HUNGARY: Hungary's new strongman, Prime Minister Péter Magyar shut down Kossuth radio & M1 TV & is purging the newsroom at TV2, forcing out its director & anchors. Only approved voices get to broadcast now. This is what censorship looks like.

President Trump said North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un responded to requests for the two leaders to have a conversation, as Trump moved to cut military drills with South Korea, a traditional US ally

The Copycat Dictator: Trump Echoes Hitler's Tactics This is not a deal. It is a stickup with letterhead. Trump did not negotiate 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. He bagged a president, propped up the next available strongman, and announced that the ground under other people's feet now answers to Washington. Delcy Rodríguez did not sit down as an equal. She sat down as a hostage who still had a pen. The United States pointed a gun at a country, then invoiced it for the privilege. That is the old dictator's sequence, not some American innovation. Invent the emergency. Hit the neighbor. Install the local who will sign. Seize the asset. Call it destiny. Hitler wrapped conquest in grievance and "restoration." Trump used drugs as the cover story and crude as the payoff. If Maduro were the point, the story ends in a courtroom. It didn't. Rodríguez is not a partner. She is a quisling with stationery. Majority control. Oil at cost. A hundred-year claim. A press release screaming HISTORY while a shattered country is told to be grateful for the occupation's investment. McFaul called it theft dressed as policy. He was being polite. It is a colonial concession signed after a midnight kidnapping. Kaine was right: this pads the family firm and Big Oil and kicks any clean-energy future further down a burning road. Van Hollen was right: troops in harm's way so billionaire friends can book reserves is not statecraft. It is a fiduciary crime with a flag pin. Spare the gasoline fairy tale. Prices will not collapse because he typed in all caps. What lasts is uglier: Washington owning a slice of another nation's geology, carbon locked in for generations, Venezuelans watching their inheritance sold by a regime that exists because the raid allowed it to exist. After a year of government equity stakes, even a Cato economist gagged: a majority-state oil vehicle branded as private enterprise. That is not capitalism. That is the state as holding company for its donors. If this were about Venezuelans, there would be an election before a concession. First the force. Then the asset. Then the lie that it was always ours. Trump is not Hitler. He is the copy: same method, cheaper suit, commodities desk attached. A dictator-wannabe who looked at a broken country and saw a warehouse. The people calling it a win are the people expecting to cash the receipt.

"One can presume that when Modi first watched hundreds of disaffected young people, describing themselves as cockroaches, trickle into Jantar Mantar, a traditional site of protest in New Delhi, the 75-year-old strongman would have felt fairly confident of squashing them like bugs," writes Asim Ali. "The reality turned out to be wholly different."

The devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela last month would have tested any government. But they have hit a country still navigating the aftermath of strongman Nicolás Maduro's capture by the US six months ago, turning a natural disaster into a political test for acting President Delcy Rodríguez and exposing anger over the state's response.

US Puppet Marcos Stages Constitutional Coup to Crush Duterte Nationalists Three weeks after staged gunfire in the Philippine Senate, a fake constitutional crisis is exploding. Its goal: lock in US puppet Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as unchallenged strongman while destroying Sara Duterte. The Senate is split under two rival leaderships who call each other fake. Marcos — son of the old dictator, controlled by Washington via his family’s frozen billions — is grabbing all the power. He rules by emergency orders, forces changes, and plans special sessions for his agenda. This is no random mess. It is open war between Marcos, America’s eager servant building bases against China, and the Duterte camp’s fight for true independence and friendly ties with Beijing. The Dutertes refuse to make the Philippines America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier. So Marcos unleashes raw lawfare: fake plunder charges and repeated impeachment attacks on Sara Duterte, plus the sham International Criminal Court “trial” of Rodrigo Duterte — a US-controlled political weapon against leaders who defy Washington. May 11 revealed the script. The House impeached Sara Duterte again. Pro-Duterte forces pushed back. Then came the staged shooting for chaos and cover. Pure theater. In June, the Marcos camp seized control, changed rules to weaken Duterte allies before Sara’s July impeachment trial, and called it legal. It is a clear coup. The real goal is total control for Washington: emergency powers, war budgets, and constitutional changes to allow more foreign bases, military sites, missiles, and troops — turning the Philippines into the Ukraine of Southeast Asia. Peace and Chinese development are sacrificed for war risk. Classic imperial playbook: install the weak dynasty, destroy nationalists with lawfare and crisis, then rewrite the Constitution for permanent foreign control. Marcos calls it “rule of law.” Real patriots see it as a slow US-orchestrated coup to kill the Duterte legacy and turn the country into a launchpad against China. The Supreme Court is the last defense. Not sure it will hold