ArticleIP_1702.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            The two great child scares
of the week, the "chicken flu" crisis in Hong Kong and the 600-plus epileptic
fits caused by the flashing red eyes of a TV cartoon monster in Japan, caused
most of the world's newspapers to sound the alarm. Asahi Shimbun
in Tokyo reported that the TV station that broadcast the cartoon
show had apologized in only a guarded way, refusing to accept responsibility,
while the Japanese government, it claimed, was resolved to get to the bottom of
the problem. Quoted in the London newspapers, British TV regulators oozed
smugness, saying that such frenzied eye-flashing was already forbidden on
British screens.

            In Hong
Kong, the South China Morning
Post gave blanket coverage to the flu virus with which Chinese chickens
have infected several small children, killing two. But the newspaper's
practical advice to the public seemed excessively relaxed under the
circumstances, saying merely that flu symptoms include fevers and chills and
can take as much as two weeks to recover from. "Do not struggle into work," it
begged the industrious Hong Kong Chinese. The infection of two infants whose
little cousin had already caught the flu was being urgently studied by the Hong
Kong health authorities because it suggested that the virus might also be
transmittable among human beings, the SCMP said. An official health
spokesman said the virus had so far been "relatively inefficient" but might now
mutate into a more virulent form.

            In Europe, the holiday mood was beginning to take control
of the press, though it was generally devoid of any spirit of peace or
goodwill. In Britain, the Times reported on its front page how a little boy in Yorkshire
had been struck across the face by a department-store Santa Claus after
questioning his legitimacy, claiming to have seen another Santa Claus in
another department store only a short time beforehand. "Christopher was crying
his eyes out," the boy's mother said. "All the innocence has gone and it can
never be replaced."

            But columnist Auberon Waugh
(son of Evelyn), writing in the Daily Telegraph, blamed the existence of such fake Santa
Clauses on the influence of the United States and mentioned that, "according to
an American psychologist called Professor Jim Hoot, the modern American child
is so terrified by the experience that it should be seen as a form of child
abuse." The Times , incidentally, launched the most perverse Christmas
charity appeal in history with an editorial asking for money to save the
threatened Ethiopian wolf, which it said had fallen victim to "a rabies
epidemic and canine distemper spread by the wild dogs used by the Oromo tribe
for herding their cattle." "Beside the ox, the ass and the sheep around the
Christmas manger, the wolf is an unusual candidate for Christmas benevolence,"
the newspaper admitted. "But this is the last chance for the Ethiopian
wolf."

            In the
patriotic British tabloid the Daily 
               Mail , there was another
attack on the United States, this time over the practice of eating turkey at
Christmas. Calling for a return to the older British tradition of having roast
beef or goose, right-wing political columnist Simon Heffer said turkey was "yet
another unfortunate example of the Americanisation of our glorious culture."
Anti-Americanism was evident in the French press as well, with Libération in Paris claiming
in an editorial that U.S. concessions at the recent "global warming" summit in
Kyoto, Japan, amounted to a rare Wild West victory by the Red Indians over the
Cowboys. This was, it said, the first time the United States had accepted any
kind of limit to its economic expansion: "The old Indians of Europe and the
countries of the South have lassoed the American cowboys, who have been left
without adversaries since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc."

            
But the Jerusalem Post was on the United States' side, urging the Israeli airline El Al to choose Boeing rather than the
European Airbus for its new fleet of airliners, despite the fact that the
commercial arguments were finely balanced. It recalled the United States'
$3-billion-a-year aid for Israel and said that France, the leading member of
the four-nation Airbus consortium, was always opposing U.S. foreign policy,
"and in ways that directly jeopardise Israel's interests."

            The Jerusalem

               Post also quoted the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, as
saying that the pope would not attend the "Bethlehem 2000" millennium
celebrations unless there was an end to "the Israeli annexation of East
Jerusalem," although one of the central purposes of the event is to create a
splash by bringing the pope together with Islamic and Jewish leaders. This may
give a better chance of success to the much-mocked millennium celebrations in
Paris and London, the former involving the Eiffel Tower laying an egg and huge
plastic fishes poking their heads out of the Seine, and the latter--as
caustically emphasized in all of today's British newspapers--involving no known
purpose at all apart from the building of a giant dome at Greenwich at a cost
of more than $1 billion.

            The Italian newspapers are
reporting, meanwhile, that the Vatican has successfully requested the
withdrawal for further consideration of a CD intended for the Christmas market
in which the pope's singing voice, taken from Vatican tape recordings, has been
set against a background of rock guitars. It is said to be concerned that this
might give the wrong impression.