Sebastian Rupieper

[Michael Jordaan @MichaelJordaan]

Lower and simpler taxes can actually increase tax revenues!

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

@Zamozam @D_Naeser @IvynSambo @DereleenJ A tourist considering Cape Town could also consider Turkey, Cyprus, or Egypt. Those destinations are already closer. Not having to pay a tourist levy might be the deciding factor to rather not travel to Cape Town. Then we lose the levy and tourist spend.

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

We are slowly slipping into an world war because, like at the start of the Second World War, western politicians are too meek to confront a Nazi leader

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

Ukrainian special GUR forces have released photos of them training and fighting alongside numerous African milita to directly challenge Russians continued expansion of mercenaries into Mali and other nations.

This conflict is now being fought in Africa too...

[Jewish Tim Flack 𝕏 @tim_meh87]

But they are protesting for what, then? if it was proven that Cape Union Mart and Krawitz aren't doing what they accused them of, then why target it still?

It's a Jewish business thats why

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

@cornedupreez1 Is this the one that Javan is installing? If so they are using my chemical anchor😃

[Martin Varsavsky @martinvars]

On radically different incomes life in America can be surprisingly similar.

Imagine three single mothers, each raising a ten-year-old boy. One is a public-school teacher in Tampa earning $50,000 a year. Another is a lawyer in Atlanta earning $200,000. The third is a venture-capital partner in Chicago earning $1 million.

On paper, they inhabit three different Americas. One earns twenty times more than another. One is 25th percentile im wealth the other 84th the last one top 1%. They describe inequality in the USA.

Now look at their sons.

All three wake up with electricity, running water, refrigeration, heating and air conditioning. They eat plenty of food, ride in safe modern cars, wear sneakers, watch YouTube, play the same video games, use similar phones and tablets and have access to vaccines, antibiotics, dentists and modern medicine.

One goes to public school, another to private school, the third perhaps to an elite private school. One flies economy once a year, another travels frequently, the third may occasionally fly private. Their houses, neighborhoods and vacations are different.

But their actual daily lives are far less different than their mothers’ incomes suggest.

The socialist argument has always been about equality of outcomes.

Well, look around. In much of ordinary material life, capitalism has already produced something remarkably close to it.

The millionaire’s refrigerator does not keep milk twenty times fresher. Her son’s iPhone does not make YouTube twenty times more entertaining. He cannot eat twenty breakfasts, sleep twenty hours at once or enjoy a video game twenty times more because his mother earns twenty times as much.

For several hours every day, these three boys may be doing almost exactly the same thing.

This would have been unimaginable two centuries ago. The child of a rich family and the child of a laborer often lived in genuinely different physical worlds. One had plentiful food, warmth, books, servants, doctors and transportation. The other might lack adequate calories or clean water.

Industrial capitalism destroyed much of that inequality by doing something socialism never managed very well: making formerly scarce things cheap enough for almost everyone.

Cars, refrigerators, televisions, air conditioning, computers and smartphones began as luxuries and became mass-market goods. The entrepreneur became rich precisely by making what the rich had available to everybody else.

And that may explain one of the great ironies of the new American enthusiasm for socialism. Capitalism’s victories are now so complete that nobody notices them.

Clean water is not considered wealth. Neither is electricity. Nor refrigeration. Nor an air-conditioned bedroom, instant global communication, unlimited music, thousands of films or a computer in your pocket more powerful than anything that existed when many of today’s billionaires were children.

Those things have become invisible because almost everyone has them.

What remains visible are the inequalities capitalism has not eliminated: the mansion, the private school, the beachfront house, the prestigious university, the best neighborhood.

But if the political demand is that ordinary people should be able to enjoy many of the same basic experiences as the rich, something extraordinary has already happened.

Put these families on a chart and the inequality looks enormous.

Put their ten-year-old boys on three sofas at eight o’clock at night, eating pizza in sweatpants and staring at nearly identical screens, and the difference becomes surprisingly hard to see.

Equality of income? Obviously not.

Equality of many of the outcomes that actually fill a human day?

Far more than we admit.

[Howard Feldman @HowardFeldman]

Well done to @capeunionmart for standing up to the bullies. The South African courts have done well in ruling that the right to protest does not include intimidation. The constitutional right to equality and dignity applies to all, including to the Jewish community.

[Sarah Abv @Sarahsa09309757]

1995 : dans le cadre des accords d’Oslo, Israël transfère Naplouse à l’Autorité palestinienne.

Au cœur de la ville se trouve le tombeau de Joseph, l’un des lieux saints du judaïsme.

En octobre 2000, Israël évacue ses forces du tombeau, après un accord prévoyant que la police palestinienne protège le site.

Quelques heures plus tard, une foule palestinienne envahit le tombeau.

Ils le saccagent et y mettent le feu.

C’était juste important que vous le sachiez.

[Anton Eberhard @AntonEberhard]

Yoh! The last time @Eskom_SA had electricity sales this low was 26 years ago in year 2000. Industrial demand shrunk 22% last year! Yet the utility’s revenue is up 4% through double digit tariff increases. Not sustainable as energy intensive and other customers defect.

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

It’s funny how any level of @MYANC leadership only wake up to the level of devastation they preside over in the month before an election. After an election they go back to eating funds

[Executive Mayor: @CityofJoburgZA @DadaMorero]

This morning, I met with the entire senior management of the JMPD because what I continue to witness in the inner city is simply unacceptable.

I walked from the Joburg Art Gallery to Marble Towers, and what I saw cannot continue. JMPD vehicles were parked while officers sat on their phones, even as illegal trading continued in plain sight. I have repeatedly met with JMPD leadership and made it clear that our by-laws must be enforced without fear or favour.

[Yehuda Teitelbaum @chalavyishmael]

In 2007, Israeli jets flew deep into Syria and destroyed a facility that Bashar al-Assad insisted had “nothing to do with nuclear,” prompting IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei to slam Israel for bombing the site instead of giving its intelligence to international inspectors.

Five years later, the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement condemned the strike as a “flagrant violation of the UN Charter” and praised Syria’s cooperation with the IAEA, even as Assad’s regime continued concealing what it had built.

Now, 19 years after the strike, the IAEA has closed the investigation and confirmed that Israel destroyed an undeclared nuclear reactor, that Syria was secretly manufacturing fuel for it, and that approximately 73 metric tons of uranium metal remained at a connected facility, including 55 tons already made into fuel rods.

Had Israel waited for the world to agree, Syria’s reactor could have become operational before inspectors uncovered it, and seven years after the raid, the ruins of the reactor site itself fell into the hands of ISIS.

Iran is no different. Jihadists must not obtain nuclear weapons. It's that simple.

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

@CaitlinCloud9 Not moving out of the way for an ambulance or fire engine

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

@Khwezi_bass That pass was an absolute bullet that went straight to hand. Honestly one of the best passes I have ever seen

[Trisha Posner @trishaposner]

This is not the 19-year-old girl who was buried to her neck and stoned to death in Afghanistan

This photo is of Zarmina, a victim of the Taliban that is burned into the memory of all of us old enough to have lived through that moment. Zarmina was the mother of seven, and her husband savagely beat her and their two eldest two daughters nightly. They finally reached their breaking point and killed him.

The Taliban tortured and beat Zarmina for 3 years in prison. And then, on November 16, 1999, the Taliban made her kneel on the penalty spot in Kabul’s Olympic Stadium and one of her husband’s relatives shot her through the head in front of 30,000 people. Brave activists from The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, smuggled a harrowing video clip out of the country.

And as for Zarmina’s children? Under Islamic law, the 16 and 14-year-old daughters were given to the husband’s brother. He sold them into sex slavery to a man in Khost, then a Taliban stronghold. The haggling over the price for the girls is what had delayed their mother’s execution.

Zarmina’s corpse lay unclaimed for 20 days in the morgue. Her own mother was afraid to collect her daughter’s body. Zarmina eventually was buried in an unmarked grave north of Kabul.

That barbaric Taliban lost power after 9/11. We hoped they were relegated to the dust bin of notorious history. But after America left the country in 2021, a new generation Taliban returned and began enforcing again their medieval version of Islamic fundamentalism. Girls banned from school. Women banned from work, parks, even raising their voices. Men in charge no matter what they do to women.

Sharia law under the Taliban is a poisonous ideology that has nothing but contempt for women. And in 2026, we get the silence as we did in 1999 from the people who never stop lecturing the rest of us about “women’s rights.”

[Juliet Moses @JulietMosesNZ]

I’m quite partial to what the Berlin “fuckparade” had to say recently when asked why there were no Palestinian flags (excuse expletives)

[Francisco Cunha - ✈️ Aviation et al @OnDisasters]

Airlink Flyby South Africa Update – Airline rejected that the jets flew below minimal altitude over Stadium.

In a statement, the airline said it was aware of the concerns expressed by the public regarding the operation carried out the previous day. According to the company, the flight required careful planning and rehearsals, as the aircraft needed to perform the pass at low altitude and at approximately 150 knots, equivalent to about 278 km/h.

Airlink highlighted that the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) and the Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) provided guidance, approval, and support for the safe execution of the overflight.

(More info on the link below by Aero_In)

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

Going forward I’m only flying @Fly_Airlink 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼 #greatestrivelry #springboks

[Sebastian Rupieper @SebastianRup]

So many comments saying this was dangerous. It’s only dangerous if you have DNA, South
Africans have RSA💪🏼😎 @Aviation_Intel @Combat_learjet

[Herman ⚡ @hermux]

One more angle.

[Turbine Traveller @Turbinetraveler]

Today's flyover in Cape Town wasn't the first time, South Africa has had a history of delivering some truly unforgettable low passes.
Here are some of the best from the past.