November 30, 2018 Friday

Bedtime Story 

Why some Societies Succeed and Others Fail 

Just like neurons make the brain and their interactions results in the creation of thoughtful mind the very same way it is the people who make nations and not objects in it. 

For the very reason that in one instance of these 100-billion-nueornal brains can give arise to a mind of Bernhard Riemann and on the other hand an average mind like that of Pan narrans it is for the very same reason that one bunch of apes can create a nation like that of Japan and another bunch a chaos that is Bharat where any law created by parliament or Supreme Court is doomed to failure in its execution.  

Jared Diamond in his 1997 book and the Pulitzer Prize winner of 1998 “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” attempted to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations became the conquerors of the world.

  

His argument is that in cases of societies and civilization it is not the intelligence of its members or some genetic superiority that is responsible for the swings in the fortunes of civilizations but the opportunities and necessities.

Series of chance events tilt the scales in their favor which then snow balls gaining momentum on its own.

Diamond perhaps oversold the idea of importance of geography in historical success of certain societies ignoring the role of certain factors such as strong government with strong and independent institutions.

The importance of a system on monetary exchange that far more accurately allows a society to rate the value of goods and services, and to acknowledge without defining which goods are in shortage and which services unwanted was largely ignored.

Free market with independent judiciary to defend the rights of traders is one of the essential factors necessary for the economical bloom of a society.

It is for this reason that I say that one can easily list out several reasons why Japanese society is the way it is and yet it would not satisfactory explain as to why specifically this bunch of Mongoloid race is so unique socially whereas others who try to ape dismally fail to come anywhere close to it.

Let us revert to the puzzle of Japanese criminal justice system and its exceptionally high conviction rate.    

Is it that the Japanese judges are obsessed in convicting the accused “having seen it all before” and the advocates of both the sides “have seen them seeing it”?

Or maybe there is some other more sensible reason one can figure out on closer analysis.

The researchers who did the study came to the conclusion that the Japanese prosecutors are critically understaffed (though the same thing is also applicable to any overpopulated third world country of today).

They compared the Japanese criminal justice system with that of the United States.

The found that while the United States federal government employs 27,985 advocates and the states another 38,242, Japan with one-third of American population employs just 2000 advocates.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 29, 2018 Thursday

Bedtime Story 

From American to Japanese Criminal Justice System 

Tonight we shall continue with the Nehru’s argument in the Constituent Assembly.

“Wherever we turn, we are confronted with this problem.

If we cannot solve the problem soon, all our paper constitutions will become useless and purposeless.

Keeping this aspect in view, who could suggest to us to postpone and wait?”

This passage tells us very vividly the perilous and deprived conditions the nation was born deeply divided from within and starvation staring at everyone’s face.

We shall leave India for now with the knowledge that much of its constitution was borrowed from other nations but tweaked for Indian conditions.

    

The word federal with respect to the United States simply means national and the power to legislate laws rests on the Congress and the power to execute orders or laws rests upon the President.

The judicial powers of the United States government rests upon the federal courts with the condition that the President would appoint the judges of all the federal courts.

Approval of the Senate for the appointment of the federal justices is also needed by the President.

While the criminal justice of the United States is interesting when it comes to conviction perhaps the most unique criminal justice system belongs to that of Japan.

Japanese criminal justice system proudly boasts of a spectacular conviction rate that exceeds 99%.

Scholars in the United States have been fascinated with it and have sought to answer the question “Why is the Japanese conviction rate so high?”

Japanese society is a liberal democracy that is highly developed whose people are the most highly educated in the world.

The Article 1 of the Fundamental Law of Education in Japan states that:

“The law shall aim for the full development of personality and strive to nurture the citizens, sound in mind and body, who are imbued with the qualities necessary for those who form a peaceful and democratic state and society.”

While every country of this world has set out great ideals in print only very few are able to realize them either in practice or spirit in spite of strong desire to do so.

As to why only few rare countries to manage to do so while almost every other fail is like asking why was Bernhard Riemann able to conjure up a whole new geometry while others didn’t.

It is, you might argue, silly to compare destinies of nations with individuals but it might not be so whimsical considering the fact that all human brains consists of 100 billion neurons (besides the supporting glial cells).

They work and interact with each other through 1000 trillion synaptic connections much alike we apes interact with each other each time we conduct a professional business or transact socially.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 28, 2018 Wednesday

Bedtime Story 

Federal Judiciary of the United States

We had discussed the role of immense resources required for enabling smooth functioning of a trustworthy and a fair and efficient justice criminal system to the people of a society.

Such a system serves as an effectual deterrent to crime; the fear of being caught and convicted does instills far more fear than any of our mythical gods.

If it is all about resources then what about the world’s largest economy with holds the world’s maximum trust to reimburse its debts?

The federal judiciary of the United States (consisting of three-tier system of district courts, courts of appeals and the Supreme Court) has a variable conviction rate ranging from 75% to 85% with around 80% in the state of California and as low as 60% in the state of Florida).

Federal judiciary of the United States is one of the three arms of its federal government that besides judiciary also includes legislative and executive very much similar to the system that the government of India is based upon.

I must admit that the modern constitution of India that demarcates the fundamental political code, power and duties of various government arms and framed by B. R. Ambedkar (he is considered the chief architect even though the Constituent Assembly had 389 members) came much later than the American constitution.

It was obviously inspired and perhaps parts of it even directly copied from various other constitutions including those of United Kingdom, the United States and Soviet Union. 

I would also like to emphasize that the Constituent Assembly was not elected directly by the people of un-partitioned India through the principle of universal adult suffrage yet it represented the wide diversity of thoughts including conservative industrialists, radical Marxists and Hindu revivalists.

While it is widely believed that the main purpose of the creation of the Constituent Assembly of India even before the independence was to draft the constitution for an independent India which would be born in a few years to come its true scope was much wider.

Nehru in one of the many debates in the Assembly expressed the scope with the following words:

“The first task of this Assembly is to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to clothe the naked masses, and to give every Indian the fullest opportunity to develop himself according to capacity.

This is certainly a great task.

Look at India today.

We, are sitting here and there in despair in many places, and unrest in many cities.

The atmosphere is surcharged with these quarrels and feuds which are called communal disturbances, and unfortunately we sometimes cannot avoid them.

But at present the greatest and most important question in India is how to solve the problem of the poor and the starving.”

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 27, 2018 Tuesday

Bedtime Story 

The Cons of Offering Plea Bargain

The other line of argument against the system of plea bargaining is that the accused stands disadvantaged as he will be more likely drawn towards the lure of plea bargaining for the fear of being convicted even if the evidence against him might not hold water.

The argument against plea bargaining becomes even more convincing when there are more than one accused in a single crime.

In such a scenario the game of prisoner’s dilemma actually plays out where it is in the interest of all the parties to go for plea bargaining and testify against the other accused.

The game becomes more intriguing if among the accused there are some who had very little to role to play in the actual serious crime and some who may actually be innocent. 

In such a scenario the innocent ones or relatively innocent ones stand at a disadvantage.

The reasoning is that it would be in the interest of the principal perpetrator to accept plea bargaining and rat out the details of crime spicing the narration of events with some fabrication in his favor and against the others.

On the other hand there would be little or no incentive for the innocent to choose the offer or implicate himself in the perpetuated crime.

Much research has been done on this subject of plea bargaining more specifically on how innocent accused would decide to choose when offered this route by the prosecution.

It is interesting that just as in basic sciences and medicine research is also carried out in theories of law by students of premier law schools and universities.      

In a paper titled “Fairness and Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers” published in the June 2017 issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies it was summarized that the innocent accused were far more likely to reject the offer of plea bargain than the guilty because of the perceived unfairness being handed out to them.

Rejecting a plea bargaining offer leaves them with the consequence in them of facing the complete trial.

Eventually they end up being handed out even harsher punishments than they would have received had they accepted the prosecution’s offer.

In the words of authors “this somewhat counterintuitive ‘cost of innocence’, where the preferences of innocents  lead them collectively to fare worse than their guilty counterparts, is further increased by the practice of imposing much harsher sentences at trial on defendants who contest the charges.

This ‘trial penalty’ seeks to facilitate guilty pleas by guilty defendants […and ironically] disproportionately, collectively, penalizes innocents, who reject on fairness grounds some offers their guilty counterparts accept.”     

In spite of the points made above against the system of plea bargaining United States criminal justice heavily relies on it probably in consideration of the monetary this system buys.

We do always have to return to the United States as a reference point for any subject that we deal with. 

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 26, 2018 Monday

Bedtime Story 

Plea Bargain

The confession of any accused in a criminal case is not treated as an evidence of guilt.

It is treated merely as additional evidence along with the others and it would still be necessary to build up evidences to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the crime was indeed committed by the accused. 

The trial would continue as usual unless he insists on plea bargaining.

In plea bargaining the devil makes a deal with the prosecutor in a criminal case.

The rules of this game is that the accused agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge or to one of the many criminal offenses lodged against him for a more reduced or lenient sentencing.

The benefit comes to both the parties in that on one hand it saves the prosecution a lengthy trial and on the other hand the accused is spared from conviction of a more serious criminal offense and therefore a harsher punishment or sentencing.  

It might even extricate the accused from a custodial sentence or imprisonment depending upon the nature of crime and offenses lodged against him.

Strangely enough the concept of plea bargaining was introduced into the Criminal Procedure Code of Indian criminal justice system as late as in 2006.

It took place through an amendment of the code of Criminal Procedure by The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2005 by introducing a new Chapter XXI(A) in the code.

In contrast to India or perhaps even many other countries in the United States plea bargaining occupies a prominent position in the conduct of criminal trials with as many as 90% of criminal cases being settled by plea bargaining rather than the entire lengthy jury trial continuing on to its logical completion.

The high figure of 90% undoubtedly is a reflection of fear of getting convicted in the U.S. criminal justice system in contrast to say the state of Maharashtra.

In a state such as Maharashtra with such low conviction rate as the data showed the criminal or the accused might as well take his chances with the system where the odds of acquittal are very high; in such a scenario only a fool or a very poor person with no resources to exploit the system would go for plea bargaining.

In many countries plea bargaining is forbidden because of theoretical studies and outcomes of research based on the problem of prisoner’s dilemma, a well known technique in game theory.

Theoretical studies and reasoning and analysis of game theoretic approach to plea bargaining has convinced many that it is open to coercive manipulation and exploitation by the prosecutors and by the accused.

There is one line of argument that in systems that have plea bargaining the prosecutors would be encouraged to go overboard heaping on the accused with far more criminal charges than actually deserving in the hope that the fear of conviction would drive him to accede to plea bargaining.  

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 25, 2018 Sunday

Bedtime Story 

The Price of Fair Trials

Fair Trials by their very definition and execution modalities are extremely time-consuming, prohibitively expensive for the state (and for the accused if he is a man of resources who wishes to defend himself with the best of counsels), phenomenally boring and painstakingly tedious for the reason of which not surprisingly they have become the scorn of the elite class.

It is truer in overpopulated nations where the pendency of criminal and civil cases is not only huge but keeps on growing everyday due to incessantly increasing backlog piling up each moment.

You may ask how that is possible for most courts do not work every day or all the time.

As Inspector Jacques Clouseau tells his secretary Nicole Durant in the movie ‘The Pink Panther’ (2006) “Crime does not rest Nicole” and therefore the criminal cases keep on piling up at a much faster rate than they are dealt with. 

The law enforcement agencies which are primarily the state police is on duty 24/7 and even with their full-hearted intent to register as minimum FIRs as possible criminal cases keep on accruing.  

There is very little of the court-room dramas often depicted in suspenseful tightly-knit thrillers by the master writers of the genre of crime fiction that I so much adore.

Once the crime has been committed and the purported accused arrested the process of penology that follows thereafter is very intricate and much more so if the accused has resources to hire the best legal minds besides influencing the law enforcing agencies in more devious ways.

The adversarial system under which most criminal-trial courts operate are exploited to its hilt by the lawyers of the defendant where the accused has all the rights, the freedom to remain silent and freedom not to be questioned either by the judge or the prosecution.

The rules of admission of evidences are very strict and the chief duty of the judges is to be an impartial person whose role is to ensure fair play of due process so that rules of fundamental justice are enacted out as stated in the Criminal Procedure Code of that nation.   

To get a better understanding of the role of judge there is a noteworthy example in the book ‘Practical Guide to Evidence’ written by Peter Murphy.    

A frustrated judge in an English (adversarial) court has been hearing conflicting accounts of several witnesses in a trial.

Tired of it he asks the barrister, “Am I never to hear the truth?”

The counsel of the defense replies, “No, my Lord, merely the evidence”.

We all have come across adversarial system of criminal-trial through various forms of crime fictions (books and movies generally) but is there any alternative form of approach to a criminal trial besides the familiar one?

Yes, there is one.

It is called the inquisitorial system where the defendant has confessed to the said crime but yet that does not imply the trial would not take place.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 24, 2018 Saturday

Bedtime Story 

Fair Trial

We saw last night the criminal justice system of India, China and Canada and saw how diverse they are in several ways.

It also highlighted the point that an overpopulated democracy with spare resources simply lacks the capability to carry out the prosecution to its logical conclusion for factors very diverse.

The failure of the criminal judiciary system as we saw in the case study of the state of Maharashtra conducted by an independent NGO is lucidly and with great pithy explained by summation of Isaac Asimov, my hero:

“Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

Human dignity cannot survive it.

Convenience and decency cannot survive it.

As you put more and more people in the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears.

It doesn’t matter if someone dies.”

It also doesn’t matter if some accused gets acquitted is what I can definitely add further.

Especially if he is a person who is either politically powerful or has resources to bribe his way through to dilute the case enough for the prosecution.

It is my observation that in spite of not any conscious or willful desire by any particular individual, overpopulation by default breeds contempt in-between humans especially against socio-economic weaker segments.    

Most modern democracies are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.

Article 10 of the Declaration explicitly states the right to a fair trial of every individual even though there is no universal understanding or definition that clarifies what exactly would be deemed as an unfair trial.  

The Universal Declaration enshrines the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the article 10 goes on to state that:

“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him”.

Even though there is no exact definition of fair trial, at a very bare minimum a fair trial must have the following components:

(a) The right to be heard by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal

(b) The right to a public hearing

(c) The right to be heard within a reasonable time

(d) The right to Counsel (if not affording the state shall provide the accused with a lawyer)

(e) The right to interpretation

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

November 23, 2018 Friday

Bedtime Story 

Findings of Praja Foundation

This means (as shown by the data gathered and analyzed by the NGO Praja Foundation)  that in Maharashtra there is a conviction rate of mere 23% in cases of serious crimes that include offences such as murder, attempt to murder and rape.

This is mainly due to the fact that the prosecuting agency which is chiefly the state police is unable to prove the offence because of lack of evidence or witnesses.

It is not necessarily the case that evidence or witnesses are lacking for the prosecution to develop a strong water-tight case against the accused.

Witnesses are often bribed, coerced, threatened or simply knocked off with the state unable to provide security to them or the witnesses not having enough faith in the state to provide them so.

At times even a whole-hearted effort is lacking to bring in witnesses to strengthen the cases.

When a witness who was supposed to testify in favor of prosecution makes a U-turn in legal terms such an act is called “witness turning hostile”.

The Praja Foundation report of 2017 that took into consideration verdicts of 1,326 criminal cases pronounced between the year of 2008 and 2012 going on in the state of Maharashtra came out with some astonishing figures.

Out of 244 cases of charges of murder, only 60 ended up with convictions.

In cases that involved attempts to murder under section 307 of IPC out of 196 cases only 32 landed up with convictions. 

In cases where charges are those of rape out of 300 cases a mere 54 landed up with convictions in this time frame.

What is even more damning is that in these rape cases majorities of victims (a little more than 70%) were children (below 18 years) and were being tried under the relatively new POCSO Act of 2012.

POCSO stands for Protection of Children against Sexual Offences which aims to protect children (being gender neutral) from offenses of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography and making the judicial process more friendly for the victims.

Yet the conviction rates remains very depressing which then becomes a weak deterrent for the criminals in changing their ways.   

India with its humongous population and its resources stretched to its seams is obviously not a very inspiring case when it comes to the criminal justice system.

Let us see how other nations fair in this respect.          

Canada and China have the highest conviction rates reaching as high as 99% but both for very contrasting reasons; China uses tactics that would be unacceptable in other nations using coercion, torture and pressure on prosecuting agencies.

Canada is a liberal democracy with vast resources, low population and low crime rate making the functioning the criminal judiciary system far smoother than most nations.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

             

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg