Slanted Research

In an enigmatic and highly sinister response to American peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Heathen Chinee appear to have carried out a space weapons test without first informing the world that it was intended as part of the War on Terror. Officials in the Chinese defence ministry, and even ordinary Beijing saleswomen, have proven unable to say anything about the test, because there has been no official announcement. Obviously, this kind of thing could never happen in the West, where defence ministries are customarily the least secretive of places; and certainly not in the United States, where ordinary citizens are so well informed by their government that they can point out the latest surge of pre-emptive humanitarianism on a map provided it's labelled clearly enough. The Chinese government's space researches have apparently followed "a Russian model of development, from manned missions, to space walks, to moon walks, to space station development - all for military purposes", rather than the American model, which discarded this illogical sequence of development so as to favour disinterested scientific research. Naturally, such niceties have no place in the Heathen Chinee philosophy. "This is a weapon pure and simple, and a very offensive one," said the editor of health and beauty publication Air-Launched Weapons. "The number one target is the US." It is to be hoped that the editor of Air-Launched Weapons is a more reliable source of intelligence than those who predicted mushroom clouds over New York as the alternative to the Iraq adventure.