Sıradışı Analiz YGS LYS Optik Konu Özetli - Feyzi Karahan itibaren Sıradışı Analiz Yayınları içinde LIT biçim

Luis Sánchez elsanchez — Need to buy the dern thing and read it!

Shehnaz Anjum anjum5757 — Ken Rutherford’s history and analysis of the global movement to end the use of landmines combines two virtues: it is exhaustive and at the same time highly readable. The author’s level of expertise on this topic is second to none: since his own near-death landmine injury he has been at the forefront of efforts to ban, control and destroy landmines in addition to being a pioneer in several programs to rehabilitate landmine victims around the world. The book moves from the particular to the global by starting out with Ken’s own experience. While he was an aid worker in Somalia in 1993, Ken’s vehicle struck a landmine, injuring him severely. After a medical evacuation during which he nearly bled to death, one leg was amputated to save his life and the second one amputated several years later. But as the book makes abundantly clear, Ken Rutherford is a determined, hard-core optimist, tough as any prizefighter and capable of bouncing back from trauma to enter the struggle against landmines at the international level. The fact that Ken Rutherford was employed by a nongovernmental aid agency is particularly relevant because of the crucial role NGOs played in adding momentum to the anti-landmine movement. The book details how, even though major states such as the US, China, India, Pakistan and Russia did not join the movement, a host of NGOs and mid-size states successfully brought the landmine ban to life despite the popularity of landmines as cheap, easy-to-use weapons. Beyond that, Rutherford analyzes the unprecedented nature of the movement as a popular force, aided by new advances in communications technology of the early 90s (fax machines and email), growing phenomenally by virtue of the firm convictions and tireless leadership of Jody Williams and Stephen Goose, among many others. The lessons learned are worth noting: The United Nations and the superpowers were not the movers and shakers here—they are portrayed as lethargic naysayers sidelined by the breadth and vigor of the moral majority. Much of the vitality of the landmine ban movement derived from survivors like Ken Rutherford, as well as from the many thousands who did not survive and whose deaths added potency to the urge to end the ugly legacy of buried explosives inflicted on innocent civilians. At times Disarming States reads like a thriller: can a few boisterous protesters get enough attention to change the world? Or will the gargantuan leading nations maintain the status quo of indiscriminate murder and mutilation? We see behind the scenes in Washington, Oslo and Ottawa, we read activists’ personal correspondence expressing frustration and disgust, and at the very end, Ken invites us into the convention hall to witness the final vote on the International Convention to Ban Landmines, as, against all odds, it becomes a reality. The awarding of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize serves as a supreme validation of this achievement. This is a story of the triumph of a moral campaign in a world that favors money and power, but Ken Rutherford holds it up as the shape of things to come. For him it is no mere fluke of history but rather the first step with a new pair of legs into a brighter future.