Word: belgians
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...shying away from controversy. Even so, the Indian-born businessman Lakshmi Mittal says he was taken aback by the fury that greeted his announcement in late January that he was bidding to buy European steelmaker Arcelor, formed in 2002 out of what was left of the French, Luxembourgian, Belgian and Spanish steel industries. "We really didn't expect such a violent reaction," Mittal told Time. "A lot of people were obviously not happy at all." [an error occurred while processing this directive...
...fiction, the culmination of two years of secret planning by television journalist Philippe Dutilleul and his colleagues at the French-language public broadcaster. The ensuing panic didn't quite approach that created by Orson Welles' War of the Worlds - acknowledged as the model for the Belgian prank - but more than 30,000 phone calls flooded the broadcaster's switchboard, and the channel's website crashed as concerned viewers sought confirmation. The reason for the hubbub, of course, is that although the events described in the fake "news" broadcast had more than a dash of melodrama, they were eminently believable...
...Belgian nationality is a recent invention. The country was born in 1830 when the southern, Catholic provinces of the Netherlands broke off with the support of other European powers eager to have a neutral buffer between France and the German principalities. The southern region of the country was for more than a century the richer part, with steel mills, coal mines and the cultural hegemony of the French language; the Flemish spoken in the north was considered little more than a peasant patois. But since the Second World War, Flanders has moved ahead, with higher income, lower unemployment...
...People in Wallonia just put their head in the sand," he says. "It was never discussed in parliament or in French-speaking circles. As a journalist, I think the television show was unethical, but it gave our cause a major marketing boost. Now people in the heart of the Belgian system have to face up to the long-standing problem of Belgium...
...called the TV event an "unacceptable" breach of journalistic ethics, especially for a state-owned channel. "We didn't intend to create such an emotion, but rather to raise a real question that preoccupies citizens who are attached to Belgium," says Jean-Paul Philippot, the chief administrator of Belgian state television, after having been called on the carpet by the responsible minister. The citizens who are more interested in loosening the ties to Belgium - up to 80% of Flemings, depending on how the question is posed - will be watching to see whether their compatriots have experienced a mere passing shock...