Response to "Elsevier and weapons trade"

[Gabor Lukacs <lukacs@cc.umanitoba.ca>]

[Note from moderator: as the poster points out, categories is not a forum
for political discussion. Consequently, further messages on this topic
received before Monday will be digested and posted then, closing the
discussion.]

Dear Colleagues,

I am responding to the posting of Marco Grandis.

I would like to express my heartfelt admiration to all those who raised
their voice against Elsevier's involvement in the arms trade. I find it so
noble that many scientists found time to express their outrage and
protest.

At the same time, I cannot help saying that I find the whole initiative
childishly naive, and even somewhat hypocritical. Naive, because
apparently, they believe that wars are because of the arms trade -- in
other words, they seem to mistake the cause with the result. (If there
were no wars, would there be any point in manufacturing weapons? Let me
ask it clearer: Would it bring *profit* to manufacture arms in that
case??)

And I said hypocritical, because I do wonder where the same good souls
were at the time of the invasion of Iraq, during the war in the Balkan, or
what do they think about what is happening in Israel. I wonder if the same
worried scientists who propose to boycott Reed-Elsevier have already
signed the academic boycott against Israel, and would participate in a
similar action against the US as a protest against its foreign policy.

I am raising these issues not in order to generate a political discussion
on a categories forum (which is definitely not the appropriate place for
such a discussion), but rather to illuminate the disproportional nature of
the suggestion action. It appears to me an overreaction, and directed
against the wrong entity.


With best wishes,

Gabor Lukacs