As the EU has sought to prolong the Ukraine proxy war, expropriate frozen Russian assets, and enlarge the bloc at any cost, Viktor Orban's Hungary opposed it at every turn. Now, with his support teetering, leaked documents reveal a major EU official plotted a long-term covert campaign to oust him.

A senior European Union official has been secretly seeking to remove Hungarian President Viktor Orban since at least 2019, according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone. The files show in January 2019, the EU's International Coordinator for the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, Marton Benedek, authored a "project proposal" aimed at "developing a permanent coordination forum to organise resistance against the Orban regime." In addition to his role at the European border control agency, Benedek currently heads Brussels' "cooperation" with Libya.

Read Benedek's anti-Orban project proposal here.

At least Latin America has a history of resisting Washington's imperialism, unlike its European vassals
What's the difference between Venezuela and Denmark? Apart, of course, from geography, food, the weather, and the fact that the Venezuelan government used to at least condemn the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, in accordance with basic moral norms and international law, while the Danish leadership has, in effect, sided with the Israeli perpetrators, in accordance with the revolting way things are done in the "values-driven" West.

Fun fact: there is no real difference between these two countries, except US President Donald Trump wishes to see one. And at this point, it seems that he and his merry crew of hemispheric pirates are in the mood to treat Venezuela and Denmark in essentially the same manner: namely by doing whatever they want to them in the pursuit of raw materials and geopolitical location advantage. Trump himself has reiterated his belief that Washington "needs" Greenland. Which, in his world, is the same as "has a right to take."

Stephen Miller, one of Don Trump's famiglia's many aggressive and sinister sidekicks, has claimed that Denmark's Greenland really belongs to the US anyhow (totally false) and that there won't be any military resistance if Washington seizes it (most likely correct). Miller's wife Katie had already posted a map of Greenland covered in the American flag and the caption "soon," even before her husband laid down the law - or rather its absence for the Americans: "We live in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power."

That, fundamentally, Denmark is getting no more respect than Venezuela is ironic, obviously, because Venezuela has a history of resisting the US, whereas Denmark has a history of submitting and is a member of two clubs of US vassals, NATO and the EU. And yet, Washington is openly threatening to take over a massive slice of legally Danish territory with the same total disregard for laws and rules it has displayed while assaulting Venezuela.

Sure, the American campaign against Venezuela has been much more vicious and bloodier than a US takeover of Greenland is likely to be. Notwithstanding her safely rhetorical resistance to Trump's equally verbal (for now) sallies, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has good chances not to be kidnapped in blindfolds and handcuffs, while her guards are massacred by the dozen, as happened to Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Last but not least, Denmark's leftover-colonialist claim to Greenland is much less impressive than Venezuela's clear right to sovereignty, its own resources, and, last but not least, peace, all of which the US has trampled on.

Britain will send forces to the country if it is certain they would be safe, Richard Knighton has said.

Britain's chief of defense staff has said he is "confident" UK troops would be safe if deployed to Ukraine under a ceasefire with Russia, despite Moscow's warnings that any Western forces in the country would be considered "legitimate targets."


Speaking at a parliamentary defense committee hearing on Monday, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton stressed that the UK "won't deploy our armed forces [to Ukraine] if we're not happy that they're going to be safe."

Asked whether UK forces would have sufficient equipment, training, and rotations, Knighton said he was "confident" troops would be deployed in a manner "to ensure that they are safe." At the same time, he acknowledged that "there is no such thing as zero risk in operational environments."

Trump and Putin may have the same enemy in their crosshairs: it could be the very "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" that JFK warned us about back in 1961...

[From this morning's I-System TrendCompass] The Trump Administration's policies are clearly wrecking the post-World War II global order, which will have hugely important consequences on the future global order. It should therefore be paramount for us to try and discern what Trump is trying to achieve. At the moment, the information space is saturated with expressions of indignation and outrage. Even very learned observers are falling into this, accusing Trump of betrayal, engaging in psychoanalysis of Trump and calling him names.

Drunk on Trump Derangement Syndrome

The outrage is understandable, but it's not helpful: it seems to be anchored in a lot of assumptions and feeding on worst case scenarios. There's even some insistence on clinging to the darkest possible interpretations of what Trump is doing and why. For example, in a recent podcast I pointed out that Trump reduced the mandatory vaccine schedule for American children by 55 doses.

Indeed, the Trump-bases order is THE future. And that is erratic, can change from day to day, as circumstances dictate. If President Trump and his handlers have their way, only a few major powers will have a say in the future.

Mr. Trump is the one wielding the scepter of world hegemony - meaning the coming One World Order. He is the elephant in the room, that everyone sees, but nobody realizes that he has been given this role because he has the personality to be The King without clothes and nobody dares say so. They are afraid.

Cult figures work with fear, they feed on fear of the masses, on their anger and frustrations. Believe it or not, we are currently living in a cult-led world. As long as we are "afraid" - and mind you, fear is planted by the media on a daily basis - we the people, the masses of the people, will never be ascending to a higher spiritual level which would be escaping the terror being played on us at the latest since the beginning of the UN Agenda 2030, alias the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Great Reset, in 2020.

No this is not a conspiracy theory. It is real. They got away with Covid, "vaccinating" some 5.7 billion people worldwide, at least twice. The fate of the "vaxxed" ones, will play out in the coming three to ten years, when nobody can trace death and injuries back to the poisonous covid injections. No, they were not emergency "vaxx trials" gone wrong. They were deliberate killer injections forced upon the entire world - basically from one day to the next. That is how fast the "virus" travels around the globe. Fear makes people obey the most absurd orders.

A retired US Green Beret whistleblower claimed that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents train with Israeli police after a fatal shooting of a mother of three by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

The video features Anthony Aguilar, saying ICE, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and other 'three-letter' agencies train alongside Israeli police and security forces.

Aguilar suggests he has personally been sent to Israel and witnessed joint training, arguing that tactics learned abroad are later 'brought back home'. He frames these methods as oppressive and not routine law-enforcement skills through first-hand testimony.

"Look at what's happening every day. I've been there, I have trained with them. I have been to Israel, where ICE agents and DEA agents and other three-letter agencies train with the gendarmerie and the Israeli police force training with them. And they bring those tactics back here."

When people ask me why I don't trust Washington's "diplomacy" with Iran, I usually answer with history.

In 2009, the Saban Center at Brookings published a strategy paper with a title that reads like a travel brochure and functions like a regime change recipe: Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran. The premise is straightforward: Iran is hard, American policy has been unimpressive, and therefore Washington must consider a range of tools — diplomatic, military, and covert — to force Tehran into compliance or change its regime.

What matters is not only what the paper proposes, but what it normalizes.

It lays out "nine discrete approaches" and groups them into bundles: "Persuasion" (carrots and sticks), "Engagement" (accommodation), military options (invasion, airstrikes, and even encouraging Israeli strikes), regime change options ("colour revolution," "insurgency," "coup"), and finally "containment."

This think-tank language is polished enough to be read on Sunday morning in Washington, while describing pathways that, in plain English, amount to coercion, sabotage, and war.

The paper even admits what every serious observer knows but polite Western discourse tries to hide: the best American strategy, it argues, would "combine several" options into an "integrated policy," pursued sequentially or simultaneously. In other words, Washington does not choose between diplomacy and pressure. It uses diplomacy as pressure, and pressure as the background music for diplomacy.

This is why I keep returning to the "gang" metaphor. Empires do not act like philosophical debating societies. They act like syndicates: negotiate when convenient, punish when necessary, and keep alternative methods ready in the drawer.

When I spoke with Firas Modad, we started from this same reality. We discussed the new U.S. approach to regime change that does not require occupying a country and rebuilding it from scratch. Instead, you decapitate the leadership and do business with whoever remains inside the structure. Take Venezuela, for example: kidnap Maduro, keep the state, keep parts of the regime, just change the terms of loyalty and the direction of policy.

So, finally an act of unvarnished predatory action by Trump and his team - the abduction of President Maduro in a lightning night-time military strike - has launched 2026 into a pivotal moment. A pivotal moment not just for Latin America, but for global politics.

The 'Venezuela method' is aligned with Trump's 'business first' approach which is rooted in constructing a 'financial reward system', whereby diverse stakeholders to a conflict are offered financial benefits that permit the U.S. to (ostensibly) achieve its own objectives, whilst locals continue to extract rewards from the exploitation of (in this case) Venezuelan resources - under U.S. close supervision.

In this template, the U.S. does not need to create a new governing régime from scratch, nor put 'boots on the ground' - for Venezuela, the plan is that the existing government of the newly-sworn in President, Delcy Rodriguez, will remain in control of the country - so long as she follows Trump's wishes. Should she or any of her ministers fail to follow that blueprint, they will receive the 'Maduro treatment', or worse. Reportedly, the U.S. has already threatened Venezuela's Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, that he will be targeted by Washington unless he helps President Rodriguez meet U.S. demands.

Put another way, the plan comes down to a single underpinning premise that the only thing that matters is the money.

In this context, the U.S. approach to Venezuela resembles that of a Vulture Hedge Fund 'buy-out': Remove the CEO and co-opt the existing management team with money to run the company to new dictates. In Venezuela's case, Trump likely hopes that Rodriguez (who has been 'talking' with Secretary Rubio via the Qatari royal family, and who is also the Minister responsible for the oil industry) has squared off all the factions that compose the Venezuelan power structure to accept the relinquishment of state sovereign resources to Trump.

What is so pivotal here is the shedding of all pretence: The U.S. is in a debt crisis and wishes to seize - for exclusive U.S. use - Venezuelan oil. Submission to Trump's demand is the only variable that matters. All masks are off. A Rubicon has been crossed.

"Venezuela will be turning over 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil to the United States of America, sold at market price with the money controlled by me", Trump has written on Truth Social.

The erasure of the American 'project' - the substituting of self-interested hard power for the American narrative of it being 'a light to all nations' - constitutes a revolutionary change. Myths and their supporting moral stories provide the meaning to any nation. Without a moral framework, what will hold America together? Ayn Rand's celebrated belief that rational selfishness was the ultimate expression of human nature cannot reconstitute social order.

The western Enlightenment has turned on its own values - and has destroyed itself. The ramifications will ripple throughout the world.

In yet another major blow to the German automobile labor market, Mercedes has announced it will be relocating production of its A-Class from Rastatt, Germany, to Kecskemét, Hungary. While Hungary's foreign minister is taking a victory lap, Germany's largest opposition party is sharply crticizing he government as signs grow that Germany's automobile market is faltering.

Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó has officially confirmed Mercedes move, writes Budapester.

Szijjártó credited the success to "an economic policy based on sound common sense and a stable government that continually attracts new investment projects from global companies in America, Asia, and even Germany."

Through police exchange programs, local and federal officials travel to Israel for training that advocates say further militarizes the police and exacerbates harm to marginalized communities.

It is not uncommon for police to drive around with their lights flashing in Black and working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta. This is a tactic used to intimidate and make their presence known; for residents of these neighborhoods, it can feel like psychological warfare. US law enforcement learned this strategy from Israeli forces.

Thousands of law enforcement officials have traveled to Israel to learn new repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet, who inflict violence, crowd control, and surveillance onto Palestinians. Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.

These programs are facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program — the latter of which was started in 1996. US leaders sought Israel's guidance to curb terrorism, and a 'deadly exchange' of worst practices between US and Israeli forces was born. Federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement executives including local police departments, the FBI, and ICE have traveled to Israel, while thousands of officials have attended conferences with Israeli experts in the US. An inaugural "US-Israel Security Conference" by JINSA occurred last month, where a former Israel Defense Forces commander was included as a guest speaker.