They Huey P. Newton Reader

3061 The Hue. P. Newton Reader
swiftly :abilized its fo rces. RAF jets dropped napalm bombs on the
slicks to fire them into oblivion. It was like a grand military campaign.
(JENKINS TELLS OF PLAN TO USE TI IE VlETNAM T TORROR nOMO, proclaimed
an extra edition of the London Daily Mirror.) But the open ocean,
heeding its own laws, dispersed the spilled oil into a slick solution that,
as a reporter on the scene for the Economist noted, is "incombustible
by anything short of the fires of hell." From napalm bombs, the campaign
accelerated to include a fleet of thirty warships armed with chemical
detergents. Yet the detergent fleet could hardly cope with the extent
of the slicks, and those that they did manage to emulsify drifted down
into the ocean depths to asphyxiate schools of fish. Great Britain
retreated to its shores, and Tommies, along with children using garden
spray cans, began deploying detergent on the beaches. Ironically,
the detergent created a milky liquid more toxic to shellfish that Kuwait
crude, and much of the muck had then to be shoveled up. Meanwhile,
in makeshift hospitals, bird lovers, their hands clawed red, cleaned terrified
oil-smeared seabirds with talcum. The nation that started out
to napalm the fireproof sea was hand-cleansing its beaches and its
birds-and waiting for the next high tide. The British prime minister,
who had called out the RAF, tried to cheer up Cornwall's worried
hotel and shop owners, their livelihood suddenly threatened. "I am not
canceling my holiday in that part of the world," said Harold Wilson
reassuringly.
Some hotelkeepers canceled their carpet orders; others rolled up their
carpets, while one more inventive owner prohibited the wearing of
shoes in his hotel. When oil from a Liberian tanker grounded in international
waters and controlled by an American company smears your
rugs, whom do you sue? Today marine bacteria, the only creatures that
can stomach Kuwait crude, busily feast on the remains of the slicks.
Professor Marx goes on to tell us that the stresses on the ocean are
ceaselessly intensifYing. As land resources shrink, the world's population
and its expectations expand. Indeed, the functions of land on a
congested planet that consists largely of water may narrow to one: providing
living space for man. Already we contend with orange groves
and cattle ranches for elbow room. The continuing depletion andlor
usurpation of land resources raises the need for a new storehouse of
energy to keep the Technological Revolution fueled with fo od, water,