After looting some 30 percent of selected bank account holders’ deposits in Cyprus on behalf of the so-called “Troika”— the European Union (EU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank (ECB) — eurozone boss Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters this week that taking money from savers in other crisis-hit nations to prop up banks could become the norm. Across Europe, analysts, experts, economists, markets, and especially savers recoiled in horror, prompting the increasingly discredited Dutch Finance Minister to backtrack slightly. In Cyprus, meanwhile, anger is boiling over as authorities prepare to impose capital controls in an effort to avoid a full-blown bank run. 

Concerned about the out-of-control Federal Reserve System and the increasingly unstable fiat dollar managed by the privately owned central bank, lawmakers in Arizona are following in Utah’s footsteps to come up with a potential alternative that protects citizens. Legislation to treat gold and silver as legal tender already sailed through the state Senate in late February, and last week, the Arizona House Financial Institutions Committee voted 4 to 2 to advance the bill as well. Activists are now working hard to keep it moving along.

Concerned lawmakers and activists across America from all points on the political spectrum have for months been seeking an explanation about the Obama administration apparently stockpiling weapons of war for domestic use. Estimates suggest, for example, that the federal government has committed to purchasing up to two billion rounds of ammunition over several years while rolling out dozens of armored vehicles known as MRAPs on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, the controversial Department of Homeland Security and its boss Janet Napolitano are refusing to provide real answers.

Even as the world’s most prominent expert on genocide warns that South Africa’s European-descent Afrikaner population is on the verge of government-linked extermination, the virulently racist U.S.-based “New Black Panther Party” has a delegation visiting the so-called “Rainbow nation” — a country now ruled by a president who openly sings about murdering whites. The NBPP and its leadership have regularly called for genocide against white South Africans as well, so critics of the visit are expressing alarm, concerned that the recognized hate group is agitating for further ethnic cleansing while collaborating with genocidal elements within the regimes ruling South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Reports of a chemical-weapons attack in Syria have the “rebels” and their allies among Western governments and Sunni Arab dictatorships blaming the Bashir al-Assad regime, while the regime and its foreign partners such as authorities in Russia are blaming the so-called “revolutionaries” for the alleged deployment. At this point, it remains unclear who really carried out the attack, or even if it actually happened. Advocates of more aggressive U.S. government intervention in the bloody conflict, however, are seizing the opportunity to urge the Obama administration — already deeply and lawlessly involved in backing the Syrian rebels — to put American troops on the ground.

Following Alabama’s lead, lawmakers in the Oklahoma House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to approve popular legislation protecting private-property rights and banning a controversial United Nations “sustainable development” scheme known as Agenda 21, which critics say represents a serious threat to American values and liberty. If approved by the Senate as expected, the law would also prohibit state and local governments from working with the UN or its affiliates to implement any sort of “international law” that violates the U.S. or Oklahoma constitutions.

The bill, H.B. 1412, was passed in the state House last week on a bipartisan vote, with a Republican-led coalition of 67 supporting the legislation against 17 Democrats who opposed the measure.

A controversial state gun-confiscation program in California, which relies on weapons registration records to seize legal firearms from individuals deemed to be “prohibited” by politicians, is now being touted by officials, lawmakers, and anti-gun rights zealots as a potential model for a new federal scheme to disarm certain classes of citizens. While California is currently the only state with such a system in place, gun control proponents, including Democrat members of Congress, want to see similar disarmament plots nationwide — along with the government registry of weapons such a scheme would necessarily require.

Panic-stricken bank depositors in Cyprus emptied ATM machines across the nation after the surprise announcement Saturday that, as part of an extremely controversial European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout deal, authorities would seize up to 10 percent of all savings deposited in Cypriot banks. Markets across Europe plunged as fears of contagion or even a large-scale bank run in the region plagued investors, with the single euro currency falling to multi-month lows and gold rising back above $1,600 following news of the $13 billion scheme.

Despite openly admitting the failure of prohibition by conceding that drug use has not declined after decades of United Nations-mandated “war on drugs” policies, the UN and its mostly totalitarian member regimes have been meeting this week in Vienna, Austria, seeking to expand the controversial drug war even further. Critics of the dubious UN “Commission on Narcotic Drugs” (CND) schemes, however — ranging from a coalition of American law enforcement officers to Latin American heads of state — are increasingly calling for new approaches to the problem.

After sparking outrage from across the political spectrum by demanding that Obama crush marijuana legalization approved by voters in Colorado and Washington State last year, the United Nations and its largely totalitarian member regimes gathered in Vienna this week to advance a more vigorous global “war” on unapproved plants and substances. Despite openly admitting that drug use has not declined after decades of prohibition, the top global narcotics bureaucrat — a former Soviet diplomat — claimed the UN-mandated drug war must expand.