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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (17796)	11/19/2002 3:56:03 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Re: Uh, Gus, Europe it seems might be more afraid of immigrants than that old chestnut you keep trying to resurrect. Well, actually, I'm afraid the hoopla about Islamic terrorism, sleeper cells among immigrant minorities and illegals are just the tip of the iceberg... and the iceberg is an economic one... drifting away in the ocean of globalization. Corporate Europe is slipping, there's no doubt about it --even before September 2001, several lights started flashing on the EU dashboard. Just in Belgium, the bankruptcy of the flag carrier Sabena was a trauma... a few months after the shameful demise of Lernout&Hauspie. I think the pivotal event was the collapse of the advertising/media market when the Kirch group went belly-up: the shockwaves shattered the whole sports/media biz. In Belgium, it triggered the sack of (TV network) RTBF CEO Alain Druitte and the dismantling of RMB... Afterwards came the collapse of Vivendi Universal, that media behemoth destined to become a major Transatlantic venture --RIP. Oh, before I forget, Belgium also lost her Forumla One Grand Prix in Francorchamps... Too many FO Grand Prix in Europe chasing too few chainsmoking viewers --I guess Bernie Ecclestone is only too happy to replace Francorchamp with Shanghai... And now there's Italy... somehow the decline of Belgium was a forerunner of what awaits Italy: Gruppo Fiat, the flagship of corporate Italy, is on the brink of bankruptcy and if Fiat falls into foreign (American) hands then what will prevent Telecom Italia and the Italian banking&insurance biz from falling into German and French hands? As I said on another thread, the only thing that keeps European spirits up is the USD/EUR peg --so long as EUR 1.0 ~ USD 1.0, Europe will be able to skirt a major political crisis. In the meantime, terrorism and immigration are being hyped up as useful scarecrows.... Gus