[OPE-L:6595] Re: [Andrew Kliman] Open Letter to OPE-L

[Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Alejandro because it seems highly likely to me that the
ban on Kliman was not in fact imposed because he may have been
circulating a mss elsewhere even if this is how RRPE editors
justified the ban at that time to themselves. It would seem to me
that the ban was in fact imposed on Kliman because he is unlikeable
and/or politically deviant. And both reasons  do not justify a ban,
so yes RRPE now has had to retract the ban even if wants to continue
to believe that it imposed it solely due the misunderstanding that
Kliman had been circulating a mss to two or more journals at the same
time.

And it does seem to me that now that Kliman has had the ban lifted,
he should stop having his lawyers make calls--if this is in fact what
he had done-- simply because one of the editors refuses to recognize
that the ban was not in fact imposed due to the putative
misunderstanding alone. The objective harm--the ban--has been undone.
So if in fact Kliman had his lawyer contact Skillman because Skillman
still believes that the ban was imposed due to a misunderstanding
alone, I think this can be seen as a petty act since Skillman clearly
did nothing illegal in telling us that he refuses to interpret the
RRPE retraction as a confession to previous censorship on political
and/or personal grounds. Skillman refuses to believe a lot of
things--is he to be threatened, however obliquely, with a lawsuit
every time he refuses to submit to the obvious or continues to hold
on to his own personal and idiosyncratic criticism out of what seems
to me at this point obviously bad faith?

Rakesh