> However, I don't think we should/could add this to the posix module: 
> it expects a pthread_t instead of a PID, to which we don't have access.

We already have such function:
http://docs.python.org/dev/library/signal.html#signal.pthread_kill

I added threading.get_ident() to easily get the thread identifier. In Python < 3.3, you can use threading.current_thread().ident.

It's not documented, but if you pass a random integer, signal.pthread_kill() does crash.