Crimea votes on whether to secede from Ukraine

AP News

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine (AP) — In a referendum watched closely around the world, residents of Ukraine's strategic Crimean Peninsula voted Sunday on whether to demand greater autonomy or seek to join Russia. The vote has been condemned as illegal by the United States and European countries.

The referendum comes two weeks after Russian-led forces seized control of Crimea, a predominantly ethnic Russian region on the Black Sea that hosts a key Russian naval base. Locals say they fear the new Ukrainian government that took over when President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia last month will oppress them.

Ukraine's new prime minister insisted again Sunday that neither Ukraine nor the West will recognize the referendum, which it says is being conducted at gunpoint.

"Now, on the territory of the autonomous republic of Crimea under the stage direction of the Russian Federation, a circus performance is underway: the so-called referendum," Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a government meeting. "Also taking part in the performance are 21,000 Russian troops, who with their guns are trying to prove the legality of the referendum."

Russia raised the stakes Saturday when its forces, backed by helicopter gunships and armored vehicles, took control of a Ukrainian village and a key natural gas distribution plant outside of Crimea — the first Russian military move into Ukraine beyond the peninsula of 2 million people. The Russian forces later returned the village but kept control of the gas plant, according to Ukraine's border guard agency.

If Sunday's referendum passes, Russia faces the prospect of quick sanctions from Western nations.

But so far Russian President Vladimir Putin has vigorously resisted calls to pull back in Crimea. At the United Nations on Saturday, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution declaring the referendum illegal. China, its ally, abstained and 13 of the 15 other nations on the council voted in favor — a signal of Moscow's isolation on the issue.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Putin by phone Sunday, proposing that an international observer mission in Ukraine be expanded quickly as tensions rise in the country's east. Her spokesman said she also condemned the Russian seizure of the gas plant.

In Sevastopol, Crimea's key port and the site of the Russian naval base, more than 70 people surged into a polling station Sunday within the first 15 minutes of voting.

"Today is a holiday!" said 66-year-old Vera Sverkunova, breaking into a patriotic war song: "I want to go home to Russia. It's been so long since I've seen my mama."

"Today is an important day for all Crimea, Ukraine and Russia," said voter Manita Meshchina.
Speakers blared the city anthem up and down the streets, giving Sevastopol a block-party feeling. But the military threat was not far away — a Russian naval warship still blocked the port's outlet to the Black Sea, trapping Ukrainian boats. Russia pays Ukraine $98 million a year in rent for the naval base at Sevastopol.

At a polling station inside a historic school in Sevastopol, Vladimir Lozovoy, a 75-year-old retired Soviet naval officer, began tearing up as he talked about his vote.

"I want to cry. I have finally returned to my motherland. It is an incredible feeling. This is the thing I have been waiting for for 23 years," he said.

But Crimea's large Muslim Tatar minority — whose families had all been forcibly removed from their homeland and sent to Central Asia during Soviet times — remained defiant.

The Crimea referendum "is a clown show, a circus," Tatar activist Refat Chubarov said on Crimea's Tatar television station Sunday. "This is a tragedy, an illegitimate government with armed forces from another country."

The fate of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in their Crimean bases by pro-Russian forces was still uncertain. Crimea's pro-Russian authorities have said if those soldiers don't surrender after Sunday's vote, they will be considered "illegal."

"This is our land and we're not going anywhere from this land," Ukraine's acting defense minister, Igor Tenyuk, said Sunday in an interview published by the Interfax news agency.

But Tenyuk later said an agreement had been reached with Russia that its forces would not block Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea through Friday. It was not clear exactly what that meant.

In the regional capital of Simferopol, blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags were nowhere to seen but red, white and blue Russian and Crimean flags fluttered in abundance in the streets.

Ethnic Ukrainians interviewed outside the Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral of Vladimir and Olga said they refused to take part in the referendum, calling it an illegal charade stage-managed by Moscow.

Some said they were scared of the potential for widespread discrimination and harassment in the coming weeks, similar to what happened in parts nearby Georgia, another former Soviet republic, after a brief war with Russia in 2008.

"We're just not going to play these separatist games," said Yevgen Sukhodolsky, a 41-year-old prosecutor from Saki, a town outside Simferopol. "Putin is the fascist. The Russian government is fascist."

Vasyl Ovcharuk, a retired gas pipe layer who worked at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, predicted dark days ahead for Crimea.

"This will end up in military action, in which peaceful people will suffer. And that means everybody. Shells and bullets are blind," he said.

Weak and Feckless Obama won’t “take sides” in CIA-Senate Fight 

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Obama said taking sides was”not something that is an appropriate role for me and the White House to wade into at this point.”

Discord, infighting and internecine warfare is quickly becoming the hallmark of the Obama years — both domestically and internationally. The latest outbreak in hostilities is between the Senate Intelligence Committee’s  Sen. Dianne Feinstein and CIA thug Director John Brennan.

Obama is letting the dogs have it, in what is now his  typical  weak and unpresidential style. The enemedia, in their typical lapdog mode, paint this leaderless move as “a delicate balancing act for Obama in CIA-Senate Row” and “refusing to wade in.”

He refuses to wade in? But he always “wades in.” And on the wrong side, I might add. He waded in on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Gaza, and the jihadists in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He has no problem weighing in on the side of evil. Every time.

He weighed in on Trayvon Martin. He weighed in on Henry Louis Gates. He weighed in on Sanda Fluke. He weighed in on the “Auschwitz” borders in Israel. This man puts his ass in more places that it doesn’t belong, and he refuses to weigh in on this critical national security issue. Is he kidding?

Note the AP’s insertion of ‘blaming Bush” in the very first sentence. Six years into his presidency, and they are trying to pin this latest Obama on Bush. These destroyers are evil. Pure evil.

As an aside, Bush was hardly perfect, but from a Presidential standpoint, Obama can’t touch him. Not even close.

Karzai says Afghanistan doesn’t need US troops

Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

 

“In his final address to Afghanistan’s parliament Saturday, President Hamid Karzai told the United States its soldiers can leave at the end of the year because his military, which already protects 93 percent of the country, was ready to take over entirely.” Then why wait til the end of the year? It’s only March. Why not leave now? Or do Karzai’s troops need more targets for their shooting practice?

“Karzai says Afghanistan doesn’t need US troops,” by Kathy Gannon and Rahim Faiez for the Associated Press, March 15:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In his final address to Afghanistan’s parliament Saturday, President Hamid Karzai told the United States its soldiers can leave at the end of the year because his military, which already protects 93 percent of the country, was ready to take over entirely.

He reiterated his stance that he would not sign a pact with the United States that would provide for a residual force of U.S. troops to remain behind after the final withdrawal, unless peace could first be established.

The Afghan president has come under heavy pressure to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, with a council of notables that he himself convened recommend that he sign the pact. The force would train and mentor Afghan troops, and some U.S. Special Forces would also be left behind to hunt down al-Qaida.

All 10 candidates seeking the presidency in April 5 elections have said they would sign the security agreement. But Karzai himself does not appear to want his legacy to include a commitment to a longer foreign troop presence in his country.

Karzai was brought to power in the wake of the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and subsequently won two presidential elections __ in 2004 and again in 2009. But he has in recent years espoused a combatative nationalism, with his hour-long speech Saturday no exception.

“I want to say to all those foreign countries who maybe out of habit or because they want to interfere, that they should not interfere,” he said.

Karzai said the war in Afghanistan was “imposed” on his nation, presumably by the 2001 invasion, and told the United States it could bring peace to Afghanistan if it went after terrorist sanctuaries and countries that supported terrorism, a reference to Pakistan….

MALAYSIA AIRLINES Flight 370: Maybe it’s time to take another look at those Uighur Muslims from China

Bare Naked Islam

 

Early on, a claim by Uighur Muslims taking credit for the missing flight was quickly discounted, but now is being reexamined. Uighur Muslims have been behind virtually all the terror attacks in China over the past 6 years, but their methods are neither sophisticated nor technologically advanced – mostly knife attacks or homemade bombs.

 

See More on China’s Uighur Muslims

News. AU (h/t Susan K)  Claims last week by a Malay newspaper that a 35-year-old Uighur man from China’s violent, autonomous Muslim province was on Flight MH370 may be looked at in new light after being written off as irrelevant. An email sent to journalists, supposedly from representatives from the Uighur separatist movement, claimed for responsibility for the Malaysia Airlines flight’s disappearance. The emails were dismissed as opportunistic and troublemaking. 

Malaysia’s Harian Metro claimed the man had taken flight-simulator training in Sweden in 2005.

 

Malaysian police hosed down suspicion, but claims by Prime Minister Najib Razak that the plane could be have disappeared on a corridor up to Kazakhstan will attract new interest.

 

The Uighur heartland stretches from western China to Kyrgyzstan, directly beneath the “Kazakhstan‎ corridor” to which Mr Razak referred. China blames Uighurs for two bloodthirsty and deadly mass knife attacks on innocent Chinese citizens within the last fortnight.

 

Uighur rebel Abdullah Mansour told Reuters from an undisclosed location Pakistan in recent days that the intent was to bring the Holy Fight to China. “The fight against China is our Islamic responsibility and we have to fulfill it,” he said. Pakistan is also along Mr Razak’s so-called Kazakhstan‎ corridor.

 

If the plane had turned west from the South China Sea, then turned northwest towards Kazakhstan, it would have taken a direct path over Uighur heartland — but also over many other countries.

 

In December, the US released the last of three of 22 Uighurs that had been detained in Guantánamo Bay since 2001, after being detained for fighting with the Taliban. The men were taken by Slovakia, because China would not take them.

Op-ed:   

Why don't we just ask the NSA where the plane is

By: Diane Sori

Movements that "are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane."
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak

Two so-called 'innocent' Iranians fly to Malaysia but NOT from Iran. They go from Tehran to Qatar where they purchase two passports that were stolen in Thailand, bought through a Thai travel agent and an Iranian middleman, that takes them to Malaysia to get a flight to Beijing then on to Amsterdam with the final destination being Germany. Two passports...one an Italian passport used by Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, 29...the other an Austrian passport used by Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, 18...who then fly from Qatar to Kuala Lumpur, where they board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. And why Germany...the younger Iranian 'supposedly' has a mother in Germany who claims her son was on his way to Germany to seek asylum...guess the new route to European asylum is through China. But the question is why NOT travel a direct route from Iran to Germany with a valid passport which can easily be booked online for about $1000 instead of dealing with stolen passports.

Why indeed even as Interpol Chief Ronald Noble said it's believed the two are NOTHING but illegal immigrants who went through Kuala Lumpur to reach Europe, and are "probably not terrorists."

Probably nots do NOT cut it in today's post 9/11 world...period.

And NO mention has been made or attention focused on the Chinese Uighur muslim man with flight simulation training...flight simulation training just like some of the hijackers of 9/11 infamy had. Instead attention is being focused on the pilot and co-pilot as the plane's disappearance has now been ruled by Malaysian government officials to be a deliberate, criminal act, and NO accident.

But with NO reports or evidence linking either the pilot or the co-pilot to any wrongdoing, isn't it odd that time is being wasted on this wild goose chase for why NOT stay focused on the two Iranians and the Chinese Uighur muslim. I'll tell you why...first, as to the Iranians, any attention focused on Iran could jeopardize the kumbaya warm fuzzies the Obama administration is embracing after the Geneva Accords to help paint Iran as a nation wanting to join the world community by stopping their quest for nuclear weapons. And we know that has as much truth to it as all Obama's birth certificates combined do. Second, China has become a world player in the trade markets...in the jobs market...in the money lending market...and we and other nations are so much in debt to them that we cannot afford to point fingers at them as they have us and the others under its promissory 'note due' thumb.

But these are the very nations that need to be under scrutiny as isn't it odd that now the search perimeter has been expanded all the way to the so-called 'stan countries' including Pakistan and to Iran as well. A search perimeter that encompasses large areas of the muslim world...as in most of the countries that support or gave birth to terrorism. And with terror analysts saying that Malaysia is home to people who are operatives of militant islamic groups, isn't it odd that Malaysia (to date) has NOT been targeted in any terror attacks. But China has indeed been facing problems with its muslim population in its far west regions... muslims who complain to any and all who will listen about their perceived Chinese repression of their religious rights. And tying these two countries together is the fact that since 2011, Malaysia has deported at least 17 muslims...probably more...who were using fake passports to travel back and forth to China.

And what of the plane itself...based on pings to satellites and unconfirmed reports of radar hits, the plane apparently flew between known flight paths on its way to Europe or the Middle East. This seems to hold true based on a 2:15 am report of a radar hit of a plane to the west instead of north of Malaysia over the strait. The plane was unidentified, but with all other planes accounted for what else but Flight 370 could this be. And if this was indeed the plane it would have to come down eventually somewhere...but where.

The first scenario as to where sends chills up one's spine. Fact...this jet needs 3,600 feet to land and many airports in both friendly and unfriendly countries have runways of this length, but 5000+ feet is needed for takeoff. If this plane was hijacked, as most experts and Malaysian government officials now agree that it has been, it obviously was done for some very nefarious purpose...and with Iranians on board it must be remembered that there is NOTHING more nefarious than Iran's plans for Israel. So did this jet after being secured by hijackers land in and be welcomed by some terror supporting country for retrofitted with a WMD to be dropped over Israel. Could be, but if so searchers need to focus their attention on airports that have suddenly added length to their takeoff runways.

The second scenario is that even if the plane was indeed hijacked that does NOT mean it made it to its intended destination...therefore it could have gone down over water. And over water there is very little radar coverage, meaning if the plane was flying at a low level with radars NOT being able to see over the horizon beyond 25 miles, and with NO one searching flying the sort of airborne AWACS radar planes that could spot low flying targets, the plane could very well fly unnoticed until it crashed, again unnoticed, into the sea. 

So Flight 370 either crashed into the water, crashed somewhere on land, or landed someplace nobody suspects or is looking for as mentioned above.

And while some say that if this was hijacking of the terrorist kind why hasn't credit been taken. That is quite simple to answer... terrorists... jihadis...take claim only after a successful event has occurred NOT before and NEVER while an act is in progress.

So as the mystery of Malaysian Flight 370 continues unanswered I still say let's look at the possibility...as per LOST...that a time continuum was crossed over as right now that is as good a possibility as anything else we have.