"Gang stalking" victims who believe they are targets of mind control

Last year, the Richmond, California city council passed a ban on space-based weapons that are secretly causing physical and psychological damage against people via "remote transmission." This legislation was driven by a community of people who have banded together to fight the "operatives" they believe are targeting them and ruining their lives with mind-control weapons. Today's New York Times reports on the phenomenon, called "gang stalking" and the people who claim to be "targeted individuals (T.I.s)."

Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is co-author of perhaps the only study of gang-stalking, said the community poses a danger that sets it apart from other groups promoting troubling ideas, such as anorexia or suicide. On those topics, the internet abounds with medical information and treatment options.

An internet search for "gang-stalking," however, turns up page after page of results that regard it as fact. "What's scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional," Dr. Sheridan said.

"They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber," she said.

In instructional tracts online, veteran T.I.s explain the ropes to rookies:

" Do not engage with the voices in your head.

" If your relatives tell you you're imagining things, they could be in on it.

" "Do not visit a psychiatrist...."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the (T.I.) community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

The movement's most prominent voices, however, tend to believe the surveillance is part of a mind-control field test done in preparation for global domination. The military establishment, the theory goes, never gave up on the ambitions of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.'s infamous program to control the mind in the 1950s and '60s.

"United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers" (NYT)