Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to welcome Vermonter Chris Pratt, the “Reluctant Activist,” to our masthead. Look for regular features by the Reluctant Activist in the months ahead. Free Vermont, and long live the UNtied States!

The term “conspiracy theories” has been with us since the 1960s. It was coined to deliberately stifle any questioning of official government stories. More often than not, though, said “conspiracy theories” – surprise! – become realities.

Outlined below are over 70 government/media coverups and/or conspiracy realities that began as theories.

Many were initially supported by science in peer-reviewed journals. This list, by no means, is exhaustive:

• Tobacco, asbestos, Thalidomide, Vioxx, methylmercury, lead paint, the Manhattan Project,     Watergate, Karen Silkwood
• Marijuana and hemp deceptions, radiation exposure, DDT, PCB, pesticide safety
• EPA declaring air safety following the 9/11 building collapses
• Geoengineering
• Cell phones and brain tumors and WHO coverup, corporate personhood, election fraud lawsuit
• Cancer and birth defects following the use of Agent Orange and depleted uranium
  • Operation Northwoods, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Paperclip, Project 112/SHAD, Tuskegee Syphillis Study, CointelPro, Iran-Contra, Project MKULTRA, Gulf of Tonkin incident
• Cocaine and the CIA, Operation Gladio.
• Babies thrown out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait lie by Bush Snr.
• Dr Ignaz Philip Semmelweis – hand washing before surgery.
• The sinking of the Maine and the Lusitania, the USS Liberty, the Gulf of Tonkin.
• The financial crash of 2008 (the housing bubble),   derivatives, banker bailouts the LIBOR scandal, offshore banking.
• H1N1 (swine flu) the false flu pandemic of 2009, Rumsfeld and Tamiflu, Rumsfield and Aspertame, Crimes of Bayer Aspirin.
• CIA redactions, renditions.
• Indefinite detention provisions of NDAA, Monsanto Protection Act, Obama signs Dark Act, The USA PATRIOT Act.
• Torture, drones, Weapons of Mass Destruction, nuclear testing.
• Fukushima suppression, Bill Clinton’s flights to “Fantasy Island.”
• Church Report #21: CIA assassinations, staged accidents, development of the “heart attack” gun and more.
• Operation Ajax, Operation Snow White.
• Pedophile rings at the highest levels are being exposed.
• The Sick Rituals of Bohemian Grove performed by our leaders, and other secret societies such as Skull and Bones and the Freemasons.
• Inspector General reports DOD can’t account for 6.5 trillion.
• The fraud of the Federal Reserve system.

Many people find it a stretch to consider that media and government are intentionally deceiving us. Considering the relentless cover-ups and lies that we now know to be true, I find it a stretch not to.

The above list of conspiracies/cover-ups and scandals does not include several more that are still in process and remain unresolved including:

• JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X.
• The Warren Commission, the 9/11 Commission.
• Hundreds of questionable suicides and car accidents of scientists, bankers and holistic doctors
• NAFTA, TTIP, TPP, TISA.
• Prosecution of whistleblowers, 9/11 coverups , the War on Terror, Homeland Security, police   brutality and intimidation.
• HAARP, chemtrails (See our “Reluctant Activist” chemtrails winners here – and the winning photo is below.)
• Fluoridation of water, MMR vaccine and autism.
• Staged terrorist attacks, media corruption and…

The list goes on and on. Reason and logic are constantly set aside while positions taken by the status quo are never questioned.

For instance.

Imagine, in a single day, the unprecedented collapse of 3 skyscrapers into their own footprint, symmetrically, even though no steel building in human history has ever collapsed due to fire. On 9/11, three buildings did and one building — Building 7 — was never hit by an airplane. Although fires from airplane fuel never generate temperatures hot enough to melt steel, molten steel flowing like lava was discovered in the rubble months after the collapse. Nanothermite particles have also been discovered in dust samples taken from the 9/11 crime scene. Dr. Judy Wood baffles us further with disappearing steel beams and still no one investigates. And contrary to forensic procedure, the crime scene was disrupted when all the steel columns that remained (the primary evidence) were cut up and whisked away almost   immediately and no one was held accountable.

Today, $40 billion is spent annually on Homeland Security and billions more is spent fighting terrorism around the world, yet according to the Washington Post, “You’re more likely to be fatally crushed by furniture than killed by a terrorist.” With almost no measurable terrorist threat, how will we ever spend 40 billion dollars a year?

Staged disaster events are being conducted all over the country. That will spend some of the money. Vermont is set to receive $570,000 for ten days of disaster reenactments. Although 95% is a waste, the TSA also spends $7 billion annually. But where does all the rest go and what about billions more for foreign miltary engagments? The Pentagon cannot account for 6.5 trillion dollars. Does this surprise anyone? We are awash in lies, theater and cover-ups.

At a time when it takes forever to get “a trickle” of money from the government to address human needs, an avalanche of money is instantly and unaccountably available to kill our own species whenever the word “terrorist” is mentioned.

My advice is to question and challenge everything. If definitive evidence cannot be provided nor tough questions asked and/or addressed, disregard what MSM (mainstream media) or the paid experts are telling you. Apply your own reason and logic to what you are being told. If you look at things objectively and with an open mind,  it will become obvious almost instantaneously – our perceptions are being managed and our opinions are being engineered. Most of the time we are instructed by MSM to believe lies or deceptions supported by no evidence or very loosely-constructed associations.

I know it is horrible to contemplate that your country is capable of such lies, deceptions and heinous crimes against its own people but if that is not the case then why are the simple questions neither asked nor answered? I believe that the evil doers rely upon American ignorance, naivety, apathy and a disbelief that our government would deliberately kill its own. It is Germany all over again as We-the-People have chosen self-deception and illusion. We are unable to fathom or accept that we belong to a government capable of such depravity, because if we do — we are guilty too. So we go along with the big lie at our own expense.

Recent terrorist attacks fully illustrate this point: when a deer is run over on the road the vehicle is usually covered in blood, yet in Nice, France, this past summer, a white tractor-trailer mows down 80 people and critically injures 18 more, yet there is no blood, nor tissue residue on the bottom of the vehicle, nor any conclusive video evidence of this tragedy. Where is the proof that these people existed before these tragedies – the personal histories, the pictures in family albums, the grade school records, high school and college yearbooks, employment records? And where is the proof of death afterwards – their names, obituaries, wakes, funerals, payments of last respects by family and friends, media interviews? Where is the coroner’s reports, the death certificates, and hospital treatment records? Why has an autopsy never been requested? Where are the cell phone pictures or video images from any of the security cameras? Why is it that the main perpetrator is always killed, never talks, and is always a Muslim? Were crisis actors employed at that site? Was a FEMA/Homeland Security drill occurring at the same time? Why are tough questions never asked and when they are…never answered?

The authorities should definitively answer every one of these basic questions every time an attack of this magnitude is alleged.

Are these horrible and heinous assaults against humanity or staged terrorist attacks?

Allowing these questions to go unanswered defines the U.S. of Empire, those who run it, and those that accept it without question. Many of the shadow elite hide their evil depravity behind masks of love and kindness. Behind the masks are monsters who pay homage to the darkest of forces and who will readily kill any and all who dare to expose them.

We need to go deep, beyond so-called “MoveOn.org” progressivism. In my opinion, these movements are worse than Republicans, for they give progressive thinkers the illusion that change from within this systemically corrupt, bogus, two-party system is actually possible. This belief keeps millions of Democrats in the fold, dancing by design to this ‘old boy’ status quo system and the song of death. Over and over, round and round we go, expecting that this election cycle will somehow be different than the last. Eight years of Bush and then eight more years of the same with Obama.

Now empire is presenting us with Hillary and Trump. Will we ever learn to think differently?

We are not talking about a few bad apples here. We are talking about gangrene. I can not think of one big corporate entity, one regulatory branch of government, or one media giant that is not participating in knowingly sacrificing human health for profit on almost a daily basis. Can you?

Last week, gasoline was priced at less than $2/gallon. We-the-People benefit from these prices when we fill our cars at the gas pumps or our carts at the grocery stores. The US military is by far the world’s largest consumer of oil and gas. Imagine if just half of our 830 military bases around the world closed. Imagine a world with no US military interventions. Imagine if thousands of energy patents were released and free energy was made available to the public. Imagine if your food was available pesticide free and properly labeled. Imagine if your money was placed in public banking institutions that did not charge obscene interest rates, or gamble away your money, and whose owners were made public. Imagine a press that was dedicated to humanity, not to corporate monopolies.

The good news is that this evil empire is collapsing. New ways of thinking are beginning to replace this old materialistic survival-of-the-fittest mentality. This old mentality has enabled billionaires and trillionaires to control the world based on a system of fear, greed, secrecy, exploitation and death. The bad news is that they will not let go of this model without a fight and the battleground is between your ears and in your hearts.

The faster we take personal control of what we think and how we feel, the faster change will occur. Let there be no doubt — change is happening. This movement cannot be stopped. You see — once you become aware, you can never become unaware. The thought revolution has begun, our numbers are growing, global consciousness and awareness is now sweeping the world. Cracks in the foundations are appearing everywhere. Redacted pages in the 9/11 Commission Report, Warren Commission disclosures, vaccine safety, the CDC’s and the WHO’s integrity are now being questioned, the light has begun to shine on the United Nations, Agenda 21 and depopulation, pedophile rings reaching into the Vatican and the highest echelons of government are now being exposed.

Censorship, the militarization of the police and staged terrorism are reactions by the status quo to a world waking up to its own imprisonment. No longer is it about who can rain the most death on the most people and immobilize the masses with secrecy, fear and a gestapo-like police force. This model is dying. The new model is about nurturing, sustaining and preserving life in all its forms. It is time for humanity to reclaim its moraliy and its soul.

Belong to a world that preserves, protects, and nurtures versus kills, destroys, and tortures.

Change can be simple, peaceful, and safe.

Be mindful (really pay attention) to what goes into your mind and your body and what comes out of your wallet. Reclaim personal sovereignty for who you are and how you spend your money.

Do this and the world will change.

By the way, the term “conspiracy theory” was coined by the CIA in 1967.

Chris Pratt; The Reluctant Activist