World Press Not Buying
Into Bush's Mars Shot
BBC News
1-16-4
Is everyone buying into George W Bush's intrepid vision of a manned
mission to Mars? Some of the world's newspapers this week were clearly
behaving like spoilsports.
"The US is preparing for the invasion of Mars and other planets,"
wrote the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah.
"What are the other planets chosen for the US invasion? Are they an
axis of planetary evil? And what is the relationship between the
regime on Pluto and fundamentalist groups?"
Australians fond of sarcasm read how Mr Bush was certainly onto a
winner.
"The US President may figure that a pre-emptive strike against the
Martians should occur while we have the size advantage," wrote
columnist Tim Ferguson in Melbourne's The Age.
"Maybe he figures the Mission To Mars money is well spent; he was
never much good at book-learnin' and we've seen his disregard for
hospitals during the recent Iraq war," he said.
"George's reasons don't matter. Americans should go to Mars and
Australians should go with them. Single-minded persistence in the face
of futility is what humanity does best."
Space battles
In France, Le Monde cast a weary transatlantic eye over past joint
projects such as the International Space Station and concluded Mr
Bush's plan marked "a break with the period of international
cooperation which has prevailed for the past 30 years".
"The ascendancy of Airbus over Boeing illustrates the kind of battles
that are being fought in the corridors of space exploration," it said.
And France's Liberation daily wrote when Mr Bush points at the moon,
he is "clearly thinking above all about the astronaut China intends to
send there". It admitted however that the plan was an electoral
masterstroke.
But few of the world's papers were as cynical this week as
Switzerland's Le Temps , which accused Mr Bush of "using space as a
diversion at a time when his Iraq policy is not exactly a shining
success".
Or Austria's Der Standard : "A national mission to a far-away place
where glory awaits and no rebel movement lurks will help Americans
forget about the continuing problems in Iraq and portray the president
as a peaceful visionary."
BBC Monitoring , based in Caversham in southern England, selects and
translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies
and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
© BBC MMIV
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3403581.stm
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