... an alert and knowledgeable citizenry

[Oscar]

Sent for publishing on July 12, 2007

Dear Editor:

Our neighbours to the south are going through challenging and trying times. It is immensely important that our country, Canada, and other areas of the globe, are aware of the changes to which we and other oil producing nations, as well as our America neighbours, may be subjected in the future.

In 1961 America’s President Dwight Eisenhower declared this message in his farewell address to the nations of the world:

“ The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” [My underline.]

Michael T. Klare is a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in the US. He is the author of a book titled “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum”. Professor Klare describes, “How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them”.

A new book published in 2007 makes it possible to understand the parameters of the global tragedy rapidly unfolding before us. That book is titled “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” The author is Jeremy Scahill, a Polk Award winning investigative journalist. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine, and a correspondent to the radio and television show, “Democracy Now”. Currently he is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

This book is a most detailed and comprehensive review, with names of US Administration officials, the Military/ Industrial complex, the CIA, Oil interests, a sprinkling of neoconservative christian fundamentalists, including the horror of the war in Iraq.

Leo Kurtenbach,
Cudworth, Sask.,
Phone -- 256 3638