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Rupert Murdoch Warns About European Muslims, EU, Saudis
I don't think Rupert is too far off with the issues that he presents. It's clear that Muslim immigration is a growing issue across much of Europe, and in some areas, it's a major issue. The Dutch are already directly addressing immigration concerns, as well as the Danes and others. The popularity of Pim Fortuyn goes to show how a strong single issue can mean a lot to people.
I spent a few months living in Paris, and from what I saw in my short time there, this speech was not too far off base. There is a sizeable and growing muslim population in France, and it's not integrating into society as the muslim population has (for the most part) in the US. As much as I dislike the French for their behavior sometimes, I do worry that in the future, their western ideals will be threatened by a population that is not integrated, and wields considerable political (i.e. voting) power.
Sorry for the Newsmax source on this - it was the only place I could find that covered the speech.
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http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/.../28/95110.shtml
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 9:47 a.m. EDT
Murdoch Warns About European Muslims, EU, Saudis
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch let his hair down during a business conference in Los Angeles this past weekend, warning of rough times ahead.
"There is going to be real trouble coming in Europe, I think," Murdoch said, noting the large Muslim communities living in France.
Calling his observations random thoughts, Murdoch told the Milken Institute's annual three-day Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel about his fears.
He sees terrorist breeding grounds in France, offered a blunt critique of the European Union, and voiced fears about Saudi Arabia and China, according to Australia's Financial Review.
The topic of discussion was "Creating Prosperity and Stability Amid Ever-Accelerating Change."
Despite the ranking of his co-speakers, including Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences; Thomas Hughes, Deutsche Bank's global head of asset management; Sharon Allen, chairman of Deloitte's U.S. board of directors; and Jami Miscik, the CIA's deputy director of intelligence, Murdoch's views held center stage.
With his audience spellbound, Murdoch warned that he believes Europe, particularly France, has failed to properly assimilate large Muslim immigrant populations from Northern Africa and the Middle East, all of which makes Europe more vulnerable to another terrorist attack than the the U.S. is.
Among his other concerns:
"The Muslim populations in France and Germany are much bigger proportionately to what they are in this country [the U.S.] and they have made a very bad job of assimilating them. "The U.S.," he said, has done a "pretty good job of assimilating" its Muslim population and only has "pockets of trouble here and there."
"They [Europe] have major centers of problems that are just boiling up. Paris is surrounded by vast blocks of tens of thousands of apartments - all Muslim, all no-go areas for police and totally lawless. There is more danger of terrorist attacks coming than what we have here," he said.
The European Union has "no political leadership with the will to change." "You have this awful French socialist bureaucracy stuck in Brussels, which is deterring investment in Europe, which is over-regulating every business and everybody."
The outlook for Saudi Arabia is glum, he said, and is casting a dark cloud on the horizon for the world's economy. "I think the most outstanding thing to worry about, if we are talking about urgency, is in the Middle East and it is with Saudi Arabia.
"Saudi Arabia is really the swing. If there was a revolution there it would happen overnight and you might see oil go from $40 to $80 or $90 [a barrel] and that wouldn't simply affect us. It would bring China and Japan and all those countries into a pretty terrible state."
Despite its problems, China is the one bright spot he saw, adding that "the worries that I see that we don't know are the danger of Chinese continuity. I operate a business there."
"We see all of this wonderful expansion around us, but the fact is, it is still a centrally planned economy and historically, centrally planned economies, particularly of that size, do become unmanageable. I'm not pessimistic about it.
"I think they do a pretty brilliant job, but we have to face the facts it is one of the uncertainties. I'm optimistic, at least in the short term, hopefully in the long term, about the Chinese economy."
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FLUSHED THE JOHNS!
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