Dictators FAQ

All you needed to know about authoritarianism, totalitarianism, dictators, and tyrants:

Howard Lutnick On Social Security

Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick is out of touch with the vast majority of Americans receiving social security:

Will Trump Tariffs Work?

Things are about to become riskier when reciprocal tariffs kick in:

Should Keir Starmer Face Trial?

Arrest the prime minister of the UK and have him tried for war crimes. A good case can be made that he's aided and abetted acts of genocide. And while they're at it, arrest all other world leaders also complicit.

Oh, and just watch the dodging and weaving, as only Third World types are ever tried.

Takeovers Panel NZ and Jim Grenon

Here we go, I predicted that the establishment would intervene to stop a boardroom coup over at NZME, aka New Zealand Herald. Now, the NZ Takeovers Panel is going to check out what is going on. The existing board will be complaining of collusion and that's naughty. How about, shareholders have had enough of the grift and want change - now. It is simply interests meshing, no collusion, get over yourselves Takeovers Panel.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/545166/billionaire-jim-grenon-s-nzme-shake-up-draws-takeovers-panel-s-attention

But on Tuesday, the Takeovers Panel, which ensures shareholders have opportunity to participate in transactions such as takeovers, said the matter was under consideration. Chief executive Andrew Hudson said the panel could make no further comment.

Is War With Iran Likely?

It does seem as if Iran is being sized up by the US

DOGE Stops Feeding Dogs?

DOGE is getting carried away, it appears they've now stopped feeding dogs being employed by the US federal government. You know, drug sniffing dogs:

Net Zero Pipe Dream

 Finally a mainstream politician has announced that net zero 2050 is impossible. 

Giltrap Engineering

New Zealand is a source of quality equipment; Giltrap Engineering manufacture Giltrap and Duncan brand agricultural equipment, such as seed drills and feed out wagons. They export this equipment worldwide, and have a dealership network to back that up.

https://www.giltrapag.co.nz/nz/

All Giltrap and Duncan products are made right here in New Zealand at our Otorohanga and Timaru manufacturing plants. You can rest assured knowing that we pride ourselves on our high-quality manufacturing processes. We ensure each piece of kit lives up to the Giltrap reputation for strength, innovation, and legendary durability. 

And just for a laugh, I've added a Jeremy Clarkson short dealing with the importance of using the right type of seeding equipment:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ou6WLmkFGDk

Elon Musk's Headroom

Elon Musk bought Twitter back in 2022. The deal closed on the 28th of October that year. I have seen it reported that Musk borrowed part of the money used to buy Twitter, and that he used his shares in Tesla as security for the loan. 

When the $44 billion price for Twitter was struck on April 25, 2022, Tesla's share price was $332.67 and when Musk became owner later that year on the 28th of October, Tesla's share price was $228.51.  Somewhere between those prices the bank will have valued the security underpinning the loan, a low point being $204.99 in mid October. 

Right then, the current Tesla share price is $239.01 and it has been falling steadily all year, with only slight upticks. The lowest point in 2025 thus far was $222.10 on the 10th of March. 

The point I'm making is that Elon Musk appears to be skating on thin ice. If the value of his Tesla stake falls too low, the bank may ask him for further security to back his loan. I wonder what that conversation would sound like?

Jim Grenon's New Zealand Battle

Canadian billionaire, Auckland resident Jim Grenon has decided to wade into the New Zealand media landscape by buying a stake in NZ's largest media organisation, the NZME group, owners of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. The NZ Herald is akin to the New York Times, or the Los Angeles Times, and often referred to as Aunty Herald. It had the tone of that aunty you remember always telling you off for everything, and who used to grab you by the ear and told you to listen to her while she did so - tell you off that is. Its tone now though reminds of the know-it-all second year law student out to save the planet.

With his stake, Mr Grenon has started a campaign to remove the current board, and to replace it with himself and other nominations supportive of him. Good luck to him. 

He needs 50%+1 to remove the board, and such an event is long overdue. Thing is, Mr Grenon had better be careful and ensure his accounting for tax is in order, as the NZ Herald has connections that run deep. The government considers the NZ Herald its personal propaganda mouthpiece, you see, and they don't take kindly to those trying to unseat the established power structure.

What is that power structure? That certain elites, mostly living in Auckland are always right and get to make all the decisions and sit on all the boards. They are aligned with the two political parties, Labour and National, and these two factions share power by rotating governance between them.

The NZ Herald is a woke, liberal left-wing, handwringing sad excuse for a publication. It is kept this way so that those power structures are never challenged. Yeah, the elites don't believe any of the nonsense published each day, they're not stupid.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/360601099/who-james-grenon-billionaire-who-spent-9m-stake-nzme

Cybertruck Frame Snaps - Dangerous

Tow bars are not meant to just snap off. The Cybertruck from Tesla is dangerous and should not be allowed on the road:

Banned Words in the Trump Administration

Orwellian this:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/199-things-t-trump-administration-144949863.html

Last Friday The New York Times identified 199 words and phrases you can’t say in the Trump administration (197 in today’s print edition). These include: “biased,” “climate science,” “female,” “women,” “socioeconomic,” “underprivileged,” and “cultural heritage.” 

Obscenity sure ain’t what it used to be.

Jacinda Ardern: Progressive Princess

Here's an interesting conversation about New Zealand's former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Even these people are a little off base when it comes to Ardern; she seems to have been selected and promoted into a position of power, having never won an election.

To begin with she got into parliament off the Labour list. Then, later she stood for the Auckland Central electorate and came second. Notwithstanding that, she again got into parliament off the Labour party list. She stood again in Auckland Central but came second again. Then, when David Shearer resigned there was a by-election held in the safe Labour seat of Mount Albert (Auckland) and she finally won a seat. You could put up a wombat as the candidate for Labour in that seat and it'd be elected. 

She was then elevated into the position of Leader of the Opposition in very murky circumstances, and in the General Election of 2017, she came second. 

How did she become prime minister? Well, she managed to obtain a coalition agreement with NZFirst, but this wasn't enough as the winner on election night still had more seats. Thus, she became PM off the support of the Greens, who were not placed in cabinet office and were never in government. Since then, the Greens repeatedly lie about this and claim time and time again that they were in government. No, they weren't, they were just assigned ministerial positions outside of cabinet in exchange for their support on confidence and supply (money).

So, the government from 2017 until 2020 was a minority minority government. Note I said minority twice. Never before had a government been formed in New Zealand where the combined total of government seats in parliament, been less than the total number of opposition seats. 

Jacinda Ardern, came second all the time, was never liked, but nevertheless mysterious forces placed her at the top. Then, in 2020 she set about destroying modern post-war New Zealand, a goal she very nearly achieved. I think she was employed to do this. That's right, and I've come to the conclusion the election in 2020 was rigged. In that election we are meant to believe that every provincial electorate in the country party voted Labour, more than any other single party, but in every case these same electorates preferred their National party candidate or sitting MP (in NZ you get two votes, a party vote and the other vote for the candidate in your electorate). When you tell people this, they frown and look confused. People are wilfully blind to the obvious.

And then, having failed to take NZ down, she fled and has left the country. You cannot make this up, if it was a work of fiction, people would think it too far-fetched. 

F-35 Compromised?

I speculated about this earlier and now I see buyers of US military equipment in Europe are openly questioning whether the equipment's efficacy has been compromised.

The short answer is, yes, equipment linked to servers in the US can be modified, making it less effective by altering what targets that equipment detects.

Interesting LBC Caller

How did Putin manipulate things such that he'd end up in charge?

Argentina Mess

The story of Argentina and how it slid from developed to developing is a sobering lesson in how to go from wealth to poverty. The US needs to pay attention, and New Zealand too for that matter: if you skip to the end, you'll find that where economic and political systems are controlled by powerful and exclusive elites, no matter what model is used - protectionist or free trade - failure will follow. Countries must have political and economic systems which allow a changing of the guard, people with new ideas and methods, leading to a redistribution of wealth.

Quick Economics Lesson

Brief and simple, Donald Trump cannot achieve what he's looking to do, in the way he's going about it:

Structure and Certainty Needed

Instability and uncertainty are recipes for disaster:

Duterte Faces Trial

Things are happening so fast now, I can barely keep up. Now, former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested for crimes against humanity and as I write this, is on his way to the Hague to stand trial. He was at one time lauded as the answer to the proliferation of illegal drugs. But his methods were brutal, and saw a reign of terror unfold in the Philippines.

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20250311-philippine-duterte-crimes-against-humanity

The 79-year-old faces a charge of "the crime against humanity of murder", according to the ICC, for a crackdown that rights groups estimate killed tens of thousands of mostly poor men, often without proof they were linked to drugs.