Court follows precedent while citing gov’t breach of law, ethics

Judge Kessler’s ruling in case of indefinite detainee suffering forced feeding and unlawful detainer, force-feeder

Excerpt, reformatting, end comment by Carolyn Bennett

July 8, 2013

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Petitioner, Civil Action No. 05-1457 (GK) BARACK OBAMA, et al., Respondents. :

MEMORANDUM ORDER

Petitioner, Jihad Dhiab, has filed an Application for Preliminary Injunction Against Force-Feeding [Dkt. No. 17 5]. Upon consideration of the Application, the Government's Opposition [Dkt. No. 178], Petitioner's Reply [Dkt. No. 181], and the applicable case law, the Court concludes that the Application shall be denied for the following reasons.

Tools of torture

Petitioner seeks in his Application to enjoin the Government from continuing to subject him to force-feeding of any kind, including forcible nasal gastric tube feeding, and from administering medications related to force-feeding without his consent.

Judge Kessler
AFP

In addition, he has requested expeditious consideration of the Application because of the imminent risk that the force-feeding during the day will deprive him of the Ramadan fast, which commences this year on July 8, 2013.1

P

etitioner has been detained at Guantanamo Bay for 11 years, despite having been cleared for release in 2009.

At no time during these 11 years has he had any hearing on the merits of his habeas petition, nor any military commission proceeding to determine the merits of his case.

Due to certain actions taken by Congress, Guantanamo Bay has not been closed, and Petitioner’s detention has, for all practical purposes, become indefinite.

On February 10, 2009, this Court issued Al-Adahi v. Obama, 596 F. Supp. 2d 111 (D.D.C. 2009).

In that case, Petitioner had filed a Renewed Emergency Motion to Enjoin the Force-Feeding to which he was being subjected.

For all practical purposes, the facts in Al-Adahi, which the Court found after a long Motion Hearing, are close to identical to the facts presented by Petitioner in this case.
 In Al-Adahi, the Court concluded that it ‘lacks jurisdiction and therefore does not have the authority to grant the relief’ being requested. I d. at 117.
 The Court made it perfectly clear in that Opinion that it was required to reach that conclusion ‘if it is to carry out its obligation to faithfully follow the rule of law.’ Id.

T

here has been no material no material change in either the background facts or the applicable legal principles since issuance of the Al-Adahi Opinion. 28 U.S.C. § 2241(e)(2) still states that:

[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.

C

onsequently, the Court feels just as constrained now, as it felt in 2009, to deny this Petitioner's Application for lack of jurisdiction.

The Court also feels constrained, however, to note that Petitioner has set out in great detail in his papers what appears to be a consensus that force feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.

In addition, Petitioner cites in detail statements of the American Medical Association, the World Medical Association, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism condemning the force-feeding of detainees.

The American Medical Association in a letter to the Secretary of Defense on April 25, 2013, has declared that the force-feeding of detainees violates ‘core ethical values of the medical profession.’ Charlie Savage, Obama Renews Efforts to Close Prison in Cuba, N.Y. Times, May 1, 2013, at A1.

D

espite the statements contained in the Declaration submitted by the Government in support of its Opposition to the Application claiming that ‘[t]he health care provided to the detainees being held at JTF-GTMO rivals that provided in any community in the United States and is comparable to that afforded to our active duty service members. Detainees receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare and have regular access to primary care and specialist physicians,’ it is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.

E

ven though this Court is obligated to dismiss the Application for lack of jurisdiction, and therefore lacks any authority to rule on Petitioner’s request, there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue. 

In a speech on May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama stated ‘Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. . . Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.’ Text of President Obama's May 23 Speech on National Security (Full Transcript), Wash. Post, May 23, 2013, available at 2013 WLNR 12700673.

Judge Kessler

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that ‘[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the
Army and Navy of the United States ...’  It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority—and power-- to  directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

WHEREFORE, it is this 8th day of July, 2013, hereby

ORDERED, that Petitioner’s Application for a Preliminary Injunction is denied.

(;f~~ ·Gladys Kessler

United States District Judge

In this matter, the government, that is to say the leaders and public officials of this country seem to know they are breaking the law, violating domestic and international law and principles of ethics and human rights conventions; yet they are incapable of stopping themselves. 

Does anybody believe this? I doubt it. 

It is sad indeed that officials’ actions (all branches of government) in these matters of indefinite detention and force feeling ─
but also in a long line of ruthless acts together with their secrecy and mendacity ─ this government, collectively, has caused the people of the United States and peoples of the world to lose critical confidence in the integrity of the United States of America.  

Sources and notes

MEMORANDUM ORDER

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Petitioner, Civil Action No. 05-1457 (GK) BARACK OBAMA, et al., Respondents.

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2005cv1457-183

Judge Gladys Kessler

Federal Judicial Service:

Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Nominated by William J. Clinton on March 22, 1994, to a seat vacated by Michael J. Boudin Confirmed by the Senate on June 15, 1994, and received commission on June 16, 1994

Assumed senior status on January 22, 2007

Professional Career: Appellate attorney, National Labor Relations Board, 1962-1964

Legislative assistant, U.S. Sen. Harrison A. Williams, New Jersey, 1964-1966

Legislative assistant, U.S. Rep. Jonathan Bingham, New York, 1966-1968

Special assistant, director of Office of Staff Relations, New York City Board of Education, 1968-1969

Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1969-1977

Associate judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia, 1977-1994

Education: Cornell University (B.A., 1959); Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1962); Birth: 1938 in New York, NY http://www.uscourts.gov/JudgesAndJudgeships/BiographicalDirectoryOfJudges.aspx

Democracy Now July 9, 2013: “A federal judge has issued a ruling suggesting the force-feeding of hunger-striking Guantánamo Bay prisoners is illegal, but warning only President Obama can stop it. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler rejected a prisoner’s effort to halt his force-feeding, saying she lacks jurisdiction. But Judge Kessler said: ‘It is perfectly clear ... that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.’ Kessler added: ‘It would seem to follow [the president] has the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.’ At least 45 of the estimated 106 Guantánamo hunger strikers are being force-fed through tubes.” http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/9/headlines#799

Also: “Judge: Guantánamo Force-Feeding ‘Painful, Humiliating, Degrading,’ in Obama’s Hands”

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Pro-gun mantra feigns love of “family,” veils anti-society reality

Selfish argument betrays contempt: denies freedom while claiming to champion it

By Carolyn Bennett

Society at the mercy of the individual

 

Yesterday I sent this 436-word piece to the local newspaper. It was pegged to a shtick by a pro-weapons (arm the children) radio host.

This week I heard an AM radio “right to bear” talker on a tear about young people’s “right” to possess guns in order to shoot objects on their grandfathers’ farms and blah blah blah-ing about “protecting ‘our’ families.” I am so tired of these fallacious grounds for individuals’ unrestricted possession and use of lethal weaponry.

Wrapped in the colors
USA! USA! USA!
Wrapped in violence

THE FIRST FALSEHOOD is the feigned “concern for families,” more precisely, “my family,” as pro-

Lt. Col.,
the accused
the crime:
assault on "family"

gun ranters couch this falsehood. If families cared for their own families, there would be no domestic violence, no incest, no priestly assaults on children; in the U.S. military “family,” no sexual assault.  True justice, kindness, love begins at home.

I

f any family or individual is at risk in this country, that risk is created by the family in which that individual lives; and, in the case of the military and some boardrooms, works. The armed forces “family” not unlike “families” of any sort which the ranter wants to “protect” by arming to the hilt are themselves the central and most immediate perpetrator of harm.

THE SECOND FALSEHOOD is the concern for “protection” itself. We are only as secure as we make our society (all of us) secure. We really are in this together, whether we embrace this reality or resist it.

At work
Family assaulted
by "Family"

Laws and statutes and regulations and ordnances ─ from local communities to the global context of international laws and conventions ─ are designed or should be designed to protect and preserve society, as small as a neighborhood, as large as the world. Restrictions, prohibitions, limitations (subject to review and abolition as America’s 19th century legalized slavery) preserve freedom for all by necessarily limiting selfish desire, recklessness, excess or caprice.  For the sake of maintaining society, we have rules concerning human behavior: rules regarding access (a person cannot legally or without permission walk into another person's residence or office and drink the coffee or leave with the jewels), regarding roadways, traffic and motorists, leash laws and treatment of animals; restrictions regarding the under-age young. International rules attempt to protect sovereignty and protect against torture, unlawful detention, and targeted assassination.

One cannot reasonably compartmentalize gun violence as "theirs" but not "ours" or define criminals as "those" people but not "our people" just because it is expedient or convenient or suits individual or partisan or a national leader's desire at any given time or place. 

W

e live in a world not of farms as the ranter suggested (few “family farms” exist thanks to the same policy sources this ranter would gleefully support). Not even of old-fashioned communities where all people know each other, respect each other, and help to care for and raise the children well ─ but a world rife with “selfish” card carrying members and leaders of the Deliberately Selfish-blind Party (DSBP) who use, abuse and discard; a world of unhealthy people and institutions, bored navel-watching “smart”- phoning-facebooking-twitterer heads and altered consciousnesses; a world graphically imaged in televised, 3D, webbed virtualsphere spewing 24-7 bloodletting human transaction conducted at the point of lethal weaponry.

CAREFULLY TAUGHT
Children take adult example

Children take adult example

Virginia Tech

Against this backdrop, it is critically imperative that gun (drone, UAVs, missiles, and other lethal weapons) possession, use and abuse be monitored and restricted. Anything short of this is criminally irresponsible. [end of essay]

Apropos  

Washington D.C. ─ “Gun rights activist Adam Kokesh to stay in jail after refusing to speak to judge,” published time: July 11, 2013 16:18, Edited time: July 11, 2013 17:09, http://rt.com/usa/kokesh-bond-jail-hearing-960/

Children take adult example

Kokesh told the press:

Children take adult example

‘I loaded a shotgun on Independence Day, but I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t drone any children … I didn’t steal any children’s future. I didn’t sell this country into debt. I didn’t do any of the crimes that the man two blocks over at the White House is responsible for.’

New York State ─ “Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs amendment to NY Safe Act allowing exceptions [ownership of NYS-banned guns and ammunition magazines]  for retired police” (by Teri Weaver), July 8, 2013 4:18 PM, updated July 08, 2013 at 5:19 PM, http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/gov_andrew_cuomo_signs_amendment_to_ny_safe_act_allowing_exceptions_for_retired.html

Children take
adult example

U.S. assault on world

Qualified retired law enforcement officers are now exempt from some restrictions under an amendment to the NY Safe Act signed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo late last week. The change allows retired law enforcement officers who have met certain training requirements to own guns and ammunition magazines now banned under New York's tougher gun laws.

To qualify, this category of retired people must have worked on the force for at least a decade and left their positions in good standing.

Newtown

Law Enforcement

Those who qualify could keep the guns and magazines purchased as a part of official duties. Those guns must be registered with the state within 60 days of retirement.

H

ow ridiculous is this? How are these retired police officers 

different from others in the population? They are not different. How many in the course of their duties and or in their homes have abused the rights of others?

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Hoover to Hussein Obama, another contemporary exposes a piece

1920s-2013 and counting

When will we end the carnage?

Edited excerpt, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

High Crimes uncorrected become corrosive “normal” severing the heart of a nation.

I

t is important to distinguish between corrupt human beings and the country, one’s homeland, the land that we love, the land whose promise and potential we have barely realized.

Snowden (top)
Manning (lower left)
Ellsberg (lower right)

Snowden seems to capture this distinction that no school in America teaches in its classrooms. In America, “achievers” (the getters, those who get) must clone themselves, imitate, plagiarize entrenched power: an incestuous, nepotistic, corrupt, amoral mind.

Snowden now being hunted by this ruthless power seems to have evolved and, in a sense, escaped. Here’s some of what he said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald before the full-on hunt began. For me, these personal words of a true patriot resonate and compel.

The United States government had invaded Iraq riding on a wave of daily dusk-to-dawn propaganda and falsehoods. Snowden was a true believer. He said he had enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after that invasion “out of a belief in ‘the goodness of what we were doing.’” He believed, he told Greenwald, “‘in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas.’” A people, mind you, who had lived thousands of years in Mesopotamia: a cradle of civilization amidst the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

Ah, the young and impressionable.

U.S. in Libya
What happened?

In this, Snowden was like many other Americans, soldiers and not, young and not, who had been deliberately duped, who were and are victims of U.S. politicians’ propaganda, and U.S. inferior systems of education ─ Kindergarten to Harvard.

Over the course of his career and in watching programming masquerading as hard “news,” Snowden finally recognized that what he was watching was the SHOW: “propaganda, not truth.” Snowden continues:

We (comparing what he saw in the course of his work with what he saw on the show) were actually involved in misleading the public and misleading all the publics (plural, of course there is only one public, global and domestic inclusive), not just the American public ─ in order to create a certain mindset in the global consciousness

…I was actually a victim of that.

High CRIMEs: insidious, endless, with impunity

As a young lover, he wanted to believe in his government. Snowden said he had “continued with his job while waiting for political leaders to rein in ‘government excesses.’”

But they never quit.

“‘As I’ve watched I’ve seen (no end to government excesses),’” he said; “‘and, in fact, we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it (the situation) worse and more invasive; and no one is really standing to stop it.’”

Uncorrected abuse of power

High crimes 1920s-2013 -

Notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972): appointed, reappointed, a lifer, allowed to hold office until death from natural causes

1950s, 1960s: COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs) the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation used covert means to disrupt activities of groups it considered “subversive” and to discredit their leaders. Officially discontinued in 1971

"Subversive" then, "terrorist" now?

37th U.S. president Richard Milhous Nixon (1969–1974)

Nixon 1970-1973: Supported Dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean general who overthrew Chile’s President Salvador Allende (elected 1970). [Consider contemporary Washington’s insidious wars on Latin America’s leaders South and Central as well as Libya’s and Syria’s leaders; Bahrain’s, Yemen’s, Somalia’s, Egypt's, Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Iran’s, North Korea’s and others’ people; wars on Afghanistan and Pakistan Sovereignty and peoples].

Richard Nixon
J. Edgar Hoover

Secret war: The Nixon administration (1970-73) ─ after President Allende nationalized American-owned mining companies ─ restricted Chile’s access to international economic assistance and discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military, cultivated secret contacts with anti-Allende police and military officials, and undertook various other destabilizing measures, including funneling millions of dollars in covert payments to Chilean opposition groups. In September 1973, Allende was overthrown in a military coup led by army commander in chief Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Nixon 1972: Illegal activities by President Nixon and his aides concerning a burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.; allegations of other loosely related crimes committed both before and after the break-in; and the cover-up brought Nixon almost to prison. Nixon had secretly directed his White House counsel, John Dean, to oversee a cover-up to conceal his government’s involvement in Watergate. He had also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating his administration. Faced with almost-certain impeachment, Nixon was allowed to resign the office of the presidency (1974).

 

40th U.S. president Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981–1989)

 

Reagan 1980s: Another U.S. political scandal in which the National Security Council (NSC) was involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated stated public policy of the government.

Reagan 1984: his popularity riding high, he proclaims “Morning in America”, “America is back” and reelection sloganeers about “economic prosperity” and a renewed U.S. leadership role in world affairs.

Reagan 1985-1986: the president authorizes a secret and illegal initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange for that country’s help in securing the release of Americans held hostage by “terrorist” groups in Lebanon. Monetary transfers were undertaken by National Security Council (NSC) staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North with the approval of NSC head Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter (succeeding William McFarlane who had recommended the arms sales).  NSC’s illegal activities came to light in November; Poindexter and North lost their jobs and were prosecuted; the United States suffered serious but seemingly temporary loss of credibility as an opponent of “terrorism”; Reagan was unpunished and in later years highly praised.  [Nixon also was resurrected before death]

43rd U.S. president George Walker Bush (2001-2009)

Bush 2002-2005: Bush W’s administration secretly and illegally authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens and others in the United States without first obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

When the program was revealed in news reports in December 2005, the administration insisted that it was justified by a September 2001 joint Congressional resolution that authorized the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks. (Gloves off ─ anything goes)

Post-September 11, 2001, FBI powers to surveil U.S. citizens and foreign residents were significantly expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act (formally the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).

In 2003 the FBI established an Office of Intelligence to manage its intelligence-gathering activities and to coordinate its efforts with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Bush and Congress 2008: The U.S. Congress in 2008 legislation granted immunity (illegal becomes legal) and expanded the NSA’s surveillance powers; Bush signed.  Congress also passed the Military Commissions Act giving the commissions foundation in law and prohibiting recourse in law: non-U.S. citizen “enemy combatants” were barred from challenging their detentions in U.S. federal courts.

Bush’s CIA: abduction, rendition, torture: under another Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-run program dozens of individuals suspected of involvement in “terrorism” were abducted outside the United States and held in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere or transferred for interrogation to countries that routinely practiced torture.

44th U.S. president Barack Hussein Obama II (2009 - )

Obama 2008: a campaign for the U.S. presidency promising positive “change”, a “reset” in foreign relations; and reminiscent of actor-Reagan’s rhetorical flourish, it died post-election; and words turned into the bloodiest U.S. foreign relations policies and practices in American history.

The country under current Washington governance emanating from all branches has shown itself to be astoundingly hostile ─ in its invasions and occupation, its extrajudicial killings, its destabilization and provocation of regions and peoples, its funding of oppressive regimes (authoritarian, dictatorial and military), its malevolent intrusiveness, secrecy and surveillance, in its near-destruction of the United Nations, and its misleading rhetoric and blatant falsehoods ─ to all nations and

peoples of the world including the American people.

T

here is an ethos here, a sinister connectedness running through the character of U.S. “leadership” that others, now Snowden has exposed a piece. Snowden continued the contemporary saga related to which I wonder as he has wondered about Americans’ penchant for forgetfulness.

“The partnership between the intelligence agencies and the corporate sector was a ‘dangerous collaboration’ ─ especially for an organization like the NSA (National Security Agency) that time and again has demonstrated: ‘it works to shield itself from oversight.’

“‘The NSA (that is, people heading this agency) lied … to Congress and to specific (members of the U.S. Congress in response to previous inquiries about NSA’s surveillance activities)’ and ‘about the existence’ of a particular surveillance system called “Boundless Informant,” which “allowed the NSA to track data it was accumulating.” Snowden said,

‘They are getting everyone’s calls; everyone’s call records; everyone’s Internet traffic.’

Tunneling through pageantry and propaganda and fake patriotism (undeterred by those who wrap themselves in the same stars and stripes that flap from their car windows, ring their used car dealerships) and trying to salvage the nation’s promise takes insight and uncommon courage.

Snowden concludes

“‘America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing but the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.’ And ─

‘I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.

‘That’s not something I’m willing to support; it’s not something I’m willing to build and it’s not something I’m willing to live under.’

 

P

atriots do not ask how can I use or abuse this nation (or any nation); how can I cash in or what can I take from her; what can I do to her or against her. How can I destroy her principled potential and promise?

“Patriots,” I wrote a few days ago, “are … people who love their country and support its interests” (not the propaganda of politicians, their paymasters, allies and or cronies). Patriots ask what I can do not for this or that party or politician, foundation, corporation or nonprofit; but what can I do for my country.

I’d say Edward Joseph Snowden qualifies as a “patriot.”  

One day, before having to leave this land, we the people who love it will gather the courage to vote out the real traitors, clean house; and welcome true patriots and true progressives ─ 

…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common defense (this does not mean wage domestic or foreign wars), promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….

Sources and notes

“Edward Snowden: U.S. surveillance ‘not something I’m willing to live under’ ─ In second part of Glenn Greenwald interview, NSA whistleblower insists he is a patriot who regards the U.S. as fundamentally good,” Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, Monday 8 July 2013 14.22 EDT, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-surveillance-excess-interview

Excerpt from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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