'Russia Without Putin': Huge Protests Assemble In Moscow. By Ali Gharib on December 24, 2011 at 4:00 pm "‘Russia Without Putin’: Huge Protests Assemble In Moscow" For a month now, a nascent protest movement has roiled Russia as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seeks to reassert himself as president, the same position he gave up in 2008.
His successor and likely soon-to-be predecessor President Dmitri Medvedev responded to the protest movement by offering reforms on his way out the door after a planned March election. Thousands march in Casablanca for political change. Several thousand people took to the streets of Casablanca Sunday to press for deeper political reforms, saying recent changes did not go far enough. The protesters, mobilizing on a call from the so-called Feb. 20 pro-democracy movement, held their first demonstration without the Islamist Justice and Charity group.
The group withdrew from the Feb. 20 movement earlier this month, claiming it had been the object of “attacks” from youths within the movement. Up to 5,000 people demonstrated in Casablanca’s poor Hay Mohammadi suburb, an AFP journalist witnessed, while police said about 3,500 people in total protested countrywide. InterOccupy.org.