Dear Mainstream Media,
Using posts from X users as your own news isn't journalism. I just saw The Telegraph do this and label it as "breaking news." Please, either reference it properly or get back to real, old-fashioned journalism!
#Xnews
I suspect Redi Thlabi’s article on Starlink carries the kind of Twitter headline (“My piece on why Starlink IS a national security issue for South Africa”) that causes 90% of people to retweet or condemn it based on that alone. But on actually reading it, it is striking how weak it is. For one, it does not provide an answer to the headline. There is no evidence that Starlink is a national security risk anywhere in the article, in any shape or form. Remarkably, there is in fact not a single fact about Starlink. Staggering when you think about the response to it. Instead, most of it is about social media, the dangers of propaganda, on platforms like X and TikTok, and how various governments have or have not responded to those platforms. But on high speed internet access, not a word. That is because all that stuff is irrelevant to high speed internet – it just makes your internet go faster. What makes the article even more bizarre, is that the companies responsible for these platforms, X, Facebook, TikTok, etc, all already operate in South Africa. So, I mean, given her passion for national security, that is what she really should be focusing on. But it’s the patronising paternalism that really grates. Starlink is a product, like Discovery Health or your Apple iPhone. If it was allowed to be switched on here, every consumer, just like every other product, would be faced with a choice: read the terms and conditions, and sign up, or don’t. Whatever you want. And, like all other products, it would subject to laws and regulations, and held to account for wrongdoing. What Thlabi is really saying, in a sort of “mother of the nation” mode, is: “you people are not capable of making this choice, you need me, Redi Thlabi, to make it for you, by advocating for the choice not to be available to you at all.” Of course, she doesn’t do that for any other product. Banks, Facebook, Insurance firms, they are all interested in your personal data. They all tell you what they will or won’t do with it. It’s a decision you make 100 times a year in different ways. Starlink may do this, I don't know, not sure why it would need to, but even if it does, it would give you a choice - sign up if you like our conditions, or don't. As for politics all of those companies have owners with views. Some of them with quite mad views. But it is only on this one that Thlabi is going to fight, not for your right to choose, but to ensure you can’t choose: because if you are given that choice – being the idiot you are, you will make the wrong decision. This is an ego out of all control. Really. And arrogant too. Thlabi starts by dismissing out of hand any other consideration. She says, “We are told this is about rural children accessing the internet, about innovation, about economic growth” and then says she knows “the real question”. Oh really? I think rural children, the unemployed and the economically marginalised would disagree. I think they could tell her the “real question” very quickly: how can I get a job? Thlabi has a job, and internet access. She also thinks she knows what is best for you. Much like the ANC. And much like the ANC, she has offered up a massive smoke screen filled with rhetoric and hyperbole, that deals with nothing but her own animosity towards Elon Musk and, in doing so, shows nothing but contempt for the choices of people themselves. https://t.co/BEkKY63ONn
This was written by someone, not me. But sums it up pretty well, what was she thinking?
I’m a mother, so I’m going to comment right now. I will say this exactly the way a mother thinks it, raw, direct, and without pretending this is complicated. A 37-year-old woman. Three kids. Middle of a work week. The father of those children is dead. She is the parent left. The one job she has above every cause, every protest, every headline, is getting home to her kids.
And what is she doing instead?
She’s out of state (other reports claim she lives there), in the street, in her car, blocking federal agents who are doing their job. Not alone! Her partner is right there filming her like this is some brave little documentary moment. Around them: sirens blaring, people yelling, pure chaos, manufactured chaos, so agents can’t do their lawful duty.
Her window is down. She hears the orders. She understands the orders. She ignores the orders.
Then she puts the car in reverse.
Still doesn’t comply.
Then she puts it in drive, NOT park! She moves forward into the agent.
That’s not “confusion.”
That’s not “panic.”
That’s decision after decision after decision.
Now put yourself in the agent’s shoes for half a second. A driver is already in an unlawful act! refusing commands in a hostile, chaotic scene, and now that driver uses a vehicle to move toward you. You get a split second. You don’t get the luxury of “Maybe she’s just stressed.” You have to assume the worst, you have to think of protecting other people like the partner at the window, because if you assume the best and you’re wrong, you don’t go home or someone else.
So the agent fires after she makes an intentional and aggressive move toward him, because he has no idea what her intentions are, and she just demonstrated she’s willing to escalate.
Now… imagine her three kids. At school. Sitting there like any other day. Not knowing their mother is out playing street-hero games for criminals in the middle of a work week, with the two adults responsible for them!
She didn’t think about them.
She didn’t think, “If I get arrested, who picks my babies up?”
She didn’t think, “If I get hurt, who raises them?”
She didn’t think, “If I die, they have nobody.”
She thought about protecting criminals.
She thought about interfering with federal agents.
She thought about the camera.
She thought about the crowd.
She thought about the moment.
There is no amount of evidence, money, tears on TV, or news spin that can make this make sense.
As a mother: NOTHING about this makes sense.
At minimum, she knew her actions could get her arrested. At minimum. And she still chose it. She chose strangers. She chose chaos. She chose lawlessness.
Make it make sense, because the only thing I see is three kids who just got abandoned by the only parent they had left, not by accident… but by a series of deliberate choices.
I understand that you people believe everything you read and that’s fine , as a father I have one request.Please stop posting my children on your socials.
I walked through central London last night and realised something that made me genuinely sad:
The city I once loved—vibrant, safe, recognisably English—is gone.
Here’s what I saw 👇