Mind Scalpel

So were our good friends the Chinese Communists satisfied with stealing our gambling profits? Can they rest, now that they’ve attempted to co-opt the world’s venality?

Of course not! Instead, they’ve moved on to actions based on their idiosyncratic mistranslation of a popular Western song, as they set to work in their Army-ant-like way humming “Who’ll Kill The Rain?”

According to this article from USA Today, the Chinese are embarked on an ambitious weather-control experiment:

When he’s not tending cherry orchards outside Beijing, Yu Yonggang can be found behind the twin barrels of a 37mm anti-aircraft gun, blasting shells at passing clouds.

Yu is one of 37,000 peasants enlisted by the Chinese government to help produce rain in parched areas. The 45-year-old farmer works with China’s other trigger-happy rain men to water the crops, break up damaging hailstorms and put out forest fires. After a sandstorm blew through the capital in May, he lobbed shells and rockets skyward to coax rains that washed sand and grit from city streets.

Now Yu and the other rainmakers face their toughest challenge: making sure it stays dry for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The idea is for the peasant gunners to work with meteorologists watching radar in the capital. Together, they will hunt pregnant rain clouds and pound them with rockets containing silver iodide. The hope is that any moisture will fall before the clouds can threaten the parade of athletes and lighting of the Olympic flame at the new National Stadium.

“Hunt pregnant rain clouds,” eh? What a nice touch!

Once again giving proof to the scale of China’s weapons efforts, according to the Palm Beach Post, “China has 37,000 people, 7,000 artillery guns and 4,700 rocket launchers in place” working on their weather control efforts alone!

Think about that — they’ve got so many artillery pieces just lying around they can effectively say “oh, what the hell — toss around 10,000 of these puppies over to the meteorologists. Maybe they can think of something to do with them.”

It’s would be like all the friendly weather guys you see on every TV station in the U.S. getting a Fedex delivery of a Multiple Launch Rocket System. “What exactly am I supposed to do with this?” they might ask. The reply might go something like “Heck, I dunno – get creative. Don’t tell me you’ve never wished for one of these babies when someone makes fun of you for predicting sun when it rained instead….”

Chinese Communist public relations not exactly having a deft touch (witness their recent subtle grabbing of journalists by the lapels and bellowing “NOTHING TO SEE HERE! THOSE WEREN’T CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS, BLOGGERS AND JOURNALISTS WE’VE ROUNDED UP BEFORE THE GAMES! AND THIS ISN’T ‘POLLUTION’ OR ‘SMOG’ LIMITING VISIBILITY TO THREE FEET! IT’S REFRESHING, MINTY-FRESH, COOLING MIST WE ARE MANUFACTURING TO WELCOME OUR WESTERN FRIENDS! CEASE YOUR COUGHING AND CHOKING IMMEDIATELY!”), you know, you just know that they will be helpless to stop themselves from going over-the-top in their adorable, prestige-obsessed militaristic way.

So, soon, as clouds loom and threaten the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, prepare yourself for a follow-up news story akin to the following:

China’s weather-control efforts having come up short, the country’s rulers have progressed to Phase II of the “Deny Anti-Revolutionary, Subversive Rain Its Dastardly Goal With Glorious Vigor and Zeal!” plan.

‘We have moved several thousand highly-trained marksmen armed with rifles into a ring around the Olympic Stadium,’ says Zhang Qiang, a “weather modifier” at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau. looking nervously behind him at several glowering soldiers who glanced meaningfully from him, to the droplets of rain starting to spatter the pavement around him, and back to him again. ‘These highly-motivated and praiseworthy soldiers are zealously guarding our most amazing Olympic games from any interfering raindrops — if they see even the tiniest raindrop that is falling toward the stadium, they are under orders to instantly blast it out of the sky!’

Pressed for more details on this plan, Zhang noted that the troops were prepared even in the ‘most unlikely event’ of a downpour, pointing out they were armed with fully-automatic weapons and had plentiful ammunition. Asked about possible safety issues that might be presented by thousands of soldiers firing multiple rounds into the air over a stadium packed with people, Zhang began to point out how few houses were destroyed and people killed by his country’s previous weather-control artillery — ‘Only a few hundred houses…’ he began before being hustled inside by his ‘honor guard’ of Red Army soldiers…

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