Unionist; SocialistFeminist; Justice Advocate. We/us. Pers: [email protected]
South Auckland, New Zealand
Joined October 2013
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Maxine Gay retweeted
Why hasn’t health minister Simeon Brown been sacked? simonwilsonhopetown.substack…
Maxine Gay retweeted
Please don't vote for: National, ACT, NZ First or Opportunity who do not believe Israel is committing genocide. They don't want to sanction Israel, and welcome Israeli babykillers to NZ. They don't respect the rules based order & flout international law.
Vote Greens, Labour, TPM.
Maxine Gay retweeted
Also boycott the mowbray plastic toys, they are dreadful for kids and the world, the family is evil towards workers rights and greedy to the hilt.
So it turns out Chantelle Baker has received money from Harry Mowbray to promote Split-Vote Strategy nonsense
Chantelle Baker has received money to boost posts promoting the split-vote strategy targeting New Zealand’s election, according to Harry Mowbray. Mowbray has previously acknowledged giving the fringe micro-blogger funding to boost her posts after asking her to focus on marginal electorates.
“I have given her a little bit of money,” he said according to news reports. The amount was not disclosed, and it remains unclear which posts received paid promotion.
The strategy encourages National supporters to give their electorate vote to National candidates while directing their party vote to ACT or New Zealand First, potentially producing extra parliamentary seats through an MMP overhang. Mowbray said he had helped fund promotion by podcaster Penny Marie and contributed to a campaign run by Reality Check Radio. The disclosures come as Mowbray faces questions over compliance with election advertising rules. He has said the Electoral Commission told him his Split Your Vote website breached the Electoral Act and indicated that an investigation may be under way.
The Commission’s rules require promoter statements on election advertisements, while paid political advertising is not exempt as personal online commentary.
No finding of wrongdoing against Baker has been established.
#nzpol
Maxine Gay retweeted
Are voters allowed to have bottom lines? Here's mine. I have spent my life believing that if I or my children need hospital care, we will get it. It’s a fundamental tenet of our welfare state. But it's no longer true. New Substack post at Hopetown today.
simonwilsonhopetown.substack…
Maxine Gay retweeted
"By any international comparison, the list of climate policy rollbacks and reversals is staggering" rnz.co.nz/news/environment_c…
Maxine Gay retweeted
THE MOST INCOMPETENT WAR IN HISTORY: SARAH PAINE ON TRUMP’S IRAN DISASTER
Dr. Sarah Paine, a leading historian of great-power conflict and strategy, delivers a blunt verdict on the Iran war. She calls it one of the most incompetent wars in human history. The decision ignored basic principles of assessment, put maximum costs on America itself, and left permanent damage to the country’s power and alliances. This is not hindsight—it is the predictable result of hubris meeting reality.
THE CORE VERDICT
➡️ “The Iran war is probably one of the most incompetent wars in human history.”
➡️ A competent war puts the costs on the enemy and minimizes them for yourself.
➡️ This one did the opposite.
THE COST CATASTROPHE
➡️ It trashed the US economy.
➡️ It blew the US alliance system.
➡️ Iran is hurting, but the collateral damage is taking down the world’s economy.
➡️ That transforms the United States from a partner into an annoyance—and for many, a primary adversary—because it is threatening their economies.
➡️ “That’s breathtakingly incompetent.”
THE STRATEGIC BLIND SPOT
➡️ Any serious assessment looks at the enemy’s strengths and your own weaknesses, plus everyone else who might intervene.
➡️ That was absent.
➡️ The first thing Iran would do is shut Hormuz. Narrow seas close in wartime. Ukraine already showed this with the Black Sea.
➡️ Shore artillery, mines, and other tools stop traffic. There is no mystery here.
➡️ The big naval base in Bahrain becomes unreachable. The fallback is Diego Garcia, 2,500 miles away in the middle of nowhere. “That would be a mess.”
THE HUBRIS THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE
➡️ The people making the calls are historically unqualified for the job. That makes them profoundly dangerous.
➡️ Type A hubris assumes all decisions that matter happen in the United States.
➡️ Type B hubris assumes being good at one thing makes you good at everything.
➡️ Half-court tennis: you only watch your own side and never study the other team.
➡️ The Iranians understand Americans far better than Americans understand them.
THE UNFEASIBLE OBJECTIVE
➡️ Trying to “solve” Iran with 90 million people was never realistic.
➡️ Nazi Germany had roughly 80 million and required an occupation force of about 1.5 million just to hold it after the war—before counting everyone else.
➡️ The goal was unattainable. Pursuing it guarantees overextension and a bad ending.
➡️ The lesson the world takes is simple: get a nuke. The war incentivized proliferation.
➡️ This was a pivotal error. The choices that existed before are gone and will not return. “We will never be the trusted partner ever again. It’s done.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
The Iran war did not merely fail. It maximized American costs, destroyed trust with allies, and handed every rival a clearer reason to treat the United States as a threat to their own prosperity. Competence would have contained the problem at affordable cost. Hubris chose the opposite.
This is what permanent strategic damage looks like.
#IranWar #SarahPaine #StrategicIncompetence #HormuzDisaster #USHubris #AllianceCollapse #CatastrophicMistake
HT: YouTube The Diary Of A CEO
Maxine Gay retweeted
'yeah, sure, in the *last* three years, we delivered smaller GDP per capita, 35,000 fewer jobs, and wages rising slower than inflation.... but the *next* three years will be different. Promise.'
Maxine Gay retweeted
This is what happens when you pander to the fringe, like David Seymour and Winston Peters.
I have a feeling that “They don’t know where they’re going and they don’t know what they’re doing” is a sentiment many Kiwis feel about this government.
#nzpol
Maxine Gay retweeted
Why has Netball NZ suddenly pulled the plug on the deal with Anna Mobray & Ali Williams? Did they just now realise Harry Mowbray, Anna's father is behind a dirty politics campaign, associated with Don Brash a racist. How many Māori women are successful netball players.
Maxine Gay retweeted
I have given a lot of thought as to whether I should make this post. I decided to because I have a number of kind and caring followers. 😊
The last few weeks have been full of stress and worry. Our youngest son, who is not so young, has been really unwell.
Maxine Gay retweeted
L A B O U R P O L I C Y
Labour will support more tradies and young people into work and to gain a qualification, so they can earn more.
labour.org.nz/apprenticeship…
Maxine Gay retweeted
Ntl is struggling in the polls -only polled ahead of Labour in 2 of the 6 most recent polls.
Ntl $2,790,750. ACT $2,394,407. Labour $912,301, Greens $564,208
Latest Election 2026 charts: National brings in $499k in big donations amid polling woes newsroom.co.nz/2026/10/30/th…
Maxine Gay retweeted
Update, I've sent a formal notice of defamation to the anonymous author of the article, whose real name I found out is Sean Haines. Copied below:
Formal notice of defamation
This article states or implies that my family’s trip to Xinjiang this summer was organized, funded or directed by the Chinese government as part of a covert promotion campaign, and that I knowingly took part in it. This is false and defamatory.
The facts are simple. I paid for the entire trip myself: the RV rental, the flights and the accommodation. The receipts are public. No government entity paid for any part of it, set our itinerary or accompanied us.
The article also presents, as a direct quotation from my Substack, a passage I never wrote. Those words are not mine: they are a back-translation of a Chinese translation of my article, falsely attributed to me as my own English text.
I therefore demand that, within 7 days of this notice, you:
Withdraw the article in its entirety;
- Publish a correction and retraction, with equal prominence, acknowledging that my trip was entirely self-funded and that the quotation attributed to me is not my wording;
- Refrain from repeating these allegations in any medium, including Substack, Bluesky and X;
- Preserve all notes, drafts, communications and sources relating to this article.
Should you fail to comply, I will instruct counsel to commence defamation proceedings without further notice. All my rights are reserved.
Arnaud Bertrand
Maxine Gay retweeted
Though our politicians sometimes deride them as a politically disengaged, disorganised bunch of dropkicks and little shits, young people are doing a better job of holding MPs to account than just about any other group in the country right now. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/31…
Scrolling RNZ site at 1.15 pm Saturday one could be forgiven for thinking there are only two parties contesting the election, National and ACT rnz.co.nz/news/politics_elec…
Maxine Gay retweeted
Righteous fire from S. Wilson completely justified: “This isn’t a competent government with a plan to fix the economy. Its record, instead, is of economic mismanagement, privatisation by stealth, crony corruption, climate denialism, expensive populist promises, abject incompetence in health and … a still-rising cost of living!”
simonwilsonhopetown.substack…
Maxine Gay retweeted
Still waiting for the loose mouthed Tory @PronouncedHare to back his nonsense bet offer with cash. Happy for proceeds to be split between Labour Party and Women’s Refuge.
@PronouncedHare I’m happy to bet you $10,000 I won’t. First I have confidence kiwis are seeing through your team’s bullshit. Secondly unlike your mate Luxon I abhor the Trump approach regarding rejection of results, making it harder to vote and invading Iran
Maxine Gay retweeted
😂 Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed fires back at Trump calling him “Abdul Ramadan”:
“Groceries under his leadership have gotten so expensive, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s like, listen, we could just do Ramadan for all!”
What a comeback!
Maxine Gay retweeted
Why hasn’t health minister Simeon Brown been sacked?
simonwilsonhopetown.substack…
#nzpol