The communist dictatorship ruling over mainland China has a new centrally planned plot in the works, a controversial scheme that seeks to force hundreds of millions of farmers from rural areas to regime-dominated mega-cities being built across the nation. According to news reports, much of the land is being seized by force as the Chinese Communist Party works fiendishly to pack people into cookie-cutter buildings and cities sprouting up all over the country.

Despite a massive influx of funds from billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is an anti-gun extremist using his fortune to bankroll nationwide attacks on the Second Amendment, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed legislation on Thursday that would have mandated “universal background checks” on gun purchases. Gun-rights activists successfully mobilized to stop the bill, inundating the Republican governor’s office with phone calls asking him to veto it.   

The defeat of the controversial legislation was viewed as a major development with implications that extend far beyond Nevada’s borders.

Less than a month after a spokesman for the Western-backed “Free Syrian Army” threatened in a television interview to exterminate Shia Muslims across the nation, dozens of Shia villagers in Syria were massacred by Sunni rebel forces this week, according to international news reports citing government officials and opposition fighters. Analysts said the brutal killing spree, segments of which were recorded on video and posted online, illustrated the problems with the bloody “regime change” operation being waged by the Obama administration, European powers, Sunni Arab dictators, and oftentimes foreign jihadists on the ground. About two weeks ago, rebels also massacred a Christian village. 

As the debate in Congress intensifies over so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” amid fierce opposition from conservatives, critics are hammering the S. 744 legislation from all angles, arguing that it would provide amnesty to potentially tens of millions of illegal immigrants while costing trillions and doing nothing to secure the border. This week, meanwhile, an organization that advocates on behalf of law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents added its own opposition to the plan due to numerous concerns over national security, uncontrolled immigration, agent safety, and more. 

As national sovereignty increasingly becomes a thing of the past for most Europeans, the controversial European Union is taking the British government to court in an effort to force taxpayers to supply more welfare for immigrants in the United Kingdom. Analysts, however, say the move is likely to backfire, with fuel essentially being poured on the fire as escalating anti-EU fervor sweeps across Britain ahead of a promised public vote on secession.  

The secretive Bilderberg meetings that took place over the weekend in Watford, England, drew protesters from around the world and seemingly unprecedented amounts of media coverage in the international press — a stark contrast with decades of near-total silence surrounding the controversial annual gathering of some of the planet’s most powerful figures in politics, business, military, academia, banking, and more. As usual, however, virtually nothing is known publicly about the agenda or what went on behind the veil of secrecy surrounding the entire conference. 

Despite unconstitutional federal statutes and United Nations agreements purporting to override state authority by criminalizing marijuana, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed tri-partisan legislation decriminalizing possession of cannabis in the state. The new law, which was supported by top law-enforcement officials and almost two-thirds of voters, makes Vermont the 17th state to defy the UN and the U.S. government by ending criminal penalties imposed on consumers of the controversial plant.

After a global outcry about his prosecution and alleged torture, whistleblower Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence officer accused of “aiding the enemy” by leaking hundreds of thousands of U.S. government documents exposing war crimes and countless dubious diplomatic dealings to WikiLeaks, is finally on trial this week. The secretive court-martial proceeding, widely criticized as a show trial with a pre-determined outcome, began Monday and is expected to run for around three months.

The infamous annual Bilderberg meetings, which bring together global powerbrokers from government, business, finance, intelligence, royalty, media, central banking, academia, and more, are set to begin this week in the United Kingdom. In line with an apparent trend developing in recent years, the veil of secrecy surrounding the mere existence of the controversial confab has slowly been pierced as more and more major media outlets report on the gathering. Taxpayers will be picking up much of the tab, but the growing numbers of protesters and reporters seeking answers will not be allowed in.

The so-called “organic” foods industry may not be as natural as consumers have been led to believe, owing to a lack of serious testing and other major flaws in the system, according to a former inspector of organic foods in the United States and Canada who grew up on an organic farm. What the expert described as the “globalist environmental movement” — George Soros, for example, and others like him — is also deeply involved in promoting organic foods, he explained.

In an interview with The New American, Mischa Popoff, who serves as a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute and wrote a book exposing “the inside story” of the organic industry, explained that much of the certification process for organic produce today essentially amounts to a “scam.”