The Marseille gangland payback execution video

Marseille suffers from drug-related crime and murder just like any other lage city, and it too has its share of rappers from underprivileged areas who produce videos which illustrate how the murky drug underworld goes about its business. One of those rap groups is Kalif Hardcore, who are from Marseille, and they produced a documentary-song video last year about the cruel reality of life in the drug-dealing world. They called it 'Marseille la Kalash Liga One' ('kalash' meaning a kalashnikov assault rifle - a weapon of choice for France's gangland killers).

The video depicts the cruel reality of life in the ghettos, where drugs and violence are omnipresent, and it features a sequence in which a young drug-dealer steals a bag of drugs from a lady who was 'looking after it' for other drug-dealers. His identity is discovered and there follows a scene in which he is abducted by armed men, driven to a lonely spot outside the city after being handcuffed and beaten up, thrust down onto the the ground, and shot in the head as payback. The killers then pour petrol over his body and set it alight before leaving the scene.

The 'victim' was played by 19-year-old Nabil Sedik, a young man from one of Marseille's poorer areas, and the drug-minding woman was played by his mother.

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The harrowing scenes contained in the video were of course fictional, and Nabil Sedik walked away unscathed from that fictional killing field, but real life underworld revenge killings such as that shown in it are not the stuff of fiction. They are a fact of life, and they have occurred every 10 days in Marseille since January of last year. The most recent of those executions took place a few days ago, when a young man was kidnapped in Marseille. His body was later discovered in the boot of a burnt-out car. He had been shot to death.

His name? Nabil Sedik.

His mother buried him on Tuesday.

French 'Hypocrital Sick Jerk of the Month' award goes to Joey Starr

A Jerk

I had to rub my eyes and clean my glasses to be sure that I had understood this story correctly. French rap artist Joey Starr has filed a complaint against a woman who, he alleges, slapped him in the face in a supermarket. He claims that she was drunk. He was shopping in Paris' VIII Arrondissment when, a police source says, he was attacked by "a very drunk woman who slapped him."

Well, I don't know if I'd go so far as to file a complaint about it. After all, being slapped by a drunken woman in a shop, whilst being a disagreeable experience, is hardly going to put me in hospital now is it. Besides, I have much better things to do than take drunks to court.

On the other hand, some people would file a complaint, and that's fair enough. Violence is a crime after all.

But JOEY STARR?!

For those who may not know, Starr has been in a Police Commissariat before. Here's why.

1999. 2 months in prison for violence against an air hostess.
1999. 6 months in prison for injuries he inflicted upon his former girlfriend.
2000. €1,000 fine for possession of a pitbull which attacked another dog.
2000. €12,000 fine for violence against a person in the street.
2001. 2001. Prison and a fine for possession of cannabis, a 6.35 automatic pistol and dealing in cocaine.
2002. Guilty of cruelty to an animal.
2003. 4 months for spitting on policemen.
2005. False driving documents.
2009. 3 months and a €2000 fine for domestic violence, against his girlfriend.
2009. 2 years prison (18 months suspended) for attacking a car with an axe. He was also placed under a committal order.

And this 'man' goes crying to the police because a woman slaps him in the face?

Joey Starr is a first-class jerk (crétin). Voila.