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NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­ial that was not in the orig­i­nal broad­cast. This pro­gram and descrip­tion are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with dis­cus­sion in suc­ceed­ing programs.

Rove: Clothes Make the Man

Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Youssef Nada

Intro­duc­tion: In the wake of the Tunisian upris­ing and atten­dant down­fall of pres­i­dent Ben Ali, pop­ulist demon­stra­tions and upris­ings have man­i­fested them­selves in many Arab coun­tries. This and future pro­grams exam­ine this phe­nom­e­non in con­junc­tion with the actions of the Wik­iLeaks milieu and the omi­nous pres­ence in Swe­den of for­mer Bush pres­i­den­tial adviser Karl Rove.

Trig­gered, in part, by Wik­iLeaks dis­clo­sures and sup­ple­mented by online attacks by the Anony­mous milieu, those demon­stra­tions and, in the case of Egypt, pop­u­lar upris­ings may well have been part of an oper­a­tion involv­ing resid­ual ele­ments of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion within the State Depart­ment, intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and polit­i­cal establishment.

Assange as a mem­ber of “The Family”?

As will be  set forth in FTR #735 and sub­se­quent pro­grams, we may be see­ing the Obama admin­is­tra­tion being used to real­ize the goals of the Bush administration/transnational cor­po­rate com­mu­nity, at the same time as the Democ­rats will be blamed for “los­ing the Mid­dle East.”

Fol­low­ing what some ana­lysts have termed “the Wik­iLeaks” rev­o­lu­tion in Tunisia, ana­lyst Robert Spencer noted the wide­spread approval of the Tunisian upris­ing by Jihadist/Muslim Brotherhood-linked ele­ments through­out the Mid­dle East. Hail­ing the Tunisian revolt as a “Jihad,” they see it as open­ing up the Mid­dle East­ern polit­i­cal land­scape to the ascen­sion of fun­da­men­tal­ist elements.

Although reas­sur­ing com­ments about Egypt­ian civil soci­ety are abun­dant in the media, avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood will be assum­ing a large role in the upcom­ing Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion appears to be posi­tion­ing itself in such a way as to work with a Brotherhood-inclusive gov­ern­ment in that country.

In Tunisia, the Islamist leader has returned to the coun­try, with opin­ion divided about whether his party can assume a theo­cratic pre­em­i­nence over the rest of Tunisian civil society.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: An Islamist sui­cide bomb attack in Swe­den, con­ve­niently timed to rein­force the polit­i­cal agenda of the Swe­den Democ­rats; review of the financ­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats by fas­cist financier Carl Lund­strom, who has  also under­writ­ten much of the Pirate Bay oper­a­tions, them­selves closely inter­twined with Wik­iLeaks; review of the pro-Islamist sen­ti­ments of GOP big­wigs Karl Rove and Grover Norquist; review of the pro-Muslim Broth­er­hood sen­ti­ment in the trans-national cor­po­rate community.

1. The bulk of the State Depart­ment cables being accessed in the news media have come from Barack Obama’s State Depart­ment and have proved embar­rass­ing to the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. It devel­ops that Karl Rove is hold­ing forth in Swe­den, act­ing as an adviser to the Swedish Prime Min­is­ter. Media spec­u­la­tion has cen­tered on the pos­si­bil­ity that Rove may be aid­ing in Assange’s pros­e­cu­tion. Is Rove actu­ally pre­sid­ing over Wik­iLeaks’ oper­a­tions in Swe­den? Is the Wik­iLeaks’ leak­ing of State Depart­ment cables part of a Rove-directed covert operation?

. . . For at least 10 years, Rove has been con­nected to Swedish Prime Min­is­ter Fredrik. More recently, Fredrik, who is known as “the Ronald Rea­gan of Europe,” has con­tracted Rove to help with his 2010 re-election campaign.

Rove was said to have fled to Swe­den dur­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer Alabama Demo­c­ra­tic Gov. Don Siegel­man, who believes his pros­e­cu­tion to have been polit­i­cally motivated.

“Clearly, it appears that [Rove], who claims to be of Swedish descent, feels a kin­ship to Swe­den . . . and he has taken advan­tage of it sev­eral times,” the source added.

Shuler’s source spec­u­lated that Rove could be try­ing to pro­tect the Bush legacy from doc­u­ments that Wik­iLeaks may have. “The very guy who has released the doc­u­ments that dam­age the Bushes the most is also the guy that the Bush’s num­ber one oper­a­tive can con­trol by being the Swedish prime minister’s brain and intel­li­gence and eco­nomic advisor.” . . .

“Rove’s Hand Seen in Julian Assange’s Pros­e­cu­tion, Sources Allege” by David Edwards; The Raw Story; 12/20/2010.

2a. The sub­ti­tle comes from the recent Tunisian coup, that was inspired by Wik­iLeaks’ release of a cable that was crit­i­cal of the regime of Ben Ali.

The man now pres­i­dent, Mohamed Ghan­nouchi was pro­filed in Jan­u­ary 2006 in a secret US cable in 2006, recently released by Wik­ileaks. “A tech­no­crat and econ­o­mist, Ghan­nouchi has served as prime min­is­ter since 1999. Is rumored to have told many he wishes to leave the gov­ern­ment but has not had the oppor­tu­nity. Length of his ser­vice as PM also sug­gests Ben Ali [pres­i­dent until res­ig­na­tion] does not view him as a threat and he is unlikely to be viewed as a qual­i­fied suc­ces­sor. How­ever, aver­age Tunisians gen­er­ally view him with respect and he is well-liked in com­par­i­son to other GOT and RCD [rul­ing party] offi­cials.” Then US ambas­sador William Hud­son said: “Given the fact Ben Ali has a dic­ta­to­r­ial hold, it is hard to believe he’ll vol­un­tar­ily step down.” Even so, “the mere fact an increas­ing num­ber of Tunisians are talk­ing about the end of the Ben Ali era is remarkable.”

Pub­li­ca­tion of Wik­iLeaks sourced pri­vate US com­ments on the cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism of a hated “scle­rotic” regime is said to have helped cre­ate Tunisia’s protest, and gen­er­ated talk by US com­men­ta­tors of a “Wik­ileaks revolution”.

“Tunisia: The Wik­iLeaks Con­nec­tion” by Ian Black; The Guardian; 1/15/2011.

2b. It turns out that the Anony­mous milieu (described in FTR #732) launched attacks against Tunisian gov­ern­ment sites.

Sites belong­ing to the Min­istry of Indus­try and the Tunisian Stock Exchange were amongst seven tar­geted by the Anony­mous group since Monday.

Other sites have been defaced for what the group calls “an out­ra­geous level of cen­sor­ship” in the country. . . .

“Anony­mous Activists Tar­get Tunisian Gov­ern­ment Sites”; BBC News; 1/4/2011.

3a. Ini­tial reports on the coup described a pos­si­ble role played by for­eign­ers with blond hair and blue eyes, some car­ry­ing Swedish and some car­ry­ing Ger­man passports.

. . . Police said they had caught two men with Swedish pass­ports after one of the shoot­ing inci­dents, and state tele­vi­sion quoted a secu­rity source as say­ing four peo­ple car­ry­ing Ger­man pass­ports had been detained in the same incident.

How­ever, the Swedish news agency TT said the men were part of a Swedish group vis­it­ing Tunisia to hunt wild boar who had been attacked by a mob. . . .

“Tunisia Forces Fight Pres­i­den­tial Guards” by Tarek Amara and Chris­t­ian Lowe; yahoo.com; 1/16/2011.

3b. Interestingly–and per­haps significantly–an ear­lier, [now] cached ver­sion of the story had a sig­nif­i­cant detail, which was scrubbed from later ver­sions of the story. In this con­text, it is impor­tant to  remem­ber that there are ongo­ing oper­a­tional links between Swedish and Ger­man neo-Nazis. In FTR #735, we exam­ine the pos­si­bil­ity that the coup will ulti­mately ben­e­fit the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Police said they had caught two men with Swedish pass­ports after one of the shoot­ing inci­dents, and state tele­vi­sion quoted a secu­rity source as say­ing four peo­ple car­ry­ing Ger­man pass­ports had been detained in the same incident.

It showed what it said were the detained for­eign­ers, with blond hair and fair com­plex­ions, being guarded by armed police, and said the arms they were car­ry­ing included auto­matic weapons. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

How­ever, the Swedish news agency TT said the men were part of a Swedish group vis­it­ing Tunisia to hunt wild boar who had been attacked by a mob. . . .

“Tunisia Forces Fight Pres­i­den­tial Guards” by Tarek Amara and Chris­t­ian Lowe; yahoo.com; 1/16/2011.

4a. Con­ser­v­a­tive ana­lyst Robert Spencer noted that the upsurge in demo­c­ra­tic sen­ti­ment fol­low­ing the Tunisian upris­ing might lead to the empow­er­ment of the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

When Tunisian Pres­i­dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was top­pled from power and fled to Saudi Ara­bia on Fri­day, The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Jen­nifer Rubin hailed this “Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion” as a “remark­able event: a pop­u­lar, sec­u­lar revolt in a Mus­lim coun­try” that “poses an oppor­tu­nity and a risk for the U.S.” Mona Elta­hawy, also writ­ing in the Post, explained that “a 29-day pop­u­lar upris­ing against unem­ploy­ment, police bru­tal­ity and the regime’s cor­rup­tion” brought down Ben Ali. But there are numer­ous indi­ca­tions that there were other sources of dis­sat­is­fac­tion in Tunisia with Ben Ali — includ­ing the rel­a­tively sec­u­lar char­ac­ter of the gov­ern­ment. Pro-Sharia Islamic suprema­cist forces are poised to take advantage.

The pop­u­lar per­cep­tion is that Ben Ali was brought down by the will of the peo­ple. The French gov­ern­ment declared that Tunisians, by top­pling Ben Ali, had “expressed their demo­c­ra­tic will.” Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel expressed her sup­port for “real democ­racy” in the North African nation, adding in a mes­sage to offi­cials of the new Tunisian gov­ern­ment: “I appeal to you to use this deep break in Tunisia’s his­tory as a new departure.”

A fac­tory worker in Carthage had sim­i­lar high hopes: “This is like the French Rev­o­lu­tion,” he said enthu­si­as­ti­cally. “It’s the end of an era. I’m hop­ing there is real change. We can’t con­tinue like this.” Polit­i­cal ana­lyst Ahmed Lashin declared: “The Arabs have been repressed for too long. They are eager for change and are on the verge of explosion.”

But what kind of change? What kind of Reign of Ter­ror might come in the wake of this new French Rev­o­lu­tion? Rached Ghan­nouchi, the London-based leader of the banned Tunisian pro-Sharia party, the Tunisian Renais­sance Party (Hizb al-Nahdah), was quick to dub the Tunisian upris­ing an “intifada” and to claim it as a vic­tory for Islam. “The Tunisian intifada,” he exulted, “has suc­ceeded in col­laps­ing the dictatorship.”

Pro-Sharia MPs in Kuwait applauded “the courage of the Tunisian peo­ple,” and Abdel­malek Der­ouk­dal, a leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, hailed the rev­o­lu­tion as a jihad and expressed sol­i­dar­ity with the Tunisians. In Gaza, the jihadist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad were both thrilled at events in Tunisia. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri hailed the vic­tory for democ­racy, and Gaza For­eign Min­is­ter Fathi Ham­mad empha­sized that “we are with the Tunisians in choos­ing their lead­ers, no mat­ter what sac­ri­fices it takes.”

Islamic Jihad praised the Tunisian peo­ple for lib­er­at­ing them­selves “through blood, sac­ri­fices and the expres­sion of free will,” adding omi­nously that the top­pling of Ben Ali was “a mes­sage to Arab and Islamic coun­tries to pay atten­tion to the aspi­ra­tions of their peo­ple that are reject­ing hege­mony and tyranny before it is too late.”

Islamic Jihad held a rally in Gaza City, fea­tur­ing hun­dreds of jihadists wav­ing Tunisian flags fes­tooned with the words “Revenge against tyranny.” Islamic Jihad spokesman Dawud She­hab sounded a drea­rily famil­iar note in accus­ing the Ben Ali regime of main­tain­ing “sus­pi­cious ties” with Israel.

Mean­while, a PLO fac­tion warned Tunisians about “waves of polit­i­cal Islam” that could fol­low Ben Ali’s top­pling, and urged them to “cut the road to polit­i­cal Islam and its mis­lead­ing slo­gans to avoid a repeat of the Gaza Strip expe­ri­ence in Tunisia” — refer­ring to the seizure of power in Gaza by the Islamic suprema­cists of Hamas.

The great unac­knowl­edged truth about Tunisia and the rest of the Islamic world is that Islamic jihadists and pro-Sharia forces, far from being the “tiny minor­ity of extrem­ists” of media myth, actu­ally enjoy broad pop­u­lar sup­port. Any gen­uine demo­c­ra­tic upris­ing is likely to install them in power. That’s why jihadists are hail­ing events in Tunisia, and why all lovers of free­dom should view those events with extreme reserve — for a Sharia gov­ern­ment in Tunisia is unlikely to be any kind of friend to the United States, and if the “Jas­mine Rev­o­lu­tion” does indeed spread and other Arab and Mus­lim dic­ta­tors are top­pled, an already hos­tile anti-American envi­ron­ment could become much, much worse.

The events in Tunisia also show yet again the cry­ing need for real­is­tic analy­sis in Wash­ing­ton of the jihad threat, rather than the fantasy-based analy­sis that pre­vails there now. But that is even less likely than the flow­er­ing of a plu­ral­is­tic, sec­u­lar democ­racy in Tunisia.

“A Jihad in Tunisia” by Robert Spencer; Human Events; 1/18/2011.

4b. The Tunisian Islamist leader has returned from exile in the wake of the WikiLeaks/Jasmine Revolution.

The leader of a banned Tunisian Islamist move­ment said on Sat­ur­day he would return in the next few days from exile in Lon­don after Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who ran the coun­try for 23 years, was forced out.
Tunisian author­i­ties out­lawed the Ennahda, or Renais­sance, move­ment in the early 1990s after accus­ing it of a vio­lent plot to over­throw sec­u­lar rule. But the move­ment said it is non-violent and the vic­tim of gov­ern­ment repres­sion.
“I am going to go back very soon,” Rached Ghan­nouchi told Reuters in an tele­phone inter­view. “I haven’t decided when yet, but pos­si­bly in the days to come.” . . .

. . . Tunisia has had a strong sec­u­lar tra­di­tion since its inde­pen­dence from France in 1956 and Islamist politi­cians have a much lower pro­file than in nearby coun­tries such as Alge­ria or Egypt.
There is some back­ing for mod­er­ate Islamist groups in Tunisia, but it is not clear how much because sup­port­ers hid their sym­pa­thies to avoid arrest. . . .

“Tunisia Islamist Leader to Return from Exile” [Reuters]; msnbc.com; 1/16/2011.

4c. Despite reas­sur­ing state­ments con­cern­ing Tunisia’s sec­u­lar tra­di­tion, many  observers feel that the Islamists will assume power there, eventually.

There was also a loom­ing wild card: the revival of the banned Islamist party. The gov­ern­ment said that for now it would con­tinue to block the return of the party’s exiled founder, while he repeated that his party espouses a mod­er­ate pluralism.

Many Tunisians said they were wait­ing — some hope­fully, some anx­iously — to see what kind of rebirth the once-flourishing but long-outlawed Islamist polit­i­cal party might have. In a radio inter­view, Prime Min­is­ter Ghan­nouchi said that the exiled leader, Rached Ghan­nouchi — no rela­tion — would be banned from the coun­try until the gov­ern­ment passed an amnesty law lift­ing a con­vic­tion he was given in absen­tia under the Ben Ali government.

The exiled leader, mean­while, made clear that his party envi­sioned a soci­ety far more lib­eral and open than Iran or Saudi Ara­bia. In an inter­view with The Finan­cial Times, Rached Ghan­nouchi said his party had signed a shared state­ment of prin­ci­ples with the other Tunisian oppo­si­tion groups that included free­dom of expres­sion, free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and women’s rights.

It remained unclear how much sup­port he com­mands in the coun­try. Some argued that Tunisian soci­ety today was too res­olutely sec­u­lar for the Islamists to find much sup­port, after two decades of efforts by Mr. Ben Ali’s vast secret police to elim­i­nate the party and crip­ple it.

“They have peo­ple who are 50 years old or 60 years old, but they don’t have any­body under 40 because of the repres­sion,” said Ahmed Bouazzi, an exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber of the largest oppo­si­tion group, the Pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­tic Party.

Oth­ers, how­ever, argued that the reli­gious con­vic­tions of Tunisians would assure the Islamic par­ties a strong base of sup­port, espe­cially away from the more cos­mopoli­tan coasts. “Look, they will be eas­ily the most pop­u­lar party,” said one ana­lyst who opposes the Islamists, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymity to avoid anger­ing fam­ily and friends. “No one can say any­thing against any­thing that is Islamic.” . . .

“More Offi­cials Quit in Tunisia Amid Protests” by David D. Kirk­patrick and Kareem Fahim; The New York Times; 1/19/2011.

5a. A Wik­iLeaks leak indi­cated that ele­ments of the State Depart­ment under George W. Bush were tak­ing note of sen­ti­ment for remov­ing Mubarak. This may have actu­ally led to a slow-motion desta­bi­liza­tion of Mubarak’s regime.

For the last three years, the US gov­ern­ment secretly pro­vided aid to the lead­ers behind this week’s social upris­ing in Egypt aimed to top­ple the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, accord­ing to a leaked diplo­matic cable.

One of the young Egypt­ian lead­ers who attended a sum­mit for activists in New York with the help of the US embassy in Cairo was detained when he returned to Egypt, the memo released by Wik­ileaks said.

The Daily Tele­graph reported Fri­day that it and the secrets out­let were both hid­ing the iden­tity of this young Egypt­ian leader. He was arrested in con­nec­tion with this week’s demonstrations.

The leaked doc­u­ment indi­cates that the US gov­ern­ment was pub­licly sup­port­ing Mubarak’s gov­ern­ment while pri­vately back­ing oppo­si­tion groups. . . .

“US Secretly Backed Egypt­ian Protest Lead­ers” by Nathan Diebenow; The Raw Story; 1/28/2011.

5b. More detail on the U.S. back­ing of the pro­test­ers, from the Tele­graph arti­cle cited in the above story:

The Amer­i­can Embassy in Cairo helped a young dis­si­dent attend a US-sponsored sum­mit for activists in New York, while work­ing to keep his iden­tity secret from Egypt­ian state police.

On his return to Cairo in Decem­ber 2008, the activist told US diplo­mats that an alliance of oppo­si­tion groups had drawn up a plan to over­throw Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak and install a demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment in 2011.

The secret doc­u­ment in full

He has already been arrested by Egypt­ian secu­rity in con­nec­tion with the demon­stra­tions and his iden­tity is being pro­tected by The Daily Tele­graph.

The cri­sis in Egypt fol­lows the top­pling of Tunisian pres­i­dent Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the coun­try after wide­spread protests forced him from office.  . . .

“Egypt Protests: America’s Secret Back­ing for Rebel Lead­ers Behind Upris­ing” By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swin­ford; Daily Tele­graph; 1/28/2011.

5c. The Anony­mous group has also under­taken to attack Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment sites.

The group Anony­mous, known for stag­ing web attacks on Pay­Pal and Mas­ter­Card in sup­port of Wik­ileaks, has called for vol­un­teers to stage a dis­trib­uted denial of ser­vice (DDoS) attack against web sites run by the Egypt­ian government.

The group’s Face­book page, called “Oper­a­tion Egypt” car­ries mes­sages about the Egypt­ian protests, and also a pic­ture of a recruit­ing poster with an IRC chan­nel as well as a “care pack­age” to down­load. The rest of the page has news and updates from Egypt­ian and for­eign sources. . . .

“Anony­mous Asks for DDOS Attacks on Key Egypt­ian Sites” by Jesse Emspak; Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times; 1/26/2011.

5d. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has indeed been posi­tion­ing itself to par­tic­i­pate in the polit­i­cal process.

. . . ElBa­radei, the for­mer head of the U.N. nuclear watch­dog agency, has gained a fol­low­ing among young sec­u­lar democ­racy activists with his grass­roots orga­niz­ing. But some demon­stra­tors dis­miss him as an expa­tri­ate long removed from Egypt’s problems.

“Many peo­ple feel he loves prizes and trav­el­ing abroad,” said Muham­mad Munir, 27. “He’s not really one of the people.”

The out­lawed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which wants to estab­lish an Islamist state in Egypt, has made some state­ments that it was will­ing to let ElBa­radei act as point man for the move­ment. But it also appeared to be mov­ing for a more promi­nent role after lying low when the protests first erupted.

On Sun­day evening, the pres­ence of overtly pious Mus­lims in the square was con­spic­u­ous, sug­gest­ing a sig­nif­i­cant Broth­er­hood rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Hun­dreds per­formed the sun­set prayers. Veiled women prayed sep­a­rately.

A senior Broth­er­hood leader, Essam el-Erian, told The Asso­ci­ated Press he was head­ing to Tahrir Square to meet with other oppo­si­tion lead­ers. El-Erian told an Egypt­ian TV sta­tion that the Broth­er­hood is ready to con­tact the army for a dia­logue, call­ing the mil­i­tary “the pro­tec­tor of the nation.“

Clin­ton sug­gested there were U.S. con­cerns over the pos­si­bil­ity of the Broth­er­hood seiz­ing direc­tion of the move­ment. She warned against a takeover resem­bling the one in Iran, with a “small group that doesn’t rep­re­sent the full diver­sity of Egypt­ian soci­ety” seiz­ing con­trol and impos­ing its ide­o­log­i­cal beliefs. . . .

. . . Egypt­ian secu­rity offi­cials said armed men fired at guards in overnight bat­tles that lasted hours at the four pris­ons — includ­ing one north­west of Cairo that held hun­dreds of mil­i­tants. The pris­on­ers escaped after start­ing fires and clash­ing with guards.

Those who fled included 34 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, whose lawyer, Abdel-Monaem Abdel-Maqsoud, told the AP they were among scores rounded up by author­i­ties ahead of Friday’s large demon­stra­tions. The escapees included at least seven senior mem­bers of the group.

State TV later reported that 2,000 escaped inmates were recaptured. . . .

“Egypt­ian Reform Leader Calls on Mubarak to Resign” by Hamza Hen­dawi and Mag­gie Michael [AP]; Seat­tle Times; 1/30/2011.

5e. The Broth­er­hood called for the dis­so­lu­tion of the Egypt­ian parliament.

Egypt’s largest oppo­si­tion move­ment demanded Wednes­day that Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubark dis­solve the newly elected par­lia­ment and hold new elec­tions, in a move that appeared to be an attempt to cap­i­tal­ize on the hopes for change sparked by Tunisia’s pop­u­lar uprising.

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood also called for an end to Egypt’s 30-year-old emer­gency law that bans polit­i­cal ral­lies, and demanded sweep­ing con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments to allow free and fair pres­i­den­tial elections.

The Brotherhood’s list of griev­ances is not new, but the demands appeared to be aimed at seiz­ing on the momen­tum trig­gered by the revolt in Tunisia that top­pled the country’s author­i­tar­ian pres­i­dent and gal­va­nized oppo­si­tion move­ments through­out the Arab world.

“The events in Tunisia are a cor­ner­stone for the rest of the peo­ple of the Arab and Islamic world,” the Broth­er­hood said in a state­ment posted on its web­site. “It is a mes­sage to all the despotic lead­ers and the cor­rupt regimes that they are not safe and they are liv­ing on the tip of a vol­cano of people’s anger and God’s wrath.” . . .

“Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: Dis­solve Par­lia­ment” [AP]; The Jerusalem Post; 1/19/2011.

5f. The Obama administration’s State Depart­ment is posi­tion­ing the U.S. to coop­er­ate with the Brotherhood.

As it braces for the like­li­hood of a new ruler in Egypt, the U.S. gov­ern­ment is rapidly reassess­ing its ten­u­ous rela­tion­ship with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an oppo­si­tion move­ment whose fun­da­men­tal­ist ide­ol­ogy has long been a source of dis­trust in Washington.

Although the group has played a sec­ondary role in the swelling protests that are threat­en­ing to top­ple Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak, U.S. offi­cials have acknowl­edged the polit­i­cal real­ity that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is poised to assume at least a share of power should Egypt hold free and fair elec­tions in the com­ing months.

On Mon­day, in what ana­lysts said was a clear ref­er­ence to the Broth­er­hood, the White House said a new gov­ern­ment in Egypt should “include a whole host of impor­tant non-secular actors.”

The move drew the skep­ti­cism of some U.S. offi­cials who have argued that the White House should embrace oppo­si­tion groups that are more likely to sup­port a demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment in Egypt, rather than one ded­i­cated to the estab­lish­ment of reli­gious law.

It also marked a change from pre­vi­ous days, when Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton and other offi­cials expressed con­cern that the upris­ing in Egypt could shift power to an Islamist gov­ern­ment much like the one in Iran, where ayatollah-led fac­tions elbowed aside other groups to seize con­trol of the coun­try in 1979.

Offi­cially, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has long shunned the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood because of doubts about its stated com­mit­ment to non-violence and demo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ples. For years, how­ever, U.S. offi­cials have engaged in back-channel talks with Egypt­ian mem­bers of the move­ment in recog­ni­tion of its sub­stan­tial pop­u­lar support.

The unof­fi­cial con­tacts have taken place spo­rad­i­cally since the 1990s but became more fre­quent after mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood were elected to the Egypt­ian Par­lia­ment in 2005. After­ward, U.S. diplo­mats and law­mak­ers held sev­eral meet­ings with Broth­er­hood lead­ers, includ­ing at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. . . .

“U.S. Reex­am­in­ing Its Rela­tion­ship with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Oppo­si­tion Group” by Craig Whit­lock; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 2/3/2011.

6. In a slight digres­sion from the topic of Wik­iLeaks and Karl Rove, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the fact that Sweden’s Swe­den Democ­rats (the Swedish equiv­a­lent of the British fas­cist group the BNP ben­e­fit­ted from an Islamist ter­ror attack in this pre­cise time period.

The bombs had barely exploded in Stockholm’s bustling shop­ping dis­trict before mem­bers of the far-right, Islam-bashing Swe­den Democ­rats rushed to their blogs and Twit­ter feeds. “Told you so,” said one. “Finally” tweeted another.

The gov­ern­ment and just about every edi­to­r­ial page has warned against blam­ing Sweden’s grow­ing Mus­lim minor­ity for the Dec. 11 sui­cide attack car­ried out by an Iraqi-born Swede, who appears to have been rad­i­cal­ized in Britain.

But the far-right fringe is doing just that in another chal­lenge to Sweden’s famed tol­er­ance, already frayed in recent months by the Swe­den Democ­rats’ entry into Par­lia­ment and a ser­ial gunman’s sniper attacks against peo­ple with dark skin.

Author­i­ties say there’s a risk that even more extreme groups, long mar­gin­al­ized in Swe­den, will use the oppor­tu­nity to advance their positions.

“The biggest worry isn’t that the Mus­lim com­mu­nity will become rad­i­cal­ized but what this means for the view of Mus­lims in Swe­den,” said Erik Aker­lund, police chief in Rinkeby, an immi­grant sub­urb of Stock­holm nick­named “Lit­tle Mogadishu” because of its large Somali community.

While inves­ti­gat­ing the attack, the Swedish secu­rity ser­vice is also keep­ing an eye on any poten­tial reac­tion from right-wing extrem­ists, said Anders Thorn­berg, the agency’s direc­tor of oper­a­tions. Those groups have kept a low pro­file since a series of attacks on immi­grants and left-wing activists in the 1980s and ‘90s.

The sui­cide bomber, Taimour Abdul­wa­hab, killed him­self and injured two peo­ple when some of the explo­sives he was wear­ing exploded among pan­icked Christ­mas shop­pers in down­town Stockholm. . . .

“Sui­cide Bomb­ing Stirs Sweden’s Far-Right” by Karl Rit­ter [AP]; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 12/16/2010.