Interesting Post: One Victim of the Toulouse Assassin Buried in Morocco

In a blog post on March 22 Rachid Aadnani points out an element of the terrible story of the “Toulouse Killer” in France that I was not aware of.

The remains of Imad Ben Ziaten, the 31 year old paratrooper who was gunned down by the “Toulouse Killer”  were laid to rest in Morocco this past Tuesday.  His family had requested he be burried in his hometown of Md’iq a short distance from the city of Tetouan in Northern Morocco.

The other alleged victims of the assassin were a rabbi and he three young children.  The murder of children is always shocking.  What could a 3 year old, or even a 7 year old have done to justify being murdered in cold blood.  That is what is so gut-wrenching about the story of Robert Bales, the US soldier who committed the massacres in Afghanistan on March 11.  We want to see our men in uniform as heroes, to the point that we overlook a lot.  But shooting innocents at home, that is only possible when the enemy has been completely dehumanized.
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SAR Academic Freedom Media Review – October 1-7, 2011

The following is the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Media Review, re-published here regularly, as received. For more information on SAR, visit their site.
The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available here. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.
Assuring Civility or Curbing Criticism?
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, 10/7
One year on: Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo still in jail
Michael Bristow, BBC News, 10/6
Chen Campaigners Detained
Luisetta Mudie, Radio Free Asia, 10/6
Scholars at Risk calls for letters on behalf of Mr. Yassin Ziadeh of Syria
Scholars at Risk, 10/6
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Freedom of the Press in the Maghreb

Upon the death of his father, it looked as if Morocco might be on its way toward total freedom of expression.  This post is too short to go into much detail, but tentatively at first, then progressively with more and more confidence the media and the arts began to confront previously taboo subjects including corruption in government and the private sector, human rights abuses, gender oppression, linguistic and cultural suppression of minorities, policies in the Western Sahara, homosexual rights, etc.
There was shock when the Moroccan magazine TelQuel was able to publish an investigative piece on “The Salary of the King,” and get away with it.  Under his father Hassan the II such matters were kept as secret as nuclear launch codes.  I don’t mean to say that the media totally ignored all that was wrong in Morocco until the liberalization, either.  But when something was  reported, it was done very carefully, with great care as to who was bore the blame.  All of that changed in the years following the elevation to the throne of Mohammed VI.
Recently, however, there have been a number of setbacks and it has been hard to watch.  Continue reading

Grégoire and My Major Company


So what do you think about that song? It was a Top 5 single in France, propelling the album it came from as high as #81 on the album charts, not just for France, but for all of Europe. Grégoire is a rising star. It just goes to show you what happens when you get discovered and a major record label puts it weight behind you.
Only Grégoire wasn’t on a major label when he recorded that album. He was on a label called My Major Company, an online community that helps artists and producers find one another so that good music can be recorded and promoted in a professional manner. The producers are the users of the site who invest sums of their choosing and, in turn, receive a share of royalties just as any other producer would do.
It is brilliant, really. Music lovers can go on the site, listen to new, undiscovered artists, and make a small but real investment in the careers of those they believe in. According to Billboard, it certainly worked for Grégoire.
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Grégoire’s rise to fame began in association with My Major Company (MMC), an innovative online music company in France that operates almost entirely outside the major-label music system. He was the first MMC artist to break through to mainstream success when his song “Toi + Moi” was put into regular rotation by the popular radio stations RTL and NRJ. Grégoire’s full-length solo debut album, Toi + Moi (2008), was subsequently released in association with Warner Music France, which had agreed to a distribution deal with MMC earlier in the year. Debuting at number two on the French albums chart, Toi + Moi proved similarly popular in neighboring Belgium and Switzerland, as did the title track, charting at numbers one and nine on the respective singles charts there. In the wake of his breakthrough success, Grégoire was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2009 NRJ Music Awards.

The producers, on the other hand, not only have the possibility of recovering and even seeing a return on their investment, but they also have the satisfaction of literally investing in and enabling the career of an artist they care about with professional produced recordings and national exposure.
It’s a great idea.

Opera returns to Libya after 40 years

A performance of “The Barber of Sevillé,” organized by the French embassy and sponsored by French companies with interests in The functional mechanism of Sildamax citrate involves tablet sildenafil the security of cyclic guanostine monophosphate (cGMP) compounds from degradation by the action of cGMP- specific phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors. There have been no reported side effects for using maca to address buy vardenafil levitra these conditions. Women these days are exploring their sexuality distinctively. cialis tadalafil canada The pharmacy has been serving numbers of its customers for several years buy cheap cialis of establishment. Libya was staged on May 16th at the Roman theatre in Sabratha, according to an article on Magharebia.com.