The United States is getting sucked into a conflict in the Middle East, central banks are desperately trying to keep inflation under control and the world is facing an energy shock that may cripple the global economy. There are lots of ways the world looks very similar to the early 1970s. And yet, it is now clear that there is also one significant difference between now and then. Whereas half a century ago, the oil cartel OPEC was rising in power, with Tuesday’s shock decision by the United Arab Emirates to quit the group, it is clear that it is falling apart. In reality, the US is taking back control of the fossil fuel industry – and that is of huge geopolitical significance.
As of April 2026, a series of AI-generated, “Lego-style” propaganda videos created by pro-Iranian groups have gone viral, targeting American political figures with animated, hip-hop-style diss tracks. These videos are designed to look like they were produced by The Lego Group but are actually part of a sophisticated digital “meme war”. Fortune +4
Key Aspects of the Iran Lego Rap Videos:
The Content: The animated videos depict Lego-style characters in surreal, aggressive scenarios, often featuring hip-hop soundtracks, to mock U.S. politicians and officials, including Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. Facebook +2
The “King Charles” Connection: Some content discusses Trump interacting with international figures like King Charles III, with narratives asserting that U.S. officials are failing in their leadership. YouTube +1
The Creators: The videos are reportedly produced by a team calling themselves “Explosive Media,” which has been described as a “student-led media team” that admits the Iranian regime is a “customer”. The New Yorker +1
The Technology: They use AI tools, including ChatGPT, Grok, and Suno for lyrics and audio, and Sora-like video generators, to create these clips in about 24 hours. The New Yorker +1
Platform Response:YouTube took down accounts associated with these videos for violating policies against “deceptive practices” and coordinated foreign influence campaigns.The New York Times
These videos are being used to push a narrative that Iran is resisting American pressure, utilizing pop culture to gain viral traction. Fortune +1
Trump just decided how this war ends, and it’s not how anyone expected… Trump has reportedly told his aides to prepare for an extended U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The president apparently sees both available off-ramps, pulling out of the conflict entirely or resuming combat operations, as carrying significantly more risk than maintaining the current naval blockade indefinitely. This follows separate reporting that the intelligence community was directed to assess the risks of declaring unilateral victory and pulling back from the conflict. Both data points point in the same direction.
Trump is choosing to settle into the standoff rather than force a resolution either way. The logic is brutal but coherent. Resuming bombing burns through more JASSM-ER missiles the Pentagon can’t replace for years, risks more American casualties, drives oil even higher heading into midterms, and almost certainly fails to extract the nuclear concession Iran refuses to make.
Walking away with no deal hands Iran a clean political victory and tells every adversary that American military pressure can be outwaited.Maintaining the blockade keeps the pressure on Tehran, slowly degrades the Iranian economy, and preserves Trump’s leverage for whenever a real diplomatic opening emerges.
But there’s a real cost to “indefinite blockade” as a strategy. American gas prices already at $4.18 don’t ease while the Strait stays effectively closed. Fertilizer prices stay 90% above pre-war levels. Global supply chains stay fractured. The Iran war might be morphing into a permanent low-intensity confrontation, with the U.S. Navy enforcing a blockade in perpetuity while Iran keeps boarding ships, deploying cyber attacks, and waiting for the political pressure on Trump to crack first. Source: WSJ
The problem plaguing Western civilization isn’t toxic masculinity, it’s a lack of masculinity. What the country needs is fatherhood. Watch our new documentary “Fathers Wanted” on https://t.co/sLkXnGKCFd. pic.twitter.com/QRLFiYf99i
Jensen Huang just told you who is winning the most important race on Earth. For fifty years, America held an unchallenged monopoly on the future. We built the transistor. We launched the internet. We wrote the source code for the modern world. Then the man who builds the physical backbone of every AI system on the planet read the score out loud. Huang: “50% of the world’s AI researchers are Chinese.” Half the minds building what comes next are not ours.
Huang: “70% of last year’s AI patents are published by China.” Seven out of every ten blueprints for the next era are being written in Mandarin. Huang: “Nine out of the ten top science and technology schools in the world are now in China.” The talent pipeline did not slow down. It reversed direction. Huang: “We used to lead most of them; now they lead most of them. This has completely flipped in the last half to a decade.”
Fifty years of American intellectual supremacy. Inverted in less than ten. This is not a rivalry between OpenAI and DeepSeek. This is not a stock ticker or a quarterly earnings call. This is the largest transfer of civilizational power in the modern era. And it is happening while the West drafts safety frameworks and fills out compliance paperwork. Huang: “They have a large population of highly qualified students. They work incredibly hard. This is a country with an enormous might.” China does not treat AI like a product category. They treat it as the single variable that decides who writes the rules for the next century.
The West keeps asking what AI should be allowed to do. China keeps asking how fast they can build it. That gap is not philosophical. It is existential. This is not a left fight. This is not a right fight. This is a survival fight. And right now, America is not fighting it like one. The nation that controls the talent controls the research. The nation that controls the research controls the models. The nation that controls the models does not ask permission. It sets the terms. History never remembers the civilization with the better safety committee. It remembers the one that refused to stop building.
Jensen Huang just told you who is winning the most important race on Earth.
For fifty years, America held an unchallenged monopoly on the future. We built the transistor. We launched the internet. We wrote the source code for the modern world.
The UAE leaving OPEC is a major blow to the cartel’s pricing power. Here’s what it actually means. – The UAE is OPEC’s second-largest producer and can now pump freely with no output restrictions – Good for consumers in the short term: more supply, downward pressure on prices – Less clear for U.S. producers: cheaper oil globally means lower profits for Big Oil – The U.S. is energy independent but still imports roughly a third of its oil, including heavier crudes from the Middle East that American light crude can’t replace – The world was already oversupplied before the Iran war, so it’s unclear if long-term demand supports UAE’s extra production – The bigger picture: the Iran war is permanently reshaping global energy supply chains and the UAE exit may not be the last domino to fall Source: CNN Picture:
An ‘epidemic of r*pe and child pregnancy’ is being reported in Gaza under Hamas rule. Gazans living under Hamas rule are beginning to break their silence, describing s*xual abuse by multiple men, s*xual blackmail for aid or money and abuse by people in positions of power.
Human rights organizations in Gaza say that up to 60,000 women are vulnerable, with reports also indicating a rise in child marriages and pregnancies. Jusoor News filmed rare video testimonies inside the Gaza Strip. The filming was done at great risk because speaking up in Gaza carries severe risk. In one account told by a male Gazan, whose identity has to remain anonymous for his safety, he described how he found a widow displaced in the war being molested inside a tent by ‘a bunch of’ Hamas members and was warned to stay silent. ‘We were contacted by the wife of a friend. She had asked a Qassam Brigades commander to help her, but he took advantage of her,’ he said. ‘His behaviour is disgraceful. We investigated the matter and found her in a tent in the Gharabli area where a bunch of Qassam members were taking advantage of her. ‘We informed the leadership but we were told we had to keep silent about it.’
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is the military arm of Hamas. Another Gazan man confirmed that a similar episode had happened with one of his female neighbours, who was blackmailed by ‘one of Hamas charity organisations… they wanted her to “sell” herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher, or 100 shekels’.
Fortune +4
Facebook +2
YouTube +1
The New Yorker +1
The New Yorker +1
The New York Times
Fortune +1
canisgallicus 