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Morocco: Corruption, politics, and the aftermath of a bombing

Categories: Middle East & North Africa, Morocco, Economics & Business, Environment, Film, Politics

After the Los Angeles Times [1] published an article about the cost of filming the 2003 action flop Sahara [2], which highlighted in particular the amount spent on local bribes (“‘Courtesy payments, ‘gratuities’ and ‘local bribes’ totalling $237,386 were passed out on locations in Morocco to expedite filming”), Moroccan bloggers chimed in with their opinions.


Laila Lalami
was saddened by the spending: “Honestly, I started to laugh about all this, until I got to the part where palm trees are being taken out and river improvement projects that benefit Moroccans are halted in order to accommodate films, and then I wanted to cry.”

Liosliath [3] posted highlights of the article in her blog, highlighting “the most pathetic part” as this: “An ‘assistant propman’ on Sahara, for example, earned a weekly salary of $233, the equivalent of one day’s pay for a U.S. prop worker.”

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The aftermath of the recent Casablanca bombings and Morocco's safety level were also on the minds of bloggers. Blogger Taamarbuuta [4] said at grains of sand [5], “Look, the point is, Moroccans are not against America. Perhaps its government (but I can count on one hand my American friends who aren't against the government!), sure, but America or Americans?”

Cat in Rabat [6]‘s take on the whole thing was slightly humorous – noting that metal detectors have cropped up in the capital. “I have set off the bells & whistles of many of Rabat's security scanners and no one has yet to ask me to step aside in order to search me. So while there is now a guard at Pizza Hut, nobody has actually seen him use his metal-detecting magic wand,” she notes.

Everything Morocco [7] responded to those who've asked “is Morocco safe?” saying, “That's a tough one to answer without a crystal ball and without going into a very long and drawn out explanation…It is much more complicated than saying it is terrorism; religious or anti-American or any other kind.”

In a separate entry which discussed the Virginia Tech massacre as well as the Casablanca incidents, Everything Morocco [8] surmised: “The underlying commonality, in my opinion, was the sense of exclusion and desperation all the perpetrators must have felt before going so far as to kill.”