The New York Times exposes a farce enacted on the real stage of international politics: a perfectly performed con-trick by which an imposter extracted a mountain of moola from craven double-dealing presidents, diplomats, and generals involved in The Endless War of Waste and Futility.

The conman claimed to be Mullah Akhta Muhammad Mansour, “the second highest official in the Taliban movement” after the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He and “two other Taliban leaders” were flown to Kabul from Pakistan in a NATO plane, wearing serious beards, and were ceremoniously ushered into the presidential palace, where they proceeded to beard President Karzai in his den, so to speak. Then they were conducted to the city of Kandahar where “Mullah Mansour” and his two merry men hoodwinked government officials, NATO commanders, American diplomats and top-brass.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

Doubts about the man’s identity arose after the third session of negotiations. Only then –

A man who had known [the real] Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him.

Even so, they wistfully hoped that whoever he was would come again. They’d paid him to keep the fake peace talks going, and any old talks, with anyone at all, are better than none.

While the Afghan official said he still harbored hopes that the man would return for another round of talks, American and other Western officials said they had concluded that the man in question was not Mr. Mansour. Just how the Americans reached such a definitive conclusion — whether, for instance, they were able to positively establish his identity through fingerprints or some other means — is unknown.

As recently as last month, American and Afghan officials held high hopes for the talks. Senior American officials, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the talks indicated that Taliban leaders, whose rank-and-file fighters are under extraordinary pressure from the American-led offensive, were at least willing to discuss an end to the war. …

President Karzai himself – who wears, literally, the mantle of power – denied that any talks with any Taliban, real or pretend, were going on at all:

“Do not accept foreign media reports about meetings with Taliban leaders. Most of these reports are propaganda and lies,” he said.

The Taliban also deny that any talks took place, or were planned.

In a recent message to his followers, Mullah Omar denied that there were any talks unfolding at any level.

Now, since “Mullah Mansour” turns out to have been a scam artist, it seems they might be telling the truth.

Since the last round of discussions, which took place within the past few weeks, Afghan and American officials have been puzzling over who the man was.

So who was he?

[Some] say the man may have been a [real] Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case.  “They are playing games.”

Others suspect that the fake Taliban leader, whose identity is not known, may have been dispatched by the Pakistani intelligence service, known by its initials, the ISI. Elements within the ISI have long played a “double-game” in Afghanistan, reassuring United States officials that they are pursuing the Taliban while at the same time providing support for the insurgents.

The theory we like best is that he was “a humble shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta”, who simply enlisted the help of two cronies and carried out the sting operation for the most understandable of motives – to get a lot of money. Which they did.

Facebook is alleged to have helped the Palestinian Authority track down a free-thinking blogger living in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.

If this is true, Facebook has committed an indefensible and despicable betrayal of trust.

Walid Husayin is a 26-year old barber. Knowing the intolerance of Islam, he kept up the appearance of a conforming Muslim, and posted his real views anonymously on the Internet, thinking himself safe from detection.

AP reports the story, which is a good thing, but does so unsympathetically, calling his blogs “anti-religious rants”.

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is … illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence. …

Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was … secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

He faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

“He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a “primitive Bedouin.” He called Islam a “blind faith that grows and takes over people’s minds where there is irrationality and ignorance.”

If that wasn’t enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

Then comes a very interesting piece of information:

At its peak, Husayin’s Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

Wow! We wish we could find so many like-minded readers in the free West. But what a revelation – that there are some 70,000 Arabs who appreciate atheism and anti-Islam satire. A thirst for reason in the heart and home of Islam!

But hold on – not all his visitors liked what he said. Some hundreds among them objected – ranted, one might say.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called “Fight the blasphemer who said ‘I am God.'”

The outburst of anger reflects the feeling in the Muslim world that their faith is under mounting attack by the West.

Come, come AP – hundreds among 70,000 reflect “a feeling in the Muslim world”? Oh, we know that feeling exists, but there are larger manifestations of it than that. These figures suggest something quite different: that there is an undercurrent of rebellion against Islamic dogmatism. A tide that could become a flood? We wish.

AP does its best to defend the Palestinian Authoritarians:

Husayin is the first to be arrested in the West Bank for his religious views …

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region. It is dominated by secular elites and has frequently cracked down on hardline Muslims and activists connected to its conservative [read fundamentalist – JB] Islamic rival, Hamas.

Husayin’s high public profile and prickly style, however, left authorities no choice but to take action.

No choice, AP?

Husayin used a fake name on his English and Arabic-language blogs and Facebook pages. After his mother discovered articles on atheism on his computer, she canceled his Internet connection in hopes that he would change his mind.

But he persisted intrepidly:

Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe — a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner …  said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a cafe worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.

He has his brave defenders:

A small minority has questioned whether the government went too far.

Zainab Rashid, a liberal [female] Palestinian commentator, wrote in an online opinion piece that Husayin has made an important point: “that criticizing religious texts for their (intellectual) weakness can only be combatted by … oppression, prison and execution.”

Is Facebook unable to resist being misused by despots?

Such “stalking” on Facebook and other social media sites has become increasingly common in the Arab world. In Lebanon, four people were arrested over the summer and accused of slandering President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. …

In neighboring Syria, Facebook is blocked altogether. And in Egypt, a blogger was charged with atheism in 2007 after intelligence officials monitored his posts.

The effect over time of the products of freedom on the closed world of Islam must be for the good. Meanwhile, those – such as Facebook – who provide the means for the free dissemination of ideas, must resist all attempts to interfere with their purpose. If they collaborate with the forces of oppression they don’t merely tarnish their own reputation but subvert the invaluable service they exist to provide.

The US is now fighting al-Qaeda in Gaza.

Yesterday an al-Qaeda leader, Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, was killed in Gaza City by a missile fired from a US ship on the Mediterranean.

How did the US know where Namnam was at that moment?

He was driving or being driven in one of a consignment of new cars just allowed into the strip from Israel – and of course the Israelis, knowing that the chiefs of armed organizations, such as Namnam, would commandeer the new cars for themselves, had put tracking devices in them.

The targeted assassination was not carried out in order to help Israel defend itself against a terrorist operation, but because US forces were under threat.

Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda’s Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP – to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after last week’s air package bomb plot. …

The Palestinian cell members were planning to infiltrate northern Sinai from the Gaza strip over the coming weekend and strike American personnel serving with the Multinational Force and Observers Organization – MFO – which is under American command and is stationed at North Camp, El Gorah, 37 kilometers southeast of El-Arish.

In a coordinated operation, Al Qaeda fighters hiding up in the mountains of central Sinai were to have attacked US Marines and Air Force troops stationed at the South Camp in Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh.

The twin attacks were scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 7, or the following day. …

You can read more here.

One by one, the East End parishes and boroughs of London are becoming small de facto Islamic Republics. The latest  – not the only or the first as this report suggests – is Tower Hamlets. The police fear to act in them. Sharia law is enforced in them.

From the Telegraph:

Britain’s poorest borough …  has elected [Lutfer] Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”

Lutfer Rahman has links with “a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) – which believes, in its own words, in –

transforming the “very infrastructure of [European] society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.”

He won a democratic election, standing as an Independent, but –

We should be clear what this result was, and was not. It was a decisive victory. But it was not much of an endorsement by the borough’s people. Turnout, at 25.6%, was astonishingly low, with most voters (particularly the white majority, and they still are a majority) unaware of, indifferent to or turned off by the process. Lutfur’s 23,000-odd votes are only about 13 per cent of Tower Hamlets’ electorate.

It was not a victory for any sort of democracy.

Was it not? Okay, not a “victory” for the electorate, in the sense that most of the local population probably don’t want a jihadist in power, but if most of them couldn’t be bothered to vote then democracy hands the victory to those who do bother.

It was the execution of a careful and sophisticated plan by a small, well-financed and highly-organised cabal to seize control of a London borough. It deployed not just volunteers from the IFE and other bodies but also people paid to campaign by Lutfur’s business backers. Someone also paid for tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of copies of the most pernicious literature ever seen in a British election, in which [Lutfer Rahman’s Labour Party opponent] Mr [Helal] Abbas was falsely smeared as a wife-beater, a bankrupt, a racist and and an insulter of Islam.

Britain has dhimmified itself. It has capitulated to jihad. Most Britons, of all classes, either passively accept Islamization or actively promote it. Prince Charles loves it. The Archbishop of Canterbury worked to have sharia law “partially”  adopted, and succeeded.

Fear of offending Muslims holds the nation in thrall.

That is real Islamophobia. Unfortunately there is all too little of the alleged sort – criticism, derision, outspoken rejection, organized opposition – that Muslims whine about. A cowering Western nation is a triumph for the jihadists, proving the efficacy of their terrorism.

So this is what the nation of Nelson and Wellington has come to? No spirit to resist? No pride, no courage?

An underground site deep in the Zagrod mountains of western Iran, the Imam Ali Base where Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers are stored, was struck last Tuesday, October 12, by three explosions.

According to the official report, 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed and 14 were injured.

In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus – which is still at work.

Read more about it here at DebkaFile, whose own “military sources” report:

Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have … suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are at a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow up the missile launchers.

The number of casualties is believed to be greater than the figure given out by Tehran.

The soldiers’ funerals took place Thursday, Oct. 14, at the same time as Ahmadinejad declared in South Lebanon that Israel was destined to “disappear”.

So far, what with Stuxnet and the explosions, it’s Iran that’s looking sick.

Which high-tech country might Iran turn to for help in ridding itself of the Stuxnet computer worm that is incapacitating its industrial-military complex? (See our posts A virus that might save us all, September 25, 2010, and Sound the trumpet, September 29, 2010.)

Germany? Siemens provided the systems that are under attack, but apparently will not or cannot come to the rescue.

Russia? Russians were employed to install the Siemens systems. But not only have they been unable to destroy the worm, they are now being accused of planting it, and are fleeing Iran as fast as they can.

Some of them say they hope to return when the trouble has blown over – which rather strongly indicates they were not responsible for causing it.

Here’s the latest Stuxnet-chaos news:

Dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program.

Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus.

One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning at the beginning of last week. He refused to give his name because he and his colleagues intend to return to Iran if the trouble blows over and the detainees are quickly released after questioning.

Last Saturday, October 2, the Iranian Intelligence Minister, Heidar Moslehi, “announced that nuclear spies had been captured”, accused of sending “electronic worms through the internet”.  [Which is not how the attack was initiated according to more credible sources – JB.]

This was the first high-level Iranian admission that the Stuxnet virus had been planted by foreign elements to sabotage their entire nuclear program – and not just the Bushehr reactor. The comprehensive scale of the damage is attested to by the detention of Russian nuclear experts also at Natanz, Isfahan and Tehran. …

“Hundreds of Russian scientists, engineers and technicians were responsible for installing the Siemens control systems in Iran’s nuclear complex and other facilities which proved most vulnerable to the cyber attack”, and as they were “the only foreigners with access to these heavily guarded plants”, they are prime suspects.

If it was not the Russians who worked this most inventive and effective form of sabotage ever contrived (and we don’t believe it was), those who did can now enjoy, as an extra cause for celebration, the discomfiture of the Russians. The real saboteurs, we guess, are laughing out of sheer Schadenfreude. And while we’re well aware that Stuxnet could ultimately be a threat to ourselves – to friend as well as foe just as nuclear weapons are – for the present we’re reasonably happy that this humiliating blow has been struck at the insufferable Iranian regime.

In fact, we confess, we are laughing too, and hope our readers feel like joining in.

Cheerful news. The “One Nation” rally in Washington, D.C. yesterday was a disappointment to the left as it failed to attract anywhere near the number of Obama supporters the organizers had hoped for. (See the PajamasMedia assessment of numbers here.)

Among the few that were there, however, enthusiasm was high.

Here are some true believers doing their thing. The Red Army song does the Socialists proud.

Obama wants no Muslim to feel shunned and excluded, even if he’s a known terrorist, and even if the place he’s excluded from is a top-secret government center.

What about Muslim terrorists? Must they to be let in to such places, lest they feel cruelly discriminated against?

Oh, yes! For one thing, you see, no Muslims are terrorists, and no terrorists are Muslims. There is only a “tiny minority” of “extremists” who carry out terrorism in the name of Islam and in no way represent the Religion of Peace. Indeed, the word “Muslim” should never be uttered in the same sentence as the word “terrorist”.  Such is the official and only-permissible opinion of the Obama administration.

Furthermore, in those official eyes, even Muslims  who have been proved to be dedicated supporters of active terrorist organizations are really only the maligned victims of prejudice, and they more than any need to be reassured that they are trusted and respected. How may this be done? Why, invite them into the National Counterterrorism Center, show them around, let them ask questions and give them frank, full, and honest answers. They’re Muslims, not terrorists, for godssake!

Our view is obstinately different. We say those who finance, support, applaud, and defend terrorism, are co-perpetrators of terrorism. We know that without their fans and funders, the terrorists could not operate. We have also observed that almost all acts of terrorism carried out anywhere in the world in the 21st. century have been perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam (today’s tally, 16115 since 9/11). But there you – our terrorist is an Obama administration’s peace-lover.

One such known co-perpetrator, who was invited to look around the country’s counter-terrorism facilities and acquire sensitive information, is an agent of Hamas named Kifah Mustapha.

What a gift to the sworn enemies of the United States! He and they must be laughing fit to burst!

Patrick Poole reports at Big Peace:

A known Hamas operative and unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history – Kifah Mustapha – was recently escorted into the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center and other secure government facilities, including the FBI’s training center at Quantico, during a six-week “Citizen’s Academy” hosted by the FBI as part of its “outreach” to the Muslim Community. The group was accompanied by reporter Ben Bradley of WLS-Chicago (ABC), who filed a report on the trip …

“Sheik Kifah Mustapha, who runs the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, asked some of the most pointed questions during the six week FBI Citizens’ Academy and trip to Washington. He pushed agents to fully explain everything from the bureau’s use of deadly force policy to racial and ethnic profiling. ‘I saw a very interesting side of what the FBI does and I wanted to know more,’ Sheik Mustapha explained after returning from D.C. …”

Yes, I bet he wanted to know everything about the FBI’s policies.

Curiously, Bradley’s report on the Citizen’s Academy fails to make note of Mustapha’s extensive terrorist ties and support for Hamas, including his former employment with the Holy Land Foundation, which was listed as a specially designated terrorist group by the U.S. government in December 2001, and whose executives were convicted of terrorism support in 2008 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Mustapha was personally named unindicted co-conspirator (#31) in the case and employment records submitted by federal prosecutors during the trial showed that he received more than $154,000 for his work for the Holy Land Foundation between 1996 and 2000. … In a deposition he gave in a civil trial concerned with the murder of a Chicago teenager killed by Hamas while waiting for a bus in Israel, Mustapha admitted that he was the registered agent for the Holy Land Foundation in Illinois, and also to his involvement with other Hamas front groups, including the Islamic Association for Palestine. He was later hired as an imam by the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, which the Chicago Tribune reported in 2004 has long been a hotbed of Hamas support. …

Why should terrorist operatives have to covertly case potential targets when the FBI will happily escort them and take them into areas they would never be able to reach on their own? Who’s next on the FBI’s “outreach” calendar, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow GITMO detainees?

Sure, why not? After they’ve had a civil trial and been acquitted, they might be given jobs in the intelligence services. Their expertise would be of inestimable value to the state.

No terrorist left behind.

Why has Israel not bombed Iranian nuclear facilities? Perhaps because it doesn’t need to. Perhaps it has found another way to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability.

Instead of risking lives and aircraft and weaponry, it seems that Israelis may be crippling Iran’s nuclear industry by using their best and most reliable resource – their brains.

One thing is certain: cyber war is being waged on Iran. Whether or not it was the Israelis who devised it, an extremely destructive computer virus called STUXNET has incapacitated some 30,000 Iranian industrial computers including at least 3,000 centrifuges.

The rumor is that Israel is hitting Iran with it, in partnership with the US.

Neither Israeli nor US confirmation has been forthcoming. But neither has Israeli or US denial.

Peripheral information helps to make the rumor plausible. Israel has been able to acquire up-to-date knowledge of Iran’s nuclear secrets for some time now. Human spies were suspected. But it seems that no one had to penetrate the secret facilities. Israel, the story goes, has Iran’s most vital computers in its hands.

Here’s part of the latest report on this interesting and heartening development:

[Mahmoud] Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran’s industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that 30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled by the malicious Stuxnet virus. …

[According to] Washington and defense sources … a clandestine cyber war is being fought against Iran by the United States with elite cyber war units established by Israel. Stuxnet is believed to be the most destructive virus ever devised for attacking major industrial complexes, reactors and infrastructure. The experts say it is beyond the capabilities of private or individual hackers and could have been produced by a high-tech state like America or Israel, or its military cyber specialists.

The Iranian official said Stuxnet had been designed to strike the industrial control systems in Iran manufactured by the German Siemens and transfer classified data abroad.

The head of the Pentagon’s cyber war department, Vice Adm. Bernard McCullough said Thursday, Sept. 22, that Stuxnet had capabilities never seen before. In a briefing to the Armed Forces Committee of US Congress, he testified that it was regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated piece of Malware to date.

According to Alyaee, the virus began attacking Iranian industrial systems two months ago. He had no doubt that Iran was the victim of a cyber attack which its anti-terror computer experts had so far failed to fight. Stuxnet is powerful enough to change an entire environment, he said without elaborating. Not only has it taken control of automatic industrial systems, but has raided them for classified information and transferred the data abroad.

This admission by an Iranian official explains “how the United States and Israel intelligence agencies have been able to keep pace step by step [with] progress made in Iran’s nuclear program. Until now, Tehran attributed the leaks to Western spies using Iranian double agents.”

But if  it is true that the US is waging the cyber war, and what is more waging it in alliance with Israel, it can only be with the approval and permission of Obama – right?

Obama supporting Israel in a war against Iran? Admittedly a war without bloodshed, but still a war. This would be so plainly counter to Obama’s open-hand policy towards Iran that we remain skeptical – not of the fact that Iran is being severely hampered on its road to becoming a nuclear-armed power, nor that Israel is attacking Iran with a new kind of weapon, but that Obama wants it to happen. Sooner or later we’ll know more.

Meanwhile, all-hail great Stuxnet! – as long as the toxic terror remains in friendly hands.

The pointless Israeli-Palestinian talks proceed. Or maybe not.

Tuesday the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, stormed out of a meeting with Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon. The cause of his fury? He proposed that there should be a Palestinian state in which only Arabs and no Jews would be allowed to live, and a second Palestinian state  – where the State of Israel with its mixed population of Jews and Arabs now exists – in which Jews would be allowed to go on living. At least some Jews. For a time. Perhaps.

Ayalon rejected the proposal.

So if the talks that were started without any remote chance of bringing any result whatsoever break down despite all Obama’s pressure to keep them up, it will be Israel’s fault.

It’s always Israel’s fault when the dear old talks break down.

Bill Clinton now blames Natan Sharansky for the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian talks held under his auspices at Camp David in 2000, when Prime Minister Barak made an extremely generous offer to Arafat, which Arafat turned down.

[Foreign Policy magazine] claimed that Clinton talked about a conversation that he had with Natan Sharansky, who, according to Clinton, was the only Israeli minister to reject the comprehensive peace agreement Clinton proposed at the Camp David Summit in 2000.

“I said, ‘Natan, what is the deal [about not supporting the peace deal],'” Clinton was quoted as saying. “He said, ‘I can’t vote for this, I’m Russian… I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.'”

Sharansky … denied Wednesday that the alleged conversation ever took place. “A report of President Clinton’s comments has been brought to my attention which I hope is inaccurate.”

“However, as to the basic facts, I was never at Camp David and never had the opportunity to discuss the negotiations there with President Clinton,” said Sharansky.

I suppose it depends on what “said” means. If Sharansky “said” no in Clinton’s imagination, does that mean Clinton is lying?

Good grief! Would Bill Clinton lie?