Everyone who's ever frequented the cyber saloon that is the Wild West Web is all too familiar with the concept of the 'catfish', that being, a person pretending to be someone they're not online.

But did you know where the term originally came from?

In the eponymous film, young filmmaker, Nev Schulman, is hoodwinked into believing he's in an online romance with a beautiful young woman, Megan, whilst also becoming friendly with her various family members and friends... only to discover that it's actually the lonely middle-aged Angela who was responsible for the whole elaborate charade, having constructed an entire cast of characters using Facebook and mobile phones, and then using them to successfully dupe Nev.

When a shocked and reeling Nev discovers the truth, Angela's husband, Vince, tries to help him understand why this has happened by telling him a story about catfish.

Vince explains that, when live cod were shipped from North America to Asia, the fish would become inactive in their tanks, resulting in mushy flesh upon arrival. Fishermen discovered that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active and ensured the quality of the fish.

Vince suggests to Nev that Angela's eccentric antics ensure she serves as a 'catfish' to those around her, keeping them alert and on their toes.

Nev accepts the metaphor... and goes on to make a hugely successful TV show of the same name, sleuthing out the truth about deceptive internet romances (I highly recommend it, but be warned, it's totally addictive).

The origin story of 'catfish' as term for internet agitator has always stuck with me, because I think Angela's long-suffering spouse was right. We all need some form of 'catfish' in our lives, to keep us vigilant.

It's too easy to become complacent and metaphorically "turn to mush", just like the travelling cod, if we're not regularly challenged.

So, I've been reading with interest the ongoing debate between various writers including Aisling O'Loughlin, Francis O'Neill, and Petra Liverani about whether high-profile terrorist events and shootings are real or fake.

It's great to see people being able to have robust and invigorating debates without losing their cool or resorting to insult-trading, and, whether we believe certain events are real or faked, it's always good to take the opportunity to review and refine our own position.

Aisling O'Loughlin has become known for her belief that certain high-profile events - events almost unanimously held in conspiracy circles to be faked - are in fact real... but, she thinks, the intelligence agencies intentionally place false evidence making them look fake, in order to bait those of a conspiratorial disposition into labelling them hoaxes, so this belief can ultimately be used against them.

She cites the Sandy Hook and Manchester Arena scenarios as examples of events that she believes are real, but into which intelligence assets - in these cases, Alex Jones and Richard D. Hall - have been inserted in order to bamboozle conspiracy theorists and lead us down the garden path.

While I don't agree with her that the events were real, I do agree that the two aforementioned characters are assets, particularly in the context that we can now see what the consequences of the two respective high-profile court cases involving them have been.

In both cases, the defendants have lost.

In both cases, they have been ordered to pay hefty damages, and...

In both cases, the trials have been used to clamp down on free speech for the rest of us - with Hall's case even setting case law precedent and inspiring the creation of the UK's first "anti-conspiracy theory" law.

Now, while I totally agree with Aisling that Jones and Hall are assets (ultimately because they are simply far too helpful to the anti-free speech agenda for them not to be), I wholly disagree with her that these events were real, and here's why:

The establishment needs to be absolutely sure these events will go their way in order fulfil the agenda items they are designed to fulfil, and said establishment has no way of knowing that unless they control every last detail.

We know they wanted to use Sandy Hook, for example, to crack down on gun ownership in America. That's a massive agenda item - which has been successfully fulfilled here in the UK, through the very similar 'Dunblane', where 16 schoolchildren were supposedly killed by a gunman barging into their school.

The establishment boasts that, since handguns were banned in the wake of the Dunblane incident, there have been no more school shootings in the UK.

Classic problem-reaction-solution. The public believes the problem is "nutters shooting up schools" (whereas the actual problem is citizens owning handguns thus enabling them to defend themselves against rogue governments), so are happy with the "solution" of the government banning guns. The government claims this ban is to protect cute kiddies, but really it's to protect them.

So, we have to ask ourselves: are the establishment just going to leave such a crucial agenda item as pushing through gun control in America, to chance, and just hope some loser lone wolf (always the loser lone wolf!) shoots up a school?

How could they know with any accuracy or assurance that this will ever actually happen, let alone in the timeframe they want it to?

Okay, some might say, so maybe they didn't leave it to chance. Maybe they trained and MK Ultra'd the killer. But he really did go on a shooting rampage and those children are really dead.

The problem with that theory is two-fold:

One, as I said in a previous article, is that it would take years of specialist study to do proper background checks on all these children and ensure they're not somehow connected to heavyweight players who might make life very difficult for the establishment.

If you just kill a bunch of kids at random, you don't know who they're connected to and what those people might do in seeking vengeance.

The second problem is, if you kill people for real, you don't know how the families are going to react. To use these events as the establishment wants to - to agenda-push - you need the families to cooperate. You need them to agree to give lengthy interviews to the media, often over years. You need them to agree to keep the spotlight on the case by writing books (as both Robbie Parker and Martin Hibbert have done). You need them to agree to push the agenda in question - gun control or clamping down on free speech - unequivocally and relentlessly.

How on earth can you guarantee in advance that some random family, blindsided with grief, would do all that?

A random family is far more likely to refuse to give any detailed interviews to the media (and if they do try, to be overcome with emotion and unable to say very much), and there's also a very high chance a genuine family would say, "I do not want the tragedy of my child's death to be exploited to push political agendas so I wholly disavow our family's pain being used by politicians to push in anti-freedom laws".

Yet the families never say this. They're always happy to talk to the media, they always parrot the establishment line, and they even agree to such exhausting, stressful, expensive endeavours as high-profile court cases.

Sorry, but that's far too colossally convenient for the establishment for it all to be organic, and there's not a snowball's chance in the proverbial inferno that they leave all this up to chance, and just hope random, grief-stricken families will do exactly what they want, and do it effectively.

So they set up actors to do it instead.

Actors on both sides.

What this means is that, in any high-profile event, you shouldn't only question the official story, but you should question the "official conspiracy theory", as well, because there always is one, and - just like the official story - it isn't telling you the whole truth.

In the case of Manchester, for instance, even though Richard D. Hall tells us the truth that there was no bomb, he then muddies the waters by suggesting such things as Saffie Roussos died before the event and the parents used the Manchester Arena situation to cover it up.

Accusing people of being crisis actors is one thing, and not an especially serious accusation, as this is not actually a crime, as evidenced by the existence of crisis acting agencies (and just have a look at some of their listed clients...) - but accusing them of murdering their child, is quite another (which, not incidentally, is also what Hall accuses Madeleine McCann's parents of).

Hall then engages in self-evidently nonsensical "statement analysis" of various participants in the Manchester event... despite his own stated belief that they are actors.

Well, if they're actors, they're reading from a script, aren't they?

Everything they say is on purpose.

They're not "accidentally giving things away", as the particularly ludicrous Genevieve Lewis claims, they're just saying exactly what high-level social engineers have told them to.

Analysing AN ACTOR'S lines doesn't bring you anywhere closer to the truth - obviously! But Richard D. Hall has got vast swathes of his fans believing that it does and therefore pointing fingers at people (actors) because "they say the word hand too often" or something equally ridiculous.

There's not a scintilla of evidence to support the theory that Saffie Roussos' parents killed her (after all, that would first hinge on evidence she's dead), so saying that just makes Richard (and by virtue those who agree with him) look, at the very least, stupid.

As I've previously said, it's fine (and indeed necessary) to risk making allegations that end up being wrong, but you must have some meaningful and credible evidence to support your allegation, otherwise it simply serves to dramatically diminish and undermine your own credibility (such as Hall's allegations that Eve Hibbert wasn't really disabled, and that Martin Hibbert wasn't really her father - allegations that were both easily proved false, as Hall had not done his due diligence on either of these subjects before recklessly making the allegations).

For instance, if I were to make the claim "I think Richard D. Hall is a serial killer", but admitted I had no actual evidence to support this claim - it's just that I don't like the guy and think he seems kind of shady - does that make me look good or bad?

(Please note, because I'm well aware there are some over-literalists who read my blog: I don't think Richard D. Hall is a serial killer.)

Richard suggesting that Saffie's parents killed her and concealed it makes him look just as bad, as he has as much evidence for that as I do for my claim that he's a serial killer.

So this is how counter-narrative agents work: they expose some truth (there was no bomb), and then twist it with nonsense (such as baselessly accusing people of child murder, or proliferating the idea that you can discern the truth by analysing the statements of actors).

The purpose of the nonsense part of the narrative is, ultimately, to indict and thus shut down alternative and critical thinkers, and it's working exceptionally well - for instance, as a result of the Hall v Hibbert trial, we now have the proposed anti-conspiratorial "Eve's Law" in motion (good work, Agent Hall!)/

So now that public sentiment has successfully been edged further towards shutting down free speech, you can expect the "evil conspiracy theorists" agenda to accelerate very rapidly.

You might have noticed the wholly bizarre story in the media recently, of a young woman, Hannah Kobayashi, who inexplicably went missing whilst waiting for a flight at Los Angeles' LAX airport. She had sent a flurry of strange text messages before disappearing. Her father, Ryan, flew over from Hawaii to join the desperate search for his daughter, but, in a devastating double tragedy, ended up taking his own life when, after 13 days, she still hadn't been found.

Okay, I thought, what's the agenda here, because this very strange story seems almost as if it has been scripted specifically to appeal to conspiracists.

The inexplicable disappearance, the strange messages, the supposed suicide... it's like something straight out of a twisty-turny, crime drama thriller.

So, sensing that we were being baited into some sort of trap, I refrained from saying anything about this particular story... and hence, was not at all surprised to see this headline in the New York Post:

"Cults, hackers and kidnappings: Wild conspiracy theories may have sparked tragic twist in Hannah Kobayashi’s missing persons case."

There are now similar such headlines in the UK's Daily Star, and Australia's News.com.

As always, when something gets international lockstep media coverage like this, you know it's part of the agenda.

I don't know what really happened to Hannah and Ryan Kobayashi, or indeed if they even existed, but I do know exactly how the media is trying to spin this and what the intended consequences are...

To demonise alternative thinkers and their "wild theories" and show these can have horrific, tragic consequences.

Concomitantly to this coverage, we also have the family of allegedly murdered "child beauty queen", JonBenet Ramsay, back in the press, slamming evil conspiracists for putting their family through hell with false accusations when they were innocent all along.

In relation to the new Netflix documentary covering the case, we are told that JonBenet's brother, Burke, refused to be in it because:

'Citing his treatment by the media and online websleuths, Burke Ramsey declined our request for an interview'.

Note that Burke Ramsay successfully sued broadcaster CBS for claiming he had killed his sister and his parents had covered it up.

Equally, here at home, Gerry and Kate McCann are never far from the headlines, reminding us that Madeleine is still missing and that there is no conclusive evidence to show that she is dead.

Note that in May of this year, the Home Office ploughed another £192,000 into Operation Grange, the operation to investigate Madeleine's disappearance (and please note, 'disappearance', not death. This is still formally considered a missing persons' case, not a murder investigation).

The Metropolitan Police have so far spent £13.2 million investigating this case.

Meanwhile, thousands of children have gone missing in the seventeen years since Madeleine disappeared, and they get nothing.

Do we really think the establishment ploughs this amount of funding into something, or gives it this amount of media attention (for, I repeat, 17 years!), for nothing?

The establishment never invests in anything like this unless it expects to substantially recoup.

The idea that the whole thing is "an establishment cover-up" is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, for the sole and simple reason that the last thing the Madeleine McCann case is, is "covered up".

It's been headline news for nearly two decades, and everyone in the world knows about it, including the widespread theory that the parents are responsible for her alleged demise.

Some "cover up" - !

If you're in any way conspiratorial, you're meant to think the parents are guilty and the establishment are "covering it up" - but this simply doesn't stand up to the most basic scrutiny, because the establishment are clearly not covering it up. They're shoving it in our faces every chance they get.

Consequently, we must observe that, as with all high-profile mysteries, the establishment controls both the official story - Madeleine was abducted by a predator - and the official conspiracy theory - the parents killed her and covered it up.

Those of a conspiratorial disposition are meant to see through the obviously fake official story (and please note they did make it obviously fake), and then latch onto the more persuasive, but ultimately also fake, official conspiracy theory.

Conspiracists then loudly proclaim their beliefs that the parents are guilty of murdering Madeleine (a theory particularly effectively proliferated by none other than Richard D. Hall) - so what happens if and when Madeleine turns up alive?

How stupid and evil will the conspiracy theorists who asserted her parents had killed her look then?

As I've said before, I think we're being set up for this by the recent emergence of Julia Wendell, a young German woman claiming to be Madeleine. Whilst it seems that Wendell is an impostor (although she's back in the press this week, doubling down on her claims), the fact that the media promoted her to such celebrity - putting her in all the papers and even on Dr. Phil - has successfully reframed public perception from "Madeleine is obviously dead and the parents need to accept it" to "well, I guess it is possible she's still alive somewhere, living under a different name...".

To be clear, I think the whole Madeleine thing was staged - acted - from the start. The McCanns and pals flew out to Portugal to do some on-location filming of a "child abduction drama". Madeleine McCann probably never existed and was likely played in the production by a friend's child, borrowed for the occasion (wearing a contact lens with the eye-defect, an intentionally conspicuous tell, so we'll all "know it's her" when she's found). Everyone involved, including the young German woman who has recently come forward claiming to be her, are all actors reading scripts.

(You can read my full Madeleine theory here.)

In short, I believe that neither the official story - that she was abducted - nor the official conspiracy theory - that the parents killed her - are true.

And when she (i.e., the actress playing her) is "found", that will be used to indict conspiracy theorists as crazy fantasists who make baseless accusations, about whom something must be done.

It's all been set up from the start.

Problem-reaction-solution, just like the "school shootings".

So, you can see the common thread weaving through all these cases I've just mentioned: Sandy Hook, Manchester, Hannah Kobayashi, JonBenet Ramsay, and Madeleine McCann.

In all cases, we - alternative and critical thinkers - are being baited into traps. We're being given some accurate information by counter-narrative assets (such as, Sandy Hook and Manchester were hoaxes, and Madeleine wasn't abducted), and then led astray with lies, thus leading us to draw false conclusions, publicly proclaim them, and thus give the establishment exactly the ammunition it needs to crush free speech for good.

The lesson to be learned. then, is that we need to significantly up our game, and lend the same sceptical and discerning eye to popular "conspiracy theories" as we do to official stories, because when a conspiracy theory is well-known and high-profile, the establishment is almost always controlling it.

There will typically be some truth in the official conspiracy theory, in order to pique the interest of critical thinkers, but then it will be laced with lies, too, in order to lead us into traps.

So, always remember when investigating any high-profile media event with a similarly high-profile counter-narrative, that the establishment wants to destroy free speech and make it impossible for alternate thinkers to express their views.

So what bait are they putting out there to help them do that?

Are they trying to get you to label innocent people child murderers?

Are they trying to persuade you into illegally harassing people?

Are they baiting you into controlled protest situations which will turn violent so you can be arrested? (A favourite tactic of Tommy Robinson's, of course, and please note that Richard D. Hall's lawyer, Paul Oakley. is a big fan of Robinson's.)

Simply speculating and discussing alternate theories isn't illegal. That's why the establishment has to bait you into doing things that are illegal - or that people will perhaps start believing should be illegal, such as accusing others of child murder with no evidence, especially if and when it turns out the child has been alive all along.

It's interesting to note that, although it's claimed a DNA test ruled out Julia Wendell as being Madeleine McCann, what the test actually claimed to find that she was "100% Polish".

Yet that doesn't prove she isn't related to the McCanns.

First of all, how on earth can a test claim to find someone is "100% Polish" when Poland is defined by arbitrary lines on a map that have changed over time, and secondly, until we know the McCanns aren't also genetically connected to Poland - Gerry looks quite Slavic to me - then this is no evidence Julia isn't related to them.

Watch this space, I'd say, because I'm not sure we've seen the last of Julia Wendell just yet...

Yet whether she is conclusively "revealed as an impostor" or not, the fact remains that we're in very dangerous waters now, and it's no time to be a complacent cod.

We must up our game and remain as active and alert as possible, knowing there are "catfish" everywhere trying to deceive us.

The secret to triumphing over them is - just like Nev Schulman did - instead of letting their deception and betrayal destroy us, ensure the lessons they teach turn us into better, more thorough, and more discerning versions of ourselves.

The truth, as some other well-known conspiracists once said, is out there.

(Aliens are totally fake, though.)

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