More and more information is coming out about the Crimean elections that totally undermines the legitimacy of the process. It turns out that busloads of Russian "tourists" traveled from polling station to polling station rigging the election by stuffing ballot boxes, including in Crimean neighborhoods.
The two white vans and the several cars were registered in Krasnodar, Russia. The men’s accents were Russian, and so from their appearance were they _ those in uniform were Don Cossacks, a famed fighting force that served the Tsars and now, experts say, has become a sort of Pretorian guard for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Political tourists” traveling by the van-load from one polling station to the next have been a feature of Ukrainian elections going back more than a decade _ locals call it “carousel voting” _ but this was the first time that anyone had heard of foreigners getting into the act, a Tatar organizer told McClatchy.
Based on the article, this practice was so widespread, that it totally undermines the legitimacy of any outcome that was announced by the Official Story (TM). And Dianne Feinstein has absolutely no clue when it comes to intelligence. She is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Yet she said:
On Sunday, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, indicated she viewed the referendum as legitimate.
“The Crimea is dominantly Russian, a referendum was passed,” she said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union. “That, I think, has been done,” adding later, “I get the Crimea thing.”
No, she doesn't. If she had bothered to read the papers or any other legitimate source of information, she would have at the very least realized that this election did not pass the smell test. And these are the people who are supposed to be protecting our country.
The fact that Feinstein couldn't care less that millions of Crimeans were disenfranchised by rampant cheating by Putin and his allies is deeply disturbing. It ignores our own history of vote suppression, of massive efforts to disenfranchise Blacks and suppress votes in order to keep people out of the polls. This supports my thesis that this is a tacit agreement by the West and Russia to loot Ukraine. The IMF rakes in billions of dollars of profits; Russia gets Crimea and maybe more of Eastern Ukraine aided and abetted by Yanukovich's treason, and the Ukrainian people are the real victims in this situation. And big oil companies have the potential to rake in massive profits as they step in to sell Europe cheap gas.
The fact that President Vladimir Putin told President Bush back in 2008 that Ukraine wasn't even a country should have raised a red flag for all members of the Senate and House intelligence committees entrusted with protecting our country and our allies against these sorts of activities. The fact is that our elected officials entrusted with protecting our country did nothing to monitor Russia and see what they were doing while everyone's eyes were elsewhere.
And while Dianne Feinstein sits at her desk and twiddles her thumbs, this is happening:
A reporter for the local Tatar ATR television station said he was able to register and vote in four separate polling stations. In Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, initial results spoke of a 123 percent turnout. The ATR television station showed film of Russian “bikers” visiting one polling location and a man departing carrying a submachine gun.
And one professor compared Putin's tactics to North Korea's.
Putin “was using percentages out of North Korea,” said Vladimir Kazarin, a professor of journalism at Simferopol’s Russian language Vernadsky University and a former high official in the Crimean and Sevastopol government. “It’s not truthful.”
“I’ve been following Crimean politics for a long time,” he told McClatchy. “I know what an election is, and what voting is. And I know our people. Even if they are in favor of something, they never vote more than 65 to 70 per cent. Some go to drink vodka. Some go fishing. Some go out with women.”
Supposedly, 82% of the people voted, and 96% voted in favor of annexation with Russia. The Crimean Tatars and the local Ukrainian population both organized a boycott. They make up 30% of the population, so there is no way that the math would have worked out even if we account for crossovers. But for DiFi, everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
In the meantime, the process was so rigged that even many of the ethnic Russians stayed home. In one place, which normally has 2,000 people come in to vote, it was 90 minutes before closing time. Very few people came in and voted all day. Finally, one student came in and voted. The entire staff applauded; they were the first student who had come in and voted all day.