Google Earth Community: GE crash on startup

I got GE installed, not much of a problem, but it won't run. Upon start, it displays the splash, then opens the GE window and another window announcing that it is about to "Performing Google Earth server login...". After a split second all this is gone and debug information (assertion failed) is listed in the terminal I started GE from (attached at the end of this posting). From the debug information I suspect some library compatibility problem, as the crash appears to happen during thread creation, but I'm absolutely clueless which libraries to inspect. And GE uses far too many libraries for a trial 'n error approach. Any hints anybody? Did I miss anything obvious?

The environment is a Debian stable ia32 chroot under a Debian AMD64 (X2 CPU) installation with a 2.6.18.3 SMP kernel. The Graphics is an nVidia 6600 chip with the recent nVidia 9631 driver in Xinerama mode. The ia32 chroot is working ok as it runs other 32 bit software routinely and reliably (OpenOffice being one example).

Cheers Peter

googleearth-bin: ../nptl/sysdeps/pthread/createthread.c:229: create_thread: Assertion `({ __typeof (({ struct pthread *__self; asm ("movl %%gs:%c1,%0" : "=r" (__self) : "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->header.self))); __self;})->header.sysinfo) __value; if (sizeof (__value) == 1) asm volatile ("movb %%gs:%P2,%b0" : "=q" (__value) : "0" (0), "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->header.sysinfo))); else if (sizeof (__value) == 4) asm volatile ("movl %%gs:%P1,%0" : "=r" (__value) : "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->header.sysinfo))); else { if (sizeof (__value) != 8) abort (); asm volatile ("movl %%gs:%P1,%%eax\n\t" "movl %%gs:%P2,%%edx" : "=A" (__value) : "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->header.sysinfo)), "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->header.sysinfo) + 4)); } __value; }) == pd->header.sysinfo' failed.
Google Earth has caught signal 6.

Stacktrace from glibc:
./googleearth-bin(__gxx_personality_v0+0x1ec) [0x8057aa4]
./googleearth-bin [0x8057e8b]
[0xffffe500]
/lib/tls/libc.so.6(abort+0x1d2) [0xf60fbfa2]
/lib/tls/libc.so.6(__assert_fail+0x10f) [0xf60f42df]
/lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 [0xf60c756a]
/lib/tls/libpthread.so.0(pthread_create+0xc1) [0xf60c6ce1]
/lib/tls/libpthread.so.0(pthread_create+0x6c) [0xf60c6e9c]
./libbase.so(_ZN5earth6System5spawnEPFPvS1_ES1_+0x21) [0xf7ed1c99]
./libauth.so(_ZN5earth4auth12LoginProcess7doLoginEb+0xaa7) [0xf628c953]
./libauth.so(_ZN5earth4auth12LoginProcess24loginAfterAuthenticationEv+0x9a) [0xf628ca9a]
./libauth.so(_ZN5earth4auth12LoginProcess22authenticationCompleteENS_4evll9ErrorCodeE+0x2a) [0xf628ce20]
./libauth.so(_ZN5earth4auth22AuthenticationComplete7executeEv+0x2b) [0xf629312f]
./libgoogleearth.so(_ZN5earth6client15SyncMethodEvent8dispatchEv+0x20) [0xf76de7ea]
./libgoogleearth.so(_ZN5earth6client15SyncMethodEvent15SyncCustomEvent8dispatchEv+0x1a) [0xf76de82a]
./libgoogleearth.so(_ZN5earth6client11Application11customEventEP12QCustomEvent+0x37) [0xf76d7f43]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN7QObject5eventEP6QEvent+0xbc) [0xf6dc29ec]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN12QApplication14internalNotifyEP7QObjectP6QEvent+0xa1) [0xf6d57fc1]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN12QApplication6notifyEP7QObjectP6QEvent+0xef) [0xf6d58acf]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN12QApplication16sendPostedEventsEP7QObjecti+0x197) [0xf6d59987]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN12QApplication16sendPostedEventsEv+0x24) [0xf6d59b44]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN10QEventLoop13processEventsEj+0x1ac) [0xf6cfdcfc]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN10QEventLoop9enterLoopEv+0xa9) [0xf6d71b09]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN10QEventLoop4execEv+0x26) [0xf6d71a06]
./libqt-mt.so.3(_ZN12QApplication4execEv+0x1f) [0xf6d579bf]
./libgoogleearth.so(_ZN5earth6client11Application3runEiPPc+0xec8) [0xf76dbc80]
./libgoogleearth.so(_ZN5earth6client11ApplicationC1EiPPcb+0xf76) [0xf76dcf0c]
./googleearth-bin(main+0x123) [0x805830d]
/lib/tls/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0xf60e7974]
./googleearth-bin(__gxx_personality_v0+0x79) [0x8057931]

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