Beer Good, Dictators Bad

Something I hadn't realised about Brewdog when I did my unpaid advertising for them on Friday, is that in one important way they have in fact followed in my footsteps, by pointing out how unconvincing Putin's heterosexuality is:

A Scottish brewery has launched a ‘not for gays' beer in protest at Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws, and have even sent a crate to the Russian leader himself.

The limited-edition ‘Hello, My Name is Vladimir’ beer features a Warhol-esque impression of Vladimir Putin wearing make-up on its label and the satirical *not for gays small print across the bottom.

BrewDog, the brewery responsible for creating the ‘protest beer’ included the following description on the labels: “Hello, my name is Vladimir. I am 100 per cent hetero and will pass laws to prove it.

On the subject of the camp Cossack, negotiations with Putin over the war in Ukraine are a complete waste of time. Russia has broken every treaty it has ever signed with respect to Ukraine and its assault will only be stopped if the Ukrainians are given weapons to fight back. It is much like the wars in the former Yugoslavia in that regard, the peace treaties signed by Belgrade meant nothing until Croatia was given the resources to fight back.

Moscow's Wikiwar

An obscure Wikipedia article about a type of fighter jet has been the subject of an edit war today. Why? Because it is about a "Sukhoi Su-25", and Russia's latest propaganda claim is that a Ukrainian SU-25 was detected near the downed Malaysian flight MH17.

The problem is that the Su-25 can only fly up to 23000 feet- which is far too low to have been intercepting the passenger plane that was flying at 33000 feet. So once the physical impossibility of the Kremlin's claim was pointed out, the Putinbots began to frantically edit Wikipedia like an army of Johann Haris.

If it weren't about the slaughter of 300 civilians the amateurishness of Putin's lies would be comical.

So How's That Reset Coming Along?

I'm beginning to suspect that the "reset " the Obama administration offered to Putin in 2009 might not be going so well. In this Obama's delusion was that the poor relations between Russia and the USA was due to something Bush had done because he looks at the world entirely through the prism of US domestic politics.

The real cause is that the Putin's Russia seems unable to have civil relations as equals with it's neighbours and instead tries to dominate, intimidate and control them. The USA is not unusual in being targeted by Russia, even neutral Sweden gets the threatening treatment.

It is the geo-political equivalent of the retarded kid whose been held back a couple of years and can't socialise with his class mates but can beat them up. Although even an actual retarded kid would be hard pressed to have handled the Ukrainian situation less effectively than Putin.

Putin, Genius Or Moron?

In some quarters Putin's invasion of Georgia and the lack of serious resistance he has face proves that he is some kind of genius, but I think there is a stronger case for arguing that he is the same bumbling moron who screwed up the Kursk rescue, the Beslan siege and the attempted murder of Victor Yuschenko.

Yes Russia now looks to have brought two Georgian provinces into Russian control but at the cost of driving Ukraine into the Western camp and earning his country near universal contempt in the civilised world. The word for someone who would trade the Ukraine for two tiny provinces plus the uncritical love of the far left is not 'genius'.