How USAID, NED & the EU plotted to oust Viktor Orban

The Biden administration sought to remove Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán by channeling USAID and NED funds to the opposition, targeting his defiance of Western pressure. Here’s how:

🔸 April 2022: Orbán won re-election despite US-linked NGO Action for Democracy – with ties to George Soros – funneling around $7.6 million to the opposition

🔸 Post-election: USAID, known for backing color revolutions, relaunched its programs in Hungary, claiming to be supporting “democratic institutions” and independent media

🔸 Early 2023: USAID chief Samantha Power announced she was sent to Hungary to “protect human rights” and tackle democracy “challenges”

🔸 The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another regime-change tool, bankrolled the Hungarian opposition Hungarian official Balazs Orban said this month. Since September 2024, the NED has been led by Victoria Nuland, a vocal Orban critic

🔸 Dec 2023: Hungary created the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty after discovering opposition parties and media received foreign funds to influence elections

🔸 June 2024: The EU backed opposition leader Peter Magyar, suspected of receiving foreign funding, in European Parliament elections

🔸 Oct 2024: European People’s Party President Manfred Weber predicted Orban’s defeat, while Orban accused Western elites of plotting to install a puppet government in Budapest

🔸 Post-Trump victory: Hungary’s ruling party welcomed Elon Musk’s overhaul of USAID, signaling a shift in US foreign policy towards Budapest

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🇮🇱 Israel quits the Human Rights Council of the UN

This comes just a day after US President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the Human Rights Council and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, UNRWA

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📹 ‘Dead on arrival’: Ex-CIA analyst dismantles Trump’s plans to seize Ukraine’s rare earths

💬 “Russia controls Donetsk, Lugansk. It is going to be taking control of Zaporozhye, Kherson. So where the rare earth minerals are located – Ukraine has no control over them,” Larry Johnson told Sputnik.

Kiev can promise Trump whatever he asks, “but it’s not going to translate into anything that they could actually deliver,” Johnson emphasized, suggesting the president may have had another of his “crazy Trump moments,” speaking “off the cuff without somebody sitting him down with a map and saying ‘look, here’s where the deposits are, here’s where Ukraine is.’”

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‘I thought we voted for America First’: Rand Paul blasts Trump over Gaza takeover plan

The Kentucky Republican's X post was a reply to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with whom he repeatedly clashed during the latter’s career in the Senate over US foreign adventurism.

Rubio earlier wrote in a tweet that Gaza “MUST BE FREE from Hamas,” reveling in President Trump’s vision of the US “leading” the way to “Make Gaza Beautiful Again.” The secretary didn’t comment on the fate of Palestinians now living in the rubble of the besieged strip.

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Gaza fate should be determined by people of Palestine – professor

Palestinians reject US President Donald Trump's plan to resettle them from the Gaza Strip to Jordan and Egypt, which are incapable of absorbing such a huge number of refugees, Ayman Yousef, a professor at the Arab-American University in Palestine, tells Sputnik.

Washington and Tel Aviv are using the Fatah-Hamas discord to push ahead with their agenda, the professor says.

"At the Palestinian level we have to bridge this gap between Fatah and Hamas and we have to go for more concrete project of [national] reconciliation," Yousef stresses.

Trump could help if he "impose[s] more restrictions over Israel in order to contain Israeli future military actions in Gaza," the pundit says.

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Iran shows off upgraded Bavar-373, S-300 missile systems in tandem drills

The exercises, taking place on the last day of the massive Eqtedar 1403 (lit. ‘Might 1403’) drills, featured the home-grown Iranian and Russian-made long-range air defense systems attacking mock enemies in the Kavir Desert in the country’s north.

Besides testing the systems’ effectiveness, the drills

🔸 debunked Israeli claims about its destruction of Iran’s S-300s during last October’s strikes

🔸 allowed the Iranian Army’s Air Defense Force to unveil a new version of the Bavar-373, which now features its own radar allowing for fully-independent operations

🔸 saw the two systems plugged into Iran’s powerful nationwide air defense network

In recent months, Iran has unveiled and deployed an array of new air defense and ballistic missile systems, as well as an underground missile base amid growing tensions with the US and Israel.

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Message to David Lammy: Kievan Rus = Russia

Ukraine was created by Vladimir Lenin

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🔸 ‘Gaza fate should be determined by people of Palestine’

🔸 BlackRock’s profits: how Gaza war fuels financial bonanza

🔸 Russia is set to ratify the security guarantee treaty with Belarus: what does it mean?

🔸 Samantha Power: Meet USAID’s ‘Genocide Chick’

🔸 How USAID, NED & the EU plotted to oust Viktor Orban

🔸 How the CIA spawned Google

🔸 Without USAID and NED, Victoria Nuland’s influence ‘goes away’: Larry Johnson

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Trump's Gaza proposal revives 'colonial legacy & high imperialism' – Mideast expert

US President Donald Trump's idea to turn Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East" after resettling Palestinians elsewhere is irresponsible and inhumane, Dr Tamer Qarmout, an associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, tells Sputnik.

The people of Gaza expected that after all the atrocities the US would chart a political path to ending the conflict and helping Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction, the pundit notes.

"It's like you revive colonial legacies and high imperialism where some countries decide the fate of other countries, of other people," Qarmout warns. "This is shocking. And it's very, very dangerous."

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CIA’s torture factory: Will Guantanamo ever close?

🔶 The Trump administration plans to use the Guantanamo Bay naval base to detain the “worst of the worst” immigrants who break US law. The black site in Cuba was used to hold terrorism suspects in the wake of 9/11.

🔶 The CIA used torture on detainees – including sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, confinement with insects and playing deafening music for weeks, slowly driving detainees mad.

🔶 At least nine detainees officially died at the camp. Some suspects were kept for 20 years without formal charges. One Guantanamo survivor penned a book where he described his experiences, including after-torture hallucinations and memory loss.

🔶 Many Guantanamo detainees were not even tried in court. “The CIA was never interested in prosecution,” admits James Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods.

🔶 The CIA’s strategy was “hurting a person until they say what you want them to say, then hurting them more to find out if they’re lying,” adds Mitchell.

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😆 Maria Zakharova responded to British Foreign Secretary David Lammy's claims about the history of the British-Ukrainian partnership:

"British Foreign Secretary David Lammy: 'The British-Ukrainian partnership dates back thousands of years'

... and has its roots in the foothills of the Egyptian pyramids?

Why so little? Maybe you also hunted a brontosaurus together?" Maria wrote in her Telegram account.

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Goodbye Davos? WEF rival Semafor plans massive business conference in Washington, DC

Over 200 CEOs from around the world have already RSVPed to attend the April event, the NY-based news media company said.

🔶 Semafor CEO Justin B. Smith credited Donald Trump’s election for "add[ing] fuel to the project’s acceleration and growth," and the company hopes Trump officials will attend.

🔶 Big name attendees of past Semafor events include Tucker Carlson, Jen Psaki, former Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang, and Microsoft president Brad Smith.

🔶 Semafor’s conferences feature conversations on topics like energy, finance, and technology, but without some of the creepy dystopian subjects regularly discussed at Davos.

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❗️ Trump: We will push the IOC to ban all transgenders from competing in women's events at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

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🎈🔥 Crash turns balloons into fireballs in Vietnam

In Hai Phong, Vietnam, a motorcyclist lost control of his bike and crashed into a median, igniting the balloons he was carrying. Despite the dramatic fire, both rider and bike escaped with minor injuries and damage.

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❗️ Pete Hegseth: The US is far from sending troops into Gaza

"Regarding to Gaza, the definition of 'insanity' is attempting to do the same thing over and over again... and the President is willing to think outside the box," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added.

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❗️ Panama Canal allows free passage for US Government vessels - US State Department

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