That's a bit like telling a career criminal that he should better not do a petty crime. Like telling a murderer that it's not ok to steal a car to drive to his victim.

So, which of those key players are in the newly formed government?

Let's see. Out of 19 ministers, 3 are from Tyahnybok's "Svoboda". scoring such important spheres as agriculture and ecology. Really, the only serious position that they have is that of vice prime minister. The majority of the rest are from "Batkivshchyna", which is a mainstream European-oriented liberal party, and then there are a few independents straight from Maidan. Yarosh's "Right Sector" didn't get any spots at all (and they said that they aren't seeking them), and the only way they are involved in the new government is by having a representative on the country's National Security and Defense Council.

So, which "far right government" are we talking about, again?

Oh, and while we are at it, speaking of "Right Sector" and Yarosh. Are you aware of the fact that they have explicitly came out in support of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians who supported Maidan? Do you know that on the website of Tryzub (the organization that Yarosh leads, and one of the members of the Right Sector coalition), they list fascism and Nazism alongside with communism in the list of their "ideologies harmful to Ukrainian nation"?

Here is an official interview that one of the Right Sector's high-ranked members gave to BBC (in Russian) - does he sound like a crazy far right extremist to you there when he speaks about human rights and democratic freedoms, broadening freedom of speech and of gathering, or about their plan for Crimea which includes proportional representation of languages in accordance with the demographics (i.e. 60% Russian, 20% Ukrainian, 20% Tatar and others), or about nationality being primarily and ethnicity being of no importance?

I do think that the rebellion was spontaneous enough. There's no denying that Western countries heavily backed the rebels, including aerial support and spec ops teams on the ground though. Or that many rebel factions were hardline Islamist, and some aligned with al-Qaeda.

Well, they're building a pipeline to Azerbaijan (which doesn't go through Russia) for a reason. And then there's also Turkmenistan. And then there's shale gas, of which, ironically, Ukraine of all countries is likely to have a boatload of (and shale formations are in western parts of the country).

Also, Iran, which would be quite willing to export gas to Europe, except for that whole sanctions thing. It will be interesting how the perspective on Iran might suddenly change now, though.

'cause all the money they had went into the product and nothing was left for the PR department?

15. How often do we get to hear about it? I read about it on $otherpage $time ago.

Um, except they do not. Keep in mind that if they are fired, they have like a month to find a new job before they get booted out of the country.

That one was actually explainable.

The equivalent of what we are seeing in Crimea, OTOH, is if Libyan insurgents were also sporting flecktarn camo, and carrying MG4 and G28 in addition to G36. Oh, and riding around on Boxers with black-red-yellow stripes painted on them.

He is outright lying (not the first time). Anyone who saw the available video material and who understands Russian well enough to follow the conversations can reach only one conclusion here, since the soldiers in question are readily admitting that they're from Russia on numerous occasions. This is without even getting into how they're equipped (forget the uniforms; if they're hastily organized self-defense units, where'd they get AS Val from?)

Yes, I do realize that. The problem is that Russian has two distinct words denoting Russian ethnicity/self-identification ("russkiy") and citizenship ("rossiyanin") which does not exist in English. The soldiers in the videos use the word that denotes citizenship. Not to mention various other slip ups (some have even named the place of origin where their units are normally stationed; heck, there was one guy from Pskov VDV who was openly wearing a cap with it inscribed!).

Anyway, at this point, believing that tens of thousands of troops, all dressed in brand spanking new Russian digital camo (which was only adopted a few years before and not used by any other ex-Soviet republic), carrying the best gear that Russian army has at its disposal (Pecheneg, AS Val etc), and riding around on BTRs with Russian flag colors on the tips of their exhausts, are some kind of "spontaneously organized local self defense force" requires going so far beyond Occam's razor that it's not even funny. Anyone who seriously believes that there are no Russian troops in Crimea is either not familiar with the facts, or plainly retarded, or is intentionally misrepresenting the issue.

When I look at the American immigration debate, this topic practically never gets up. It's 95% about illegals (and even then most people think "Mexicans"), and 5% about outsourcing and H1Bs. The legal immigration track is not discussed at all.

So no, you as a nation have not decided it. It's not even the politicians that have decided it for you. It's the bureaucrats.

Whether you want it to be easy or hard is another matter, but the barriers should at least be sensible - i.e. they should select people for some meaningful positive traits, or discriminate against some meaningful negative traits. Randomly denying applications because the immigration officer had a headache is not useful to anyone.

Do you think those extra people just work 24/7, and don't eat, don't need a place to live and a car to drive etc?

More people means more customers, not just a larger labor force.

If you know Russian, you may find this of interest. In general, searching for aksenov+goblin+seylem will yield more info.

Think about it, next time you wonder how on earth someone could come up with a law that is so far away from reality that it hurts. These people are the same the make laws concerning computers, the internet and everything connected to it. Most of the time taken verbatim from sources that have a rather intense interest in certain laws (aka "lobbying groups"), without even having the slightest idea what their laws will entail.

And this is why the whole crap is in the sorry state it is in today, with laws that are not executable, laws that make no sense, laws you cannot heed and laws that benefit a minority at the expense of everyone else.

And it's only half as dangerous as long as it's just domestic. It gets downright scary, though, when international laws get negotiated. Because one thing is certain: Whatever country can field the ones that can spell TCP/IP without too many accidents will be the one-eyed king amongst the blind.

Even though I'd fear that he'll just be the one eyed dummy that's being remote controlled by some corporate lawyer who DOES have an idea what he's doing.

Tatars were already a minority there when they were deported, actually. They used to be about 20-25% compared to today's 10-15%.

The reason why Russians are a majority in Crimea is because it was steadily settled by Russians ever since Russia took it away from the Ottoman Empire under Catherine.

You're deliberately distorting the issue. One of the first actions of the new government was to repeal a law about regional languages signed by Yanukovich that is widely believed to be flawed both inherently and procedurally - this was repealed among several other such laws. This reverted the country to the language laws that were in place since 1989 (back when it was still the Ukrainian SSR). A committee was immediately formed to author a new law to replace the repealed one, and in the meantime the acting president has vetoed the repeal of the old law, citing concern about the interim period.

The whole diatribe about racist assholes is just verbatim Russian propaganda. If they are so racist, why did Lviv hold a "Russian language appreciation day"? Why did the Right Sector troops participated in the burial of several observant Jews who died on the barricades of Maidan (presided by a rabbi, no less)? Why do the majority of Russian speakers in Kiev say that they want Putin to fuck off?

For that matter, why is that the new government in Crimea is led by outright criminals? The new prime minister, Aksenov, had criminal record for assault and extortion back in 90s. Why are the pro-Russian figures in Eastern Ukraine outright Nazis, like Gubarev, the wannabe "people's mayor" of Kharkov, who turned out to be an ex-member of Russian National Unity, a neo-Nazi organization with swastika as an emblem?