DAVID HAMEL - Final

The Biblical David had only to throw a rock to kill Goliath.; Hamel's task in our world of spiraling chaos is far more daunting: how do you effectively throw the Book at today's energy crises?The technocrats keep the faith, Hamel argues, and we pay the price for their power -- in our homes, our vehicles, all over our polluted planet.; With the "oligarchy" (on both Christian and Islamic sides of the fundamentalist fence) hell-bent on harnessing dwindling fossil fuel resources, Hamel - and the full spectrum of more moderate free-energy supporters inspired by his passion are taking aim.

So if you feel you must treat Hamel's messianic message as a crackpot UFO odyssey, fine.; You won't be alone.; But Hamel would remind you that the Battle for Oil is a crackpot odyssey pursued with far more damaging messianic zeal. Hamel has been living on the brink of Armageddon for as long as he can remember, and he's not about to wait for you to come around before trying to build a magnetic free-energy device that he believes can save the world fro the tyranny of the Grid. If you feel you don't need saving, that's fine too. He hope not to see you in hell!

EPILOGUE:DRESDEN

It was no ordinary blaze that engulfed Dresden, Germany, on February 13, 1945. Three waves of Allied bombers unleashed a precision engineering firestorm on the city from above, killing between 25,000 and 135,000 people in a heat of such intensity that may died of suffocation before burning, as air was sucked from the ground as if by the bellows of a furnace.

Among the million-plus people then crowded into the city were thousands of Allied POWs, made famous by fellow prisoner Kurt Vonnegut, who science-fictionalized his fiery escape from Dresden in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. One of the POWs was Montrealer David Hamel, the firstborn of fifteen children, who in 1939, at the age of fifteen, joined the Canadian army because it was the only work he could find during the Depression. He landed at Dieppe and survived a bullet to his spine before eventually being captured and detained at Dresden in 1944.

When all hell broke loose that February night, Hamel says he fled his prison through a window and, using a horse blanket and metal wire taken from a barn, rigged himself a makeshift bed hung from the underside of a train headed for the drilling fields of Ukraine After ten days of living off of stolen food, he smelled gasoline and noticed he was rumbling through a Nazi-held oil well zone, so he signaled with a flare to notify the Russians of this crucial bombing target. For this heroic feat, Hamel was awarded the Order of the White Eagle by the Russian military. Unfortunately, the medal was stolen from his burnt hands as he lay on a stretcher in Belgium, en route to Buckingham Palace.

A photomontage from his subsequent audience with King George VI now hangs on Hamel's wall, ensuring he cannot escape the memory of Dresden. He won't discuss his time as a prisoner, but he's emphatic about what he saw while running from his prison to the train. "I looked up, and saw the ships join together in formation - one, two three, four .... the corners of a pyramid. And above them, I didn't know what it was at the time, at the apex, I know now, was a flying saucer."