“Salt remnants of ancient oceans flow through our veins . . .”
Now, along with endangered species, the Gulf spill has given us a new category: endangered oceans.

The challenges presented by the disaster lay before us in their incomprehensible enormity. To what extent have the hundreds of thousands of gallons of the highly toxic dispersant Corexit 9500 that BP has poured into the Gulf aggravated the ecological horror? How will hurricane season complicate the cleanup? Will the flow of crude continue till Christmas? How many cleanup workers have gotten sick, and why? Might the “relief well” also blow?

We can’t solve our problems, as Einstein said, with the same kind of thinking we used to create them. This sums up the situation for me as well as anything — and pushes my despair up against the door of possibility. We’re at the far edge of the industrial age: the age of fossil fuels. How do we proceed beyond it?

From first impression to last impression this book, like its title Quicksand, is deceptive. Even the first physical impression, the physical structure of the book itself - its glossy pages and high quality binding - is designed to impress the reader. Initially the history is written powerfully and revealingly, highlighting information that I have not encountered within other histories of U.S. imperial adventures in the Middle East.

However as the story unfolds, particularly in the final third of the book, a different sense akin to déjà vu surfaces, as the history becomes more of a current events crisis without the in-depth analysis and critique that should have accompanied it. The end result is that instead of discussing the general Middle East geopolitical context and the power of the Israeli lobby within the U.S. - not to mention the lack of global context within the over-riding imperial intent of the United States since its inception - and there are many texts that support that analysis - the history ends leaving a feeling that, well, yes, the U.S. has made some mistakes in their relationships in the Middle East, but their intentions were good.

BP's apocalyptic Gulf gusher has put our ability to survive in serious doubt.

We have no reason to believe an end to the crisis is near---or even in sight. Nor can we begin to calculate the damage to our Mother Earth…to her oceans, to the core of her being…and to each of us as individual organisms.

Only one thing IS clear: we cannot ultimately survive without a rapid conversion to a Solartopian economy that is totally green-powered. That transformation will be forced by biological imperatives, not money or markets.

The powers that be studiously avoid the core reality that this disaster stems from the ability of large corporations to make all of us pay for their irresponsible greed.

The black poisons killing our global body gush from a system that grants corporations human rights but does not demand human responsibility.

It is suicidal to allow corporations to deploy technologies they cannot mange or insure and then make us pay for their greed.

I grew up by the Gaza sea. Through my childhood, I could never quite comprehend how such a giant a body of water, which promised such endless freedom, could also border on such a tiny and cramped stretch of land - a land that was perpetually held hostage, even as it remained perpetually defiant.

From a young age, I would embark with my family on the short journey from our refugee camp to the beach. We went on a haggard cart, laboriously pulled by an equally gaunt donkey. The moment our feet touched the warm sand, the deafening screams would commence. Little feet would run faster than Olympic champions and for a few hours all our cares would dissipate. Here there was no occupation, no prison, no refugee status. Everything smelled and tasted of salt and watermelon. My mother would sit atop a torn, checkered blanket to secure it from the wild winds. She would giggle at my father's frantic calls to his sons, trying to stop them from going too deep into the water.

I would duck my own head underwater, and hear the haunting humming of the sea. Then I'd retreat, stand back and stare at the horizon.