about playing against an Israeli team due to solidarity with a terror regime, he should not be permitted to play in the uniform of the German team."
…
A member of the conservative ruling party, Dr. Friedbert Pflueger, said: "This is completely unacceptable. Sports should not be politicized. A player cannot decide whom he will play against." The popular German daily "Bild" called to throw the player off the team.

"Bild" is a rightwing tabloid with the highest circulation in Europe. The biggest tits are on page two and the smallest possible word pool everywhere else. Traditionally it has very close links to Israel and its lobby. "Bild" condemning Dejagah is no accident.

What YnetNews sells as the ‘Jewish community’ is the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Liberal Jews here do not regard it as representative. One wonders why it feels mandated to judge soccer players.

Note the familar argumentation the Israel lobby is using: Dejagah does not want to play in Israel, and that is a ‘boycott of Jews’.

Why is any argument against Israel depicted as a boycott of Jews which implicates anti-semitism? Why are they confusing a destinct religion and race with a state that is ethnical and religiously mixed? (Also – last time I checked at least two-third of the Jews of this world had decided not to live in Israel.)

The further lobby argument is on Dejagah’s alleged ‘solidarity with a terror regime’ (projection?). But he never publicly said anything positive or negative about Iranian politics.

The last German government under Schröder and Fischer was proud to have closed a national agreement with the Central Council of Jews in Germany that entitles it to €3 million per year of German state funds.

But while claiming to be political neutral the council is in fact a likudnik infested lobby for Israel.

Support for racism, apartheid and defaming soccer players, financed by the German state. Stupid me thought we had left such behind us.

There is reason to believe that the Oxford Research Group report by Paul Rogers will likely be ignored.

War on terror is fuelling al Qaeda

Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fuelling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.

A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a "fundamental re-think is required" if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.

"If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report’s author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.
…
"Failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades," the report added.

Who would benefit if Rogers’ plans are implemented? Who would lose?

Decades of high profits for ‘defense’ and oil companies, better control of the public and a ‘clash of civilizations’ rational for expending the ‘western’ empire – what’s not to like continuing this racket?

In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate "important individuals" such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press.
U.S. considered radiological weapon

On November 1, 2006, former lieutenant colonel of the Russian Federation’s Federal Security Service Alexander Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised.
Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

[Another] priority was "munitions for attack on individuals" using radioactive agents for which there is "no means of therapy."
U.S. considered radiological weapon

He died three weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.
Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

"This class of munitions is proposed for use by secret agents or subversive units for lethal attacks against small groups of important individuals, e.g., during meetings of civilian or military leaders," it said.
U.S. considered radiological weapon

The use of polonium in the poisoning has been seen as proof of involvement of a state actor, as more than microscopic amounts of polonium can only be produced in nuclear reactors.
Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

The Dec. 16, 1948, memo said a lethal attack against individuals using radiological material should be done in a way that makes it impossible to trace the U.S. government’s involvement, a concept known as "plausible deniability" that is central to U.S. covert actions.
U.S. considered radiological weapon

Vladimir Putin’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky commented: "The excessive number of calculated coincidences between the deaths of people, who defined themselves as the opposition to the Russian authorities, and major international events involving Vladimir Putin is a source of concern. I am far from believing in the conspiracy theory, but, in this case, I think that we are witnessing a well-rehearsed plan of the consistent discrediting of the Russian Federation and its chief. In such cases, the famed "qui bono"[sic] question has to be asked."
Alexander Litvinenko poisoning