As pointed out by Mr Abidi, the nation’s numerous conspiracy theorists got to work quickly once news of Dr Farooq’s death was reported.

Instead of mourning the loss of a political worker and taking the society for correction they got busy working hard on table-stories by inciting more hatred by writing personal and biased opinions and calling them ’sources’ which have no way to be verified or proved.

After this, there is a follow up of SMS campaigns by the same maniacs sending links to log on or full texts declaring the deceased’s own party as his killer. There are always some who would like to learn about negative before the positive and blindly believe in it, being a huge society of illiterates but aware of politics it works very well with them on a massive level. News about MQM is more interestingly read in up country than in Karachi itself, the difference is that in the 90’s it was national media, and now its blog sites and websites only. If these propaganda sites were so true, then our mainstream free media would have been the first to discuss about these conspiracies publically and put these questions to the party.

But the murder of Dr Farooq is not the only story that has become the target of conspiracy theories. Earlier this week, The Nation published an opinion column that claims that the US military has developed a machine to create global warming and control the weather that is being used by a secret group called “New World Order” to dominate the world.

The article, by A. R. Jerral, is essentially a paranoid rant that combines old conspiracy theories of secretive groups trying to control the world with a new spin of science fiction to add a spicy twist. This is a story that has been circulated in emails and websites of paranoid and discredited conspiracy theories, but that it has now been published in a newspaper should give all serious people concern for how low the standards of journalism have fallen.

Some of these conspiracy theories, however, are not simply paranoid rants but are actually political attacks meant to target specific people for personal or political vendettas.

Discredited conspiracy theorist Ahmed Quraishi has seemed to have a long and strange obsession with the Ambassador the the USA, Husain Haqqani. A few weeks ago on his Facebook page he accused Mr Haqqani of arranging luxurious accommodations for the Foreign Minister’s visit to New York City, only Mr Ahmed Quraishi was then shamed when it was reported that actually Husain Haqqani was in Pakistan for his mother’s funeral.

But shame does not appear to bother Quraishi, who is at it again accusing the Ambassador of interfering in the Dr Aafia case. According to an article this week, Ahmed quotes extensively an article by Yvonne Ridley, who he calls “investigative journalist”. Actually, Miss Ridley is a propagandist who does not do very well with facts.

For example, according to Miss Ridley’s article, Husain Haqqani holds US citizenship. This is an old accusation that Ahmed Quraishi has tried to peddle before only to be disproven as it was revealed that a diplomat cannot hold another citizenship. Mr Haqqani has Pakistan citizenship only, though he has worked in the US like thousands of other Pakistanis.

Yvonne Ridley and Ahmed Quraishi accuse the Ambassador of secretly telling journalists that Dr Aafia was “a bad woman”, though they naturally provide no evidence for who was told this or where it was published.

But the Ahmed Quraishi and Yvonne Ridley conspiracy falls apart once they claim that their case is proved because an American politician Cynthia McKinney was refused a visa to visit Pakistan to lobby the government on Dr Aafia’s case.

This simply makes no sense. Dr Aafia is not held by the Pakistani government but has been held by the American government. Why would an American politician fly to Islamabad to lobby the government on a case that is actually taking place in her own country? It simply makes no sense.

But even more ridiculous is the claim that Husain Haqqani has been working against Dr Aafia’s case. Actually, news reports have been filled with public statements by the Ambassador urging the American government to turn over Dr Aafia to Pakistani authorities and let her return home.

Actually, the facts are that the government including its representatives in the Embassy at Washington have been doing extensive work in support of Dr Aafia which has been widely reported.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has also taken a keen interest in the Afia Siddiqui case given its political importance at home, sources say. He had two meetings with the Bush administration’s Attorney General and has made President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder at least four times to discuss the case. The US government has been unusually considerate in allowing these meetings, American officials point out, as it is not usually US policy to let foreign ambassadors get involved in cases pending before its courts.

Senior diplomats from the Pakistani embassy in Washington have been following Aafia Siddiquis case since the beginning. On the insistence of her brother Mohammed Ali Siddiqui, an expensive team of lawyers was hired to defend her in court with special approval from Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. It was unusual for the Pakistan government to pay top human rights lawyers, who had successfully defended other Al-Qaeda linked prisoners in the past, to defend a single Pakistani citizen who was not arrested while in service.

Whether it is the murder of a political worker like Dr Imran Farooq, science experiments by American universities, or complicated legal cases like Dr Aafia, there are facts and there are fantasies. Proper journalists investigate the facts and report them so that the citizenry may be well informed and make good decisions. Unfortunately, we are seeing an enormous amount of misinformation and wild conspiracy theories being published in all forms of media. These conspiracy theories distort our perceptions, cloud our minds, distract us from important issues and put us off the path of progress.

When you think about it clearly, Syed Abidi’s conclusion is correct.

Information that is verifiable is what we should believe in and develop on. It is our responsibility to be mature and not fall for such theorists, which blocks your positive imagination and creativity. They are getting paid to do it, but you are made a victim for free.

Let us be victims of these conspiracy theorists no longer.

Her column, “Our collective shame and some troubling questions,” actually begins quite well. She sees the slaughter of innocent Ahmadis in the middle of prayer as a wicked act that speaks to the degredation of our society acted out by religious imposters.

Islam which teaches brotherhood and tolerance has all but disappeared in spirit and essence from within us and, instead, we are filled with hatred, intolerance and a desire to simply kill all those who may differ from us. As for the Pakistani nation, how far we have sunk from the ideal of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah should be shamefully visible to every sane Pakistani.

In fact, Shireen Mazari goes on to call on us to stop looking to blame others for our own problems, and to take responsibility for the extremist ideologies that have infected our society.

 There can be no shying away from this horrendous act in Lahore and it is time that the Pakistani nation took stock of itself and its leadership and made a determined effort to restore the spirit of tolerance and accommodation that is the essence of Islam and that must be the essence of our nationhood since Pakistan comprises a rich diversity of people – all of whom are equally dedicated and loyal to this land.

This is all quite good! I must admit, when I read it my heart began to lighten. Shireen Mazari is an excellent writer, though her hatred of America has blinded her too often to the realities under her own roof. It has led her to concoct the most ridiculous conspiriacy theories, so poorly constructed a school child could disprove them quite easily. She has aligned herself with the Ahmed Quraishi and Zaid Hamid school that teaches that facts and reason are to be avoided, leaving her isolated from former colleagues who lament her fall into paranoia. So for Shireen Mazari to finally write a column like this was a breakthrough to be applauded.

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until I reached the end of the column that that familiar voice began to seep through the page. There had to be some mention of the Americans. There had to be some conspiracy. Nothing could simply be a horrible, wicked act perpetrated by sick minds under the influence of religious imposters. And there it was.

There are also some troubling questions about the Lahore targeting of the two Ahmadi places of worship:

First: The timing comes at the peak of US pressure for the Pakistan Army to begin its operations in North Waziristan Agency. Mere coincidence or not, every time the US has wanted the Pakistan military to commence an operation in FATA, there have been such acts of terror prior to the commencement.

Second: The incidents happened when Pakistanis were celebrating Youm-i-Takbeer, the anniversary of our going overtly nuclear – something that still is not acceptable to the West and Israel.

Third: What is equally relevant is that our Government and our national security managers need to seriously look into how friendly spy agencies from West Asia and the US-UK were allowed to establish direct links to Kashmiri freedom groups based in Pakistan, especially central and south Punjab, during the Bosnia war.

It’s sad, really, to so clearly see the sickness that is a paranoid obsession. Shireen Mazari is not a stupid person, by any means. She knows that the Americans had nothing to do with this. She knows that these murders had nothing to do with nuclear assets. Sometimes an apple is only an apple. But her mind is like a warped glass that reflects a distorted view of the world. It is as if she cannot help herself, no matter how hard she tries.

Shireen Mazari begins with a noble call to shed the hatred and intolerance that can cause some terrible event like we suffered this week. But then she ends overcome by her own hatred and intolerance. Someday, perhaps she will be cured of this sickness and finally know some peace.

Thanks to a tip from a dear reader we have been informed that there is a new article coming out in the American magazine The New Republic about Nation editor Shireen Mazari in which the author calls her “The Ann Coulter of Pakistan” and speaks at length about her paranoid delusions and yellow journalism. The article is written by Mr. Nicholas Schmidle, an international journalist who has written a book about the two years that he lived in Pakistan as a journalism fellow and now lives in America and is a fellow at the think tank New America Foundation.

Our dear reader included a link to a blog post by Michael Crowley, a journalist for The New Republic, that discusses Mr. Schmidle’s coming article and the state of media in Pakistan generally:

At the heart of this problem is the anti-Americanism and conspiracy-mongering of Pakistan’s media, which I saw first-hand when I read through a large stack of local papers at the embassy. So I was glad to find on my return to Washington this week that the latest print issue of TNR features a really top-notch article by Nicholas Schmindle about Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani journalist who’s been dubbed “the Anne Coulter of Pakistan,” and who has been responsible for countless stories like the one that recently speculated about whether a Wall Street Journal reporter in the country is actually a CIA spy, potentially endangering his life. When I was Islamabad, one newspaper (I believe it was Mazari’s The Nation, which is generally the worst offender) ran a story which included the wacko claim, attributed to Seymour Hersh, that a “death squad” backed by Dick Cheney was behind the 2007 assassination of Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as well as the 2005 murder of Lebanese prime minister Raffik Hariri. (It seems this nutty rumor has been floating around since at least May, even though Hersh himself has publicly denied saying such a thing) In Islamabad, American officials told us about another story that identified–complete with photograph–a building in the city purportedly housing workers for the security contractor Xe (nee Blackwater). In fact, the building was home to Western aid workers–at least until they fled to safer environs that same day. 

Stories like this fan the rising flames of anti-Americanism in Islamabad. A reporter traveling with me had hoped to meet a colleague at a coffee shop in central Islamabad, until embassy workers warned him that the shop was known to be under surveillance by people who might like to kidnap a Westerner. One embassy official told me that he enjoys dining out at Islamabad’s restaurants–but when pressed admitted that he never lingers for coffee and dessert. “You try to be out within an hour,” he said. (The same goes for activities like grocery shopping.) The Pakistani media surely also contributes to the growing harassment of U.S. embassy officials, who are finding their visas inexplicably denied and their vehicles pointlessly searched at security checkpoints around the city.  So it’s understandable that the vibe within the embassy compound–a deceptively bucolic place of walking paths and tennis courts that seems more college campus than  embattled diplomatic outpost–feels so tense. After all, even behind the barricades and razor wire safety is not guaranteed. We all remember the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. But less remembered is the way an angry mob overran and torched our embassy in Islamabad that same year. One U.S. Marine was killed, and it was a miracle that dozens more American lives weren’t lost. (As Steve Coll recounts in his masterful book Ghost Wars, the Pakistani government barely lifted a finger to help.)

The cause of that deadly riot? False Pakistani media reports that the U.S. had orchestrated an attack on Mecca. Lies have consequences–sometimes deadly ones.

I will be waiting with great anticipation to see this article, as I am certain, is Shireen Mazari herself. A quick search of The Nation‘s website only found one mention of Mr. Schmidle in which he is referred to as “an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the non-partisan New America Foundation.” I’m sure Mazari will have a new title for him once the article is released.

In the meantime, it is quite disappointing that Pakistan’s media is being discussed with such negative tones in the rest of the world. We have Shireen Mazari and her band of paranoid conspiracy theorists and media Talibans to thank for this. As the author Mr. Crowley correctly says, “Lies have consequences.” When Pakistan’s media talking heads spread lies and gossip instead of proper reporting, it not only sets our country on a wrong path, it makes us look foolish to the rest of the world.

If any of our dear readers have a copy of the article by Mr. Schmidle or any other tips, please send an email to us at pakistanmediawatch@gmail.com and we will be most appreciative of your assistance.