Casablanca in Crisis? Democracy movement nudges the crown

The gradual awakening of the Moroccan people

By Miguel Urbano Rodrigues
Global Research

Translated from Portuguese by John Catalinotto

The wave of confrontation churning though the Arab world came late to Morocco. It was only on February 20 that the first demonstrations against the regime took place. Announced in advance, they attracted some 8,000 people in Casablanca and Rabat. Police dispersed them with brutal force.

The organizers — intellectuals, trade unionists and young people — explained in their call that the initiative was peaceful and not aimed at the overthrow of the regime. “Less power to the monarchy” and “The King shall reign and not rule” were the timid slogans heard most often.

‘Global Economic Crisis’ exposes plans for a global military dictatorship

By Rady Ananda

Review of: The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Editors, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall
Publisher: Global Research, 2010 (391 pp)

There’s a certain irony to my reading this book while waiting at the Food Stamp office. I’m part of an increasing number suffering under the New World Order’s systematic destruction of the planet’s middle classes so as to concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer families. While global uprisings now threaten global governance under a single currency, scheming rulers have long anticipated this reaction. In The Global Economic Crisis, we learn exactly how a planet-wide military dictatorship plans to enforce its feudal vision.

Gaddafi’s Private Plane, Loaded with Gold, Ready to Leave for Zimbabwe as Early as Tomorrow

By Tyler Durdin
Zero Hedge

The latest news from the ABC.net.au should come as no surprise to those who know all too well that one can’t eat gold: “Gaddafi own private plane is loaded with gold bullion and lots of hard currency, mainly dollars, and is preparing to flee to Zimbabwe to stay there with his friend Robert Mugabe.”

Yet there is speculation that instead of pulling a Ben Ali, Gaddafi may pull a Hitler: “Earlier, one of Mr Gaddafi’s former ministers predicted the Libyan leader will follow in Adolf Hitler’s footsteps and commit suicide rather than give up power. Mustapha Abdeljalil, justice minister until he quit over the bloody crackdown on protesters, says he expects Mr Gaddafi to make good on his pledge to die on Libyan soil rather than slink into exile. “Gaddafi’s time is up. He is going to go like Hitler. He is going to commit suicide,” Mr Abdeljalil told Swedish media.”

The Tunisia Effect

Please see information about purchasing my new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, following this week’s column.

By Robert C. Koehler

On one weekend in February of 2003, an estimated 10 million people in 60 countries took to the streets to protest the looming Iraq war. Never before in history had there been such massive, public opposition to a war before it began. But the war began anyway and the people — their numbers misreported in much of the media by a factor of ten, their opposition seemingly irrelevant — went away.

Are they back now?

Egyptian Labor Uprising Against Rubinites

By Matt Stoller
Naked Capitalism

Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman on the banking crisis. Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.

The Emerging Counter-Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research

Omar Suleiman, CIA Torture Chief in Egypt

“President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down as president of Egypt and has assigned the higher council of the armed forces to run the affairs of the country,” Suleiman said in a brief televised address. “May God help everybody.”

Cheers could be heard in the streets of Cairo even before Suleiman stopped speaking. And while there was no way to know whether the army would make good on its previous pledges to safeguard democratic elections, the crowds were euphoric at the news that Mubarak’s 30 years of authoritarian rule were over.

“Egypt is free! Egypt is free!” they shouted in Tahrir Square. “The regime has fallen!”
-The Washington Post (February 11, 2011)

An arrogant pharaoh has fallen. Egyptians may be chanting that their country is free, but their struggle is far from over. The United Arab Republic of Egypt is not free yet. The old regime and its apparatus are still very much in place and waiting for the dust to settle. The Egyptian military is officially in control of Egypt and the counter-revolution is emerging. A new phase of the struggle for liberty has started.

America’s Strategic Repression of the ‘Arab Awakening’

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

Taking the position that everything is organized from on high in the corridors of power is a flawed analysis, as is taking the position that America was caught entirely unaware.  We must not see this as an either-or development, but rather a congruence of over-lapping and inter-twining developments. American strategic objectives are aimed at ultimately repressing and co-opting the organic revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world. For the past six years or so, America has been developing and starting to implement a strategy to manage the ‘Arab Awakening’ by promoting “democratization” in a process of “evolution, not revolution.” The need to ‘control’ the ‘Global Political Awakening’ is the most prescient problem in American foreign policy. However, the evolution was evidently not fast enough for the people living under the Arab regimes, and revolution is in the air, writes Andrew Gavin Marshall.

First ever mass meeting of all US ambassadors

Wikileaks, Arab revolution, internet kill switch… when so many imperialists meet at one time in one place, we can be sure that evil will be done.

AP: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors.

The top envoys from nearly all of America’s 260 embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries will be gathering at the State Department beginning on Monday. Officials say it’s the first such global conference.

Tahrir Square breaks into song; plus the video that started the Egyptian Revolution

Aljazeera.net Feb 4, 2011
11:36pm Amid cries for Mubarak’s immediate departure, demonstators – led by a guitarist off camera – break into song during the “Friday of Departure”. Al Jazeera cannot verify the authenticity of any Youtube videos.

Translation: Let’s make Mubarak hear our voices. We all, one hand, requested one thing, leave leave leave … Down Down Hosni Mubarak, Down Down Hosni Mubarak … The people want to dismantle the regime …. He is to go, we are not going … He is to go, we won’t leave … We all, one hand, ask one thing, leave leave.

Are We Witnessing the Start of a Global Revolution?

North Africa and the Global Political Awakening, Pt 1

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

It seems as if the world is entering the beginnings of a new revolutionary era: the era of the ‘Global Political Awakening’ perceived as a threat by globalists, writes Andrew Gavin Marshall.

“For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…