This is edition 2026/128 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. Paul Henry Is a Gift and a Gamble for Act
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- 📺 Minutes into his Act candidacy, Henry insulted future colleagues, attacked other parties and floated a multibillion-dollar cancer hospital — “colour and chaos” as political theatre.
- 📊 Act stuck at ~7–8% while NZ First capitalises on disgruntlement; Jenna Lynch calls Henry a potential “gamechanger” and “media-savvy attack dog.”
- 🗣️ Division of labour: Seymour as serious DPM/ideologue; Henry free to say what Seymour cannot about National and NZ First.
- ⭐ HdPA: “ten out of ten… candidate get of the election so far”; Hosking: “shot in the arm”; Coughlan compared the launch to Jacindamania; Audrey Young: possible “seismic” event.
- 📉 The real risk for Luxon: Henry may not grow the right-wing bloc, but can lift Act to 10–11% by poaching National voters — fewer National MPs and less coalition authority.
- 🎯 Takeaway: under MMP, a few points shifting yellow can be “devastation stations” for Christopher Luxon even if the government is re-elected.
2. Death by Government
Rodney Hide — Brash & Mitchell
- 💉 Last year 486 lives ended under the End of Life Choice Act; 459 via lethal injection by an approved medical professional — not self-administration.
- 📋 Only 121 SCENZ-listed practitioners (~1 in 1,000 doctors/nurses); the full list is secret; government pays up to $3,000+ per death — cheaper than palliative care.
- 🧪 Protocol (Canada-style): midazolam → lidocaine → propofol → neuromuscular blocker; death by respiratory arrest — “technically, suffocation.”
- 🗣️ Hide: “the pharmaceutical equivalent of pushing a pillow over Nana’s face… rendered unconscious, paralysed and then suffocated.”
- ⚖️ Editors’ note from Brash & Mitchell: the law came from a referendum with majority support; 306 applicants died waiting for consent; making people suffer a certain death is also barbaric.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Parliament funds and medicalises state killing — and both sides claim the moral high ground over how death should look.
3. Can We Have Proper Conversations?
Ani O’Brien — Thought Crimes / Free Speech Union
- 🎤 Free Speech Union “Good Faith Yarns” winter tour: ten events, $10 tickets, substantial audience Q&A — not point-scoring debates.
- 🗳️ Motive: election-year debate is “louder, nastier, and increasingly useless”; normal Kiwis conclude it is safer to say nothing.
- 📍 Stops include Queenstown (growth/infrastructure with Mayor John Glover & Mike Casey), Christchurch (Treaty with Prof Te Maire Tau), Dunedin (AI/identity with Tā Ian Taylor), Whangārei (co-governance with Cr Davina Smolders).
- 🗣️ Themes: Treaty as constitution, assisted dying, AI, farming, media, politics and “our future” — guests who will not necessarily agree with her.
- 🎯 Takeaway: an attempt to model good-faith public disagreement when social media rewards hysteria and politicians recite lines.
4. A Solution to Our Electricity Problems
Bryan Leyland — Brash & Mitchell
- 🔌 Plug-in balcony solar subsidies show the debate has drifted from reliable, economic power; rooftop solar ~3× cost of utility solar once backup is priced in.
- 📊 Transpower/MBIE-style reports assume wind/solar dominance via batteries and “demand-side management” — no real-world working example at scale; industry will fire up diesels instead.
- ⚡ Spot-market design rewards keeping the system “on the edge of a shortage,” guaranteeing dry-year pain.
- 🛠️ Four fixes: abandon net zero; expedite gas (e.g. Kawera); long-term competitive generation contracts that price backup properly; build dispatchable geothermal/hydro/coal and evaluate ~300 MW factory SMRs.
- 💰 Estimated $4–8 billion a year saved by ditching net zero; of 195 Paris signatories only 19 reported progress — 15 of 18 failed their targets.
- 🎯 Takeaway: NZ cannot change world climate, but can stop virtue-signalling itself into rationing and industrial decline.
5. The Death of History
Niall Ferguson & John-Clark Levin — The Free Press
- 📜 Thesis: antisemitism’s ancient cycle is back — but algorithms and AI have broken the old remedy of truth confronting myth.
- 🎓 Ferguson recounts decades of teaching Holocaust history and warning that antisemitic rhetoric can become state genocide; today he sees hatred normalised and the Holocaust trivialised or mocked.
- 🎙️ Popular conservative spaces (e.g. Tucker/CPAC orbit) increasingly tolerate Nazi revisionists; Nick Fuentes-style radicalisation for young conservatives “even worse than traditional Holocaust denial.”
- 🤖 With AI researcher Levin: the tools that once exposed denial are “powerless against AI and the algorithm”; truth is sacrificed “on the altar of spectacle.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: historians must admit a bitter defeat — and ask whether any remedy remains when spectacle outruns evidence. (Full essay is paywalled.)
6. The Dark Truth About the Pro-Palestine Marches
Limor Simhony Philpott — spiked
- 📄 NGO Monitor maps 40 organisations driving UK pro-Palestine activism: not a spontaneous “grassroots” surge after 7 Oct — infrastructure was ready.
- 🔗 11 linked (or leaders linked) to Hamas, Hezbollah or the Iranian regime; 13 have no formal legal structure; 19 take UK government money (FCDO/Gift Aid); 11 take foreign government money.
- 💰 Six principal organisers: five with little/partial transparency; PSC is a company (not a charity) with £3.8m income and no public donor list.
- 🏛️ Islamic Human Rights Commission received ~£458,500 Gift Aid since 2020 despite documented Iranian links; Lord Walney warns of foreign manipulation risk.
- 🎯 Takeaway: parties declare donors; these street-mobilising networks face weaker transparency than a parish council — prove the grassroots claim, or reform the rules.
7. The 51st State
Ian Plimer — The Spectator Australia
- 🧊 Greenland’s ice sheet appeared ~2.8 million years ago; much vanished 400,000 years ago and again ~7,000 years ago — no fossil fuels required.
- 🧬 ~88% of Greenlanders derive from Alaskan Inuit ancestors; Plimer quips that is a paleo-Alaskan claim alongside mineral and strategic interests.
- ⚔️ History: Vikings thrived in Medieval Warming, died in Little Ice Age; Denmark’s sovereignty path via unions, Napoleonic settlements, 1933 PCIJ win over Norway; Truman’s 1946 $100m gold offer rejected.
- 🛡️ US Cold War/defence role from 1941; Pituffik (ex-Thule) ballistic warning & space surveillance; Camp Century and nuclear incidents in the record.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Trump’s interest is history-plus-strategy — climate fraud theatre, minerals, and a super-strategic Arctic early-warning outpost against Russia/China.
8. The Left Has a Problem with Boys and Men
Jake Richards — The Spectator Australia
- 📉 ~Half of Britons think women’s equality has gone “far enough”; 40% say society does not value traditional masculine values — fuel for the “manosphere.”
- 🏫 Boys lag: ~half school-ready vs ~¾ of girls; twice as likely to be excluded; men dominate NEET stats; male industries fell from 40% to 16% of UK output.
- 👨 Father absence doubled since mid-century; ~¾ of children in custody had absent fathers; gender pay gap reverse for 18–24s.
- 🏛️ Labour’s David Lammy leads Men and Boys work; first England men’s health strategy; US Democrats (Newsom, Wes Moore) piloting mentoring schemes ahead of 2028.
- 🎯 Takeaway: progressive politics feels like “for other people” to many males — a Men and Boys strategy must sit at the heart of Labour’s agenda or far-right capture continues.
9. Do Iran’s Negotiators Speak for the IRGC?
Owen Matthews — The Spectator Australia
- 🚢 US–Iran MoU broken over who “guards” Hormuz; Trump claims 20% cargo fee as guardian; FM Araghchi replies Iran is guardian “FOREVER” and 20% is “too much.”
- ❓ Core question: do Araghchi/Ghalibaf control the IRGC — or merely advocate for its strategy after gunboats blow up ceasefires?
- 💥 After Doha talks “going well,” IRGC struck tankers, closed Hormuz; Trump: ceasefire over; US revoked oil export licence.
- 🏛️ US officials/ISW: factional fight inside Iran; Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei authorised MoU but held “a different opinion”; some IRGC attacks admitted as “errant.”
- ☢️ IAEA has not inspected nuclear stockpiles since 28 Feb; original MoU trade — HEU exit for sanctions relief, assets, $300bn reconstruction, limited Hormuz role — stalls.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Trump escalates because diplomacy is failing — “Iran may never have won a war but it has never lost a negotiation.”
10. Inside China’s Secret Plans to Bomb U.S. Warships
Gus Wilson — The Daily Wire
- 🛰️ Fresh satellite imagery (The Telegraph / prior Daily Wire) of Taklamakan Desert target range: replicas of Arleigh Burke destroyers amid missile debris dating to 2021.
- 🚂 23-mile railway moves ship mock-ups on railcars to simulate sailing targets; at least two Gerald R. Ford carrier replicas plus destroyer models.
- ✈️ Nearby: mock US runways with F-22, F-16 and F-35 models (some already cratered) — including aircraft types not sold to Taiwan.
- 🇯🇵 Recreation of Yokosuka Naval Base (home to ten Burkes) plus Taiwanese bases and political buildings for invasion practice.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Xi’s Taiwan “reunification” plan includes rehearsing strikes on the exact US assets that would intervene.
What our members are saying about Ten@10
Elizabeth
These articles are compulsory reading for me and the perfect addition to the usual list of Goodoil items!
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