Nigerian Man Indicted in Plot to Blow Up Plane

A Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day was indicted Wednesday on charges including attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill nearly 300 people.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was traveling from Amsterdam when he tried to destroy the plane carrying by injecting chemicals into a package of pentrite explosive concealed in his underwear, authorities say. The failed attack caused popping sounds and flames that passengers and crew rushed to extinguish.

The bomb was designed to detonate ''at a time of his choosing,'' the grand jury's indictment said.

There is no specific mention of terrorism in the seven-page indictment, but President Barack Obama considers the incident a failed strike against the United States by an affiliate of al-Qaida.

Abdulmutallab has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen. His father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son had drifted into extremism in Yemen, but that threat was never fully digested by the U.S. security apparatus.

Since the failed attack, airlines and the Transportation Security Administration have boosted security in airports in the U.S. and around the world. Obama has said the government had information that could have stopped the attempted attack, but intelligence agencies failed to connect the dots.

Abdulmutallab faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to use a bomb on the plane. He is being held at a federal prison in Milan, Mich., and a message seeking comment was left Wednesday with his lawyer, Miriam Siefer.

He will make his first appearance in federal court on Friday for an arraignment and a hearing to determine if he stays in custody.

The controversy here is that accusation is something and the deed itself is something else.

Since we were not there, it is in hues of vagueness what happened there. But, if his father’s assertions about his son going on extremist are real, then we all should sit down and think about it. However, US officials should not neglect to set out for necessary precautions and they truly did.

About the impact of such incidents on Iran: I think the situation is getting worse each day. Because America has been long feeding thoughts on Iran making compromises against America trying to win allies like Al-Qaeda or other radical organizations. But, I, personally believe that this is in no way true! But again the fact is that America has already made up its mind when officials introduced Iran among the 14 nations that are needed to be checked during flights into the US.

The Patriot

This movie is about a family headed by a white single male whose so called proficiency is carpentry.

The movie is comprised of so many important features existing throughout 18^th century. We have the element of slavery, gun, council, farming, nation, war, integration, and militia and so on.

We have slaves living in this family who claim to be freedmen but as the conversation goes one British general asserts: “there’s no such thing as freed men.” The concept is that wherever they go, they can be easily recognized because of their skin color. So, even if their master renders them as free, the system still will not allow that to happen.

We witness that the sense of insecurity is dominant in this period of time. Guns are being kept and shooting are taught to the little members of family especially male children just in case; and truly as the course of incidents shows this training came absolutely handy and useful. Individuals living on the new world have to be prepared to face anything and I mean anything. Because there is no clear cut rule; there is a sense of insecurity against the slaves, as the history sadly exhibited the fact that there were several riots and murders by the house slaves against the masters.

We have a council in Charlestown in which the property owners and owners of big plantations attend to help decide about the crises they are all in. This concept of congregation is believed to be borrowed from the British idea of parliament in which representatives of elites as well as commons attend and take steps along with the king. Same thing goes on here. America still follows the king of England and takes orders from him, so again in a parliament just like Britain’s it wants to be of right to consult and have representatives which later on became the core to set out for independence from the mother country.

Farming is the most important and lucrative profession of the time. Usually plantation owners are from the class of gentry that have a large number of slaves in their employment. Corn, cotton, and tobacco are the main products of this era which had made a good reason for trading with Europe.

The main message depicted in this movie is the sense of integration shaped among Americans when facing an outside threat toward their lives and specifically toward their families. We see that at first the main character is showing strong reluctance to join the war, but when losing a beloved son he has been left with no other choice save enter the war for vengeance. The same story goes on with a lot of other characters forming the unofficial militia that are interrupting the British carriages, killing them outside the battlefield and keeping their armors.

Moreover, America has shown a great deal of integrity in hard times, especially war times. That is, whenever there is a menace to destroy their lives or their identity, Americans become so much allied and goal oriented to remove that threat as soon as possible. This was the reason for forming the militia in this movie. Again, the same story is true touching upon the experience of cold war against Soviet Union as well as the incident of September 11^th during which Americans gave blank check for the federal government to bring back the security within the borders of America.

This means that though Americans are pro anti-statism in which they would like to keep differences and diversity as well as running away from a tyrant monologue of government, at these times there arises a sense of patriotism that says no matter what is going on within the borders, in harsh times our country is worth dying for, to keep the unity.

Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Efforts in Maze of Tunnels

Last September, when Iran’s uranium enrichment plant buried inside a mountain near the holy city of Qum was revealed, the episode cast light on a wider pattern: Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.

In doing so, American government and private experts say, Iran has achieved a double purpose. Not only has it shielded its infrastructure from military attack in warrens of dense rock, but it has further obscured the scale and nature of its notoriously opaque nuclear effort. The discovery of the Qum plant only heightened fears about other undeclared sites.

A crucial factor behind that push for nonmilitary solutions by Obama administration, some analysts say, is Iran’s tunneling — what Tehran calls its strategy of “passive defense.”

Indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has repeatedly discounted the possibility of a military strike, saying that it would only slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions by one to three years while driving the program further underground.

Some analysts say that Israel, which has taken the hardest line on Iran, may be especially hampered, given its less formidable military and intelligence abilities.

Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.”

Heavily mountainous Iran has a long history of tunneling toward civilian as well as military ends, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has played a recurring role — first as a transportation engineer and founder of the Iranian Tunneling Association and now as the nation’s president.

No one in the West knows how much, or exactly what part, of Iran’s nuclear program lies hidden. Still, evidence of the downward atomic push is clear to the inquisitive.

Google Earth, for instance, shows that the original hub of the nuclear complex at Isfahan consists of scores of easily observed — and easy to attack — buildings. But government analysts say that in recent years Iran has honeycombed the nearby mountains with tunnels. Satellite photos show six entrances.

Iranian officials say years of veiled bombing threats prompted their country to exercise its “sovereign right” to protect its nuclear facilities by hiding them underground. That was their argument when they announced plans in November to build 10 uranium enrichment plants. Despite the improbability and bluster of the claim, Iran’s tunneling history gave it a measure of credibility.

“They will be scattered in the mountains,” the chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Iran’s Press TV. “We will be using the passive defense so that we don’t need to have active defense, which is very expensive.”

Iran denies that its nuclear efforts are for military purposes and insists that it wants to unlock the atom strictly for peaceful aims, like making electricity. It says it wants to build many enrichment plants to fuel up to 20 nuclear power plants, a plan many economists question because Iran ranks second globally in oil and natural gas reserves.

Despite the questions about whether the West can credibly threaten to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, anlysts insist that the United States, Israel and their allies will never rule out that option. The Pentagon, in fact, is racing to develop a powerful new tunnel-busting bomb.

Mr. Ahmadinejad began professional life as a transportation engineer with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards and an abiding interest in tunnels.

He helped found the Iranian Tunneling Association in 1998, according to the group’s Web site. That year, the Tehran subway began a major expansion, and Iran, in secret, accelerated its nuclear program.

In early 2004, while mayor of Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad served as chairman of the Sixth Iranian Tunneling Conference. He praised the leaders of ancient Persia for creating networks of subterranean waterways and called for the creation of new “tunnels” between the government, universities and professional groups.

American war planners see Iran’s tunnels — whatever their exact number and contents — as a serious test of military abilities. Most say there is no easy way to wipe out a nuclear program that has been well hidden, widely dispersed and deeply buried.

Raymond Tanter, an Iran expert at Georgetown University who served in the Reagan White House, agreed. “So far, the tunneling has not succeeded to the point that the American technology couldn’t get to it,” he contended. “But it makes Israel’s options more problematic, because they have less of a military edge.”

Doubts notwithstanding, the Obama administration has been careful to leave the military option on the table, and the Pentagon is racing to develop a deadly tunnel weapon.

The device — 20 feet long and called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator — began as a 2004 recommendation from the Defense Science Board, a high-level advisory group to the Pentagon.

“A deep underground tunnel facility in a rock geology poses a significant challenge,” the board wrote. “Several thousand pounds of high explosives coupled to the tunnel are needed to blow down blast doors and propagate a lethal air blast.”

The bomb carries tons of explosives and is considered 10 times more powerful than its predecessor. It underwent preliminary testing in 2007, and its first deployments are expected next summer. Its carrier is to be the B-2 stealth bomber.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in October that budget problems had delayed the weapon but that it was now back on track. Military officials deny having a specific target in mind. Still, Mr. Whitman added, war planners consider it “an important capability.”

U.S. Intensifies Screening for Travelers from 14 Nations

Following the incident of September 11, United States felt the necessity to bring up with whole new sets of laws and regulations regarding the transportation in general and security in particular. This led United States to cover up the deficiencies within the intelligence agencies and drag them all under an umbrella called Homeland Security. Simultaneously, President Bush introduced his “War on Terror” policy which had drastic consequences for specific countries like Afghanistan followed by Iraq as we all know it.

Ever since, terrorist activities involving in several bombing or attempts to attack on airplanes and son on have taken place that each time has evoked certain overwhelming response on the US government’s side.

This time there was an incident on the 25^th of December on a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. A man of Nigerian descent tried to explode the plane by mixing two chemical fluids. This time, during Obama’s Tenure, again some countermeasures are being introduced by the federal government.

News from Washington is about the fact that Obama administration officials have alleged that citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot.

Based on what the officials have said, Americans can be at ease as they and most others who are not flying through those 14 nations on their way to the United States, will no longer automatically face the full range of intensified security that was imposed after the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight.

The change represents an easing of the immediate response to the attempted bombing of a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit that had been in place the past week. But the restrictions remain tougher than the rules that were in effect before the Dec. 25 incident. And the action on Sunday further establishes a global security system that treats people differently based on what country they are from, evoking protests from civil rights groups.

According to officials, citizens of Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, countries that are considered “state sponsors of terrorism,” as well as those of “countries of interest” — including Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen — will face the special scrutiny.

Passengers holding passports from those nations, or taking flights that originated or passed through any of them, will be required to undergo full-body pat downs and will face extra scrutiny of their carry-on bags before they can board planes to the United States.

In some countries that have more advanced screening equipment, travelers will also be required to pass through so-called whole-body scanners that can look beneath clothing for hidden explosives or weapons, or may be checked with a device that can find tiny traces of explosives.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced that whole-body scanners would be introduced in that country’s airports

Many, though not all, other passengers coming to the United States will face similar measures, but that screening will be done randomly or if there is some reason to believe that a particular passenger might present a threat, officials said.

The changes should speed up boarding of international flights bound for the United States while still increasing security beyond the standard X-rays of carry-on bags and metal-detector checks of all passengers.

The changes will mean that any citizen of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the United States. Even if that person has lived in a country like Britain for decades, he now will be subject to these extra security checks.

The implications are tough, specially for our country which has been constantly in struggle over the concept of America as an imperial power that has been and is being taken side from every week during Friday Prayers. But this time, bringing Iran among the “state sponsors of terrorism”, tensions are sure going to leap up especially with Iran trying to take America as the main element responsible for the anarchy which is currently ongoing within the streets of Iran after the 2008 Presidential elections of Iran.

This once again, will give enough fuel to both sides to keep the animosity, though there is another side to it. This time, people may get irritated to because they are simply and plainly are being suspected as terrorists just by coming from the country or by flying through it. So far, America has been able to attract a great portion of the young generation with its truly appealing features, but this course of action might provoke a lot of serious offences on Iranians side due to America’s biased perspective toward terror.

Two Party Systems

Immediately right after beginning to talk about the two party systems, American DNP and RNP comes to one’s mind. America by making use of this course has made its policy making process much easier as well as effective. This paper is going to focus on the history of the party formation in United States polity and point out advantages and disadvantages of the two party system in America afterwards.

When the Father Founders of the America documented the United States Constitution in 1787, they did not entrust a position for parties in the U.S. polity. All they were looking after and eventually settled were constitutional arrangements e.g. separation of powers, checks and balances between three branches, and indirect election of the President by an electoral college. Yet, despite the Founders' will, “the U.S. was the first nation to develop parties organized on a national basis and to transfer executive power from one faction to another via an election in 1800.”[1]

When it comes to talk about the first parties formed in America, it should be remarked that the electoral politics in the United States has been reined by two political parties since George Washington’s presidency; but with little discrepancy with what we witness nowadays in the United States in that they have not always been the same two parties. The first opposition was between Federalists and Anti-Federalists- those who supported a strong federal government and those who did not. Leaders of the Federalists were Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Both were from the Northeast where Federalist sentiment was strongest. Thomas Jefferson became the acknowledged leader of Anti-Federalist sentiment, and by the time of his election to the presidency in 1800 his party was called Democratic Republican.

Since 1856 every president elected in America has been either a Republican or Democrat. Since the 1860s, the Republicans and Democrats have dominated electoral politics.

These parties actually stand for certain hues of values and ideologies and by providing this they attracted voters who identify themselves with the party that represents their mindsets the most. “With two-party systems, you have to take a look at the political spectrum. You have the far left, moderate left, moderate, moderate right, and the far right. One party tends to be on the left side while the other part tends to be on the right side. In the United States you have the Democrats that support the left while you have the Republicans that support the right. Mainly because the the left is what you would call liberal and the right is what you would call conservative. Before the Great Depression and the events that had followed afterwards, the Democrats were conservative while the Republicans were liberal.”[2]

Today in America nearly two-thirds of Americans regard themselves either Republicans or Democrats, and even those who say that they are independents normally have partisan inclinations and show remarkable degrees of partisan loyalty. For example, “on average 71 percent of Democratic-leaning independents and 79 percent of Republican-leaning independents voted for their preferred party's presidential nominees in the last four presidential elections. It is estimated that only about nine percent of the Americans are "pure independents."[3]

American two-party politics has brought along with it certain levels of facilities as well as inconvenience which are going to be gone through here.

Pros:

In two party systems we have at least two unified sets of values and approaches toward the everyday issues and hardships. That means parties may differ in viewpoints but they are concentrated within their party and produce directions way easier than a haphazard multi-party or a tyrant one party.

The other advantage of a two party system is that it makes it easier for the voters to choose from the introduced resolutions. Easily put, the two party system simplifies the process of decision making for the voters.

Unlike the one party systems which can easily lead to authoritarianism, two parties constantly check up on the other party and that makes both of them in line and eventually it prevents corruption.

Cons:

The choices the voters get to choose from are limited; it is either black or white, and that is because there are only two political sets of minds introducing solutions. The problem regarding two party systems is that there is not that much of a variety for the voters.

The other disadvantage of such a system is that two parties are innately born competitive that are continuously vying with each other over every single issue and that, most of the times, doesn’t let them come up with effective solutions for, mainly, important problems.

The other con introduced by Rena Silverman touches upon an interesting subject. He asserts: “Throughout the nation’s history, the political parties have been associated with corrupt practices, such as patronage and the awarding of government contracts to party insiders—and those charges are still made today. In addition, the parties regularly face criticism for questionable fund-raising practices that effectively place politicians in debt to big contributors.”[4]

References:

1. http://www.youdebate.com/DEBATES/two_party.HTM, Retrieved at: 12/25/2009

2. http://www.helium.com/items/339121-the-pros-and-cons-of-two-party-systems, Retrieved at: 12/25/2009

3. http://www.youdebate.com/DEBATES/two_party.HTM, Retrieved at: 12/25/2009

4. http://renasilvermanoval.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/two-party-syste/, Retrieved at: 12/25/2009

Is Judiciary Independent?

Before getting to the main discussion right away, there is a little information needed to be provided in order to grasp a better understanding of what is going to be achieved throughout this article.

Judiciary, being one of the three separate branches of government in the American federal system, plays a very significant role in the mechanism of American domestic polity. This is established through a safeguard Constitution which leaves no doubt regarding the official powers invested in the judicial body. It is the Article III of the United States Constitution which gives the right to the judiciary’s, including United States district courts & specialized courts (tax, bankruptcy, …), United States circuit courts of appeals (13 appellate courts), and Supreme Court, existence. The federal judges, according to the Constitution, has to be appointed by the President “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”, then they, “both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office”. [1]

Though the Great Founders of the United States set out to erect a separate system of government to prevent a concentrated powerful government, from which they apparently declared independence on July 4, 1776, based on the theories of Montesquieu, Hobbs, Locke and Newton, they, on the other hand, genuinely established an intertwined relationship based on checks and balances through which all the three branches can keep an eye on the other two’s function. This is also believed to prevent corruption; therefore, help reach maximum function of all three branches eventually.

This article is going to focus on the Judiciary branch’s supposed independence and try out to conclude whether it is really independent after all or not.

Among Judiciary’s duties are: making laws naming some certain acts as crimes, setting fixed punishment for each crime and hence criminals who have committed those crimes, and interpreting the United States Constitution based on the emerging needs of the society and the elapse of time. Definitely all the above mentioned functions of the judicial body needs a clear cut conscience since they are all fragile matters that can easily alter or manipulate lives of thousands of people and even change their destiny. So, in a unique political environment like the United States, where two profoundly strong political parties exist through a strictly vying interaction as well as different lobbies or interest groups and a notably influential media, the key trait which has to be carved in a judge’s soul is his/her nonpartisanship and impartiality. Consequently judges have to independent in the way that they can’t take sides of parties or interest groups or others that have interest in the outcome of the judge’s decision. The only touchstone influencing a judge’s verdict has to be law and law only. The other renderings of the judiciary’s independence, according to The World Bank Group- Legal Institution of the Market economy, are: “judicial decisions once rendered, are respected”, “the third characteristic of judicial independence is that the judiciary is free from interference.”[2]

According to Honorable Stephen G. Breyer, an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994 says: “we must keep in mind that judicial independence is a means toward a strong judicial institution. The strong judicial institution is a means toward securing the basic goals of people: human liberty and a reasonable level of prosperity.” [3]

Moreover there is a reason behind devising an independent judiciary according to Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy “The law makes a promise—neutrality. If the promise gets broken, the law as we know it ceases to exist. All that’s left is the dictate of a tyrant, or perhaps a mob.”[4]

This is seemingly inspired from the Declaration of Independence jotted down two centuries ago which was a reaction to tyranny that led Americans to come up with their own way of government. So the basis is to be protected:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States”[5].

Now, having all that mentioned on the necessity and reasons of why there should be an independent judiciary, this paper will discuss whether it is really independent or not.

As we all know, The President can appoint anyone he desires as a judge, who are appointed for life of course and are to leave the office upon death, resignation, or impeachment, to the federal court with and by the consult and consent of Congress’ American Bar Association. Also, in some states, judges are to be elected, sometime on a partisan ballot, or on a nonpartisan ballot. This element initially is in itself reason enough to reject the independence of judicial body. The other; however, which stems from the very basic doctrine of separation of powers, is that in a separated system, branches control each other through checks and balances. Eventually there are checks over judiciary that enables a higher hand over its power. This again rejects independence.

Moreover, based on the regulation provided by the Constitution a judge has to conduct “good behavior”, putting aside the fact that “good behavior” has to be defined. Nonetheless, there is a restriction to what a judge can do meaning that in some cases they can easily be pushed out of the office through an impeachment and replaced. As till now 13 federal judges have been impeached [6].

References:

1. Article III of the United States Constitution, Section I. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_the_judiciary, Retrieved at: 12/4/2009.

2. The World Bank Group – Legal Institutions of the Market Economy. Judicial Independence: What It Is, How It Can Be Measured, Why It Occurs.

Available at: http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/legal/judicialindependence.htm 2001, Retrieved at: 12/2/2009

3. Honorable Stephen G. Breyer. “Comment: Liberty, Prosperity, and a Strong Judicial Institution,” in Judicial Independence and Accountability, Law and Contemporary Problems, Volume 61, Number 3 (Summer1998).

Available at: http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?61+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+3+(Summer+1998), Retrieved at: 12/2/2009.

4. Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy. Address to American Bar Association symposium, Bulwarks of the Republic: Judicial Independence and Accountability in the American System of Justice held December 4-5, 1998, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Available at: www.abanet.org/judind/downloads/jidef4-9-02.pdf, Retrieved at: 12/2/2009.

5. Declaration of Independence. Available at: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm,Retrieved at: 12/1/2009

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_the_judiciary,Retrieved at: 12/4/2009.