The Scales of Justice have long represented the symbolism of justice. They represent the balancing of truth and fairness in each legal case. They also represent all evidence being weighed fairly, and typically the side with the most evidence wins the case.
Lady Justice originates from Ancient Greece and Rome. The Greek Goddess of Justice, Themis, was often depicted holding a set of scales. The Roman Goddess of Justice, Justitia, is blindfolded and holds scales and sword. According to Roman tradition the sword represents those who are guilty should be punished. The blindfold is to indicate there is no prejudice involved.
This brief examination of the origins of our own symbols in the US are notable since they have deeper roots and ties than just to our country or heritage.
The premise of the legal system is to make you believe you are safe, protected, and that is it is fair, just, and equitable. With 60% of the prison population serving sentences for nonviolent crimes and 20% of the population wrongfully convicted (this stat from 2019 only includes exonerations with evidence and does not take plea agreements into account), you can draw your own conclusions about who/what this system is protecting us from.
If you’d like to read more about the justice system, check out this previous blog post.
Prisons have become privatized and money is made on each bed that’s filled. Does this influence and incentivize incarcerating at such high rates as the US does? When someone is sentenced to prison it’s bonded and traded on the bond market. I will discuss this process further in future blogs about the monetary system.
I’ll briefly explain here that legal documents are assigned a number which is used to trade these documents on the bond market. Until very recently there was an open source website that you could search by your social security number to see how many times your identity documents had been traded. Fascinating stuff yet so few citizens are aware this is happening. And why did the website change to only allow corporations to register for accounts to access the information?
Instead of digging into the history of this system any further, I am going to share some recent cases you can look into to see for yourself how our system is currently functioning because its impact is so deep and devastating.
If you haven’t yet read about Travis’s case or General Flynn’s I would invite you to start there.
Missouri & Louisiana v. Biden Administration. I’ve written a bit about this one in the past as it is an ongoing case under current proceedings. This case is so huge and pivotal for Americans yet finding any information or coverage on the case is incredibly challenging. Why is that? Why would this case be kept out of the public eye if it has major implications on the public?
The short version: MO & LA are petitioning the courts to limit the government’s influence on social media censorship, and the government (defendant in the case) has fought the process every step of the way. This case was very unique in the judge approving emergency depositions of high level government officials despite the deposition process pulling them out of their official capacity. And government did use that as a reason to attempt to get the depositions waived, but the judge denied the request. Many of the individuals who were deposed left their positions. Was this in an attempt to not have to share what they knew?
The depositions revealed much of the same as what the Twitter Files have uncovered: the government threatened social media platforms if they didn’t censor topics as they were being directed to do. Mr. Flaherty often times was very hostile in his influence over social media executives documented in emails he sent, President Biden threatened the removal of 230 protections (law that protects the platform from liability of what it’s users publish), and the government utilized non-profit organizations (NGO) to do what the government knew it could not do in controlling and censoring specific topics to influence what the American people thought.
Throughout the proceedings, the government asked the judge to strike the entire statement of facts which was filed by MO & LA because it would be an “unfair burden” for them to have to respond. In very, very simplistic terms, the statement of facts contained so many facts regarding the methods and evidence of how the government had been censoring speech outside its scope of authority, the government’s response was to ask the judge to strike all of those facts because it was too lengthy for the government to respond to.
The judge denied this request.
MO & LA have requested an injunction to prohibit the government from engaging in any further censorship and NGO use. The hearing was held before Memorial Day, but I have yet to find a decision made regarding the injunction. It seems this case, and potentially the changes it would bring to speech and censorship, is going to mostly play out behind the scenes with most citizens being none the wiser.
The explanation of this case really doesn’t do this case justice. The court filings are hundreds of pages in length. The content of the statement of facts from the depositions is eye opening about how limited our speech has become. If you have extra time on your hands read through some of the documents of this case if those types of things hold your interest. It will tell you a lot about the world you’re living in when you compare it to what you see being shared in the media.
Carleton Nelson v Amazon. This one is a doozy! This case is close to my heart because Carl’s wife spoke out publicly when her husband could not and did not slink silently into the shame of the court system. Honestly, listening to her explain the case is also worth it because she goes into depth about how this case was presented to the FBI approximately a hundred times when it should not have been entertained more than once. Her family experienced having all of their assets seized which forced them to sell their belongings to simply be able to hire attorneys to defend themselves or put food on the table for their four daughters. And they were defending themselves for a crime Carl did not commit.
What was Carl accused of? Defrauding Amazon by violating his employment agreement. This case was taken up by Amazon three years after Carl left Amazon as an employee. Amy further explains Amazon’s motivation for taking this case against Carl and a few others who had previously worked at Amazon was to save the company millions of dollars they would have had to pay for violating a contract that had a clause that a felony conviction would allow them to breach the contract without paying the penalty fee.
You can listen to her detailed account of the nightmare they have lived in this interview. In April the judge tossed out most of Amazon’s claims.
You know I’m a big advocate of voting with your dollar. If this case is as off putting to you as it is me, perhaps finding a different doorstep delivery company is prudent. Additional companies Amazon owns:
- Whole Foods Market
- Zappos
- Amazon Robotics (Kiva Systems) which services The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, Saks 5th Avenue, and Gilt Groupe
- Pillpack Inc
- Twitch Interactive
- MGM Holdings
- Audible
- Goodreads
- IMDb
- Ring
- Lab126
- Amazon Fresh
- AbeBooks
- Woot
Other companies owned by Jeff Bezos:
- The Washington Post
- Bezos Expeditions which invested in companies such as Google, Basecamp, Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, etc
- Blue Origin
- AWS Elemental
Once you start researching you can find endless examples of cases which lead to a lot of questions and confusion about how the justice system is operating. These few examples aren’t an exception to the norm; they simply don’t get media coverage to be able to know these types of things are occurring as frequently as they are.
As always, you know my message is to do your own research, critically think about what you find while questioning what you can’t find readily available through highly censored search engines like Google, dig deeper, do some more critical thinking, and draw your own conclusions.
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Peace & Love,
Janessa