The Phone Trap

by Anthony Forwood

 

Has this happened to you?

 

You start making friends with other TIs on facebook or some other website, and they want you to phone them.

 

Sometimes they'll say that they want to tell you something, but they don't feel safe talking about it online. So they want you to call them by phone so you can hear whatever it is they have to say.

 

I recall that when I first came on facebook, the first person I made friends with was a certain woman about my own age who approached me almost immediately and claimed to be a TI victimized by mind control. She posted a lot of different pictures of herself that were always very alluring and seductive. She was quite a looker. She always talked about how badly her perps were treating her, but never really said exactly what they were doing, or who they were. She said she wanted me to call her so she could tell me about her situation.

 

I don't have a phone, so I had to turn her down. I thought it was kind of strange that she would think that a phone was any more secure against perps than online messages, particularly when she was talking to someone she didn't know anything about, and so I concluded that she was into phone sex or something, and was trying to suggest that to me.

 

But then other people did the same thing. They said they had something important to tell me, and wanted me to call them. Again, I had to turn them down.

 

But I was suspicious. Something didn't seem right.

 

I mostly forgot about these incidents until it happened when I was investigating a few people. The first was a man named Jack Pruett, whose name I had previously seen mentioned in relation to the Montauk Projects (a mind-control program involving children), and then I had come across a newly published book by him at the library. The book (The Grandest Deception) was about the coming New World Order, and the author ended by asking interested readers to contact him if they were interested in joining together with him to devise a long-range plan to fight against it. It was all very intriguing, so I copied down his email address from the book and wrote to him, inquiring about this plan he had. I also asked him point-blank if he was the same Jack Pruett that worked on the Montauk Projects. Interestingly, he replied that he knew about that secret program, but denied being the same person.

 

He also asked me to call him by phone to discuss his plan. I refused, and mentioned that I didn't trust phones because of the ability to be hypnotized through them, and I didn't feel certain that he wasn't the Jack Pruett from Montauk. His responses to my emails had been coming immediately after I sent mine, and when I sent the one saying what I had about my suspicions, instead of getting a response, the computer terminal I was using suddenly went weird on me, and everything I was typing was showing up on the screen backwards, from right to left instead of left to right, the keys stopped working properly, and I couldn't do anything at all but log off. That ended our conversation, and it left me more suspicious than ever. I thought that it was an intimidation tactic and that I had been absolutely correct in pegging him as the same man that was involved in the secret mind-control programs at Montauk (I have since found further evidence to support this).

 

I also started thinking about all these requests to call these people by phone.

 

Just to explain a little background on this phone issue, I had previously researched the little-known story of another man named Jack Sarfatti (a quantum physicist who played a small historical part in consciousness research in the 1970s, whose name I had often come across in a number of books), who, when he was 13 years old back in 1953, had received a series of very strange phone calls from a metallic-sounding computerized voice that had left him in a dazed, hypnotic state after each one. It turns out that Sarfatti had been enrolled in a secret government program for gifted children at about this same time, and this program wasn't unlike the Montauk Projects in certain ways. The story of Sarfatti (described in his online book 'Destiny Matrix 2012', and in my own online book 'Shadow World') is actually what led me to begin all my research into mind-control technologies, and this phone hypnosis issue kept coming up in certain early cases of UFO witnesses and 'alien abductees' (which I've since come to conclude are aspects of early mind-control experiments). These witnesses and abductees were very often describing getting these strange phone calls from metallic-sounding computerized voices just like Sarfatti had received, so I've become quite certain that there's something to these calls and 'phone hypnosis' as part of a standard mind-control process, and still is.

 

To continue... After dealing with Jack Pruett and having him attempt to get me to call him, and the sudden strange activity on the computer when I told him my suspicions, certain other people that I've investigated for their extraordinary claims have also attempted to get me to talk to them by phone, including the self-proclaimed 'super-soldier', Duncan O'Finioan (interviewed on Jesse Ventura's TV show, 'Conspiracy Theory'), and the more familiar TI 'activist' Robert Duncan, who I've more recently been dealing with.

 

So, all these attempts by people who have something to do with gang-stalking or mind-control to talk to them by phone has got me very suspicious about phones being used as part of a hypnosis program to draw people into this sinister web, and I'm tending to believe that there really is something to this. Each of these people have acted very strange in certain ways, and I've decided to keep my distance from them for obvious reasons.

 

One of them, who is here on facebook, was having a very hard time with their gang-stalking not long ago, and then all of a sudden they were saying that everything was fixed and it had all ended, and they wanted me to call them to tell me something very important. I never did, of course. Now, in only a few months, they've gone from being without any money and forced to live on the street to apparently having all sorts of money and traveling around to other countries, living it up and not a problem in the world. Very strange!

 

There are a few other strange instances with others here on facebook as well, each of whom has also wanted me to call them by phone, but to describe these is just too complex to get into at this point, so I'll leave them for now.

 

I'm just curious if anyone else has had any TIs want them to call them by phone, and what might have come of it. I urge everyone to be very careful of this, since you may not even know what such a phone call might have resulted in, if you had made it. You may be being hypnotized and programmed or otherwise manipulated. You won't necessarily know, considering how effective hypnosis can be at covering its own tracks!

 

I must also warn about online videos, since they can be used in a similar manner. Although they don't offer the feedback necessary for in-depth hypnotic programming, they can still be used to put you in a light hypnotic state that will make you suggestive to commands and instructions, whether they be spoken normally or inserted subliminally. These might be used to influence you to take further steps that will lead you into more intense mind control by other means.

 

One final note of explanation... Since 1953 when Sarfatti received those strange calls (the very same year that MKULTRA started, by the way), hypnosis techniques could easily have been computer automated and packaged as a software program that would allow anyone to apply it on others. There are certain audio tones and electromagnetic frequencies that will put a person into a hypnotic state, and subliminal suggestions can then be given to test if the person is hypnotized, and through these means they can be completely and unknowingly mind-controlled. They can be made to believe anything, including alternative suggestions for whatever strange things occur to them or around them. These might include suggestions that will confuse them as to the technologies being used against them.

 

If you are curious about this, please stay up to date with my documents and articles posted here on my blog, as well as at http://www.scribd.com/aforwood, and the facebook group Anti-Gang-Stalking Network. You may also contact me at forwood@live.ca with any questions or concerns you might have.

Let's Get Real About All This Technology

by Anthony Forwood

Let’s play Devil’s Advocate assume that we are a group of fascists who have the technologies that many people claim to exist. This means we can put voices in people’s heads, read their thoughts, see what they’re seeing, hear what they’re hearing, insert thoughts without them realizing it, make them feel any way we want, act any way we want, etc… All the things that the most prominent promoters of these technologies among the TI community claim they can do. Let’s also assume that we can target anybody at all, since there is apparently no way to guard against these technologies.

Now, if we were going to target anybody at all, what would the objective be?

To piss around with nobodies just for a kick? That would be a complete waste of these very expensive and highly sophisticated technologies and the entertainment value for psychotic minds wouldn’t be worth it.

To police or punish certain individuals? Even if the technologies were used for this purpose, the cost for what these technologies would require in hardware per person makes this very unfeasible compared to other more practical methods. I calculated the computer storage requirements for a full representation of the human brain, and with 100 billion neurons in the human brain having an average firing rate of 1 millisecond per neuron, at one byte per neuron, that equates to 100 billion neurons x 1000 milliseconds = 100 trillion bytes, or 100,000 gigabytes per second of brain activity! So, to use such sophisticated technology for policing and punishing ordinary people is totally impractical. This technology would deserve something much more worthwhile to make it practical.

The best objective in using such highly advanced technology would be to apply it to the ultimate goal of any fascist group: the complete takeover and control of a population to turn it into a totalitarian dictatorship.

So, when seen in this light, who would we target first? Would it be ordinary people like you and me, or would it be more influential people like political, military, and corporate leaders?

If we were interested in bringing about a totalitarian state and we had this incredibly powerful and undetectable technology at our disposal, we’d target highly influential people first, who we could make to think and act in ways that are to our benefit. If we were seeking to turn a nation or the world into a slave population, as most of us believe is the ultimate goal of those developing and using mind-control technologies, then we would focus on accomplishing this in the best and quickest way possible, and not waste time toying with ordinary people who have little influence at all in fulfilling that objective and can offer us next to nothing as our unwitting slaves.

Our political, military, and corporate leaders would certainly be the first targets, and this would be quite easy if we could actually eavesdrop on everything they saw, heard, felt, thought, said, or did, and if we could insert other thoughts, feelings, sounds, and images, or cause them to otherwise act in ways that were more desirable to us, without them even knowing that we were. From all the extraordinary claims that many people are making about these technologies, based on their own supposed experiences as targets of them, the technologies are so sophisticated that these people can’t be sure of anything any more, and can apparently only guess when they are thinking and acting of their own free will at any given time. So, it would be just the same for these leaders, and there would be nothing that could be done about it.

Once our leaders were under control, the next targets would be the people directly under them, and the targeting would continue to expand downwards through the levels of power and authority until ALL levels were contained and controlled. Working from the top down would be the most efficient and least problematic method of applying these technologies to take over an entire population, and NOT bottom up, starting with ordinary people like you and me.

As this was going on, certain acts in business and politics would begin to quickly unfold that would move us towards the preferred state that those who possess the technologies want. There would be no reason to dally and wait for the right situations, since, as we know from 9/11, such situations can be created to advance certain draconian measures that move us in the direction that these fascists want. But with these technologies being at the level of sophistication that so many people claim they are, such measures could be taken to a far greater extent far more quickly and with far more desirable results than 9/11 produced.

If these technologies actually existed in the manner that many claim they do and for as long as they supposedly have (at least twenty years), then we would already be living in a totalitarian dictatorship, and there would no longer be any reason for those who possess them to worry about pretending otherwise. We would already see this quite clearly and it would be common knowledge that this was the state we were in. Society would have quickly become far different than it was before, and it would be nothing at all like it is now. The very first thing that would be done would be that all constitutional rights would be immediately and publicly revoked, something on the order of Martial Law would be declared, and police and military would be on the streets day and night in full combat readiness, prepared to squelch any public revolt. People would be being shot on site for protesting in any way whatsoever, just to get the message across. It would be quick and to the point.

Just to understand such a situation better, the idea of revolting against this sudden change needs to be considered. Any attempts to revolt would require the ability for people to first plan and organize, and this would require them to be able to communicate with each other in a secure and expedient fashion. But since all of our communications systems are already closely monitored by ECHELON (or could otherwise be taken down quite easily), there would be no way to plan and organize without being immediately discovered. Even to set up a new means of communication, even if it were simply a code system used over the existing communications network, or even messengers on horses, or whatever else, that system would have to already be in place and each party involved fully understanding how to use it, otherwise the same communication problem would still exist. And this neglects the possibility of sabotage by infiltrators.

How many people would it take to police the remaining population? With the technology at the level of advancement that so many people claim they are at, it wouldn’t require very many people at all. People would suddenly be quite expendable, and as the population came to realize that they weren’t of any great value to the new power structure beyond slave labor, people would begin to volunteer themselves to that new power structure, just to save their own lives. So the population would start policing itself rather quickly and voluntarily, and those who refused to conform or had any dissenting thoughts would be quickly weeded out and unceremoniously exterminated. This would serve those who possess the technology by eliminating the greatest opposition and preserving only those who would be most conforming to the new power structure, as quickly as possible. With the technology that many people claim exists, and to the degree that they say it does, the remainder of the population would be brought into the mind-control system without a fight.

So why isn’t this happening?

The answer is very clear. It’s because these technologies DO NOT EXIST to the level that many people claim they do! They can’t read your thoughts, see what you’re seeing, hear what you’re hearing, insert thoughts without you knowing, and they are not mapping the brainwave signatures of an entire population so as to control each of us through these means. It’s not only impractical as far as resources go, it’s also completely inefficient to target ordinary people.

These technologies, with full Remote Neural Monitoring as described here, were claimed to exist as long ago as 1992, in the case of John St. Clair Akwei. That was twenty years ago. Twenty years is a long time for things to progress, and yet, what have we seen that would indicate that these technologies actually exist? All we have to show for it is a lot of very ordinary and unremarkable people who claim to be targeted by them, but from my personal experience, none of these people can even be bothered to back their claims with any sort of intelligent consideration of their own experiences or of the claims they make, nor do they seem to have done any serious research, as anyone who was truly being targeted would want to do.

It’s been coming to my awareness more and more that many of these people who claim that they’re being targeted by such extraordinary technologies are the sort of people who tend to think that whatever might occur around them that they don’t like or are even the slightest bit suspicious of, that it must be due to being targeted. These people see any perceived negative situations as always being somebody else’s fault, and they see these situations as somebody else’s responsibility to deal with, while they claim complete incapacity to do so themselves.

At the very worst, these people have been conditioned to not think at all, but this is due to their own failures and laziness, preferring to spend the majority of their lives entertaining their minds with TV, fictional books and movies, and Internet gossip. The real extent of the mind-control that DOES exist has been effective in dumbing down a large section of the population so that they don’t know how to think, and require – even DEMAND – being babysat by those in power.

These technologies are obviously not even needed for these people. Just pose the idea that they exist, and they crumble in utter paranoia and submissiveness. These people are the REAL threat to society more than anything else, because as their numbers grow and they speak such nonsense more and more, the rest of us begin to look just as foolish as our more rational voices are drowned out, and this only makes it more apparent to those in power that we ALL need to be babysat and are undeserving of the rights and freedoms that we still have.

Freedom of speech comes with certain responsibilities. These people need to be responsible for what they claim.

Detecting Disinformation Agents

by Anthony Forwood

There are several types of disinformation agents, from high-profile ones who gain a lot of publicity and promote well-crafted stories, to low-level ones who serve to flood the Internet with less reputable claims. This document deals primarily with the former.

A disinformation agent will sometimes be someone who works directly for a larger entity (usually the government or major corporation) and uses a cover identity, but more often than not they will be someone who receives false information from someone who purports to be ‘in the know’, such as a government whistleblower. In other instances, they might just be someone who makes certain claims that tend to benefit those who keep dark secrets because it creates a sense of doubtfulness about those secrets, and confuses any chance of learning the truth. Whatever the case, they will be used because they’re willing to believe the information they’re given, and they’ll usually have or be provided with the right avenues and receive a greater than usual amount of promotion to ‘get the word out’. Often, they’ll be able to provide physical documents or other evidence that reveal certain truths to their story, but even these will not reveal the veracity of their entire story (nor are they necessarily legitimate). Other times, they’ll be able to provide verbal information that on later investigation by others will pan out, thus offering some legitimacy to what they claim. However, there will ALWAYS be unverifiable information that will be part of the foundation of their claims, and this information will more often than not be extraordinary in nature (e.g. beyond known science).

A disinformation agent will usually be given a scripted story to disseminate. This story will weave many truths with many falsehoods, so that these truths might be disregarded due to the inclusion of the falsehoods. Very often, these truths will simply be disregarded because they’re so far outside of our common understanding that they sound too outrageous to easily accept, and are hard – if not impossible – to prove. In such a case, the added falsehoods are meant to add to the seeming illegitimacy of the truths. This helps to turn away all but the most gullible people, who will be used to further increase the seeming absurdity of these planted falsehoods by the unscientific mindset these people generally have and the propensity to be carried away by imaginative ideas rather than to stay grounded in just those known truths that are provable.

A disinformation agent, particularly one who knows that they are disseminating false information, will rarely expand on their original information, and will be more interested in disseminating just the information they’ve been provided with. An unwitting disinformation agent, on the other hand, will usually be interested in investigating their own information further, and not be as compelled to stick to their original story over time as new revelations crop up.

It’s common for there to be a number of disinformation agents working simultaneously, either in secret collaboration or alone and unaware of each other’s true identity. One of their tactics is to engage in creating controversy between themselves, which only serves to disrupt the situation further and increase the uncertainty, while keeping their followers hoping something revealing might come of it.

Disinformation agents, whether witting or unwitting, will usually believe the story they tell, and this is a standard procedure in keeping secrets. These are cover stories that are fed to them with the purpose of compartmentalizing the knowledge and activities of the secret programs that they might actually be privy to. Virtually no one but those few people at the very top will ever know the full truth about the secret program.

The ultimate purpose of a disinformation agent is three-fold:

a) to create a sense of ridicule about anything that they include in their story so that even what is true will be not be believed by intelligent people,

b) to mislead those who are gullible enough to believe their story, and

c) to divert the efforts of those who seek to know the truth through further investigation.

Although disinformation agents are used to cover up the truth, their claims should not be written off completely, since they can still teach us something about the underlying truth that they’re meant to cover up.

To measure the level of truth within each of these individual stories, the unverifiable claims must be sorted out and then weighed against the verifiable claims. These two aspects of any person’s claims must be clearly understood before considering any further what they’re claiming.

To measure the claims that are being made by someone, it’s necessary to always pay attention to what they say and how they present it. For instance:

1) What percentage of their claims can be checked out, compared to what can’t?

2) What seems to be their motive for making their claims?

3) Do they act fairly and honestly during a discussion?

4) Do they act like they are beyond questioning?

5) Are they willing to provide further evidence of their claims when it’s asked for?

6) Do they claim to have special inside sources that gives them an edge on the facts?

7) Do they claim early on to only be interested in exposing what is going on at whatever cost, but then later blatantly withhold information?

8) Do they ever offer valid sources of information that would support some of what they say?

9) Do they admit when they’re only assuming something or speculating, or do they pass off everything they say as hard fact?

10) Do they often leave it for you to fill in what they aren’t saying, relying on you to use your imagination to make the connections between certain things?

11) How much trust do they expect you to put into what they say?

12) Do they attempt use emotional appeals to gain support for their claims, or do they stick to straight, unemotionally imbued information?

13) Do they convey a lot of fear by the way they describe things?

14) Do they spend an excessive amount of time going over less significant or more widely known information than they do going over the more significant aspects of their claims, or in discussing any new information they might claim to have?

14) Can they explain what they claim in a logical and scientific way that might offer the ability to test, or do they avoid those important aspects and rely instead on emotional appeal for persuasion?

15) Is the way they present themselves that of an honest, fair, and respectful person that can admit being wrong, or are there telltale quarks in their personality that might indicate otherwise?

16) Do they include terminology or phrases that are unusual, and can’t be found anywhere else where the same meaning applies? (I see this with almost every person I’ve come across that I’ve suspected of being a high-profile disinformation agent, and I have a suspicion that this terminology is purposely planted in order to track the spread of the disinformation from its original source, and to indicate what pieces of disinformation are being bought into and what aren’t. You can usually determine whether the phrases are legitimate or just made up by doing an Internet search for them, to see who else uses them.)

* * *

Here are some further pointers I found online (from ‘Disinformation Tactics of Shills & Online Trolls/Zombies’). These are common traits of low-level disinformation agents, although they usually fit high-profile ones as well:

1) Avoidance - They never actually discuss issues head-on or provide constructive input, generally avoiding citation of references or credentials. Rather, they merely imply this, that, and the other. Virtually everything about their presentation implies their authority and expert knowledge in the matter without any further justification for credibility.

2) Selectivity – They tend to pick and choose opponents carefully, either applying the hit-and-run approach against mere commentators supportive of opponents, or focusing heavier attacks on key opponents who are known to directly address issues. Should a commentator become argumentative with any success, the focus will shift to include the commentator as well.

3) Coincidental Participation – They tend to surface suddenly and somewhat coincidentally with a new controversial topic with no clear prior record of participation in general discussions in the particular public arena involved. They likewise tend to vanish once the topic is no longer of general concern. They were likely directed or elected to be there for a reason, and vanish with no reason.

4) Teamwork – They tend to operate in self-congratulatory and complementary packs or teams. Of course, this can happen naturally in any public forum, but there will likely be an ongoing pattern of frequent exchanges of this sort where professionals are involved. Sometimes one of the players will infiltrate the opponent camp to become a source for straw man or other tactics designed to dilute opponent presentation strength.

5) Anti-conspiratorial – They almost always have disdain for 'conspiracy theorists' and, usually, for those who in any way believe JFK was not killed by LHO. Ask yourself why, if they hold such disdain for conspiracy theorists, do they focus on defending a single topic discussed in a newsgroup focusing on conspiracies? One might think they would either be trying to make fools of everyone on every topic, or simply ignore the group they hold in such disdain. Or, one might more rightly conclude they have an ulterior motive for their actions in going out of their way to focus as they do.

6) Artificial Emotions – An odd kind of 'artificial' emotionalism and an unusually thick skin -- an ability to persevere and persist even in the face of overwhelming criticism and unacceptance. This likely stems from intelligence community training that, no matter how condemning the evidence, deny everything, and never become emotionally involved or reactive. The net result for a disinfo artist is that emotions can seem artificial. Most people, if responding in anger, for instance, will express their animosity throughout their rebuttal. But disinfo types usually have trouble maintaining the 'image' and are hot and cold with respect to pretended emotions and their usually more calm or unemotional communications style. It's just a job, and they often seem unable to 'act their role in character' as well in a communications medium as they might be able in a real face-to-face conversation/confrontation. You might have outright rage and indignation one moment, ho-hum the next, and more anger later -- an emotional yo-yo. With respect to being thick-skinned, no amount of criticism will deter them from doing their job, and they will generally continue their old disinfo patterns without any adjustments to criticisms of how obvious it is that they play that game -- where a more rational individual who truly cares what others think might seek to improve their communications style, substance, and so forth, or simply give up.

7) Inconsistent – There is also a tendency to make mistakes which betray their true self/motives. This may stem from not really knowing their topic, or it may be somewhat 'Freudian', so to speak, in that perhaps they really root for the side of truth deep within.

Often, they will simply cite contradictory information which neutralizes itself and the author. For instance, one such player claimed to be a Navy pilot, but blamed his poor communicating skills (spelling, grammar, incoherent style) on having only a grade-school education. I'm not aware of too many Navy pilots who don't have a college degree. Another claimed no knowledge of a particular topic/situation but later claimed first-hand knowledge of it.

8 ) Time Constant – There are three ways this can be seen to work, especially when the government or other empowered player is involved in a cover up operation:

a) ANY newsgroup posting by a targeted proponent for truth can result in an IMMEDIATE response. The government and other empowered players can afford to pay people to sit there and watch for an opportunity to do some damage. SINCE DISINFO IN A NEWSGROUP ONLY WORKS IF THE READER SEES IT - FAST RESPONSE IS CALLED FOR, or the visitor may be swayed towards truth.

b) When dealing in more direct ways with a disinformationalist, such as email, DELAY IS CALLED FOR - there will usually be a minimum of a 48-72 hour delay. This allows a sit-down team discussion on response strategy for best effect, and even enough time to 'get permission' or instruction from a formal chain of command.

c) In the newsgroup example a) above, it will often ALSO be seen that bigger guns are drawn and fired after the same 48-72 hours delay - the team approach in play. This is especially true when the targeted truth seeker or their comments are considered more important with respect to potential to reveal truth. Thus, a serious truth sayer will be attacked twice for the same sin.

* * *

Further Notes

The purpose of disinformation is to confuse the facts about an issue as much as possible and leave so many false leads and possibilities that discovery of the truth becomes next to impossible to surmise. By the time any significant facts that would point to the truth can ever be ascertained, the greater part of what remains to be known will still be much greater, so that uncovering a few facts will make little difference. The best that this might lead to is that some people might realize what is true and what is false, but trying to convince anyone who’s willing to believe the disinformation is futile, because the disinformation is designed to draw in the type of person who negates logical reasoning and allows their emotions and imaginations to lead them in making decisions instead. On the other hand, anyone else you might try to convince will want either irrefutable objective proof, or at the very least, the acknowledgement of a trusted authority whom the greater public will believe in.

Disinformation campaigns build on or borrow from each other to keep the most successful falsehoods alive and use these in whatever way they can be to create new disinformation campaigns. Therefore, we see that the UFO/ET issue, which started one of the biggest disinformation campaigns that continues today, has been built on and borrowed from to incorporate other controversial issues, including psychism, time-travel, ancient astronaut theories, spirituality, metaphysics, demonology, mind-control, the NWO, and secret government technologies. If they want to cover up something, they create a disinformation campaign that relies on the more popularly accepted falsehoods of previous campaigns, and the more outrageous they happen to be, the better.

The underlying purpose of disinformation is to create confusion and distraction and thereby bury the light of truth deep beneath a pile of falsehoods, so it only helps the disinformers to put out as many claims as possible by as many people as possible. But in order to keep the truth hidden over a long time, the disinformation campaigns must also continue in one form or other, and this usually means finding new people with new stories to act as disseminators as old ones are ‘put out to pasture’ and dissolve into obscurity. These new recruits will lead the older campaign to new focal points of misdirection, such as we’ve seen happen with the initial UFO/ET issue leading to all sorts of rather extraordinary claims about certain aspects of witness contacts, sightings, and abductions. The underlying reason for building on this earlier disinformation campaign is because it worked so well, and continues to work well, in covering up a far more plausible but equally sinister truth.