Like Glenn, I prefer a different explanation from "slip of the tongue".

I think McCain is trying to say two things at once. To the 30-percenters (or whatever minority now remains in the Bush camp) he is saying what he is saying -- repeatedly -- Iran is arming Al Qaeda.

But to the MSM -- and by extension the rest of the country -- he is saying the opposite, which is actually the source of the "serious foreign policy expert" tag. Apparently the bar for "expert on the region" is set as ankle-endangeringly low as simply knowing the names of the two major Islamic "factions".

So, either he's got serious (possibly age-related) memory issues -- which disqualify him, surely, from the highest office in the land -- or he's following a moderately Machiavellian and utterly dishonest "strategy" which is working extremely well so far -- and which disqualifies him, surely, from the highest office in the land.

Lose-lose for McCain.

The ongoing efforts to ensure (or pretend) that Beijing's air is clean enough for world-class athletes to breath...

It's time this meme was killed for good.

Ever been in Beijing over the Spring Festival national holiday? No? I didn't think so. Beijing's air is just awful for the rest of Spring, and yet it's clean and fresh over Spring Festival.

And so anyone who has been in Beijing over that week and a half knows _exactly_ what the Chinese government will do to ensure clean air during the weeks of the Olympics. It's exactly what they do every Spring Festival:

They turn off nearly all the factories in the country. Construction stops. Migrant workers go home. Streets are (relatively) free of cars.

All those things are planned for the Olympic weeks.

You can experience a mini version of this effect almost every Sunday in Beijing, as no matter how gray and desperate Friday was, by Sunday the only pollution to be seen is usually the smog known to all large cities -- the really poisonous black-snot nose-bleed stuff is simply not there, as the factories that produce it are off.

No-one, least of all me, would claim that "all is well" with China's environment, or Beijing's air.

But it will be fresh and clean for the Olympic weeks. I'd lay money on it.

I wonder if the author has ever watched a wildlife documentary? One with wolves "cruelly" separating a young animal from the herd, running it into the ground (its eyes wild, its nostrils flaring with terror) and then eating it alive, utterly immune to its cries of pain?

Not the same thing? Are humans not animals, then?

I wonder if the author is aware that most Chinese that I have spoken to about the topic view the American practice of shipping grandma and grandpa off to a nursing home at their most vulnerable time, to die surrounded by indifferent strangers, as utterly barbaric and unfeeling?

Not the same thing? I love you, Mom, but not enough to care for you like you cared for me. It's just not _convenient_. This is more "humane" than eating a dog?

I wonder if the author would deny drugs to his children, if said drugs had been tested or developed using animals?

Not the same thing? So there's a calculus of animal suffering?

"Human" and therefore "humane" is quite simply a bigger and more complex beast than simply "the stuff that Ted Kerasote feels comfortable with".

Animals of all kinds have been food for the entirety of human history. Which doesn't make it right. Which doesn't make it not cruel. But it does make it a complex issue that is intertwined deeply with who we are as tribal, cultural, regional, social human beings. Your barbarity is my normality, and vice versa.

It is a complex issue that is not served by this inaccurate, sexed-up "one anecdote and a bunch of guesswork" article. Really, this is an amazingly low-rent attempt to tie diet preferences -- and Ted Kerasote's personal beliefs about them -- to the Olympics (I mean, really, could any two things be _less_ connected?!).

The 1989 massacre on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, when the party's tanks mowed down peaceful demonstrators...

Not even the extremely credible western journalists who were present and reported on the incident in detail gave the demonstrators as clean a slate as this. Beating policemen to death is "peaceful" is it?

Of course, it's a much "cleaner" and easier to understand narrative to cast the Chinese government as the absolute aggressor of Tian'anmen -- but to do so simply ignores the public record. If they wanted to mow down peaceful demonstrators, why did they wait so long? Why did they send so many representatives?

Why didn't, to put it in terms that even Der Spiegel's emotive journalists might understand, "Tank Driver" simply drive over "Tank Man"? That image is one of extraordinary courage, but it's also one of extraordinary restraint.

And so, as always with Der Spiegel, the ancient legal precept applies: if you blur and willfully misreport the small details (we call that "lying" outside the courtroom) why should any reader believe the conclusions you draw?

False in one thing, false in everything.