I did a Web chat yesterday on conspiracy theories. Topics included the September 11 attacks, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, the origin of AIDS, why Osama bin Laden is not wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the September 11 attacks, the Illuminati, and other subjects. Check it out.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has made the bizarre claim that his group was responsible for the April 3 shooting at a community center in Binghamton, New York, which killed 13 people. Mehsud said two of his men, one a Pakistani and one a “foreigner,” had carried out the attack. He claimed one of them had conducted a suicide attack, while the other fled.

Mehsud should have googled the Binghamton incident before making up this nonsense. He would have found that the killings were done by a sole gunman, an ethnic Chinese immigrant from Vietnam, Jiverly Wong, who then killed himself. Commenting on Mehsud’s charges, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said, “based on the evidence, we can firmly discount that claim.”

On the day of the murders, Wong mailed a letter to the “News 10 Now” television station in Syracuse, New York. The text reveals a man tormented by the belief that undercover police are following him everywhere, burning chemicals in his home, touching him in his sleep, spreading rumors about him, trying to cause him to have a car accident, and other paranoid thoughts.

“Cop bring about this shooting. Cop must responsible,” the letter says. There is no mention of the Pakistani Taliban. “And you have a nice day,” it concludes.

People who knew Wong told police they were “not surprised” by the murders. A co-worker said Wong had commented he wanted to kill the president.

A video of a public flogging of a girl, said to have occurred in Swat, Pakistan has caused a furor, while the facts surrounding the flogging are disputed.

The video shows two men holding down a female in a burkha as a bearded, black-turbaned man whips her 34 times.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told the Guardian newspaper, “she came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross.” He told Adnkronos International, “it was not officially done by the Taliban but some Taliban did that in their private capacity,” adding, “some rules were ignored during the implementation of flogging like, it should be done behind closed doors and not in public.”

The person being flogged is said to be 17 years old, reportedly from Kala Kalay in Swat. But North West Frontier Province (NWFP) spokesman Mian Iftikhar Hussain said a girl who has been identified as the one in the video told officials she had not been flogged. Hussain added, “the incident depicted in the videotape never took place in Swat.”

The human rights activist who released the video, Samar Minallah, disagreed. She said she had received the video from a human rights activist in Swat, who had received it from local Taliban who disapproved of the flogging. Minallah added the girl had a Swat accent.

The date of the flogging is also disputed. NWFP spokesman Hussain said it occurred on January 3. The head of the Peshawar Bar Association said it occurred on March 7. The person who said he filmed it, Shaukat, said it took place within the past two weeks.

Shaukat said the Taliban punished the girl after she refused a marriage proposal. He told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, “the man who proposed to marry her joined the ranks of the Taliban after the rejection and this was how he took his revenge.”

The BBC reported that “relatives of the man involved in the incident told the BBC he had gone to the house of the girl in the village of Kala Kalay to do repairs as an electrician, but militants accused him of having a relationship with her.”

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered a report on the incident within 15 days. Chief Justice Chaudhry said the “possibility cannot be ruled out that a fake TV material or a video had been prepared with an ulterior motive to malign [the] people of Swat.”

A recent World Public Opinion.org poll reports growing numbers of people in some of the largest Muslim countries claim they don’t know who was behind the September 11 attacks:

• In February 2007, 29% of Egyptians said they didn’t know; in August 2008, that figure had grown to 46%.
• In January 2007, 43% of Indonesians said they didn’t know; in August 2008, 54%
• In February 2007, 63% of Pakistanis said they didn’t know; in August 2008, 72%.

(See page 24-25 of the February 25 report “Public Opinion in the Islamic World on Terrorism, al Qaeda, and US Policies” for data on these and other countries.)

If views about the September 11 attacks were based on facts, the trend would go the other way as more information becomes available, but this isn’t happening in Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

The World Public Opinion.org report comments, “this suggests that, rather than the passage of time allowing greater distance and deliberation, an avoidance and denial mechanism may have grown more habitual.”

It adds:

[C]onflicted feelings about al Qaeda—support for its goals coupled with rejection of its attacks on civilians—may help explain … the widespread rejection of the idea that al Qaeda was behind the September 11 attacks. … What this suggests is that many Muslims may feel tension or cognitive dissonance between their support for al Qaeda’s goals and disapproval of attacks on civilians. To alleviate this tension they may then avoid or discount information that points to al Qaeda (even the videos in which al Qaeda leaders claim responsibility) and seek out information that casts doubts on al Qaeda’s culpability and offers alternative theories.

Jihad Unspun publisher Khadija Abdul Qaharr has reportedly been kidnapped in Pakistan.

Jihad Unspun is a pro-al Qaida, pro-Taliban website run by Qahaar, who was known as Beverly Giesbrecht before converting to Islam after the September 11 attacks.

I wrote about Jihad Unspun as a prime venue for disinformation several years ago.

Qahaar traveled to Pakistan in August, entering Mohmand province in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, in order to make a film on the Pakistani Taliban. She describes the difficulties of her trip and a near escape from kidnapping in an August 26 dispatch, “Qahaar: Live from Mohmand Agency.” She said that four different translators she had hired for the trip to the tribal areas quit, mostly out of fear.

On October 22, she published an “Urgent Request” for funds to leave the country.

Last week, Pakistani newspapers reported she had been kidnapped on November 11, along with a translator and personal assistant.

On Friday, Canadian foreign affairs spokesperson Lisa Monette confirmed that an unnamed Canadian citizen had been kidnapped in Pakistan, stating “Canadian officials are working with Pakistan for her early release.” She refused to comment further, saying disclosing more details could undermine efforts to free the woman and put her at greater risk.