This is edition 2026/131 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. Who Would the Opportunity Party Put in Power?
Bryce Edwards — The Democracy Project
- ⚖️ TOP could decide who governs after November — yet Qiulae Wong still will not say Luxon or Hipkins; uncertainty is “leverage” to “work with both sides.”
- 📊 Not a 2% curiosity: RNZ-Reid 4.7%, June Verian 4.6% — threshold-close enough that post-election power is no longer hypothetical.
- 🎭 Pitch: replace NZ First as pivot without Peters theatre — socially liberal, environment-focused, land tax + Citizen’s Income; method still Peters-like (private talks after votes).
- 📞 Wong process: exclusive talks first with largest party, then other side if stalled; leadership group + board decide — procedure without predicted outcome.
- 🗳️ Among TOP voters, 41.1% prefer Labour-led vs 21.3% National-led; Wong: “That doesn’t drive our decision making.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: centrism as secrecy — progressive and centre-right environmental voters both asked to bank a blank cheque on who becomes PM. (Further sections paywalled.)
2. Untouchable Domains
Chris Trotter — Substack
- ❓ Right activists echo left’s old line: “If you win and nothing changes – what’s the point?” Target: National as “the enemy within” (Pee Kay / Brash & Mitchell).
- 🏦 Trotter’s history: post-Rogernomics National built a Treaty-centred Māori corporate domain — settlements, iwi/hapū structures, neo-tribal capitalism (Elizabeth Rata) to demobilise urban Māori workers.
- 🪓 Plus ECA + welfare cuts: break unionised Māori solidarity; then speak of “renaissance” while feeding bludger/gang narratives — friendly Māori vs savage rebels updated.
- 📜 Luxon never backed Seymour’s equal-citizenship Treaty Principles Bill as viable; Peters prefers quiet rewrite of Treaty-legislation over frontal Act-style assault (state lacks repressive depth for the revolt).
- 🛠️ Three classic ways to kill rogue state projects: insert loyalists on boards; starve funding; legislate the domain away — soft hands still dominate National ranks.
- 🎯 Takeaway: NZF/Act expected National to dismantle the bi-cultural elite bargain; three years on, the domain still looks largely untouchable.
3. Narrative Control: The Collapsing Authority of the State
Jacob Reynolds — Academy of Ideas
- 🧠 Elite job is no longer reform that wins votes — it is narrative hegemony: manage information because shaping the real world has been abandoned.
- 🇬🇧 Examples: Whitehall’s RICU “don’t look back in anger” unit scripting victims/media after racially charged crimes; DCMS “prominence regime” for “trustworthy” news on social platforms in crises; US media framing Iryna Zarutska’s murder as a “right-wing firestorm.”
- 🇫🇷 Parallel: French student Quentin Deranque murdered by Antifa — mainstream line often “far-right activist died after inciting confrontation.”
- 📉 Error theory of the rulers: masses aren’t wrong, they’re misled (Musk, Russians, algorithms) — so speech control becomes “democracy’s better self.”
- 🎯 Takeaway: Hollow Leviathan — failing state + existential dread of populism = ever more authoritarian narrative management; watchful optimism that revolt has already broken the spell.
4. The Odyssey Has Transcended the Culture War
Maren Thom — spiked
- 🎬 Nolan’s The Odyssey: critical acclaim + ~$264m opening weekend — Hollywood still capable of epic ambition.
- ⚔️ Left claims victory because black Helen / contested casting “didn’t sink” the film; right keeps complaining (modern dialogue, “too progressive”) after pre-judging it.
- 🎭 Thom: quality is Nolan’s casting-for-type, not census politics — Damon as eternal-identity-lost hero; Nyong’o’s difference makes Helen-as-property instant on screen opposite bruiser Bernthal; Page as Sinon is meant to look wrong among warriors.
- 📜 Neither “illustrate real Homer” traditionalism nor progressive correction — interpretation; diverse cast ≠ woke quota when faces serve meaning.
- 🎯 Takeaway: culture-war arguments look small against IMAX epic sincerity — trust the finished film, not the casting spreadsheet.
5. The Twilight of the Radical Net Zero Agenda
Alan Moran — The Spectator Australia
- 📘 Paul Kelly’s imminent Twilight of Exceptionalism frames Trump’s “climate con” as dominant in Australian politics since Morrison’s pre-Glasgow fold.
- 💰 Barnaby Joyce/Canavan backed Net Zero after rural pork (Joyce claims $32bn) — Walpole’s “all these men have their price.”
- 🏦 Investment-strike/diplomatic-ostracism scare sold the deal; Moran: profit still rules 649 coal plants planned globally; business peak bodies captured by subsidy-takers.
- 🏛️ Treasury since Stone: 8 of 10 secretaries ALP/green-tainted; models “prove” fossil exit costs little — politicised advice, no alternative brief.
- 📜 Constitution: energy is largely state territory; Commonwealth could have played delay-diplomacy and contingency on real cost breakthroughs.
- 🎯 Takeaway: elites still double down (CEFC dairy-to-plantation example) while US/Argentina show exit ramps — will Australia get politicians free of wokery counsel?
6. Andy Burnham’s Cringe Britannia
Tom Slater — spiked
- 🇬🇧 “Most boring coup”: Burnham in as PM, Starmer’s van north — summer makeover, not a defining crisis ouster.
- 👔 Vibes reset (smart-casual vs donor suits; Radio 6 dad vs supply teacher) — politics still technocracy, multiculturalism, Net Zero piety over growth.
- 🗣️ Downing St clichés: “circuit breaker… biggest changes in 40 years” without policies; end rough sleeping (failed as Manchester mayor); scrap digital ID but mind VPN ban; won’t lift oil/gas ban, just speed existing ones.
- 🗳️ Zero personal mandate: Makerfield by-election only; unopposed Labour leadership; Parliament in recess till September.
- 🎯 Takeaway: Cringe Britannia — more Smiths soundtrack than substance; ask soon what difference the coup made.
7. The Surprising Truth About Men and Multitasking
Patrick West — The Spectator Australia
- 🧪 Brunel / City St George’s study (Szameitat couple): women not better multitaskers — they just look less rude while doing it.
- 📊 41 men / 37 women: similar performance on recipe, phone lists, matching, slideshow tasks; men failed to answer 28% of interrupt questions vs women’s 12%.
- 👁️ Video judges rated men as making less effort (reverse halo) because they looked less alert — performance ≠ appearance of engagement.
- 🗣️ West: confirms male taciturnity isn’t incompetence; pathologising stoicism as “toxic masculinity” misreads neutral/advantageous male norms (Paglia, Peterson).
- 🎯 Takeaway: different and equal — one chatty, one silent, both get the jobs done; drop the lazy gender boast and the lazy household excuse.
8. CNN Analyst: Left-Wing Anarchists Behind Rising Political Violence
Pam Key — Breitbart (CNN clip)
- 📺 CNN LE contributor Steve Moore on News Central: more political violence than he’s seen in decades — not since the 1980s white-supremacist/Posse Comitatus wave.
- ⬅️ Now the driver is “the left-wing, the anarchists, and the anti-government people” — “highest I’ve ever seen,” linked to lost civility over differences.
- 🎆 Same segment: DHS notes ~8:20 a.m. anti-ICE rioter fireworks outside 26 Federal Plaza, bystander grazed, alleged gasoline on entrance stairs set alight.
- 🎯 Takeaway: even network LE talent now names left anarchist energy as the live trend line — watch the streets and the spin.
9. Iran’s Killing Machine Is Operating in Plain Sight
Masih Alinejad — The Free Press
- 🕊️ 18-year-old Erfan Esfandiari hanged — parents’ only child; crime reported as opening his door to protesters fleeing security in the January 2026 uprising.
- 🚪 Same Sunday: 23-year-old Afghan refugee Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi hanged for the same compassion; show trials ~1 hour × 3, no independent lawyer.
- 📋 Alikhani Square case: 59 arrested; 12 death sentences; both hanged after quarantine transfer — 10 more likely imminent.
- ♟️ Kasparov: tragic that executions became “norm… accepted… by the Free World”; Trump urged stop during war — regime bought time for mass arrests → mass hangings.
- 🎯 Takeaway: while diplomats chase ceasefires, Tehran’s quiet youth-execution campaign runs on distraction. (Full essay paywalled after lede.)
10. The Charlie Kirk Killing and America’s Forgotten History of Left-Wing Terror
Coleman Hughes interviews Noah Rothman — The Free Press / Conversations with Coleman
- 📚 Rothman’s new book Blood & Progress: left-wing political violence in America is long, patterned, and largely memory-holed.
- 🔫 Framing via Charlie Kirk’s killing: the conventional “violence is mostly right-wing” story is inaccurate and un-reckoned-with.
- 🎙️ Hughes/Rothman hour: not random lone wolves only — a tradition that needs honest inventory, not selective amnesia.
- 🎯 Takeaway: if you only police one direction of terror, you misread the present. (Podcast/article largely paywalled — free lede sets the thesis.)
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