Commentary Culture Investigations

As penance for my many sins, I watched the opening address by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. His words could have been written by an eight-year-old, albeit one possessed by the spirit of Greta Thunberg. Perhaps that explains why he uses phrases like “Enough is enough!” “No more plundering. No more exploitation.” “The sun belongs to no one. The wind cannot be embargoed.” Or the most mawkish sentiment heard at the U.N. in years: “The defiance of hope.” Someone really ought to tell António Guterres that there are certain phrases only a pope can utter without losing his dignity.
Yet, beyond the childish rhetoric lies an extremely dangerous underlying idea: the struggle “for power.” Guterres denounces something Marx himself might have decried: “we are witnessing an extraordinary transfer of power away from governments to a handful of private corporations and individuals.” Upon hearing this, my immediate thought was: “If only!” But no, Guterres. The reality is that we are being invaded and crushed by the massive backside of the State, the massive backside of international institutions, and the massive backside of globalist bureaucracy.
Guterres, a socialist morphing into a communist through the corruption of the U.N. and a passion for globalism, is essentially rewriting a centuries-old class-struggle speech.
Guterres, a socialist morphing into a communist through the corruption of the U.N. and a passion for globalism, is essentially rewriting a centuries-old class-struggle speech. He adapts it to current issues that, while filling the pages of left-wing newspapers, are not what matter most to ordinary people. Even war itself does not necessarily trouble families and workers; rather, it is the economic (and, if you will, moral) consequences that might cause the vast majority some concern. I am not saying ordinary people in the West do not care about war. They care about world hunger, too. But it is not something happening directly over their heads, nor does it appear in their bedrooms at night, the way the IRS does.
Ordinary people continue to suffer most from the economy, the loss of national sovereignty (hijacked by UN globalists), the bloated size of the State and its bureaucracy, the erosion of cultural identity and values, and the dire security consequences brought about by globalism. (RELATED: We Really Can Get Rid of the United Nations Now)
The U.N. Secretary-General states: “The danger is not technology. The danger is technology without accountability.” Interesting. Until the rise to power of all these center-left and center-right social democrats (Ursula von der Leyen and Guterres are, after all, cut from the same cloth), accountability was something reserved exclusively for elected officials and public servants. But that does not interest Guterres. What interests him is holding technology, an entity that does not actually exist, accountable; or rather, holding the private companies that develop it accountable. If you want a democracy, private companies must obey the law and answer to the justice system when necessary. However, the term “accountability” places them within the public sphere, reflecting Guterres’s great obsession: ensuring that no one owns anything that isn’t, in reality, the property of governments, the U.N., or Soros.
Furthermore, Guterres wants to reform the U.N. to give underdeveloped African nations a greater presence and more capacity for action and decision-making. Brilliant. Let us entrust major U.N. decisions, which affect almost the entire world, to leaders who have failed to develop their own countries, countries plagued by corruption, authoritarianism, violence, and poverty. What could possibly go wrong? (RELATED: The West Is a Superior Civilization (And I Don’t Care If That Offends You))
Naturally, the word “climate” appeared early in his speech, and the leader engaged in his usual performative moralizing, declaring, “Polluters must pay.” These are fine words that Guterres always directs at the United States and European fools, rather than at India or China. Can someone tell this man that not even his own family believes him anymore? It is a lie. The usual culprits do the polluting, and we’re the ones who foot the bill. And we’re f**king sick of it. And one final reminder, as a bonus: Guterres, can you scientifically demonstrate, without rigging the game, that human activity has anything to do with the way the climate evolves? (RELATED: Was 2024 the Hottest Year on Record?)
Finally, their proposal to regulate AI internationally could be summed up like this: we’ll bury everything under a mountain of mandatory regulations, international, national, regional, and local. And once the bureaucratic tangle becomes insurmountable for Western AI developers, we’ll have achieved our goal: letting China, Russia, or India dominate the world through AI.
It is true that Trump has dealt him a couple of verbal slaps, probably far fewer than he deserves. But the fact remains that it is a historic disgrace for Guterres to still be heading the U.N. Or perhaps not. Maybe it’s poetic justice. Maybe Guterres is exactly what that corrupt, stupid, and amoral organization deserves.
The secretary-general concluded with a threat: “I will never… ever give up.” But it is a hollow threat. In reality, he has already surrendered to China and to Africa’s far-left dictatorships. And that happened a long time ago. The rest is theater performed by a terrible actor.
READ MORE from Itxu Díaz:
Medicine’s Great Unfinished Business: The Common Cold
Our Children Are Getting Dumber
The Day the Light of the World Went Out
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

The Strait of Hormuz is where a right of navigation meets the realities of war. A ship may have a right to pass through an international strait, yet its owner must still decide whether to expose a crew and cargo to attack, whether insurance will respond, and whether the charterparty permits a refusal to sail. Since the Middle East conflict began on Feb. 28, 2026, those decisions have become urgent for vessels serving the Persian Gulf. They depend on the actions of both the United States and Iran, and on the gap between political assurances and conditions at sea. As Nicholas Monsarrat lamented in his 1953 novel The Cruel Sea, “The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more cruel.”
On Sep. 16, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) said it had verified 80 attacks on merchant vessels in and around Hormuz, with at least 22 seafarers killed since the conflict began. The IMO expressly cautioned that the attacks were not attributable to one country alone. Its figures describe the human and commercial danger; they should not be read as an attribution of every incident to Iran. That distinction matters in an article about responsibility, but it changes little for a master assessing a proposed transit. The cruel sea does not take sides.
The Trump administration has tried to use American financial and naval power to restore passage while pursuing a military campaign and economic pressure against Iran. In early March, President Trump directed the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to offer maritime political-risk support, and the administration raised the possibility of naval escorts. DFC subsequently described a facility of up to $20 billion in rolling reinsurance capacity; Chubb was announced as a lead private insurer later that month. These were proposals to make some voyages more insurable, not an undertaking that every vessel would obtain cover or an escort. The distinction between announced capacity and protection available for a particular voyage is critical. (RELATED: Shipping Interruption in Persian Gulf Is Yet Another Reminder of the Risks of Offshoring)
The president’s public language also changed the commercial calculation. On March 31, he said that other countries dependent on Hormuz should secure their own supplies and passage. On April 12, he announced a U.S. naval blockade. U.S. Central Command then specified a narrower operational measure: a blockade of traffic entering or leaving Iranian ports and coastal areas, applying to ships of all nationalities, while saying that vessels bound to or from non-Iranian ports would not be impeded in transiting Hormuz. Calling this a blockade of all shipping through the Strait would misstate the announced scope. It nevertheless created a fresh risk for ships trading with Iran and a need for everyone else to document their destination and cargo.
This sequence affects confidence in several ways. A promise of escorts may encourage charterers to arrange voyages; however, uncertainty about timing and availability makes owners less willing to rely on that promise. A blockade may be presented as preserving non-Iranian transit while increasing the possibility of Iranian countermeasures, and therein lies the difficulty. Presidential comments can affect expectations and pricing, but it would overstate the evidence to say that a particular statement caused a particular premium or attack. Changing U.S. policy signals became another variable for insurers, owners, and charterers already facing physical danger.
Geopolitical tension has exposed the gap between a right recognised by international law and the practical ability to exercise it.
Iran has sought to exert influence over passage through the Strait in response to the war and U.S. pressure. Its actions and threats increase the possibility that a ship will encounter hostile activity. The Iranian body, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, reported in September that it had listed 77 vessels as violating its transit protocols. It threatened consequences for listed ships and reportedly warned insurers and other maritime service providers against dealing with them. These are Iranian assertions of control, not an internationally accepted licensing system or a finding that the listed ships broke international law. Geopolitical tension has exposed the gap between a right recognised by international law and the practical ability to exercise it.
Iranian pressure reaches beyond a missile strike or seizure. A threatened detention can interrupt a voyage without damaging the hull. An insurer may ask whether a vessel has been identified on an Iranian list; an owner may ask whether its flag, beneficial ownership, cargo, destination or prior port calls attract attention. A charterer may regard an owner’s refusal as excessive when other vessels are passing. This is how state conduct becomes a private dispute about the terms of a fixture. The IMO’s account cautions against a simple story in which one state alone creates every maritime hazard. Whatever a party’s political view of U.S. strikes or Iran’s response, a prudent risk assessment must address the actual threat to that vessel at the time of the order. The right of transit passage through an international strait remains a central rule of the law of the sea. The IMO stresses that it cannot be suspended. That legal right does not guarantee safe passage, affordable insurance, or a contractual obligation to proceed, however.
Maritime business may therefore become more dependent on insurance. The first question is which risk is covered. Hull and machinery insurance protects the ship against specified physical losses; war-risk cover addresses defined hostile perils; protection and indemnity (P&I) concerns many third-party liabilities; and cargo interests arrange their own cover. Policies differ in exclusions, cancellation provisions, territorial limits, notice requirements, and additional premiums. None of these protections should be described simply as “the ship is insured.” A U.S.-supported facility might improve the supply of cover for qualifying voyages, but it does not itself resolve every policy exclusion, sanctions issue, P&I exposure, or practical objection to sending a crew into danger.
The DFC’s proposed $20 billion reinsurance facility therefore has two possible effects. If underwriters can quote usable cover and owners can rely on its terms, it may ease a bottleneck in trade. If the facility is delayed, narrowly available or too expensive for a particular cargo and voyage, the headline figure does little for that fixture. The charterparty must identify who pays any additional premium and how other costs and risks are allocated. A political assurance cannot replace a firm insurance quotation or an assessment of escort availability.
Iran’s threatened measures add another uncertainty. A voyage may face an increased premium because it involves a listed ship, an Iranian port, a contested route or a risk of detention. An Iranian notice to insurers has no automatic effect on an English insurance contract; the policy wording and actual exposure remain decisive. It may nevertheless alter underwriting appetite. Owners and charterers should check the vessel and cargo against applicable sanctions, the policy and war-risk endorsements, and the exact route before asserting that the voyage is either prohibited or fully covered.
English law shows how carefully these costs must be allocated. In Herculito Maritime Ltd v. Gunvor International BV (The Polar) [2024], the U.K. Supreme Court considered the relationship between war-risk provisions, the charterparty, bills of lading and a general-average claim after a vessel was seized by pirates. The case does not provide a universal rule for a Hormuz attack; it shows why one must read each contract before concluding that insurance has displaced a claim against another party. After the ransom, the shipowner sought a general-average contribution from the cargo interests: a share of an extraordinary expense incurred to save the ship and cargo together. The cargo interests argued that the owner should look only to the insurance. The U.K. Supreme Court held that the requirement to pay the extra premium did not, by itself, make insurance the owner’s exclusive remedy. The owner could still claim a general-average contribution from the cargo interests. The lesson is to check the charterparty and bills of lading before saying, “Insurance will pay, so the charterer or cargo interests owe nothing.”
A charterer, often a company arranging the use of the vessel, wants the agreed voyage performed. Yet an owner must protect its ship and crew and comply with its insurance arrangements. The result depends chiefly on the war-risk clause incorporated into the charterparty, not merely on whether politicians describe the situation as a war. BIMCO updated its standard time and voyage charter war-risk clauses in 2025. CONWARTIME 2025 and VOYWAR 2025 address exposure to war risks, alternative orders, and the allocation of resulting costs. The key legal question is whether the master or owner has reasonable grounds to regard the voyage as dangerous under the charterparty’s war-risk clause. Recent attacks and official warnings may be relevant. An owner does not have to wait until its own ship is attacked. Equally, a general claim that “the Gulf is unsafe” may not be enough to justify refusing an order. Geopolitical conflict creates practical difficulties for trade that can affect ships, cargoes, and ports far beyond Hormuz.
The cases show why the wording of the contract matters. In The Product Star (No 2), the court considered a risk that the parties had already taken into account when making their agreement. But there is no general rule that an owner can refuse an order only if the risk has increased since the charter was signed. The Triton Lark shows that a danger can be serious enough to justify concern even if an attack is less likely than not. The Paiwan Wisdom confirms that the answer depends on the particular contract and circumstances. There may also be a safe-port issue. Under the test in The Eastern City, a nominated port must be one that the particular ship can reach, use and leave without encountering danger that good navigation and seamanship cannot avoid, apart from an abnormal occurrence. A Gulf port might be operating normally while its approach has become dangerous. Whether that makes the port contractually unsafe depends on the facts and the terms of the charterparty.
Finally, danger may force a ship to change route or prevent it from completing the voyage. The Suez Canal cases, Tsakiroglou and The Eugenia, show that a longer or more expensive voyage does not, by itself, end the contract through frustration. The Sea Angel requires the court to consider the contract and the full circumstances. If a Gulf voyage truly cannot be performed, frustration may be arguable. But the parties should first check what their war-risk and other contractual clauses say.
The public right of passage remains. Alas, routine commercial confidence has not returned. On Sep. 18, Reuters reported that only four commodity vessels had made a recorded transit the previous day, against a 10-day average of about 16. Those preliminary tracking figures can change because some ships switch off their transponders; they indicate disrupted traffic, not a complete vessel count. The IMO’s Sep. 16 total of 80 verified attacks and 22 deaths makes it difficult to treat the danger as merely theoretical.
War around the Strait of Hormuz has turned a right of passage into a practical question of safety, insurance, and contractual responsibility. U.S. military measures, Trump’s changing statements, and proposed insurance support have affected confidence in shipping. Iran’s threats and attempts to control transit have added risks of attack or detention. Yet neither political assurances nor the legal right to pass through the Strait guarantees that a particular voyage is safe or insured. For shipowners and charterers, the answer lies chiefly in their contracts: can an owner reasonably refuse a dangerous order, who pays extra insurance costs, and what happens if a port or route becomes unsafe? The whole saga highlights the importance of resuming a geopolitical stability of sorts.
In an unstable strait in unstable times, the answer lies in careful drafting and a sober appraisal of what protection is available at the cruel sea.
READ MORE from Brian Patrick Bolger:
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The Justice Department has been investigating California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife for over a year now. Our understanding of the investigation had until recently come almost entirely from anonymous Justice Department sources, who spilled that the feds were focusing on the taxes and nonprofits of the governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
But we have just now obtained a clearer picture of precisely where the federal investigation stands now.
The San Francisco Standard obtained subpoenas issued in early September that focus on the funding of Newsom’s international travel via a nonprofit, the California State Protocol Foundation. In recent years, the nonprofit has been bankrolled by corporations, including companies with business interests in California, as well as by charities controlled by the wealthy and powerful. Many of these donations were officially reported as being made at Newsom’s request. One of the subpoenas states that the records are being requested “for use in a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California.” (RELATED: Why Newsom Is More Terrified of the DOJ Investigation Than He Wants to Admit)
It’s unlikely these corporations — or even some of these nonprofits — were being charitable out of the goodness of their hearts. They obviously thought they would get something out of the arrangement. The question is whether there was an explicit offer on the table for what they would get in return for donating to Newsom’s international travel fund. If so, that would be an illegal quid pro quo. The feds are subpoenaing six years of records surrounding the California State Protocol Foundation to find out.
Funds distributed by the California State Protocol Foundation have paid for Newsom’s trips to Rome, Brazil, China, Germany, and Switzerland, all of which he used to prop up his image on the national stage in service of his future presidential campaign. (RELATED: Gavin Newsom Is Getting Desperate Over California’s ‘Image Problem’)
Many of the companies that have donated to the California State Protocol Foundation have done so at Newsom’s specific request, including Zoox (Amazon’s autonomous vehicle company), LSN Partners (a consulting firm), Blue Cross Blue Shield, Realize CPA, Centene Corporation (a major health care company), and CVS Pharmacy, according to government records.
Some of these companies have business interests in state government contracts and the state regulatory environment. Centene is a major contractor with Medi-Cal. In 2024, it obtained a 54-month dental contract with the state government. Zoox was the first company to get a California permit to transport passengers in self-driving cars; it remains at the mercy of California regulators. Blue Cross Blue Shield is likewise a major contractor with Medi-Cal.
According to the San Francisco Standard, the feds are seeking “records, correspondence, and receipts related to the California State Protocol Foundation, including information about its donors and fundraisers” as well as “records involving the governor’s international travel and participation in international events.” In addition, DOJ is seeking to obtain communications with Rebecca Prowda, who oversees the governor’s overseas travel, and four members of the California State Protocol Foundation’s board.
The San Francisco Standard also obtained subpoenas for information about the California Partners Project, Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit that “champions gender equity,” as well as communications with Jennifer Siebel Newsom more generally, supporting the earlier reporting that the federal probe extends to her work and nonprofits.
Newsom claims it’s all a “fishing expedition” and that Trump’s DOJ is looking everywhere it can to find a crime. In response to the news of the subpoenas, Newsom’s office said: “This is a baseless MAGA conspiracy theory. There is no crime here. There is just a sick man in the White House weaponizing the federal government to settle personal scores.”
However, “[s]ources close to the investigation” disputed this to California’s KCRA last week, saying that the investigation is based on “tips received by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento.”
Criticism of the funding for Newsom’s international travel has long been far from partisan. In February, Carmen Balber, the executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told the Los Angeles Times that the “problem” with the California State Protocol Foundation and organizations like it is that donors to these foundations “receive access to the politicians whose travel they fund.”
Also, what looks particularly suspicious is the $5 million that was moved from the two nonprofits created to pay for Newsom’s inaugurations to the California State Protocol Foundation. The Los Angeles Times described the donors to these inaugural funds as “organizations with significant financial stakes in state policy decisions,” including “powerful unions, corporations, tribal casino interests, trade associations and healthcare giants.” These certainly don’t sound like disinterested parties.
The subpoena includes communications with Thomas A. Willis, whose name, the San Francisco Standard said, “threads through almost all of” the workings of the California State Protocol Foundation and the two inaugural funds. Willis is the registered agent of the California State Protocol Foundation as well as the two inaugural funds. The subpoena also includes the communications with Jim DeBoo, who served as chair of Newsom’s 2024 inaugural committee.
We still don’t know what crime prosecutors suspect has been committed here. We can only surmise from the subpoenas that perhaps it has something to do with donations that functioned more like bribes.
Jason Elliott, a member of the board of the California State Protocol Foundation, insisted earlier this year that the organization’s mission is to “lessen the burden on California taxpayers by reimbursing appropriate expenses associated with advancing the state’s economic and diplomatic interests.”
But when lessening the burden on taxpayers involves corporate interests funding political leaders, the supposed benefit to taxpayers becomes difficult to see.
“The politicians know very well who to go to,” Sean McMorris, of the organization California Common Cause, told the Center Square last month. “They’re not calling up an average person. They’re going to someone with a lot of money and someone who they know needs something from them… This whole behested payment thing doesn’t really work unless you can solicit people and entities who need things from you at the government level.”
Since Newsom took office as governor in 2019, $274 million has been donated at his direct urging, according to government records. This is 10 times the amount of money that was donated at former California Gov. Jerry Brown’s request.
Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power. 
Image licensed under CC 4.0.

As part of ongoing reporting about the justice system in rural areas, and with support from the Fund, Oklahoma Watch spent a year investigating a car crash involving a drug task force officer and a family of Guatemalan immigrants. Oklahoma Watch sued to obtain evidence that the officer sped through a stop sign without braking […]
The post Grantee sues to obtain evidence in official’s fatal car crash in rural Oklahoma appeared first on The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

A white nationalist with neo-Nazi links who hurled racist abuse at the Indian prime minister during his visit last month is being paid by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to produce content.An ABC NEWS Verify investigation into several controversial Australian pages on Facebook has found that some are benefiting directly from social media monetisation programs run by Meta.

When two farmers in a small town in Ohio were concerned about construction of a huge new corporate plant in their community, they gathered enough signatures to put the zoning changes up for a public vote. But, twice, state officials blocked the project from going on the ballot. Taylor Barnes for Inkstick Media, with support […]
The post Ohio legislators block corporate from development from public vote; grantee obtains evidence of interference appeared first on The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The City Reporter, with support from the Fund, found that 93% of street arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the New York area targeted Latino people. ICE has not released any data on who they have arrested since October 15, 2025, so the City Reporter compiled its own database, using habeas corpus petitions […]
The post 93% of ICE arrests in New York area targeted Latinos; grantees build database after ICE blocks records appeared first on The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Matt Sledge, The Intercept In text messages, the newly formed “Neighbors for Strong Communities” boosted reported threats by CEO David Ellison to move Paramount out of California.

Howie Rose’s departure cuts the last living link in the daily life of Mets fans to the original Amazin’s.