Good news for Russian beer drinkers

According to this article in Pravda, Russian beer is being regulated:

The content of toxic substances — lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, radioactive nuclides, caesium, pesticides and ergot — must be restricted in the Russian beer. Parasites of bread reserves — insects and ticks — must not appear in the production process. Beer must be made without the use of ethyl alcohol. Labels on the end product must provide full and true information for customers. These are a few of the new technical regulations on beer; the document was submitted to the Russian parliament, the State Duma, on Tuesday, The Vremya Novostei newspaper wrote.

A couple of thoughts on this, first "Yikes! I'm not drinking any Russian beer after reading that!", but second "Wait a second . . . has this gone through a typical media thought filter?"

It's a rare media outlet that ever has second thoughts about regulation — any regulation — being a good thing. As reported, this appears to be a good thing. After all, who wants to drink beer with contaminants like "lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury" in measurable quantities?

But just because it's going to be restricted in future doesn't mean it's already in the product. For instance, you could pass a regulation saying that Australian beer must contain no more than 1 microgram of U-238 per serving or that South African beer was limited to a maximum of 16 millilitres of liquid yak vomit. The media in those jurisdictions could be depended on to jump on the story as "OZ beer no longer radioactive!" or "SAB not allowed to put Yak Vomit in Beer!"

Doesn't mean it ever contained those things, just that it's now legally not allowed to contain 'em. After all, brewing is a pretty simple process involving a relatively small number of ingredients to produce the basic beer — water, hops, and (usually) malted grain. It's possible (even likely) that some Russian beers have included contaminants from improperly treated water, badly maintained brewing equipment, or (especially if rye is the source of the malt) traces of ergot.

Hmmm. On third thought, maybe I'll skip Russian beer, just in case . . .

How do you say "gaffe" in Russian?

Tom Kelley sent me this link on an unfortunate translation error which may further degrade US/Russian relations:

After promising to "push the reset button" on relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to present Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a light-hearted gift at their talks here Friday night to symbolize the Obama administration’s desire for a new beginning in the relationship.

It didn’t quite work out as she planned.

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift — a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word "peregruzka" printed on top.

"We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

"You got it wrong," Lavrov said, to Clinton's clear surprise. Instead of "reset," he said the word on the box meant "overcharge."

I'm guessing that there'll be a vacancy in the State Department's translation bureau by Monday morning.

Whole thing here.

QotD: "A vodka fuelled Genghis Khan't"

. . . it is absurd to contend that Russia as a long term threat in the way the Soviet Union threatened the world for more than fifty years. Hapless Russia has a near mono-culture economy (GDP the size of Italy, for gawd's sake) and catastrophic demographics that make Europe seem like a stud-farm (Germany, Poland and Austria more or less total the same population as Russia's 'hordes'). The appropriate personification for Russia circa 2008 is not an oil fuelled Genghis Khan, threatening to surge once more across Eurasia . . . no, it is more like a drunk with a knife unable to admit they have terminal liver disease . . . a vodka fuelled Genghis Khan't if you will.

Perry de Havilland, "Like a drunk with a knife", Samizdata, 2008-08-19

QotD: What is said . . . and what is reported

Yesterday in the British Press, much was made of the Soviet, sorry, Russian threat to nuke Poland if it hosted American, sorry, NATO defensive missile systems.

THREAT TO NUKE POLAND . . . well, really? What the Ruskies are saying is not "if you allow these systems on your soil, we will nuke you", but rather "in the event of a war between NATO and Russia, we will attack military targets in Poland, which is a NATO member".

Well no shit? This is hardly a revelation. Yet to read many of the article headlines you would think it was a clear and present danger, which it clearly ain't. Move along, not much to see here.

That said, clearly what the Russian general said is a crude attempt to intimidate Poland, albeit politically and not actually by making a threat of imminent action. Also predictably it has stiffened already deep hostility to Russia across Central Europe. Good, it is probably exactly what Europe needed.

Perry de Havilland, "Threats to nuke Poland . . . and crap journalism in action", Samizdata, 2008-08-17

Putin's successful entrapment of Georgia

Cathy Young provides more background on the Russian-Georgian conflict:

. . . this is not a situation with two equally valid opposing views of reality, or with roughly balanced rights and wrongs on both sides. True, on a political level, there are no real good guys in this conflict; the only true innocents are the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. But there are bad guys — and, at least in the short term, they seem to be the likely winners.

Mikheil Saakashvili — the pro-Western, pro-U.S. president of Georgia who was swept to power in 2003 in one of the peaceful, grassroots "color revolutions" that so rattled the Kremlin — is no liberal hero. Since 2007, he has moved to squelch the opposition and shut down the independent media, depicting his critics as puppets of Moscow in much the same way Putin has depicted his opponents as hirelings of the West. Saakashvili's decision to send troops to take control of South Ossetia and shell its capital Tskhinvali, though undertaken in response to a series of Russian provocations, was not only a major strategic blunder but also an assault on an area heavily populated by civilians.

Russia's military response, which most likely inflicted further damage on the South Ossetian population while repelling Georgian troops, quickly turned into an all-out assault on Georgia itself — a clear-cut punitive strike against a recalcitrant former colony that has been a major irritant to the ruling clique in the Kremlin, and to Putin himself.

I'm still of the opinion that Georgia is less the direct target of Russia's overall policy than just being the unlucky subject of an object lesson to other former Soviet states (Ukraine, this one's for you). There's absolutely no doubt that Russia could easily crush Georgia's military forces and conquer the country. The Americans can offer nothing but token aid to Georgia and would be extremely foolhardy to go beyond the medical supplies already dispatched.

In the short term, Russia has almost certainly secured permanent eviction of the Georgians from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and demonstrated that any attempt — military or diplomatic — to reverse the process will be met with immediate escalation beyond what Georgia can sustain.

As for Georgia's request to join NATO, Russia's immediate goal of proving NATO to be too far away to help (and too timorous to try) has been achieved. Ukraine's attention is being directed to the same lesson.