When Trump ordered the first wave of strikes in this ongoing war with Iran last month, he did so while his administration was engaged in active negotiations with the Iranian government. That echoed the situation last June when Israel launched a bombing campaign days after Trump scheduled new talks with Iran—a move Trump later claimed was a deliberate deception to help make the Israeli strikes more effective.

This time around, in that first wave of strikes on February 28, American cruise missiles targeted and destroyed a building that ended up being a girls’ school—killing more than 168 young children who had just started their day of classes.

In the weeks since, the specific toll of the war on the Iranian people has been obscured by a thick fog of war and a nationwide internet blackout. But the initial reports and anecdotes that have managed to slip through suggest that the civilian death toll from the intense bombing campaigns on and around dense residential areas has been extensive.

Then, last Saturday night, Trump announced that if Iran did not “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the US would begin targeting and destroying Iran’s power grid and energy infrastructure. Trump did announce Monday morning before markets opened that he’d extend his deadline until after markets close this weekend, which suggests it may have been a bluff.

But still, the fact that Trump is officially threatening this at all is a big deal. Because destroying Iran’s power grid would not just turn the lights off for a few days, it would irrevocably destroy Iran’s ability to sustain the current population that lives there. Food production, sanitation services, water purification, healthcare services, and more would be greatly diminished, if not stopped entirely. And the result would be mass civilian death—even more so if Iran carried out the retaliation they promised and hit similar infrastructure in nearby US allied countries.

As all of this has unfolded in the last three weeks—the surprise attack during negotiations, the violent deaths of Iranian civilians as a result of US and Israeli bombs, and the credible threats of escalations that would significantly intensify civilian deaths—anyone who has voiced any concern about the ethics of any of this has been either dismissed by the administration and its supporters as a naïve utopian pacifist or demonized as a serious internal impediment to an operation that will finally bring about the kind of lasting regional peace that virtually everyone claims to desire.

But ethics matter, especially in war. War is no trivial subject. It’s violence on the widest scale. At their best, wars can throw off the worst tyrannies and liberate the oppressed. But they can also bring about the worst atrocities.

That’s why it is so important to have a firm and precise understanding of when violence is justified. History shows that, without this, it is far too easy for our healthy human responses to real atrocities and tyrannies to be funneled into support for further crimes that only trap us in an escalating series of indiscriminate revenge cycles that create a more violent, tyrannical, and lawless world. Truly just wars are only possible when grounded in a precise understanding of what is and is not just.

And the best single articulation of that in the context of war is Murray Rothbard’s 1963 essay “War, Peace, and the State.” In it, Rothbard clarifies that the difference between war and all other questions of crime and punishment is simply a matter of scale. Basic moral truths do not magically change or disappear if more people are involved in either committing or responding to a crime.

In any context, everyone is justified in resisting or repelling any invasion of their person or property, extracting restitution or exacting punishment in response to an invasion, or helping someone else do the same. It doesn’t matter what governments say, that is a basic, universal right. However, as Rothbard lays out, one of the most important concepts that often gets lost or forgotten in the fog of war is that violence may only be used to resist or punish the aggressor. Any violence committed against an uninvolved third party in response to a crime is itself a new crime that can be justly repelled or punished.

Just about all of us seem to have a firm understanding of this nuanced but important ethical truth when we, our families, our communities, or our nations are on the receiving end of an unjustified violent attack. It’s when we are mobilized, or at least taxed, to help attack someone else that we’re propagandized into forgetting or disregarding it.

Virtually all Americans understand that the 9/11 attacks were wrong because, even if the Washington-enabled bombings of Middle Eastern civilians or propping up of brutal dictators in the region that convinced the men on those planes to do what they did were unjust, the civilians in those towers and on those planes were not responsible for it.

In recent weeks, the man who appears to have been so upset about this new war on Iran that he shot and killed people enjoying a night out in Austin, Texas, was wrong because, even if this war is unjustified, the people at that bar that night were not responsible for it.

And the man who drove an explosives-filled car into a Michigan synagogue last Thursday was wrong because, even though his brothers and young niece and nephew were killed in Israeli airstrikes two weeks before, the kids in that synagogue’s on-site school were not responsible for it.

But, by that same basic ethical standard—that is, again, uncontroversial when it’s applied to ourselves—the bombing of that girls’ school that killed all those children was a crime. Not the kind of bureaucratic “government crime” that, at most, results in a drawn-out internal investigation and some dry report about how similar mistakes could probably be avoided, but a real (at best) mass-manslaughter that the individuals responsible need to be held accountable for.

And, on that note, Trump’s plan to destroy the infrastructure that millions of Iranian civilians rely on to survive—because he’s frustrated their government has so far outmaneuvered him in the Straits of Hormuz—would be such an unbelievably egregious crime that every American should be absolutely outraged that the politician who ostensibly “represents us on the world stage” even dared to mutter it out loud.

I’ve already dealt, in recent weeks, with plenty of the talking points trotted out by proponents of this war to convince us—and themselves—that actions that are so clearly immoral are in fact warranted.

But, in short, this war was not launched preemptively to take out an “imminent” threat of Iran starting a nuclear war with Israel. It was an aggressive attack launched during negotiations as part of a broader joint US-Israeli effort to protect and expand Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East.

And then there’s the idea that, while war is always a messy business, collateral damage like this is a risk that is necessary to face in order to liberate the region, and really all future generations from the unique threat posed by the Iranian regime.

That is propaganda, not just pushed by the groups who agitated for this specific war but also sewn by the massive war machine in DC that’s spent decades inflating threats to justify its continued existence.

There’s nothing new about this dynamic. It’s a story the American population has been told dozens of times before. The German “Hun” were a unique obstacle to European peace that needed to be taken out. Then the Nazis and Japanese were the great threat standing between the world and peace. Then the USSR was. Then communists in Korea. And then communists in Vietnam.

Then it was Saddam Hussein. If he could just be removed from power, the Middle East would finally enjoy a level of peace and stability not seen in thousands of years. Then he was, and it turned out that Qaddafi and Assad were the real final obstacles. And now, after all that, it’s Iran.

In every one of these cases, war advocates acted like it was a certainty that, if the American people could just roll up their sleeves, contribute a bit more of their paycheck through taxes or inflation, and temporarily set aside any inconvenient moral considerations just long enough for the American war machine to do what was necessary to knock the current villain off the geopolitical chessboard, we would finally see a genuine lasting peace take hold. And it has never been the case. This time is no different.

But even if this were a different situation and this really was a just war that could not be avoided, it would still be imperative to demand that those running the war effort go to every possible length, not just to prevent the deaths of uninvolved civilians but, more importantly, to hold those who do kill civilians accountable.

Otherwise we risk becoming entirely defined by politicians who are gleeful about doing something as dishonorable as pretending to negotiate to set the stage for an unnecessary surprise attack, by a federal bureaucracy that protects the individuals responsible for actual crimes from accountability, and by citizens who shrug off or even embrace a policy that—if fully carried out—would constitute a moral atrocity on the level of some of the worst regimes of the twentieth century.

Said another way, we should not let our government turn us into the kind of unfeeling, evil-excusing, morally-deformed society that Americans have always, rightfully, despised.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post The Immorality of Trump’s War with Iran Matters appeared first on Activist Post.

Deadlock and Attrition

Starting a big war in the Middle East is much easier than stopping it. This is the lesson President Trump is now learning.

After one month of dropping bombs and launching missiles at Iran, Trump has called for a time out. A proposed one-month ceasefire. He even put a 15-point peace plan on the table. It was delivered via intermediaries in Pakistan.

The proposal included a comprehensive off-ramp to address everything from nuclear disarmament and missile limits to reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran quickly put a match to it and countered with five conditions of its own – including demands for reparations.

It was but one month ago when Operation Epic Fury kicked off. What was intended to be a brief operation of destruction rained down on Iran, turned into something much greater.

The initial shock and awe adeptly targeted high-level leadership and missile infrastructure. But the operation quickly spiraled into a larger war of attrition that physically severed the world’s most vital energy artery – the Strait of Hormuz.

The initial success was overshadowed by a grim, structural reality. Market volatility is one thing. Physical depletion of global resource reserves, which puts a big squeeze on every major economy, is entirely another.

Perhaps some limited shipping will be allowed to traverse the Strait as the war rages on. One can only hope. Because if it remains closed for another 30 days, the emergency oil and gas reserves held by nations like Japan and Germany will stop flowing. In fact, hundreds of gas stations have already run dry across Australia.

One more month of this will have dramatic consequences. Namely, it will result in the forced deindustrialization of energy-dependent economies as critical links in the world’s just-in-time supply chain breakdown.

When shipping containers stack up in idle ports and fertilizer plants go dark, the survival of economies across the globe are at risk.

Physical Shortages

Month one, by and large, was nothing. The impacts to the average person were mainly limited to sticker shock at the gas pump. Brent crude briefly spiked above $120 a barrel, and everyone’s 401(k) took a modest nosedive.

Month two, however, is when things really start to get serious. That’s when higher prices are met with physical shortages. The next 30 days are the real make or break moment for the global economy.

In March, the world survived on oil and gas that was already in the pipes and the tanks. The U.S. and its allies tapped into strategic reserves to help buffer the price spikes. But those reserves are a very short-term solution.

Around 20 percent of the world’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is currently trapped behind the Strait. QatarEnergy, the world’s LNG heavyweight, has had to declare force majeure on exports.

Most major industrial centers in Europe and Asia keep about 30 to 45 days of gas in easily accessible storage. If the Strait doesn’t open by mid-April, we aren’t just talking about higher gas prices and heating bills. We’re talking about mandatory industrial shutdowns. If you can’t power the factory, you can’t make the product.

Similarly, if you can’t supply fertilizer, you can’t grow food. In addition to being one of the world’s top suppliers of oil and gas, the Persian Gulf is also one of the world’s top suppliers of agricultural fertilizers. What’s more, fertilizer shortages couldn’t have come at a worse time.

It’s spring planting season in the northern hemisphere. Farmers in the U.S. Midwest, Brazil, and India are looking at prices of nitrogen fertilizers that are 30 percent to 50 percent more expensive than they were four weeks ago. And that’s if they can find them at all.

If supply constraints persist through April, farmers will simply plant less or conserve fertilizer. That means lower crop yields this fall. Moreover, it means there will be a global food security emergency that will peak in about six months.

Energy Holidays and Empty Shelves

You may have also heard of looming helium shortages. Most of the world’s helium, which is essential for cooling the machines that make high-end AI chips, comes from Qatar.

High-end semiconductor fabricators in Taiwan and Arizona have about a three-month buffer of these specialty gases. One month’s supply is already gone. If we lose another, there could be a shortage of chips that power everything from your phone to the newest AI models.

If the Keep Out signs stay up at the Strait through April, there could be several disagreeable consequences. For example, there will be energy holidays (i.e., forced rationing) in energy-hungry nations. Factories that make cars, plastics, and chemicals will go dark to conserve power for hospitals and homes.

Shipping companies will also avoid the Persian Gulf. This will add an additional 15-day detour around Africa for goods being shipped from Asia to Europe. The additional transport time will add costs to imported goods.

Many economies were already stalling out before the attacks on Iran. But now, if 20 percent of the world’s oil remains offline through May, it’s a near certainty that major economies like Germany, Japan, and China – and the USA – will slip into a recession.

In short, month one was merely a siren. Month two is the start of the actual physical impact. Specifically, the global economy will move from higher costs to shortages.

A world where shortages of everything from medical instruments to basic consumer electronics and manufacturing components, and essentials like gasoline and fresh fruits and vegetables, could soon be the reality.

The buffer period provided by global strategic reserves is disappearing with each passing day. While the first 30 days stimulated a chaotic news cycle and wild market swings. The next 30 days will stimulate a structural shift in how people live.

Jar Farming for Dummies

At this point, there doesn’t appear to be a quick and easy end to the war with Iran that will restore passage of the Strait of Hormuz. If anything, things are escalating with the prospect of ground troops becoming more and more likely.

So, without reservation, hard times are coming to a town near you.

The just-in-time world was not built for a sustained severance of its primary jugular. When the oil and gas stops flowing, the helium stops cooling the fabrication machines in Taiwan, and the nitrogen stops hitting the soil in the Midwest, the convenience and abundance of modern life break down. So, too, does the debt and the credit edifice that sustains it.

As part of the New Year edition of the Economic Prism, in the closing section titled Preparing for Chaos, we included one practical action you can take to prepare for war, inflation, or the breakdown of an ever-increasing complex digital world.

Many people laughed at our suggestion. Few took our advice. But, for fun and for free, we’ll revisit this simple, but important recommendation…

Assuming you have food storage, and some basic backup power such as a simple battery storage system that can charge with portable solar panels, there is the critical, and often overlooked need for micronutrients.

After two weeks, no matter how much protein and carbs you have, you need micronutrients for your brain and body, or you start losing mental clarity, strength, and a well-functioning digestive system. The simple solution is sprouting.

To get started, take a look at Sprout People. There you will find a great education section – simplified for dummies – and a large variety of nutrients you probably never imagined could be sprouted. We have no financial or business arrangement or affiliation with Sprout People. We’re merely passing on information we believe you will find valuable.

When the time comes, the ability to be a ‘jar farmer’ to sustain health via sprouts will be essential.

[Editor’s note: Get a free copy of an important special report called, “Cash Machine – Why You Should Own this Mineral Royalty with a 12% Yield,” when you join the Economic Prism mailing list today. If you want a special trial deal to check out MN Gordon’s Wealth Prism Letter, you can grab that here.]

Sincerely,

MN Gordon
for Economic Prism

Return from Jar Farming for Dummies to Economic Prism

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From 1933 to 2015, the Rockefeller family developed, owned, and occupied 19 buildings across 22 acres in midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center. The many tentacles of the Rockefeller Standard Oil octopus were housed in the General Electric building inside the family office known as Room 5600.

The United Nations was conceptualized inside Room 5600, alongside the IMF, World Bank, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and even the Trilateral Commission. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger formulated their scheme for the depopulation of the Third World from this office, and the plan to open China was concocted inside the vast 56th-floor office that housed the most dangerous American family in the nation’s 250-year history.

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The new regulations revealed by the Financial Conduct Authority include several technical traps which crypto software providers need to watch for to avoid sanctions

What to know:

• The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority has proposed detailed “cryptoasset perimeter” guidance that would bring most crypto activities under the Financial Services and Markets Act by October 25, 2027.
• Under the plan, any firm holding client crypto assets for more than 24 hours, or with the ability to override client authority, would be treated as a regulated custodian and require a full safeguarding license.
• Validators, node operators and stablecoin issuers face tighter rules, including loss of tech-only exemptions when offering added-value features and a requirement that U.K.-based issuers control the full stablecoin lifecycle, with firms given a five-month window from Sept. 30 to apply for authorization.

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is proposing crypto rules that could quietly expand the definition of custody, potentially sweeping in platforms and software providers that don’t consider themselves custodians.

The FCA published its Cryptoasset Perimeter Guidance on Wednesday, which includes a few technical traps for firms handling clients’ crypto assets.

The rules draw a red line at the 24-hour mark for custody. Any firm or crypto platform or app holding client assets for longer than a day during trade settlement will likely fall under the regulated custodian classification, which triggers a requirement for a full safeguarding-license.

Validators and node operators also need to proceed with caution. The regulator warned those involved in those activities will lose their pure tech exemption the moment they provide “added value” features. That includes things like user dashboards, yields or reward-compounding tools. In those cases, they must seek full approval for arranging staking.

“Our new perimeter gives us the tools to strengthen protections for consumers and support fair, transparent and orderly markets as the sector matures,” the FCA stated in the paper.

Also noteworthy is that for the first time, the FC has addressed the “shadow custody” issue. The financial watchdog made it clear that if a crypto service provider allows it to theoretically override a client’s authority, it is officially a custodian even if it guarantees it will never exert that power.

“The fact that an arrangement involves smart contracts, public blockchains or some elements of decentralisation does not determine the perimeter position or place the arrangement outside of regulation,” the document noted.

For stablecoin issuers, the mandate is equally blunt as it considers issuance legal only if the issuer is established in the United Kingdom and manages the entire lifecycle. That includes everything from the initial offering to redemption and reserve maintenance.

The FCA requested views on these proposals until the consultation closes on June 3, 2026, it said in a separate statement Wednesday. The regulator intends to publish finalized rules in policy statements this summer, followed by the final perimeter guidance in September.

The roadmap forces all entities providing crypto services to transition from the current money-laundering registrations systems to a more strict approval regime under the U.K.’s Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA).

Firms intending to continue in business under the new regulations face a five-month application window from Sept. 30 of this year to Feb. 28, 2027. Missing this deadline exposes them to potential fines and suspensions as well as permanent closures.

Only those who apply during the application period will benefit from the so-called “savings provisions” that allow them to keep operating while the regulator deliberates.

The post The 24-hour trap: Why the UK’s new crypto rules could catch some firms off guard appeared first on Activist Post.

Enshrining age verification laws nationwide presents a series of perilous privacy concerns.

(Liam Dawe) We’ve covered here before on individual US states setting up their own age verification laws, and now a new US Congress bill has been proposed for it. If passed, this would then potentially set it all up to be nation-wide across the entirety of the US.

The bill was introduced on April 13th and has been referred to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It’s being sponsored by the Democratic party’s Josh Gottheimer, with it being co-sponsored by Republican Elise M. Stefanik so it has bipartisan support.

The current concerning thing – is that the actual bill text doesn’t seem to have been provided yet. All we know is the main introduction title of: “To require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system, and for other purposes”.

It could go either way with it simply asking for people to enter their date of birth or more concerning is actual proper verification using some form of ID. The other bit about it being for “other purposes” also leaves me with a rather uneasy feeling. These types of bills we’ve seen elsewhere are always a first step towards something worse. They all mean less privacy, less freedom, more tracking and a potential for more security problems when things inevitably get leaked somewhere.

This appears to be part of the “Parents Decide Act” announced earlier in April by Gottheimer, as just one step in the process. So expect a lot more to come. Some bullet point plans from it:

• Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.
• Allow parents to set age-appropriate content controls from the start, including limiting access to social media, apps, and AI platforms.
• Ensure that age and parental settings securely flow to apps and AI platforms, so content is tailored appropriately for children.
• Prevent children from accessing harmful or explicit content — including inappropriate AI chatbot interactions — by creating a consistent, trusted standard across platforms.

Currently, the bill is only in the introductory stage so it hasn’t yet passed and become law, so if this is important to you in the US you may want to speak to your representatives.

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A report on the human rights situation in Gaza

It was 93 degrees in Gaza on Wednesday, and the best that most survivors of Israel’s war there could manage was to find shade under a tent. The Israeli air force, unchallenged by anti-aircraft defenses, has damaged or destroyed 92 percent of the territory’s homes and apartment buildings, leaving the Palestinian survivors of the war lucky, but surely not grateful, to have a tent over their heads.

The Israeli bombing of Gaza has now gone on for more than thirty months. It began immediately after Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. Hamas’s goal was to snatch vulnerable Israeli soldiers as hostages. The gates separating Israel from south Gaza were down and hundreds of frustrated Gazans, who had been suffering in a subjugated society for decades, poured into Israel seeking revenge. Both US and Israeli intelligence services had warned for months that Hamas was planning a major assault inside Israel, but those reports, which included translated US intercepts of communications from Hamas training sites and reached senior levels of the Israeli government, were ignored or not believed.

More than 1,200 Israelis, including young attendees of an all-night rave near the border with Gaza, were murdered on October 7, and 250 men and women, many of them serving in the Israeli military, were taken hostage. Unanswered questions remain today about the ignored intelligence warnings and the slow response of the Israel Defense Forces.

There were a few Americans with military and intelligence ties to Israel who tried and failed in those early days to stop Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu from his all-out bombing response. One American thought was to convince Hamas, whose senior officers planned the attack, to turn over the leaders to stand trial. It was a nonstarter for both parties. Netanyahu had moved closer to the extreme right out of political necessity and took up a policy of all-out retaliation. He was then on trial on corruption charges that, as it was reported at the time, were more than convincing. But under Israeli law as long as he was prime minister he could stay in office if convicted and delay going to prison by appealing the verdict. It has been no secret in Israel that avoiding prison was one of his motives in turning to collective punishment from the air in Gaza. The war delayed the trial and kept him in office. Two US presidents, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have done nothing to restrain the Israeli prime minister, and supported and supplied him in the war.

The IDF now controls close to 60 percent of Gaza. Hamas is still alive and still a threat, if a much subdued one. The Palestinian survivors living in tents fight the elements, with more available food than earlier in the war but still lacking health care and decent sanitation. They are under the watch and control of the IDF, who shoot to kill if a Palestinian father or son, even one searching for firewood, strays even a few feet from the constantly narrowing borders of the tent camps.

I’ve been watching the mainstream coverage of Gaza since the beginning of the war. The stagnant situation there has inevitably become a humdrum story for the Western media unless a stray bomb wipes out a family or a widely publicized plan by a member of the Trump family emerges to turn Gaza, once the Palestinian issue is resolved—no specifications about that—into a $25 billion luxury resort and skyscraper business complex. Sometimes there is a flash of coverage when, as happened last month, Al-Jazeera reported the torture by a group of Israeli soldiers of an 18-month old Gazan boy. Cigarette burns and nail punctures were part of an effort to get the child’s father to confess to unspecified actions. (It should be noted here that the US and international press corps has been thoroughly reporting on the increasing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, their murder and seizure of long-held Palestinian property, all with the IDF looking on.)

I have previously reported on the remarkable work of Francesca Albanese, an Italian legal scholar who is now in her second three-year tour as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank. She does not mince words when it comes to the continuing escalation of torture and mistreatment of the Palestinians.

“Torture has always been a central feature of the dispossession of Palestinians by Israel,” Albanese writes in her current report, which was released on March 23. Since the Hamas attack in October of 2023: “Israel has employed torture on a scale that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent. . . . The escalation of torture in Israeli detention centers is a coordinated plan” that has been coordinated by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security. Albanese finds that since the October 7 attack, “the systematic torture of Palestinians has been an integral component of the settler-colonial genocide perpetrated by Israel, functioning as an instrument of annihilatory violence directed at the Palestinians as a people. When torture is perpetrated across an entire territory, against a population as such and sustained through policies that destroy the conditions of life, the genocidal intent is apparent.”

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The couple argued, according to hotel staff and were separated. Despite confirming Ashly Robinson died by suicide, police said they are still investigating her death.

What to know:

• Tanzanian authorities are investigating the death of U.S. influencer Ashly Robinson in Zanzibar and have ordered her fiancé, crypto investor Joe McCann, to remain in the country while the case is reviewed.
• Police say Robinson, 31, died by suicide after a heated dispute with McCann at the Zuri Zanzibar resort, but her family disputes that conclusion and has launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover related expenses.
• McCann, a prominent crypto hedge fund manager whose Asymmetric Liquid Alpha Fund was recently shut down after steep reported losses, has had his passport withheld as police await forensic autopsy results.

Joe McCann, founder of crypto investment firm Asymmetric, is being probed by authorities in Tanzania, following the alleged death by suicide of his fiancée, U.S. influencer Ashly Robinson, during a trip to Zanzibar.

Robinson, 31, a Miami-based lifestyle creator also known as Ashlee Jenae, was found unresponsive on April 9 in a private villa at luxury resort Zuri Zanzibar, where the couple had been celebrating her birthday and recent engagement. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

According to an NBC News report, Zanzibar police investigating the death of Robinson confirmed she died by suicide following a “misunderstanding” between the couple.

Police confirmed the couple had been involved in a heated dispute before being separated twice by hotel staff and sent to separate rooms. However, police said Robinson’s death is still being investigated and have therefore withheld McCann’s passport, according to the news outlet.

Police have questioned McCann and have asked him to remain in the country while they receive the forensic results from Ashly’s autopsy.

The hotel said it was “deeply saddened” by what happened. “Our sincerest thoughts and sympathies go out to the family and loved ones during this painful time. We are providing our full cooperation to the local authorities and the U.S. Embassy,” the hotel said in a statement.

Robinson’s family, who said they doubt she died by suicide, have set up a GoFundMe page seeking to raise $50,000 to help with travel costs, arrangements and other unexpected expenses, they said. They have raised more than their target.

McCann, with an estimated net worth of $45 million, is a prominent figure in institutional crypto, leading Asymmetric, a hedge fund and venture firm backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.

However, in December, he announced he would shut down Asymmetric’s Liquid Alpha Fund following claims of massive financial losses throughout 2025. McCann’s decision to wind down the fund followed unconfirmed social media chatter that the liquid fund was down 78% this year.

Robinson and her fiancé, McCann, traveled to Zanzibar on April 4, according to a translated video statement from Tanzanian police.

CoinDesk called Zanzibar police several times, but the staff answering the phones immediately hung up, refusing to answer any questions. The Tanzania Police Force has also not responded to an email request for information.

The U.S. State Department said it had no further comment, only offering its condolences to the Robinson family.

“The Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, we have no further comment. For additional questions about any investigation, we refer you to local authorities. We offer our sincerest condolences to the family of Ms. Robinson and her loved ones on their loss.”

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Bint Jbail, South Lebanon – Israel has announced its intent to militarily occupy South Lebanon with its eyes set on the symbolic town of Bint Jbail. In preparation for this land theft, the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah have put up a stiff resistance and managed to inflict a large number of casualties amongst enemy soldiers.

During the last large-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanese territory in 2006, its armed forces had managed to reach the Litani River area, some 32 kilometers from the border within thirty days. In over 40 days of fighting, this time around, they have largely failed to move much further than a few kilometers deep into South Lebanon.

Desperate to make an impact and inflict a psychological blow upon the population of Lebanon and break Hezbollah’s morale, Israel has chosen to cover its failure to advance deep into the country by assaulting the village of Bint Jbeil instead.

The village’s significance dates back to the year 2000, when the former Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, delivered what was perhaps his most historic speech from a small soccer stadium there to address the Lebanese nation on May 26 of that year to mark the liberation of the South, which had been under Israeli occupation for nearly a decade.

Seyed Nasrallah declared the following:

“Israel, with its nuclear weapons and most advanced warplanes in the region, I swear by God, is actually weaker than a spider’s web… Israeli society lacks the resilience to endure a bloody conflict or suffer casualties. Israel may appear strong from the outside, but it’s easily destroyed and defeated.”

In 2006, Israel set it as an objective that they would conquer Bint Jbeil and set an Israeli flag at the site where Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah had delivered his speech, but failed to seize control of the village; due to the fierce resistance it faced from Hezbollah’s fighters. The “spiders web theory”, about Israel’s weakness, has long occupied the minds of Israel’s top military officials, who continuously attempt to dispute the statement.

Former Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would later visit Bint Jbeil as part of his 2010 trip to Lebanon. From that very same stadium where Nasrallah once spoke, Ahmadinejad delivered a speech in which he asserted that:

“Occupied Palestine will be liberated from the filth of occupation by the strength of resistance and through the faith of the resistance,” drawing outrage from the Israeli political leadership.”

However, today the Israeli military quickly claimed to have completely encircled Bint Jbeil, while some media outlets have disseminated maps showing what is purported to be the situation on the ground.

Yet, the concept of Israel totally capturing areas in Lebanon is misleading for a number of reasons.

During the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war, Israeli Brigadier General Gal Hirsch had declared publicly that Israel had “complete control” over Bint Jbeil. This claim was later discredited after the evidence emerged to show that three separate pushes to seize the village had failed, despite a heavy Israeli presence surrounding it.

Similarly, we see a similar pattern this time around. Major announcements are made, regarding the Israeli advance and how they have the area surrounded. What this actually means is that Israel has cut off all the main public roads, but doesn’t indicate that Hezbollah supply routes are closed, nor does it mean that there aren’t Lebanese fighters operating in the territory Israel claims to have “captured”.

Another example of where this has been on full display is in the case of Khiam, a border village located in south-east Lebanon. Since 1977 the Israeli military has attempted to control the village area’s mountainous terrain, failing five times to do so. In its sixth attempt to seize the territory, it also announced that Khiam was surrounded and almost entirely under their control, yet Hezbollah fighters routinely carry out attacks on the positions they claim to have already occupied.

Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem commented, following Israel’s 2024 attempt to seize the village, that the reason Lebanese fighters had foiled the invading army’s plots was that it maintained a series of undetected supply lines.

Although Israel did not claim to have seized the village of Bint Jbeil in 2024, the “spiders web” speech was still very much on the minds of the Israeli media and its senior officials. Israel Hayom, a newspaper owned by Miriam Adelson and close to PM Benjamin Netanyahu, had even run an article in September of that year, entitled “Spider Web Theory Unravels”.

Believing that focusing its efforts on seizing Bint Jbeil, will demoralize Hezbollah and constitute a major victory, Israel recently launched airstrikes against the soccer stadium where the famous Nasrallah speech was issued.

The airstrikes against a small stadium were even addressed by Israel’s 98th Division Commander Guy Levy, who boasted that “Bint Jbeil 2000: Someone here spoke and boasted about webs and spiders..Today, that man no longer exists, the stadium is gone, and his words are worth nothing.”

In the realm of Israeli propaganda, this is presented as an achievement. Contrary to this point of view, the strategy of Hezbollah has always been to draw Israel’s forces deep into Lebanese territory, in order to ambush them and wage a guerilla war that eventually forces the occupying army to retreat.  Hence Nasrallah’s warning to Israel in July of 2024, that in the event Israel invades “you will have no tanks left”, after which he said that southern Lebanon would drown the Israeli army.

Washington-based pro-war think tank, the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD) recently offered the following analysis as to why the IDF cannot achieve its stated military goals in southern Lebanon:

“Israel would have to occupy hostile, unpacified terrain over extended lines while simultaneously pushing north through south Lebanon, up the coast toward Dahiyeh, and along Lebanon’s northeastern border with Syria—all while remaining undermanned and over committed across other vital active fronts, and prepared for additional theaters to ignite. Air power alone cannot disarm Hezbollah. Israel’s sustained aerial campaign over the past 15 months hindered, but didn’t halt, Hezbollah’s comprehensive regeneration.”

Similarly, the strategy implemented by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza sought to achieve the exact same outcome. Israel typically sends its soldiers into areas it invades, in tanks and heavily armoured vehicles without infantry accompanying them, to reduce deaths. What this also means is that it does not fully clear areas it enters, nor does it ever fully control them. The difference between Gaza and Lebanon is that the Lebanese terrain is more difficult to traverse, and Hezbollah is far superior to Hamas as a military force.

Speaking to ABC news last August, Gabi Siboni, an Israeli colonel and military expert, working for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security think tank, stated that the war in the Gaza Strip could take a whole decade to complete its objectives.

With all the relevant facts considered, there is a low likelihood that Israeli ground forces will successfully achieve their objectives of preventing Hezbollah fire into the northern settlements and to permanently occupy southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, proving the “spiders web” theory of Hezbollah’s former leader, Mayors representing Israeli population centers along the border are frequently accusing their leadership of failing to protect residents and warning of an exodus from the area.

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Visa has just unveiled a new suite of artificial intelligence tools designed to overhaul how credit card disputes are handled, and once again this is being presented as a simple evolution toward efficiency and improved customer experience, yet when you step back and examine the scale of what is unfolding, this is clearly part of a much broader structural shift within the financial system toward centralization and automation.

The numbers alone should make that obvious, with Visa processing over 106 million disputes globally in 2025, representing a 35% increase since 2019, and that type of exponential growth is not something that can be resolved through incremental improvements, it requires a complete restructuring of how the system functions, which is precisely what Visa is now implementing.

They are introducing six AI-driven tools split between merchants and financial institutions, designed to intercept disputes before they even occur, automate responses, and consolidate the entire process into a unified framework where decisions are guided by network-wide data rather than individual judgment, and once you move into that framework, the human element is steadily removed and replaced by algorithmic consistency.

Every transaction, dispute, and outcome begins to follow the same predictive logic, and that is where the real transformation begins. Once behavior is standardized across a global financial network, control naturally follows.

This is exactly the progression I have warned about for years when discussing the digitization of money, because people continue to look at these developments as isolated improvements rather than understanding that they are components of a much larger system, where transactions become digital, then tracked, then analyzed, and ultimately controlled, and Visa’s expansion into predictive dispute management clearly places the system into that analytical phase moving toward control.

The introduction of AI models removes discretion. Document analysis tools that auto-generate responses eliminate interpretation, and centralized platforms that unify workflows create a single point of oversight, all of which together form the infrastructure necessary for a fully automated financial system where decisions are no longer case-by-case but system-wide.

This ties directly into what I have said about central bank digital currencies, because the real objective behind these systems has never been convenience but visibility, as governments and institutions cannot regulate or control what they cannot see, and once all transactions are processed digitally within centralized frameworks, that visibility becomes absolute.

Visa itself is not a central bank, but it operates at the core of the global payments system, and what is being constructed here is the foundational infrastructure that governments will inevitably leverage as they move toward broader monetary control systems, since a CBDC cannot function without the ability to monitor, analyze, and influence transactions in real time, and this is precisely the type of system being built.

While this is being marketed as a way to simplify disputes or improve efficiency, the broader implication is that the financial system is being transformed into a closed-loop network where every transaction is monitored, analyzed, and ultimately governed by machine logic. This is not the final stage but rather a transition toward a system where control over capital becomes increasingly centralized as confidence in traditional structures continues to decline.

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