Cobus Bester

Retired SABC Radio current affairs presenter/economics editor/TV producer/media trainer. Husband & father. Birdwatcher, loves books, wine, food, travel.

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

"No one has the right to obey". Hannah Arendt's profound statement has particular relevance in South Africa today.

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

@noentry54 Maar nie die mineraalregte nie.

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

https://t.co/2Gu9iMmwyZ

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

https://t.co/5CuRp39UpK

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

@its_The_Dr @TonyBeamish Four

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

A new low: the IDF advocate general just dropped the charges against soldiers who allegedly tortured and possibly raped a Gazan prisoner in Sdeh Teiman detention camp.
However, the event was videotaped (claims of video tampering disproved), and several witnesses confirmed it (see quoted thread).
Netanyahu has gleefully embraced the decision, attacking the judicial branch once again.
The accused soldiers are celebrating tonight, along with every Bibist out there.
I, along with numerous Israelis, are very concerned that a grave miscarriage of justice has occurred.
This is for the record. We still hope to win our country back again.
Trolls will be mercilessly blocked.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

The Israeli Democrats party has launched its English-language account. I suggest you follow it and chime the voices of moderate Israelis.
Their electoral horizon in the coming election is 10%-18%, enough to tip the scales towards democracy, political honesty and peace-seeking.

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.”

— Voltaire

[Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins]

In the first reaction to his indictment, John Bolton says:

"For four decades, I have devoted my life to America’s foreign policy and national security. I would never compromise those goals. I tried to do that during my tenure in the first Trump Administration but resigned when it became impossible to do so. Donald Trump’s retribution against me began then, continued when he tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of my book, The Room Where It Happened, before the 2020 election, and became one of his rallying cries in his re-election campaign.

Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts.

My book was reviewed and approved by the appropriate, experienced career clearance officials. When my e-mail was hacked in 2021, the FBI was made fully aware. In four years of the prior administration, after these reviews, no charges were ever filed. Then came Trump 2 who embodies what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said, 'You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.'

These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct. Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power."

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

@Moneyweb Baie geluk, Ryk!

[Gareth van Onselen @GvanOnselen]

Guys! I missed this but BIG milestone! On 29 August ASA turned 5! That’s five years of unelected leadership by Mashaba (some 1800 days) and no elective conference. 🎉💥🪅 In violation of their own constitution! Triumph. Makes the EFF look democratic. What a sham organisation.

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

https://t.co/xEbuxFdFsz

#TrumpKennedy #KennedyVaccine #Kennedy #Trump #

[JvL 🇿🇦 @JvanLogg]

Brown Mogotsi’s secret prison phone calls to Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Matlala https://t.co/McjRiNGsal

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

#childsexabuse #TwoByTwo #TheChurch

https://t.co/xJSkDGeSBp

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I see Nicola Sturgeon is once again complaining that I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt with her name on it and the legend 'Destroyer of Women's Rights.' Apparently this didn't 'elevate the debate.'

Is there a clinical term for an individual who has extreme thinness of skin when it comes to their own perceived hurts, coupled with a rhino-hide when it comes to the fear and suffering of others?

I'm thinking in particular of the two women Isla Bryson raped, who had to watch their First Minister squirm and smirk on TV as she tried to avoid admitting he was a man; of the five survivors of male violence who were ready to give evidence to Sturgeon's committee on gender self-ID, but were told to put their concerns in writing while seventeen trans-identified people appeared in person; of the mother of a young girl with a learning disability who campaigned against self-ID because she wanted her daughter to be guaranteed same sex intimate care, should she need it (the mother was presumably one of those female opponents Sturgeon calls 'shrill' and 'hysterical' in her memoir); of the ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a public bathroom by a 6'5" paedophile who served his jail sentence in a women's prison because he called himself 'Katie'; of Sandie Peggie, forced to discuss her own menstrual history in public to justify not wanting to undress in view of a 6ft straight cross-dresser in the nurses' changing room; of Marion Millar, dragged into court because she tweeted a picture of suffragette ribbons; of the Scottish rape crisis centres reliant on government funding who were pressured to admit trans-identified males into their services if they wanted funding to continue.

When Sturgeon refers to an 'elevated debate', she means a discussion that takes place within a tiny, smug bubble from which regular women suffering real life consequences of her policies are firmly excluded. These faceless ants are loftily dismissed as bigots, or, to be more precise: 'transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, maybe racist as well.'

Nicola, you hated the T-shirt picture because you couldn't ignore it, as you'd ignored so many other women trying to make you understand their concerns. Appeals to your empathy, your intelligence and your compassion all failed. Apparently the only way to get through to you is through your vanity.

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

Wordle 1,524 3/6*

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[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

I solved the 8/20/2025 New York Times Mini Crossword in 1:01!

https://t.co/NZ8yQjFOdK

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

I solved the 8/15/2025 New York Times Mini Crossword in 0:54!

https://t.co/NZ8yQjFOdK

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

I solved the 7/31/2025 New York Times Mini Crossword in 1:01!

https://t.co/NZ8yQjFOdK

[Cobus Bester @CobusB]

Wordle 1,495 4/6*

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