Dear Vladimir, Personally, I respect your fair call for neutrality in this horrible civilizational disaster. But I also think there is a delicate balancing act between *neutrality* and *objectivity*. On 9/27/22 16:20, Vladimir V. Kisil wrote:
[...] Current information flows are full of fakes, manipulations and war-time propaganda. The sequence of events will be a subject for heated debates for decades to come.
There is certainly misleading information both on the western (uncensored, free, and competitive) media and on the Russian (censored, oppressed, and state-dictated) media. But to equate these two would clearly mean to sacrifice one's objectivity to neutrality!
Alternatively, we may delete the whole statement all together. Calling for peace we shall do the first step ourselves by not taking a side in the ongoing war.
As scientists, our influence on the course of events is limited. Yet, not to speak up would mean to relinquish all influence. (Overly pathetic example: If the "Göttingen 18" hadn't spoken up in 1957, Germany would have developed nuclear weapons.) Hence, deleting the statement altogether would IMHO be faint-hearted. I re-read our statement carefully and found the first paragraph neutral – it merely sets a backdrop. The second paragraph then supports a call from Russian fellow scientists – among them at least one Fields medalist. Recall that their plea was squashed a few days later by authorities. (It has since been published abroad.) I suppose we all agree that shutting up a scientific community is unacceptable. In this conflict, suppression of speech happens objectively unilaterally. Striving for neutrality we could do two things: Replace "the Russian government" by "everybody". In addition, we should add a link to this non-Russian scientists' call for peace: <https://www.mpg.de/peace-declaration-nobel-prize-laureates>. (I am aware that it is also not "neutral".) That would be my candid proposal. All my best, -richy. -- Richard B. Kreckel <https://in.terlu.de/~kreckel/>