Taking Matters in Your Own Hands
Written: Nov 18 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Well organized, thorough, in layman's terms
Cons: Modern-day vigilante justice
The Bottom Line: Your opinion will depend on your politics not on skill of writer
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| Rocketgirl's Full Review: John Mayer - Nuclear Peace: The Story of the Tride... |
The title of this book caught my attention. I have long been associated with a nuclear waste site that is in the process of being cleaned up. I tend to look at books on the subject just out of general interest but also to see if the writer has bothered to do his/her homework. Believe me I have seen many, many articles and books on this topic that have not bothered to research the science of a nuclear chain reaction at all. So I was interested in what this author had to say.
First, I found that the subject ended up being completely different than what the description lead me to believe. This book is about a real event that happened in 1999 in Scotland. I have to admit I don't remember it at all, being as I pay no attention whatsoever to international news. At any rate, three women (Angie Zelter, Ulla Roder, and Ellen Moxley) took it upon themselves, representing a group called Trident Ploughshares 2000, to disable a government trident sub station in Scotland.
The main goal of this group is nuclear disarmament. The group insists that keeping weapons of mass destruction is against international law (against humanity) as decided by the World Court, sanctioned by the United Nations. Therefore, these three women, backed by their group, snuck into this lake side facility and destroyed the electronics of these trident subs. They yanked out various computer terminals and so forth and dumped them into the lake. These electronic terminals give the subs their "electronic silence" from being detected while deployed. They also relate to their navigation systems.
Once they were through, they basically called the authorities and let them come and arrest them. The rest of the book involves their subsequent trial. Their reasoning is that they were not committing a crime, but preventing a crime from being committed.
There are both some positives and negatives about this book. The book is written by John Mayer, the lawyer of the three women. As the book is written by a U.K.-English speaker and about the U.K., I was little worried that differences in idiomatic usage of the language might cause some misunderstandings to a U.S.-English speaker. Not so. Everything was perfectly understandable from that aspect; I had no problems understanding what Mayer was trying to say.
Related to that, is the technical aspects of the international law being discussed. I also had no trouble understanding the legalities and the logic behind how this Ploughshares organization came to the conclusions that they did. The author very clearly presented the international laws and how they came about. This was very well done for readers, such as myself, who are uneducated in international matters.
Third, the book is very well organized, describing the commission of the "crime" by the three women, the lawyer's process in researching the legalities behind the women's claims, then actually trying the case before the court. All the sections were about the right length, cutting off before they got boring or repetitive. I did think the author did spend a bit too much time justifying the actions of the women.
For the most part, the book is written completely in first person, though some of the story is as related to him after the fact. This made those long dense paragraphs easier to read; it may have been pretty difficult it had been written in a disinterested third person point of view. I would have liked to see more question and answer and verbalization of court proceedings, however, just for readability.
Now for my criticism, and it doesn't really have anything to do with the skill of the writer, but what he wrote about. This book was difficult for me to read because of two main things: 1) this kind of activity paints the whole nuclear industry with a black paint brush, making it difficult for those of us who advocate peaceful use of nuclear energy to make a difference, and 2) despite the women's contention that they were involved in "crime prevention" (against humanity, by using weapons of mass destruction) not commission for a crime, taking the law into their own hands is nothing more than vigilante justice.
To expand a bit, nuclear energy can be used for two main useful causes, that of nuclear power and that of radioactive isotopes used in medical treatment of cancer. This kind of negative publicity, even though not directly related, does not help further nuclear power or nuclear medicine. I think everybody would like to see these type of weapons eliminated but reality is that no one can trust anyone else and so you have to look out for number one. I do not think that this type of activism looks beyond the short-term goals or at political reality.
Also, when someone does not use the law to change the law, in my mind this makes you no better than vigilantes, and I don’t agree with that kind of activism for at minimum the following reasons:
1) it makes you no better than they are
2) you have broken the law in that you have destroyed public property
3) you have committed a crime against the taxpayers who now have to refinance what you have destroyed
4) you say you are concerned with safety, yet did not consider the men in the already deployed subs that may or may not be at risk because you just wiped out their navigation system and let our enemies know where they are
5) you presume that you represent the popular opinion when you may or may not, but in any case do not have the right to act for all people unless you are an elected official
I guess the author did a good job in provoking a response, which is part of the goal in writing a book in the first place. It just happened to be a negative response in this reader. This may be a result of my background and I may be a bit biased. Your personal politics will play alot in how you accept this book. Mine don't allow me to enjoy this story as how three "little people" "beat the system." I believe in using the system to beat the system and they did not do that.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Rocketgirl
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Member: Beth
Location: Tri-Cities, WA
Reviews written: 398
Trusted by: 224 members
About Me:
So many books, so little time.
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