Priorities

The Supreme Court of the United States is vested with the ultimate responsibility of ensuring and upholding whatever vestiges of integrity our country's justice system can claim. They are vested with the authority to decide instantly the fate of thousands, and ultimately the fate of millions of Americans based on their own powers of deliberation and supposed impartiality. So much of our nation's design and subsequent re-design is entrusted to a group of flawed individuals, who undoubtedly are afflicted with opinions and prejudices, who exhibit strong biases just like any other person. In the light of a true democracy, the outspoken voices of citizens would be held as the true bond, not the unenlightened decisions of a select few.

Exemplifying the SCOTUS' inherently biased and subjective role in our justice system is the Roberts Court, which has time and time again sided with corporate interest over the protest of U.S. citizens in its rulings. With an agenda set by who know what, this court has shown an unprecedented favor towards corporate interest in the majority of relevant cases, from Citizens United, to Exxon-Valdez, to its most recent transgression with female workers at Wal-Mart. There are numerous cases just like these, in which the court's rulings have had enormous implications for the supremacy of American corporations, and the dwindling rights we as individuals have to fight them. In fact, the Alliance for Justice has released reports documenting these decisions, even calculating that at one point in the current court's history, 73% of its rulings favored corporate interests over citizens' interests.

This recent ruling, that female employees at Wal-Mart do not have the right to collectively take action against the corporate behemoth for discriminating against them based on their gender, is simply a notch on the Roberts court's belt of cases in which the rights of the American people seem to hold limited importance as compared to those of giant corporations. While the appalling decision has de-certified the plaintiffs from being part of a class-action suit in any type of case, it in no way diminishes or justifies Wal-Mart's blatant discrimination against its female employees, which is hopefully now receiving increased attention and scrutiny. And while each individual woman now has to face Wal-Mart and its barrage of highly-paid lawyers alone, after 15 years and 1.5 million women, it is safe to assume that this fight is far from over.

Justice?

SPC Bradley Manning was arrested two weeks ago at his post in Iraq, and is currently being held in custody in Kuwait with no formal charges. His arrest came after a supposed admission that Manning was responsible for the release of confidential military materials to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks; namely, a video portraying U.S. soldiers firing on and killing innocent civilians and members of the press from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007.

WikiLeaks released the video this past April, and was generally responded to with outrage. Shot from an Apache helicopter, the video clearly shows a shameless act of unprovoked aggression, an act that WikiLeaks has come to refer to as "Collateral Murder." It shows 22 year old Reuter's photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his colleague, Saeed Chmagh, walking down a Baghdad street carrying their equipment, when they were gunned down and killed along with 10 other civilians by U.S. soldiers inside the helicopter. Two small children were also wounded in this attack.

The video had been kept under wraps, despite many attempts by Reuters to obtain it through the Freedom of Information Act. The military had also supposedly performed an investigation into the killings, and deemed the actions of its soldiers justified. According to a military official, "no innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately. We took great pains to prevent that. I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don't know how the children were hurt." If you watch the video, it is clear that these comments are false (Warning: this video depicts murder, and is quite graphic and traumatic; it is NOT for the faint of heart).

The soldiers who shot and killed twelve innocent people for no good reason were never prosecuted nor were they formally reprimanded for their actions. BUT, the man who releases a video revealing these actions is being held for breaching confidentiality? What type of message is the U.S. military sending? That it is o.k. for soldiers to murder civilians, but not o.k. to talk about it? That revealing an embarrassing truth is a criminal act?

Whether or not these soldiers were acting on good faith intentions, they were blatantly indecorous, and should be treated as such. In contrast, I hope that Private Manning is punished in a manner that is reflective of the severity of his actions, and not of the corresponding dishonor that the military has experienced as a result of this embarrassing leak. But despite the internal conflicts this may have created for military personnel, the event was in any case an utter and unnecessary tragedy. My last thought goes to the families of Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen, of the other 10 victims, and all of the victims of collateral murder in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in unspoken wars around the world.