Illegal? I don't think that's true, not since ~1989 in South Africa anyway.
That's a great point. One thing I've not enjoyed in modern corporate culture is the mental gymnastics required to usher out a statement that couldn't be interpreted as offensive to anyone on the planet. It's not like I'm _trying_ to be offensive, but as the number of rules governing speech increases, it becomes difficult to have conversations that are not laden with newspeak.
Removing that cognitive load is bound to leave more brainpower for the task at hand.
Unless it is group of South African expats why should we brainstorming?
Is South Africa asking for help ? Either for ideas or for money? Or is there genocide or other basic human rights abuses that we cannot but intervene.
The presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them is where it is offensive not what is being said, people are more than capable of finding their own solutions to their own problems.
Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
> presumption that we can solve or think about their problems better than them
You're the only one who presumed this. (It's also presumptuous to assume that nobody outside your own context can be helpful to you.)
I didn’t say you can’t be helpful, but if not being asked that is the definition of presumption .
> Why is this an inappropriate topic to discuss?
It would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife or Mexicans having leadership conferences on how to prevent the raise of Trump . Same as how it feels for citizens when Elon Musk is doing now in UK, Germany or France
Domestic intervention or influence by foreign actors no matter if well intentioned or not is inappropriate
If I want to have a discussion about South Africa, that's between me and whomever I'm speaking to. South Africa doesn't have a global veto on conversations about itself.
> would be same as my neighbor discussing how to fix my problems with my wife
If they're having a conversation in their house about your relationship, I don't see the issue. It's rude. But it may also be interesting or even instructive to their own situations.
It is not private though, we are not talking about diplomats doing it in confidential communications, nobody is objecting to that .
What we are describing is equivalent to having a public conversation in the street in front of your home where you can see them having it
Still rude, but nothing more.
All degrees of the same thing ? And the degree in the eyes of the subject
> degree in the eyes of the subject
Yes. The people actually having the conversation.
In a public conversation preferences of the subject i.e. who being talked about when discussing about them publicly matters more than the participants i.e who is doing the talking
Period , done . if you disagree then you and I fundamentally different views on what is a civilized society and I hope my neighbors have my world view than yours.
Why not? British people discussed the US election and Trump, lots of Americans express opinions on Britain, everyone expresses opinions about Russia and Ukraine, etc.
I would say that people's opinions about countries they do not know first hand are often (if not usually) worthless, but I cannot imagine that in any of the above cases (or similar) many people would say they have no reason not to have opinions.
500 years of slavery, colonialism, genocide and religion, propping up banana republics and dictators and countless other crimes in name of civilizing society or recently bringing freedom, fighting communism or spreading democracy is why not.
Recent and ancient history shows time and again that the opinions become policy, governing everything from who and how aid is given to bombing anyone you don’t like . Policies change and principles abandoned with changing domestic political winds .
I recently read a book review that discussed South Africa today. One of the many points it made about the dire state of things is that the air force planes that flew overhead during Mandela's inauguration were, a decade later, completely inoperable. <https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-...>.
As a long it was a white government there was lot of monetary support and knowledge transfer to South Africa, all the way to building nuclear weapons those collaborations stopped once the racial profile changed.
overtime that means complex technologies like military aircraft which are difficult to keep flying anytime will stop working as South Africa was and is not equipped or can afford to maintain them on their own.
no nation which flies f-35s can keep them flying if they are not in trump’s good graces now.
This is why countries like china or India or few others who can afford to, invest heavily to build their domestic defense infrastructure.
My objection is bigger than that though, it is independent of the merit or quality of the discourse , unwelcome discourse is impolite even if it is sound.
This is a fair rule for you to live your life by. I think it crosses a line when someone insists it be one everyone follow.
I personally got value from the comment about South Africa, and that’s despite knowing South Africans. (Their “lived experience” as non-military non-historian non-aviation South Africans is sort of irrelevant to questions of military aviation history.)
You and OP should follow the principles that you feel best.
It wasn’t a mere discussion on military aviation history, context matters, the implication here is post apartheid the government is corrupt and incompetent, it was corrupt before too just propped up better by foreign powers.
A discussion about which one can knowledgeably have without any South African “lived experience,” apart from that of people then in that government.
Like, a group of diplomats in Jburg could probably have a more-informed discussion of American politics and history than a random assortment of Americans.
Our personal opinions govern how we interact with others.
The alternative is greater ignorance.
I think effort should go into honesty, humility, and open mindedness.
I'm sure someone can have different insights from their lives experience which should be recognized, but that doesn't mean they should trump all else.
We live in the age of disinformation, influencers, and anti-intellectualism that actively dismissive qualified sources, we have to put value in source quality, while not completely dismissing the ones without them.
From the review that I cited and you didn't bother to read:
>A little over a decade later and that same South African Air Force was no longer able to fly. It wasn’t for lack of planes: new ones were procured from European arms manufacturers in an astonishingly expensive and legendarily corrupt deal. But once purchased the planes rotted from lack of maintenance and languished in hangers for lack of anybody able to fly them. Most of the qualified pilots and technicians had been purged, and most of the remainder had resigned. The air force did technically still have pilots, after all it would be a bit embarrassing not to, but those pilots were chosen for patronage reasons and didn’t technically have any idea how to fly a fighter jet.
There's more, if you care to actually read it.