ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
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19hr ago
Canada's immigration policy is so insane that the India's foreign minister himself has formally warned Canada that they're granting visas to the worst of the worst.
[Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam] Jaishankar said Canada has been welcoming people from India with links to organised crime, ignoring warnings by New Delhi.
"Often, when I see for example these kinds of attacks, threats to our embassies, because they concern me very deeply and I tell the foreign minister, suppose if (they) happened to you, if it was your embassy, your diplomat, your flag, how would you react. We have to keep our position strong on this particular report which has come. I also saw it yesterday night, I was coming to Odisha in the morning, somebody may have been arrested, their police may have done some investigation," Jaishankar said at the event.
"But the fact is that a number of gangland people, a number of people with organised crime links from Punjab have been made welcome in Canada. We have been telling Canada, saying, look these are wanted criminals from India, you have given them visas. Many of them have come in false documentation and yet you allow them to live there. If you decide to import for political purposes people with very dubious, actually, very negative backgrounds, there will be issues, they have in some cases created problems in their own country as a result of their own policies. No, why would we fear? If something happens there, it is for them to worry about," he added.
Overstays according to the aforementioned report:
| Source countries | Visas | Absolute | Relative to expected exits for this source–visa combination (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| VWP (Visa Waiver Program) | B-1, B-2 | 99,000 | 0.62 |
| Non-VWP, non-CA/MX | B-1, B-2 | 310,000 | 3.2 |
| Non-CA/MX | F, M, J | 49,000 | 3.7 |
| CA, MX | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 79,000 | 0.73 |
| All | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 570,000 | 1.5 |
| Turkmenistan | B-1, B-2 | 142 | 15 |
| Turkmenistan | F, M, J | 45 | 22 |
| Turkmenistan | B-1, B-2, F, M, J | 187 | 17 |
That's just disputing the definition of "third world". IMO, lumping into the "third world" category every country that is not classified as an "advanced/developed market" by the IMF is far from totally unreasonable, though people may complain about the inclusion of Poland and Hungary in such a category. Another definition might be "every country that is not classified by the World Bank as a 'high-income country'", which excludes Poland and Hungary but also Panama and Guyana.
ToaKraka
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1d ago
If your browser window is narrower than 768 pixels (with zoom taken into account), then this website's CSS switches from desktop mode to phone mode. This is called "responsive web design".
As the kids say, "notabug wontfix".
According to the [Fiscal Year 2023] Overstay Report, Turkmenistan had a B-1 [business]/B-2 [tourist] visa overstay rate of 15.35 percent and an F [student], M [vocational], and J [exchange visitor] visa overstay rate of 21.74 percent.
ToaKraka
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1d ago
ToaKraka
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1d ago
this viral Substack series
ToaKraka
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2d ago
Second Geneva Convention of 1949 art. 3:
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed 'hors de combat' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.
Commentary ¶ 489 (applying to the first-quoted paragraph):
The object and purpose of common Article 3 supports its applicability in non-international armed conflict reaching beyond the territory of one State. Given that its aim is to provide persons not or no longer actively participating in hostilities with certain minimum protections during intense armed confrontations between States and non-State armed groups or between such groups, it is logical that those same protections would apply when such violence spans the territory of more than one State.
Commentary ¶¶ 893–896 (applying to the last-quoted paragraph):
This provision confirms that, while humanitarian law provides for equal rights and obligations of the Parties to the conflict in the treatment of people in their power, it does not confer legitimacy on non-State armed groups that are Parties to a conflict.
Furthermore, it serves to underline that, as international humanitarian law applies based on the facts, regardless of whether a State qualifies the members of a non-State armed group as ‘terrorists’ or its actions as ‘terrorism’, humanitarian law applies if and when the conditions for its applicability are met.
The denial that groups that a State has labelled as ‘terrorist’ may be a Party to a non-international armed conflict within the meaning of humanitarian law carries the risk that the non-State armed group loses an incentive to abide by that body of law. This in turn reduces the ability of humanitarian law to serve its protective purpose. Humanitarian law seeks to protect civilians and all those who are not directly participating in hostilities; it does this in part by obliging Parties to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and military objectives.
Nothing since the introduction of common Article 3 in 1949 has altered the fact that the applicability of humanitarian law to situations of non-international armed conflicts does not affect the legal status or enhance the legitimacy of non-State armed groups. This remains as essential today as it was at that time, as any other interpretation will almost inevitably lead States to deny the applicability of common Article 3 and thereby undermine its humanitarian objective.
ToaKraka
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2d ago
Legally binding documents:
International Criminal Court Elements of Crimes art. 8 (2) (a) (i):
War crime of wilful killing
Elements
1. The perpetrator killed one or more persons.
2. Such person or persons were protected under one or more of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
3. The perpetrator was aware of the factual circumstances that established that protected status.
4. The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict.
5. The perpetrator was aware of factual circumstances that established the existence of an armed conflict.
Second Geneva Convention of 1949 art. 12:
Protection and care
Members of the armed forces and other persons mentioned in the following Article, who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances, it being understood that the term “shipwreck” means shipwreck from any cause and includes forced landings at sea by or from aircraft.
ToaKraka
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2d ago
He used the numbers from MIT's Living Wage analysis for Essex County, New Jersey, in his calculation.
That rather blatantly contradicts his statement in part 1 that he was using "conservative, national-average data".
this viral Substack series
I don't see how he gets his numbers.
Green:
| Expenditure | Size (k$/a) |
|---|---|
| Food | 14.7 |
| Housing | 23.3 |
| Childcare | 32.8 |
| Transportation | 14.8 |
| Healthcare | 10.6 |
| Other essentials | 21.9 |
| Subtotal | 118.0 |
| Taxes (including Social Security tax) | 18.5 |
| Total | 136.5 |
Bureau of Labor Statistics (size of consumer unit by income before taxes: consumer unit of four people with income < 15 k$/a):
| Expenditure | Size (k$/a) |
|---|---|
| Food | 11.1 |
| Housing, excluding personal services | 17.0 |
| Personal services (including childcare)* | 0.3 |
| Transportation | 7.5 |
| Healthcare | 1.7 |
| Apparel and services | 1.8 |
| Personal care products and services | 1.1 |
| Education | 0.6 |
| Subtotal | 41.1 |
| Federal and state income taxes** | 0.0 |
| Social Security and Medicare taxes* | 3.4 |
| Total | 44.5 |
*I have submitted a pull request to fix this nonsensical CSS.
**Tax credit of 2 k$/(child⋅a) × 2 children overwhelms all federal income tax for a couple with taxable income < 37.2 $/a, which implies total income < 66.4 k$/a. I don't care enough to figure out the refundable "additional child tax credit" on top of that, let alone state income tax.
(Totals may not sum due to rounding.)
BBC: [UK] justice secretary wants [English and Welsh] jury trials scrapped except in most serious cases
The plans, obtained by BBC News, show that [Justice Secretary David] Lammy, who is also deputy prime minister, wants to ask Parliament to end jury trials for defendants who would be jailed for up to five years.
The proposals are an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in courts, and do not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland.
The MoJ presentation, produced earlier this month, says Crown Courts are facing record backlogs, with more than 78,000 cases waiting to be completed.
In practice, this means that suspects being charged with serious crimes today may not have a trial until late 2029 or early 2030.
Officials predict in the document that the caseload will grow to more than 100,000 before then, unless there is further action.
Earlier this year, retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the government end jury trial for many serious offences, saying they could be dealt with by a judge alone or sitting with two magistrates.
This would be done by creating a new intermediate tier of criminal court, dubbed the "Crown Court Bench Division" (CCBD), sitting in between magistrates' courts and Crown Courts, where juries decide cases.
The CCBD would hear cases involving defendants facing sentences of up to three years, Sir Brian recommended.
The "DPM's [deputy prime minister's] decision", according to the leaked MoJ document, is to "go further than Sir Brian's to achieve maximum impact".
Under current law, only certain "indictable offenses" require trial by jury. This is cognate with the US's indictable offenses, which generally carry sentences of more than one year.
Compare the US's system, in which trial by jury is presumptively guaranteed for any crime carrying potential punishment greater than six months (separate from whether the crime is a felony), but this is sidestepped by pushing more than 90 percent of defendants to plead guilty. Plea bargaining apparently is not common in the UKGBNI.
Sarah Sackman, Minister for Courts and Legal Services: The vast majority of cases in our courts are already heard without juries. Around 90% of all criminal cases are dealt with robustly and fairly by magistrates, with no jury.
Sarah Sackman: I spoke to a victim of child sexual abuse who had waited years for his day in court. A couple of weeks before his trial date, he was given the devastating news that the trial had been adjourned for another year. I regret to say that he sought to take his own life upon hearing that. Luckily, his attempt did not work, but if we ever needed a more graphic illustration of the weight that these intolerable delays place on victims —on real people’s lives—that is it. That is why we have to do whatever it takes to bring down these backlogs.
Jeremy Corbyn: This is, I think, the third attempt by successive Governments to reduce the right to trial by jury. It is a fundamental right in our system that should not be undermined, and particularly not because the Government have a current and, hopefully, temporary problem with capacity. In answer to the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), the Minister recognised that the Lammy inquiry of 2017 found that jury trials are more objective than judge-only trials, less likely to be racially biased and likely to give a fairer outcome. Is the Minister really content that we should be walking away from the jury trial system because of the current problems? Instead, is the answer not, as other hon. Members have suggested, to invest more in the system to deal with the appalling backlog, which she rightly says we have?
ToaKraka
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3d ago
ToaKraka
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3d ago
I think he replied to the wrong comment. The comment before yours is on Imgur, which has blocked the UKGBNI.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
The US's IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code) incorporates an equivalent of ¶ b, but not of ¶ a.
Every habitable room shall contain not less than 70 square feet, and every bedroom occupied by more than one person shall contain not less than 50 square feet of floor area for each occupant thereof.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
ToaKraka
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4d ago
@ZorbaTHut did make a change to the HTML template for user pages a few weeks ago. Maybe it had some bugs but wasn't implemented until now.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
I personally find these judge-made standards of sadism and masochism to be very interesting. In this case, the trial judge and one appeals judge think that the insertion of a foreign object into a pubescent minor's vagina is inherently humiliating, while the other two appeals judges think otherwise. What answer would a survey of the general public give to this question? I don't know, but I feel doubtful that it would be a landslide in either direction.
ToaKraka
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5d ago
That quote is from the dissent. "Susceptibility of the minor to the defendant's possible manipulation and control" is not an actual standard that has been used in any cases. The text of the law criminalizes merely "persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense".
ToaKraka
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6d ago
I forgot to copy some text that clarifies the dissenter's viewpoint here. (The paragraph was cut in half by a page break.)
This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.
Also:
Certainly, the majority’s approach cannot accurately capture the feelings or mental state of a minor through the confined frame of an isolated image or video.[1]
Although the depiction in the material is relevant to the inquiry, the court’s focus should not be so narrow. Rather than confine the court’s inquiry to the image or video and focus on the victim’s appearance and reaction as portrayed in the visual media, the court should consider all relevant circumstances and ultimately focus on the defendant’s conduct.[2] The court’s inquiry should include the course of conduct between the defendant and the minor, the events leading up to and after the footage, and the susceptibility of the minor to the defendant’s possible manipulation and control, as those considerations yield a more accurate determination of whether a minor may have experienced objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation due to the events depicted in the material.
[1]Parenthetically, this problem is exemplified in the media by teenage Virginia Giuffre, who appears to be smiling and happy in pictures with then Prince Andrew, despite her alleging that he subjected her to extreme sexual abuse.
[2]Indeed, in other areas of the Sentencing Guidelines, we have emphasized that the "focus of the inquiry is on the defendant’s action, not the victim’s reaction".
Excerpt from a court opinion:
The trial judge stated at sentencing [on December 16, 2022]:
I am considering the sentencing guidelines. I will also consider the fact that you did have a waiver trial, and I will grant you some mitigation with that. I thoroughly reviewed the Presentence investigation report, my notes on the testimony from the trial, the testimony that's been presented here today at the sentencing, from both [the victim, a previous romantic partner of Appellant and the mother of a ten-year-old child with him,] and [Appellant's current paramour,] as well as your allocution and the arguments of counsel.
On December 20, 2022, Appellant timely filed a post-sentence motion requesting reconsideration of his sentence. Appellant acknowledged that the court had sentenced him at the bottom end of the mitigated guidelines, but he indicated that he had been nervous and had not appropriately articulated his remorse in his allocution. Appellant also requested the opportunity to present additional testimony from some of his children's mothers regarding the ways in which his incarceration would affect their lives financially and emotionally. On April 19, 2023, the court denied Appellant's motion by operation of law. Appellant did not file a direct appeal.
Court saga:
A 20-year-old man (diagnosed with ADHD and "autism spectrum disorder", employed by UPS under a special program) meets a 12-year-old girl (claiming to be 13) on Snapchat. Within a month, their conversations become sexual. Among other things, the man directs the girl to record a video of herself masturbating with a marker.
Five months in, as part of a different child-exploitation investigation, the girl is interviewed by FBI agents, and she also discloses this situation. The agents take control of the girl's Snapchat account, entice the man to meet the girl at a state fair with condoms in the expectation of having sex there, arrest him, and charge him with six crimes. He pleads guilty to three of them, and the other three are dismissed.
For sentencing purposes, the marker video is counted as production of child pornography with an enhancement for "material that portrays sadistic or masochistic conduct", which increases the total sentencing range by 55 percent (from 14–18 years to 22–27 years) under the sentencing guidelines. The defendant objects to this characterization, but the trial judge rejects the objection. It is circuit precedent that child pornography that "would cause an objective viewer to believe that the pictured activity is inflicting physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation on the minor" is sadistic or masochistic. "It is common sense that images of a middle- and high-school-aged girl inserting foreign objects into her private parts are sadistic. At minimum, such conduct is objectively humiliating." The trial judge varies downward from the sentencing range by three years to account for the defendant's youth and immaturity, but refuses to vary further based on his diagnoses. The final sentence is 19 years in prison (plus 25 years of supervised release).
The appeals panel vacates and remands.
For depictions involving prepubescent minors, all penetrative activity is inherently sadistic and alone justifies the enhancement. But, for depictions involving pubescent minors [such as the victim in this case], sexual penetration is not by itself enough. The district court must instead find, within the material's four corners, other visible and objective markers of physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Those markers can take different forms, like bondage, urination, humiliating costumes or positions, penetration with large or sharp objects, facial expressions denoting distress, or body language suggesting discomfort. But, without more indicating pain or humiliation, the depiction of pubescent minors engaged in penetrative sexual activity alone cannot justify the enhancement.
One judge on the three-judge panel dissents.
The majority contends that, since the parties agree that [the victim] was not prepubescent at the time of the video, the first avenue for application of the sadism enhancement is foreclosed. But the parties' agreement or concession on an issue is not dispositive, and it does not end our inquiry. As noted by the majority, the government "concedes" that the video shows that [the victim] has "fully-developed breasts and pubic hair", and [the defendant] describes [the victim] as "almost adult-appearing". But several other characteristics, in addition to physical ones, inform the inquiry into prepubescence. For this issue, we should not rely on the conclusions of attorneys, who presumably lack the requisite medical expertise or specialized training and experience to evaluate accurately whether a minor is prepubescent. That determination is more appropriately suited to a qualified medical expert, rather than an attorney or judge. Moreover, that determination is certainly inappropriate for an attorney or judge to make based solely on a minor's appearance as reproduced in an image or video.
As to the second avenue for application of the sadism enhancement, the majority focuses exclusively on the "four corners of the image" depicting the sexual misconduct. In particular, the majority emphasizes the minor's facial expressions and body language to discern whether the minor objectively experienced physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation during the sexual misconduct. To this point, the majority highlights that the government "acknowledges there is no point in the video in which the expression on [the victim]'s face is particularly pained", and that [the defendant] states that [the victim]'s "body does not flinch or recoil as she masturbates".
But this emphasis on the visible appearance and reaction of the victim in the material is wholly speculative and unreliable. The majority's approach requires the court to evaluate a victim's reaction while the victim is in the throes of adverse circumstances. This approach assumes that a minor's apparent facial expressions and body language in an isolated and contrived image or video accurately reflect the minor's objective experience, but that assumption defies common sense. This approach fails to take into account that the minor may pretend to tolerate the defendant's treatment or appear comfortable in the image or video to appease the defendant, which often may be the case, or because of the defendant's threats or manipulation. This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.
The burden should not be on the victim to convey to the court in her image or video that sexual misconduct with minors involves objective pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Rather, the burden should be on the defendant to prove otherwise. Common sense and human experience inform such an approach.
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