-->...ob da"oben" wirklich etwas gelandet ist
oder ob wir (die gesamte Menscheit) wieder einmal
total verarscht werden (wie bei den Mondlandungen).

Solange es die Amis nicht fertigbringen, HIER auf
unserer guten alten Erde eine Sonde OHNE Fallschirm
sicher herunterzubringen, solange glaube ich nicht
an dieses Ammenmärchen, eine oder zwei Sonden seien
auf dem Mars gelandet. Das ist doch alles schlichtweg
lächerlich. Einfach nur lächerlich. Daß die Europäer
in diesem Verarschelesspiel auch mitmachen, spricht
für sich. Womöglich drehen die auch in Hollywood? [img][/img]

Gruß
Z

-->Auch ich habe lange Zeit"alles was von drüben kam" geglaubt, aber nach
all den nun offensichtlichen"Irak-Lügen" hinterfrage ich alles was man mir weismachen möchte, und ich denke inzwischen daß hier eine ganz große Verarsche läuft!!!

Gruß Zahnloser

-->http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/012004/01252004/1239419

Mars pics prompt question: Was the Duke there first?

Mars photos prompt a question: Was John Wayne there first?

Date published: 1/25/2004

TO HER dying day, my grandmother never believed that men had actually walked on the moon.

Even as Neil Armstrong was uttering those immortal words,"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Grandma was grunting,"They're doing all that from some Hollywood movie studio."

I bring this up because I got an e-mail from a relative the other day who remarked that he is a bit suspicious of those pictures NASA was receiving from Mars before its mechanical rover went on the blink.

My cousin insists that the Martian landscape is strikingly similar to the back 40 on his father-in-law's ranch in West Texas.

Hmmm! Could NASA be back in the studio again? Or might they have gone on location this time? Is that really some low spot on the Martian surface we've been seeing on the 6 o'clock news, or is it a coyote hole in a West Texas cow pasture?

Being the investigative reporter that I am, I decided to try to dig up conclusive evidence that there really is an American probe on the Red Planet. Not that I don't trust NASA, you understand, but that organization is an arm of the federal government and, well, you know what they say about trusting Washington--even if it is in Houston.

So I got out my 234-power astronomical telescope and trained it on Mars the other night. You know what? I didn't see a single thing that even slightly resembled that Mars rover NASA says has been creeping around up there.

Nor did I see anything that looked like an unmanned American spaceship parked out on some Martian hill. Are we being hoodwinked? Is all this Red Planet photography actually originating in West Texas?

My relative said he called his father-in-law and asked if NASA was in the back 40, and the old man said no. But if these scenes didn't come from West Texas or Mars, where did they come from?

I pulled up the Martian pictures on the Internet and studied them. Something looked awfully familiar, but for the longest time I couldn't put my finger on what. Then it hit me.

Digging into my John Wayne film collection, I found the 1956 Western"The Searchers" and shoved it into the VCR. I fast-forwarded to the scene where Wayne and a group of Texas Rangers are drawn out into the wilderness by Comanches on a murder raid, and there it was.

Monument Valley! If you look at the recent Mars photographs and compare them to the Monument Valley landscape in"The Searchers" (the scene where the prize bull has been killed), you will find that they are almost identical, red dirt and all.

I know the NASA budget has been slashed in recent years, but is Monument Valley as close as the space program could get to Mars?

There appears to be more evidence that links NASA to the Utah wilderness. Have you seen that Martian stone the space rover encountered last week? Looks like a Monument Valley rock to me.

NASA claims that this Mars rock is a little bitty old thing, less than a foot high, not much bigger than the toy-sized rover. How do we know that? Maybe it is a big old cliff in Monument Valley as photographed from the front of a Sherman tank.

The truth is that NASA has no way of proving that a spacecraft ever landed on Mars--or even on the moon, for that matter. No one on Earth can actually see the Martian rover or even the flag that is supposedly on the lunar surface, which is a whole lot closer.

We have to take their word for these things and I don't like trusting anybody, especially when it comes to my tax dollars. As my grandmother suspected, all these events could have been faked.

We need to really start looking closely at the photos NASA is releasing to check for flaws. If the space agency actually is shooting the scenes in West Texas or Monument Valley, the evidence will be there somewhere.

I remember years ago watching this Three Stooges movie--I think it was"Snow White and the Three Stooges"--and there was this scene where bandits had stopped a stagecoach in the desert. The terrain was remarkably similar to the present"Martian" landscape.

While the holdup was going on, there, deep in the background, on top of this red Monument Valley-like mesa, was a red convertible driving along.

Of course, I don't expect to see any red convertibles in the background of future Mars photos, but there could be other telltale signs that the scene is being faked.

For instance, if NASA scientists say they have discovered evidence of past life on the Red Planet and we see this old graveyard in the background of some future photo, then I think we should get suspicious.

If scientists say they think they have discovered a black hole on Mars and it turns out to be a close-up of the pupil of a Navaho's eye, well, that could positively link NASA to Monument Valley.

Any Martian ice that is discovered in cube form or lying beside a plastic bag that has"7-Eleven" written on it might also detract from the credibility of the current Mars expedition.

And if photos from the European satellite that reportedly discovered water on the Red Planet show a little circular rock well out in the middle of nowhere, I'll suspect they are also sneaking around Monument Valley and the Navaho Reservation.

Of course, I don't think scientists--either European or American--will get that careless, even if the photos are coming from West Texas or northern Arizona.

What might happen, however, is that one evening we'll see the NASA rover--if they get it fixed--crawl down into that little valley on the Martian surface, scratch around for a few minutes and then unearth some empty shell casings or other signs of a past military presence on the Red Planet.

Then we're going to suddenly hear this familiar voice in the background exclaim,"I told you Saddam Hussein had those weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere!"

President Bush just might have an ulterior motive for all this space exploration he's proposing. And if weapons of mass destruction are found on Mars, how could any Democratic presidential candidate prove otherwise?

That George W. is one smart cookie.

To reach DONNIE JOHNSTON: DJohn40330@aol.com

Date published: 1/25/2004