Hassan II of Morocco Hassan dissolved Parliament and ruled directly, although he did not abolish the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy. When elections were eventually held, they were mostly rigged in favour of loyal parties. This caused severe discontent among the opposition, and protest demonstrations and riots challenged the King's rule. A US report observed that "Hassan appears obsessed with the preservation of his power rather than with its application toward the resolution of Morocco's multiplying domestic problems." In the early 1970s, King Hassan survived two assassination attempts. The first, in 1971, was a coup d'état attempt allegedly supported by Libya, organized by General Mohamed
Ascend Communications the Nasdaq symbol "ASND". Ascend Communications Ascend Communications was an Alameda, California-based manufacturer of communications equipment that was later purchased by Lucent Technologies in 1999. Ascend Communications was founded in 1988 and taken public in 1994. Initial investors included Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers (KPCB); Greylock Partners; and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Ascend Communications designed and manufactured equipment for high density dialup installations, most notably the "MAX TNT", which allowed for a DS3 of dialup lines to be terminated in a few rack units. Customers such as AOL, Earthlink, and UUnet purchased over two million dialup ports worth of "MAX