Category: Legal System

  • London – On October 27, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom will hear the Crown Prosecution Service argue on behalf of the United States government that a lower court improperly blocked the U.S. from extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

    The proceedings in London are expected to last two days and will involve five grounds for appeal that were previously approved by the High Court of Justice. (Two were reinstated by the court after a hearing on August 11.)

    District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled on January 4 that Assange’s mental health was such that it would be “oppressive to extradite him” to the U.S. But two days later, she accepted the U.S. government’s objections and ordered him to remain in jail while her decision was appealed.

    The post A Guide To The US Government’s Appeal In The Assange Extradition Case appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The United States government demonstrates repeatedly that it will do whatever it takes to protect the economic and political interests of the elites, even if it means total disregard for human rights and international law. Two cases that highlight this are the recent kidnapping and prosecution of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab and the attempts to extradite the Australian Wikileaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange. Clearing the FOG speaks with Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas who travelled to Cabo Verde where Saab was detained and tortured for over a year before his rendition to Miami and with Joe Lauria, the editor of Consortium News, who has covered the case of Julian Assange extensively.

    The post The US Will Break Any Laws To Protect The Elites: The Saab And Assange Cases appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Jessica Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, ordered to pay millions in fines and labeled a terrorist by the government for her actions of civil disobedience that damaged the equipment of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is owned by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) a $54 billion dollar corporation that also co-owns the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. When ETP intentionally and illegally damaged the private property of hundreds of people in Louisiana, the company received no criminal consequences at all.

    Both actors damaged private property. Jessica Reznicek was labeled a domestic terrorist that is, “dangerous to human life.”  Even after the courts deemed Bayou Bridge’s property destruction illegal, the company received no criminal charges and the company was ordered by the district court to pay a mere $150 to each objector.

    The post Double Standard For Jessica Reznicek And Energy Transfer Partners appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Since the night of October 10, 2012, Taide Elena and Araceli Rodriguez have traveled a long road to access justice for Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. The road has not been easy. On three occasions, the U.S. government has denied them justice. On countless other events, the same government has violated their rights as victims of a crime that has become tragically common over the years: the murder of people -migrants or not- by U.S. Border Patrol agents.

    In the first trial on April 2018, a jury in a federal courtroom in Tucson, Arizona, acquitted Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz of second-degree murder charges for the murder of Jose Antonio. In a second trial for lesser charges in November 2018, a jury only reached a nonguilty verdict for involuntary manslaughter and a hung jury for voluntary manslaughter. 

    The post Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez’ Family Demand Justice 9 Years After Murder appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Judge Loretta Preska, an adviser to the conservative Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a major donor, sentenced human rights attorney and Chevron nemesis Steven Donziger to six months in prison Friday for misdemeanor contempt of court after he had already spent 787 days under house arrest in New York. 

    Preska’s caustic outbursts — she said at the sentencing, “It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law” — capped a judicial farce worthy of the antics of Vasiliy Vasilievich, the presiding judge at the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi judge Roland Freisler who once shouted at a defendant, “You really are a lousy piece of trash!” 

    The post The Anonymous Executioners Of The Corporate State appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • In a setback to migrant rights advocates in the United States, a federal appeal court has allowed the forcible expulsion of apprehended undocumented migrant families to continue. The ruling was passed by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Thursday, September 30. It was a last minute ruling which blocked a prior ruling by a federal judge against the expulsions before it went into effect.

    Thursday’s ruling was in response to the appeals filed by the administration of president Joe Biden against the order by district judge Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for DC (District of Columbia) on September 16. The district judge’s order was stayed as a case against the current immigration policy is ongoing.

    The post Appeals Court Blocks Judge Order, Allows Deportation Of Families appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The sentence, delivered by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York City, represents “an international outrage,” tweeted journalist Emma Vigeland following its announcement.

    Donziger’s sentence came a day after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said it was “appalled” by the U.S. legal system’s treatment of the former environmental lawyer and demanded the U.S. government “remedy the situation of Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring it in conformity with the relevant international norms” by immediately releasing him.

    Donziger represented a group of farmers and Indigenous people in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador in the 1990s in a lawsuit against Texaco—since acquired by Chevron—in which the company was accused of contaminating soil and water with its “deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon.”

    The post Six-Month Sentence For Lawyer Who Took On Chevron Denounced appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The world’s top human rights legal body just offered a crucial show of support for Steven Donziger, the attorney who won a landmark multibillion-dollar case against an oil giant over pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. The ruling came on the eve of his sentencing in a criminal trial.

    On Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights ruled that Donziger’s home detention is illegal under international law and called on the U.S. to release him. Donziger will have spent an unprecedented 787 days on house arrest as of Friday in what is one of the most winding and wild court cases that spans multiple countries and involves Chevron and thousands of Indigenous people in the Amazon.

    The post UN Finds Steven Donziger’s House Arrest Violates International Law appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Washington, DC – After months of fighting for justice in the police murder of Karon Hylton-Brown, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. announced the indictment of Terence Sutton for second-degree murder, one of the DC Police officers involved with this gross negligence of their duties and complete disregard for this young man’s life. He was also indicted with federal charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, along with his supervisor Andrew Zabavsky.

    We stand in solidarity and full support of Karon Hylton-Brown’s family as they continue their fight for justice and accountability for all. Since his death on October 23rd, 2020, organizations, volunteers and supporters of his family have pushed for an investigation into his death. Not only demanding MPD exercise their due diligence as required by law to investigate, but to hold the officers accountable for their behaviors that caused his death.

    The post Two DC Officers Indicted For Murder Of Karon Hylton-Brown appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Currently in Honduras, medical anthropologist Adrienne Pine is closely involved with the Espinal and Álvarez trial.

    Pine said today: “This Monday and Tuesday, former political prisoners Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez will go on trial in Honduras on trumped-up charges related to their participation in protests during the 2017 Honduran electoral crisis.

    “Protests had erupted nationwide after the blatant theft of the November 2017 presidential elections by Juan Orlando Hernández, who had previously orchestrated an illegal takeover of the country’s Supreme Court in order to obtain permission to run for a consecutive second term, in violation of the Honduran constitution. State security forces shot into crowds.

    The post Activists Go On Trial For Protesting Power Grab In Honduras appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Human rights attorney Steven Donziger has now been under house arrest in his New York City apartment for two years. The reason for his detainment, as Lee Camp puts it in this clip from “Redacted Tonight,” is that Donziger made it his business to hold Chevron accountable for how the Big Oil megacorp “harmed, sickened and killed tens of thousands in Ecuador” and tried to avoid paying “billions of dollars” in restitutions.

    Donziger’s battle against American oil companies and on behalf of indigenous communities and farmers in Ecuador spans nearly three decades. He was part of an international legal team that represented indigenous groups in Northern Ecuador where, as he tells Camp, from the 1960s to the ’90s Texaco (now Chevron) deliberately “dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing toxic waste” into local waterways, costing thousands of people their health, livelihood—even their lives.

    The post Chevron Used The Legal System And FBI To Target Steven Donziger appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Michael admired courageous people who live their lives without contradictions.  John Brown was one such person. Brown and his band of 19 men captured the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia hoping to spark a slave uprising and arm themselves with the captured weapons. It didn’t work. Brown was surrounded, wounded, captured, tried for treason, and hanged.

    Michael admired Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who helped lead the 1917 Russian Revolution which overthrew capitalism.  Lenin had hoped that the revolution would spread to the rest of Europe and prevent a capitalist restoration.  We know what happened in 1991. 

    Michael admired Che Guevara. Che lead a division of rebel troops in Cuba 1959. They captured a military supply train in the famous battle of Santa Clara. The island was cut in half and the Americans supported puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic.

    The post My Friend Michael Ratner appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The unthinkable, unconscionable, immoral, racist, and illegal is occurring in Bethesda, Maryland located in Montgomery County. For those who thought the buying and selling of Black bodies was made illegal by the 13th amendment, Montgomery County, Maryland is challenging that notion. To paraphrase Frederick Douglas, the 21st century selling and buying of Black flesh in Montgomery County, Maryland should “disgrace a nation of savages.”

    For more than 350 years, Montgomery County has displayed a history of kidnapping, raping, and murdering of Africans. The County, in collusion with a private investor, has placed Black people back on the auction block and plans to sell over 500 Black remains along with a high-rise building to Charger Ventures.

    The post Descendants Sue County To Stop The Human Trafficking Of Black Bodies appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, released on Monday, contained some of the group’s strongest language yet affirming the link between human activity and global warming. Humans have “unequivocally” warmed the planet, the IPCC report said, making heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires more extreme in the process. While that might seem like a no-brainer to some, it’s a finding that could have big implications for lawsuits seeking to hold polluters accountable for disaster damages.

    “The IPCC report should be a sort of rallying call to lawyers,” said Rupert Stuart-Smith, a climate researcher at the University of Oxford, “to ensure that they are making use of the most up-to-date developments in climate science.”

    The post UN Report Could Be A Game-Changer For Climate Lawsuits appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • On the show this week Chris Hedges talks to investigative journalist Nick Bryant about the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, held at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center and denied bail, will be tried this fall on sex-trafficking charges for allegedly recruiting and grooming teenage girls to engage in sex acts with the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein. She is reputed to have procured teenage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004 and allegedly paid the girls hundreds of dollars in cash after each encounter with Epstein. Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 in what authorities ruled was a suicide, although a doctor hired by Epstein’s family to conduct an independent autopsy has disputed that conclusion.

    The post On Contact: The Trial Of Ghislaine Maxwell appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was removed from his post after he made public the widespread use of torture by the Uzbek government and the CIA.

    Murray has since become one of Britain’s most important human rights campaigners, a fierce advocate for Julian Assange and a supporter of Scottish independence. His coverage of the trial of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who was acquitted of sexual assault charges, saw him charged with contempt of court and sentenced to eight months in prison. The very dubious sentence, which upends most legal norms, was delivered, his supporters argue, to prevent him from testifying as a witness in the Spanish criminal case against UC Global Director David Morales.

    The post On Contact: Judicial Lynching appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Organized by Assange Defense, John and Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s father and brother, will begin the #HomeRun4Julian tour in Miami on June 6 via a live-streamed event. The Shiptons are scheduled to make stops on both coasts and the Midwest before concluding the tour in the nation’s capital.

    Assange’s family members will meet with activists, press, and policymakers to raise awareness of the importance of protecting whistleblowers and journalists, and to advocate for the release of Julian Assange, whom the United Nations has declared “arbitrarily detained” since 2010. 

    The post Assange’s Father On US Tour–First Stop Miami appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • A federal appeals court has upheld a $25 million verdict against the maker of Roundup, a weed killer that thousands of litigants blame for causing their cancers.

    The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by Monsanto Co., the manufacturer of the herbicide, ruling 2-1 that $20 million in punitive damages, “while close to the outer limits,” was constitutional.

    The post $25 Million Verdict Against Monsanto Over Roundup Upheld by Federal Court appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Hale is a veteran of the US Air Force. During his military service from 2009 to 2013, he participated in the US drone program, working with both the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. After leaving the Air Force, Hale became an outspoken opponent of the US targeted killings program, US foreign policy more generally, and a supporter of whistleblowers. He publicly spoke out at conferences, forums, and public panels. He was featured prominently in the award-winning documentary National Bird, a film about whistleblowers in the US drone program who suffered from moral injury and PTSD. Hale based his criticisms on his own participation in the drone program, which included helping to select targets based on faulty criteria and attacks on unarmed innocent civilians….

    The post Support Jailed Whistleblower Daniel Hale appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Former UK diplomat-turned whistleblower Craig Murray was sentenced to eight  months in prison at the High Court in Edinburgh for contempt of court resulting from his coverage of the trial of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

    A three-judge panel determined on March 25, 2021—following a two-hour trial in January—that information published by Murray in a number of his blog posts was likely to lead indirectly to people being able to identify witnesses in Salmond’s sexual assault trial.

    This process, known as “jigsaw identification,” refers to the possibility that a person may piece together information from various sources to arrive at the identification of a protected witness.

    In doing so, the judge ruled that Murray violated a court order prohibiting the publication of information that could likely lead to the identification of the alleged victims in Salmond’s case.

    The post Whistleblower Craig Murray Sentenced To 8 Months In Prison appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Emily Arnott from the group Palestine Action told The Electronic Intifada that she found the suggestion “absolutely ridiculous.”

    Arnott confirmed that members of London’s Metropolitan Police recently interviewed her in a Manchester police station. A Metropolitan Police officer “implied that what Palestine Action is doing could be considered [to be] terrorism and that we could be charged under terrorist offenses,” she said.

    The interviewing officer said the amount of damage allegedly caused by Palestine Action “could possibly push it into the remit of alleged terrorist offenses, but they would not be considered terrorist offenses at that time,” Arnott explained.

    Arnott has been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage against property belonging to Israel’s Elbit Systems in the UK and its property manager Jones Lang LaSalle.

    The post UK Threatens To Charge Palestine Action With Terrorism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • It was April 1, and Jestin Dupree had driven more than 400 miles from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana to the state’s capital, Helena, to testify against legislation that could be used to jail environmental protesters. For years, his tribe had been protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, which was to cross the Missouri River, their main source of water. Their efforts seemed to be vindicated when the project was cancelled by President Joe Biden during his first day in office.

    Montana’s new legislation, however, would allow environmental protesters to be jailed for up to 18 months if they obstruct operations at oil and gas facilities — and up to 30 years if they damage equipment. It seemed to be a direct rebuke to the Indigenous activism that had helped stop Keystone XL.

    The post More States Enter The Race To Criminalize Protest appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • A federal judge ordered drone whistleblower Daniel Hale’s arrest, and United States authorities took him into custody.

    On April 23, Judge Liam O’Grady signed an order suggesting Hale violated the terms of his supervised release. An arrest warrant was issued, and on April 28, he was jailed. 

    Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan, a different judge than the one who has presided over his case, held a hearing on the alleged “pretrial release violation.” Hale maintained no violation had occurred, yet the court scheduled a bond revocation and detention hearing for May 4.

    The chain of events came after a “special condition” was added to Hale’s conditions of release—that he submit to “substance abuse testing and/or treatment as directed by pretrial services.”

    The post Drone Whistleblower Jailed Ahead Of July Sentencing appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • United Kingdom – Last month, six people stood trial in Southwark Crown Court, charged with causing criminal damage to Shell’s London headquarters on April 15, 2019. The trial received little coverage at the time: although all six pleaded not guilty, it appeared to be an open and shut case. That the building was damaged was not in doubt; nor was the identity of the perpetrators.

    But then, surprisingly, all six Extinction Rebellion activists were acquitted. This verdict deserves attention as it raises big questions about how far the law can protect companies that do not take real action to deal with the climate emergency.

    The defendants were instructed by Judge Gregory Perrins that they could enter as evidence only who they were, what they had done and a brief explanation why.

    The post Courts Can No Longer Protect Companies Over Climate Flak appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Philadelphia public broadcaster WHYY (4/24/21) was one of the few outlets to report on an April 24 rally seeking the release from prison of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The story included important information on Abu-Jamal, who is serving a life sentence for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

    It noted that the case has “drawn scrutiny” over claims of police, prosecutorial and judicial bias and misconduct. It cited new evidence released as part of the appeal process, including a note from a key prosecution witness asking the prosecuting attorney for money—the sort of evidence that Johanna Fernandez, a history professor and part of Abu-Jamal’s legal team, notes has in other instances led to a defendant either being set free or getting an immediate new trial.

    The post Why Have Media Gone To Such Lengths To Silence Mumia Abu-Jamal? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • A federal judge has ordered police in Columbus, Ohio, to stop using force including tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets against nonviolent protesters, ruling that officers ran “amok” during last summer’s protests of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

    Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio described the actions of the Columbus police as “the sad tale of officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok.”

    He opened his 88-page opinion with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.”

    The post Judge Says Columbus Police Ran ‘Amok’; Restricts Use Of Force appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Chris Hedges discusses police abuse and torture with civil rights attorney Flint Taylor. Taylor’s new book is ‘The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago’. With his colleagues at the People’s Law Office, Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases exposing the corruption and cover-ups within the Chicago Police Department and throughout the city’s political machine, from the alderman to the mayor’s office. The book takes the reader from the 1969 murder of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark – and the historic 13-year trial that followed – to the pursuit of chief detective Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the Chicago Police Department that used barbaric methods including electric shock and suffocation to elicit false confessions…

    The post On Contact: Police Abuse And Torture appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The depth of public connection with George Floyd was clear on the day the verdict of his police killer was announced. The moment was awaited with trepidation and the guilty verdict was met with enthusiasm and in some cases outright joy. But at the same time that the world learned the perpetrator’s fate, a 16-year old named Ma’Khia Bryant was also killed by the police.

    Police in the United States kill more than 1,000 people every year, an average of three every day. Had young Ms. Bryant been killed on any other date, it is probable that no one outside of her immediate circle would know her name either.

    But demands for justice must be expanded beyond the latest police lynching that the media may choose to expose.

    The post No Justice Without A Movement appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Berlin – Germany must update its climate law by the end of next year to set out how it will bring carbon emissions down nearly to zero by 2050, its top court ruled on Thursday, siding with a young woman who argued rising sea levels would engulf her family farm.

    The court concluded that a law passed in 2019 had failed to make sufficient provision for cuts beyond 2030, casting a shadow over a signature achievement of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s final term in office.

    “The challenged provisions do violate the freedoms of the complainants, some of whom are still very young,” the court said in a statement. “The provisions irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens onto periods after 2030.”

    The post Court Rules Germany Must Tighten Climate Law appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Over thirty years ago, James Baldwin was the subject of a PBS documentary The Price of the Ticket (1989) in which he reflected on what he considered a lack of progress in combatting racism in America:

    “What is it that you wanted me to reconcile myself to. I was born here more than 60 years ago. I’m not going to live another 60 years. You always told me that it’s going to take time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time, my nieces and my nephew’s time. How much time do you want for your progress?”

    Sadly, his comment remains vital today. On April 21, 2021, a jury found Minneapolis police officer Derrick Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. There has been much written regarding whether the verdict represents justice for Floyd…

    The post Lessons Learned From The Chauvin Trial That Relate To Palestine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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