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Crypto fund manager probed in the suspicious death of his fiancée in Zanzibar

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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EFF Sues DHS and ICE For Records on Subpoenas Seeking to Unmask Online Critics

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today demanding public records about their use of administrative subpoenas to try to identify their online critics.

Court records and news reports show that in the past year, DHS has used administrative subpoenas to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE’s activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests. The subpoenas are sent to technology companies to demand information about internet users who are often engaged in protected First Amendment activity.

These subpoenas are dangerous because they don’t require judges’ approval. But they are also unlawful, and the government knows it. When a few users challenged them in court with the help of American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Northern California and Pennsylvania, DHS withdrew them rather than waiting for a decision.

DHS and ICE have ignored EFF’s public-records requests for documents about the processes behind these subpoenas, so EFF sued Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“DHS and ICE should not be able to first claim that they have the legal authority to unmask critics and then run from court when users challenge these administrative subpoenas,” said EFF Deputy Legal Director Aaron Mackey. “The public deserves to know what laws the agencies believe give them the power to issue these speech-chilling subpoenas.”

An administrative subpoena cannot be used to obtain the content of communications, but they have been used to try and obtain some basic subscriber information like name, address, IP address, length of service, and session times. If a technology company refuses to comply, an agency’s only recourse is to drop it or go to court and try to convince a judge that the request is lawful.

EFF and the ACLU of Northern California in February ​wrote to Amazon, Apple, Discord, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Reddit, SNAP, TikTok, and X​ to ask that they insist on court intervention and an order before complying with a DHS subpoena; give users as much notice as possible when they are the target of a subpoena, so the users can seek help; and resist gag orders that would prevent the companies from notifying users who are targets of subpoenas.

And EFF last week ​asked California’s and New York’s attorneys general to investigate Google​ for deceptive trade practices for breaking ​its promise​ to notify users before handing their data to law enforcement, citing the case of a doctoral student who was targeted with an ICE subpoena after briefly attending a pro-Palestine protest.

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Finally! Nebraska Commits to End In-State Tuition For Illegal Aliens

In a dose of good news for the American people, The College Fix is reporting “Nebraska public universities will no longer discriminate against out-of-state American students in favor of illegal immigrants under a consent decree with the Department of Justice.”

Nebraska reached an agreement with the DOJ to stop treating Illegal Aliens better than out-of-state Americans, no longer affording them this special privilege.

This is a long time coming and should have been common sense, yet previously, illegals were treated better than Iowans or North Dakotans.

Till now, “Nebraskans can qualify for in-state tuition, even if they are here illegally, if they can prove they have lived in the state for 180 days and intend to stay there, the federal complaint states. There are other ways to prove residency, such as marrying an American citizen who lives in Nebraska.” This has finally changed.

This policy was not only unfair but also violates federal law. Fortunately, the law of the land is now being enforced.

Both President Trump’s DOJ and the Republican Governor put out statements.

Gov. Pillen stated:

Nebraskans expect that illegal aliens won’t get the benefit of in-state tuition and financial aid, and federal law forbids it. Outdated Nebraska laws to the contrary are deeply misguided and unconstitutional, and I am grateful for the combined efforts of President Trump’s Department of Justice and Attorney General Hilgers to deliver this long-overdue correction. This is the latest example of the tremendous partnership between the State of Nebraska and the Trump Administration.

The deal “demonstrates the quality of partnership between Nebraska state leaders and the Department of Justice for the shared purpose of ensuring that federal tax dollars are not used to discriminate against Nebraska’s lawful citizens,” Nebraska U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods stated.

This is part of the enforcement of the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996.”

Texas has reached a similar deal with the DOJ.

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Canada Joins US-Led Anti-China War Games

As the US blockades Iranian ships from sending oil to China, Canada’s military has sent a large force to join Washington’s effort to threaten that country. As Mark Carney calls US ties a “weakness”, Canada’s armed forces are quadrupling down on their US orientation.

Exercise BALIKATAN began Monday. Beijing views the massive US-led 19-day live-fire exercise across the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait as a threat. “Unilateralism and military bullying have already brought profound disasters to the world,” noted China’s foreign ministry spokesperson in response. Guo Jiakun added, “What the Asia-Pacific region most needs is peace and tranquillity. What it least needs is the introduction of external forces to create division and confrontation.”

This is the first time Canada has participated directly in the annual exercise. According to Canada’s ambassador in Manila, this country has dispatched the third largest deployment to the six-country exercise, which includes 10,000 US troops. According to the Canadian forces release, “Led by the United States and the Philippines, Exercise BALIKATAN will involve a broad range of CAF personnel and capabilities, including contributions from the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Air Force, the CAF Cyber Command, and the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command.”

HMCS Charlottetown is part of the exercise while 500 or more Canadian soldiers have traveled 10,000 kilometres to participate in this event.

As part of militaristic 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, Canada has deepened ‘defense’ ties with the Philippines. Six months ago, the two countries signed a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement. A year before that they established a Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding and Canada gave the Philippines access to its Dark Vessel Detection System, which employs satellite technology to track ships in the South China Sea.

These efforts are designed to assist the US in its military buildup. The Bongbong Marcos led Philippines has taken a sharp turn back towards the US and against China. According to China Military Online, “Since the Marcos administration resumed defense cooperation with the US in 2022, the US military has been systematically shaping the Philippines into a forward operational hub. This includes the addition of four new military sites, the deployment of the Typhon mid-range missile system, the construction of large, prepositioned ammunition depots, and the frequent conduct of joint military exercises. Taken together, these developments indicate that the US is seeking to turn the Philippines into a forward stronghold for containing its strategic competitors.”

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The Bloody Awful Waste of War

Iran’s forensics chief said nearly 3,400 people had been killed in the country since U.S.-Israeli strikes began Feb. 28. Almost 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, 32 have been killed in Gulf states, and 23 have died in Israel. Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed, and two more died of noncombat causes.

I happen to believe Iranian lives are as valuable and precious as American lives. What gives the U.S. and Israeli governments the right to inflict such disproportionate casualties on Iran, on Lebanon, on Gaza? (I know: might makes right.) If you include the Palestinians, more than 100,000 people, and probably closer to 200,000, have been killed in the latest Israeli/U.S. wars, with the United States providing most of the deadly weaponry.

Speaking of weaponry, the liberal New York Times had an article last week lamenting the heavy expenditure of costly precision weaponry (like Tomahawk cruise missiles) by the U.S. since the beginning of the Iran War. Nowhere in the article was there a complaint about the death toll, nor was there much of a complaint about the cost. No – what the liberal New York Times was concerned about was how quickly the U.S. could replenish its stockpile of weaponry so it could be prepared for a future war against peer threats like China and Russia.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the US stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the US military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries such as Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.

Again, if you read the article, nothing is said about morality. Nothing is said about death and dying and the bloody awfulness of war. The article simply says the U.S. has used a lot of very expensive missiles that we MUST replace if we’re to be prepared to wage more wars in the near future.

There’s not even a hint here that maybe America could be at peace – even in the most distant future. Apparently, America must always remain locked and loaded for a war with China, or Russia, or some other country and combination of countries, even as all this is couched as defending the homeland.

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The Technate Was Always Coming

And what you can do about it (besides complaining).

Palantir dropped a manifesto last weekend. 22 bullet points distilled from Alex Karp’s book The Technological Republic, posted to X with the casual framing of “because we get asked a lot.” I haven’t seen a reaction so widespread, unanimously opposed and viscerally aghast since James Damore’s infamous “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”.

The usual suspects lost their shit. Engadget called it “the ramblings of a comic book villain.”

TechCrunch clutched its pearls at the bits about “regressive” cultures and “vacant and hollow pluralism.”

Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins observed, (via Bluesky, of course), that these aren’t philosophical musings floating in the ether: they’re the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it’s advocating.

He’s not wrong, Palantir sells to ICE, DoD, NYPD, and the intelligence community. It may be a manifesto, but it’s also product literature.

Even Alexander Dugin, the Russian “Fourth Political Theory” philosopher, not exactly known for having a libertarian bent, seemed triggered by it, calling it “the plan of the Western techno-fascism” on X, “Pure Satanism” on his Substack.

Former Greek FM Yanis Varoufakis called it “evil” and put out his own point-for-point on it – he calls it a refutation, it’s actually more of a rant.

So everybody across the horseshoe is big mad. Fine.

The thing is, none of this should surprise anyone. Let’s now look at why the policy this “manifesto” outlines was always going to arrive, with or without Karp’s prosaic stylings.

Karp Didn’t Invent “The Technate”

The merger of corporate power and state apparatus, the “technate” that people are suddenly discovering with horror on a Sunday afternoon, is not a new idea. It’s not even a recent one.

Back in 2013, Eric Schmidt (then Google’s executive chairman) and Jared Cohen (Google Ideas, ex-State Department advisor to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton) published The New Digital Age. The book was blurbed by Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, and General Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA. That’s an elite-class blurb list for a book that explicitly argued for the intersection of Silicon Valley and state power, the fusion of corporate infrastructure with national security logic, and the reshaping of diplomacy through private platforms.

In 2013 it was called “transformational.” Kissinger gushing that it was, “a searching meditation on technology and world order” (he would go on to co-author The Age of AI with Eric Schmidt that should be every bit as concerning as Karp’s Technological Republic).

Not too long after that, Google’s Sergey Brin and Klaus Schwab held a fireside in Davos where Herr Schwab pontificated that with the advent of AI, since the algos would be able to predict election outcomes with 100% certainty, they may as well pick the winners anyway and we could do away with elections altogether.

Nobody batted an eye. My timeline certainly wasn’t overflowing with rage over it and the people who were calling attention to it were using facing all kinds of headwinds.

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Stagflation Incoming: The Donald Ain’t Gonna Like What Happens Next!

Here is a salient place to start regarding the economic impact of the Donald’s misbegotten war on Iran: To wit, approximately 7 billion ton-miles of freight moves by truck each and every day in the USA, which heavy truck fleet consumes upwards of 2.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) of diesel fuel.

Alas, the price of diesel fuel was about $3.55/gallon both a year ago and as of early January 2026, but has since soared by more than+$2.00 per gallon to $5.60. That’s a 56% rise in the cost of pumping goods and commodities through the arteries of the US economy. On an annualized basis, the diesel fuel bill for the US truck fleet went from $155 billion per year to $250 billion per year at current oil prices.

The big question, of course, is through which channel these drastically higher fuel acquisition costs will be absorbed – in higher prices or reduced output? And that pertains not just to the microcosm of the trucking sector, but the entire GDP now being battered by the Donald’s elective war-based dislocation of the world’s 175 million BOE/day oil and natural gas markets.

We’d bet it will be a combination of both inflation and deflation, otherwise known as stagflation. The mix of these outcomes depends upon supply and demand conditions in individual sectors of the economy in part, but also, and ultimately and more importantly, on the Fed. That is, whether the nation’s central bank pumps incremental demand into the economy via credit expansion with a view to “accommodating” the soaring price of energy today, and, soon, food and other commodity inputs to GDP, too; or holds firm on the printing press dials and allows the now cresting energy and commodity shocks to work their way through the interstices of the $30 trillion US economy.

Of course, during the previous comparable petroleum supply disruption during the 1970s, the Fed made the huge mistake of printing the money to counteract what was a “supply shock” in the form of soaring petroleum prices. But that led – just as sound money advocates had always held – to double digit increases in the general price level by the end of the decade, and thereafter the trauma of the Volcker administered application of the monetary brakes.

With the Fed fixing to welcome a new Chairman, as today’s congressional hearings remind, it is therefore a question of whether or not the Kevin Warsh Fed will want to take its place in the monetary policy villains gallery along with Arthur Burns and the hapless William G. Miller.

We think not. We actually believe that for the first time since Volcker, we are about to get a Fed chairman who understands the requisites of sound money and noninflationary finance, as well as the profound error of Keynesian demand management at the central bank.

And not only that. As far as we can tell, he also has the experience from his prior service on the Fed during the so-called Great Financial Crisis and the cajones to lean heavily against the supply shock now emanating from the Persian Gulf.

Of course, in a perfect world of honest money and free markets – including in the production of money and credit – there wouldn’t be any central bank “leaning” to do. Under an honest money gold standard, for instance, the impending petroleum supply shock would cause relative price changes, thereby generating a sharp curtailment of activity in petroleum intensive sectors and the reallocation of activity, output, jobs and capital to less petroleum intensive sectors. That’s what the miracle of free markets do when they are allowed by the state to operate.

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WHCD Shooting Suspect Told Law Enforcement He Targeted Trump Officials, CBS News Sources Say

A major development has emerged in the investigation into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, and the implications are serious. 

According to two sources cited by CBS News, suspect Cole Tomas Allen allegedly told law enforcement after his arrest that he intended to shoot Trump administration officials.

If that statement is confirmed in court, the entire nature of the case changes. This is no longer just about a shooting attempt in a crowded venue. It becomes a case centered on targeted political violence against federal officials, which carries far more severe legal consequences under federal law.

Intent is one of the most critical factors in any criminal case, especially at the federal level. 

An admission like this could open the door to charges well beyond the preliminary firearms and assault counts already announced by U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro. 

Prosecutors now have a potential pathway to pursue statutes specifically designed to protect government officials and the federal government’s functioning.

One of the most relevant statutes in this situation is 18 U.S.C. § 115, which criminalizes threats against federal officials in connection with their official duties. This law applies broadly, covering members of Congress, federal judges, law enforcement personnel, and executive branch officials, including cabinet members. 

The penalties are significant, with up to 10 years in prison for threats alone, and substantially more if an attempt or actual act of violence is involved. 

The reasoning behind the enhanced penalties is straightforward: a threat against a government official is treated not just as a threat to a person, but as an attack on the operation of government.

That distinction matters. Federal prosecutors consistently treat cases involving government officials differently because of the broader implications. 

These cases are not limited to individual harm; they are viewed as potential disruptions to government stability and public order.

The setting of the incident could also play a major role. If investigators determine that Allen specifically chose the White House Correspondents’ Dinner because of the expected presence of administration officials, that could support arguments for premeditation. 

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The Rise of AI in Payments Is Not About Convenience

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.

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The Cowardice of Qualification: When Anti-War Voices Speak the Language of Empire

A respected human rights activist has spoken repeatedly against the US-Israeli aggression on Iran. She recognizes the illegality of the war and does not shy away from condemning it in clear terms. Yet, almost invariably, she feels compelled to qualify her position, reminding her audience that Iran has killed “tens of thousands of protesters” during recent anti-government demonstrations.

The number itself is highly questionable. Even widely cited figures from international reporting – such as Reuters coverage in January 2026 – place the death toll of the protests in the thousands, not tens of thousands. But the issue here is not the exact number, nor even the complex context of those protests, which began as genuine expressions of discontent but were later exploited by various external and internal actors seeking to destabilize the country.

The issue is the qualification itself.

Many who consider themselves progressive, anti-war, liberal, or even leftist seem unable to take a clear moral position on US and Israeli actions in the Global South without inserting these qualifications. The habit may appear harmless, even responsible, but in reality, it is deeply damaging. It is not a sign of nuance – it is a symptom of a deeper moral hesitation.

By qualifying their condemnation, these voices neutralize their own position. They suggest, whether intentionally or not, a form of moral equivalence: the US-Israeli war on Iran is wrong, but Iran is also guilty; the genocide in Gaza is horrific, but Palestinians are also to blame. The result is not balance – it is paralysis.

Compare this to the moral clarity of those who support war. Their position is never qualified. It is assertive, absolute, and often built on exaggeration or outright falsehoods, yet it carries conviction because it does not undermine itself.

This pattern is not new. It is deeply rooted in the history of Western political discourse. From the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which was justified as a necessary act to save lives, to the Cold War military interventions in places like Guatemala in 1954, where regime change was framed as a defense against communism, the language of morality has consistently been used to legitimize violence.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 offers one of the clearest examples. Saddam Hussein was presented as the ultimate embodiment of evil – the “new Hitler” – while the United States and its allies were cast as liberators.

Indeed, American officials spoke openly of being “greeted as liberators,” even as the country was plunged into chaos and extreme violence. A few years later, then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the devastation created by the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 as “the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” reducing immense human suffering to a necessary step in a grand geopolitical transformation.

This tradition extends even further back, to the era of colonialism, when European powers justified conquest through supposedly humanitarian missions. The abolition of slavery, for example, was frequently invoked as a moral justification for colonial expansion in Africa, recasting domination as benevolence and violence as a civilizing duty. Killing, in this paradigm, happens in the name of saving; destruction is presented as progress.

Israel has long operated within this same framework. Its wars have consistently been presented as existential and necessary for the survival of democracy and civilization itself.

Long before the emergence of Hamas, Palestinian resistance was framed through shifting labels that served the same purpose. During the 1936–39 revolt, Palestinian fighters were described in British and Zionist discourse as “terrorists,” “brigands,” and “gangs.” In later decades, the label shifted – from nationalist fighters to communists to Islamists – but the underlying logic remained unchanged: the enemy is always illegitimate, and therefore any violence against them is justified.

Many of us recognize this pattern, yet instead of exposing its fallacies, some continue to operate within it, searching for a “balanced” position while still presenting themselves as anti-war or even pro-Palestinian. They acknowledge Israeli crimes but feel compelled to condemn Palestinian “terrorism.” They oppose Israeli policies yet insist on distancing themselves from Hamas and the others, as if Palestinian resistance exists outside the historical and political reality that produced it. They speak of “extremists on both sides,” as though figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and a Palestinian fighter in Gaza can be meaningfully compared.

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