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From: ch@dce.ie (Charles Bryant)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Telephonic Paranoia
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Date: 18 Nov 90 16:03:10 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 830, Message 1 of 8


The following article is excerpted from "The Saturday Column" of "The
Irish Times", November 17th - a column with a humorous slant. (Mary
Robinson was recently elected President. She is not a member of any
party, but was supported by the parties of the left).


More Telephonic Paranoia

Two well known lefties were cruelly disturbed in the midst of their
separate Mary Robinson celebrations last weekend. Both received phone
calls of such a frightening nature that they took the matter up with
the telephone authorities first thing on Monday morning.

The cause of their concern was that their phones would ring and when
answered the only reply they got was their own voices coming back at
them. One of the recipients even had his baby's background cries
played back down the line. As this disturbance occurred up to a dozen
times over the weekend a certain paranoia took hold which led them to
believe that maybe the forces of the right were indeed plotting a
coup. President Allende and all that befell him, and his supporters,
sprang to mind.

The excitement died quickly when Bord Telecom was contacted. They told
the two concerned lefties, who were now on the point of organising
resistance, that they had received hundreds of such worried calls from
paranoid householders. Nothing sinister was afoot. A weird technical
fault meant that most incoming calls from overseas were creating this
response on Irish phones.  "But surely the Special Branch..." the
lefties ventured. Not at all, said Telecom.


Charles Bryant (ch@dce.ie)