The brutality of capitalist justice

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/loui-a11.html

Louisiana Supreme Court denies review of Fair Wayne Bryant’s life sentence for allegedly stealing a pair of hedge clippers

By Helen Halyard
11 August 2020

Fair Wayne Bryant, now 60 years old, has spent the last 23 years at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana on one count of attempted simple burglary. This penitentiary is one of the largest, and most notoriously brutal, state institutions in the US.

In 2018, Bryant’s attorney Peggy Sullivan appealed his sentence before the Second Circuit Court of Louisiana, stating that her client “contends that his life sentence is unconstitutionally harsh and excessive.”

The state appellate court, after a hearing held in November 2019, maintained that the sentence was in accordance with the habitual offender law and no longer subject to review. That decision was then appealed to the seven-member Louisiana Supreme Court.

On August 5, with one dissenting vote, the other 6 Supreme Court justices declined to review the appeal upholding the decision of the State Appellate court that Bryant remain in jail for the rest of his life.

Bryant’s crime was attempting to steal a pair of hedge clippers.

Although Louisiana’s State Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Bryant will have one more chance at possible parole. An earlier ruling by the lower appeals court in 2018 stated that Bryant had been illegally denied parole eligibility. Bryant filed an appeal on July 21 and the Louisiana Committee on Parole will decide whether or not to hold a hearing. Even then, the final decision would be made by the board.

Upon reading about this case, one is reminded of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables, which tells the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant sentenced to 19 years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread. But as Bryant was sentenced not to 19 years but to life in prison, here America compares unfavorably even to Hugo’s depiction of France under the Bourbon Restoration, when the French monarchy was re-established after the defeat of Napoleon.

This grueling and horrific experience for one count of alleged petty theft demonstrates the true face of justice in capitalist America. One finds one set of rules for the poor and oppressed and another set of rules for those who control the wealth and run the political and state institutions, including the police and courts and their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties.

Less than two weeks before Bryant lost his appeal, the grotesquely misnamed “SAFE TO WORK” Act was introduced into Congress, which provide companies with legal immunity if their workers become seriously ill or die from the coronavirus after becoming infected at work.

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States. According to a recent report from the ACLU, 1 out of every 86 residents in the state is in prison. A disproportionate number of inmates are black or another minority. The state’s prisoners suffer brutal treatment. The Angola Three, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert Hillary King, each spent 40 years in solitary confinement at Angola, the longest ever such period in prison history.

In her dissenting statement, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson wrote: “The sentence imposed is excessive and disproportionate to the offense the defendant committed. Mr. Bryant was sentenced, as a habitual offender, to life in prison for unsuccessfully attempting to make off with somebody else’s hedge clippers.” Johnson noted. In her dissent, she went on to review the conditions that this prisoner and thousands of others face in a state suffering from one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

“Mr. Bryant’s sentence is sanctioned under the habitual offender law because of his four prior convictions. His first conviction was attempted armed robbery in 1979, for which he was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor. He has had no more violent convictions. He was subsequently convicted of possession of stolen things in 1987; attempted forgery of a check worth $150 in 1989; and simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling on 19 March 1992. Each of these crimes was an effort to steal something. Such petty theft is frequently driven by the ravages of poverty or addiction, and often both.”

The Bryant case is the product of decades of bipartisan “law-and-order” campaigns. It was Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden who authored and promoted the “tough on crime” legislation passed 25 years ago, which was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. This law was the one of the key factors in the explosion of mass incarceration beginning in the period of the 1990s. The bill led to longer prison sentences, a growth of the number of prison cells and a more aggressive policy of policing. Approximately 1,000 people are killed each year by US police.

Laws enacted in the state of Louisiana followed those of the federal government, including the habitual offender statute, which condemned thousands of young people to life imprisonment for minor offenses at one of the harshest prison facilities in the US.

In addition, large numbers of the country’s prison population are innocent. To date over 375 people have been exonerated through the Innocence Project based on DNA evidence and legal appeals.

On April 29, 2016, political prisoner Gary Tyler was freed at the age of 57 years old after spending his entire adult life at Angola for a crime he never committed. He was framed up at the age of 16 for the shooting death of Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old white student. The killing occurred in a racially charged atmosphere whipped up by elements such as David Duke, then emerging as a leading figure in the Louisiana and national Ku Klux Klan.

The Workers League (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party) played a major role in campaigning for Gary Tyler’s freedom and carried out a determined national and international struggle to mobilize the working class in his defense.

Turns Out Most Americans AREN'T Completely Insane, Thankfully

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDGQRuMRoQA

Peru reopens economy as thousands of miners contract COVID-19

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/peru-a11.html



By Mauricio Saavedra
11 August 2020

The Peruvian government has reintroduced curfews and extended a military-enforced state of emergency and quarantines to 14 of the country’s 25 regions until the end of August following a record number of coronavirus infections. The restrictions of movement, first decreed in March, have not been applied to the lucrative mining sector, which the pro-business government of President Martín Vizcarra agreed to gradually restart when it classified mining as an “essential industry” earlier in May.

With 478,024 coronavirus cases, Peru has the third most infections in Latin America, and with over 21,000 fatalities, it has the highest per capita death toll in the region. The Pan American Health Organization is investigating whether the country failed to count another 27,000 deaths caused by COVID-19, which would raise the death toll to almost 50,000. The Washington Post reported last week that thousands of death certificates listing COVID-19 as one of several causes of death were not included in the country’s official toll “because the victims did not undergo a coronavirus test before dying.”

Underlying this immense suffering and death are the decades of structural adjustment programs prized by finance capital. Initiated by authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori in 1990, the Peruvian masses have been at the receiving end of policies that have been geared to meet the requirements of financial and corporate interests—mass layoffs through privatizations of state-owned industries, the elimination of job security laws and wage indexation, the privatization of social security and pension systems and the elimination of subsidies for basic foodstuffs and consumables. The systematic gutting of health budgets over years has left a nation of 33 million with a total of 1,606 ICU beds in private and public hospitals, and 90 percent of those are in use.

While the consequences of these policies were partially masked due to rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the mining sector during the 2000s as Peru opened up its economy to super-exploitation, the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare their true social cost.

The vast majority of workers are in the informal sector. Millions live a precarious existence without job security, minimum wage protection or access to social security. Lima, the country’s capital of some 10 million, has concentrated the majority of coronavirus cases in its overcrowded and impoverished working-class districts.

In the more isolated regions, where the indigenous and peasant communities reside among immense mining operations run by transnational corporations, extreme social inequality means that there is a lack of access to proper medical facilities and assistance amid an exponential growth of coronavirus cases. Arequipa, the second-most-populated Peruvian city, with 1 million inhabitants, and the commercial and industrial hub of the southern Andes, had just seven cases in March. By the end of the first week of August, Arequipa, now under quarantine, recorded 18,190 infections and 869 deaths.

The WSWS reported that in the first 10 days of the outbreak in March the Andean regions where the large export mining operations are concentrated—including Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Apurímac, Puno, Moquegua and Tacna in the south and Cajamarca in the far north—had recorded not a single coronavirus case. Today, each of these regions has thousands of cases and many hundreds have died: Huancavelica 2,148 infections (41 deaths), Ayacucho 4,603 (81), Apurímac 1,206 (42), Puno 3,211 (98), Moquegua 4,244 (128), Tacna 3,918 (44), and Cajamarca 7,974 (239).

More than 3,000 of these coronavirus cases are among workers in the mining sector, although this figure is incomplete, as the last official recording of cases in the mining industry was from the beginning of July. The Ministry of Energy and Mines has sought to downplay this by stating that the reported infections represent only 2 percent of all workers who have currently returned to operations, but it has sparked fury among mineworkers and local populations:
More than 300 workers at Pan American Silver’s La Arena mine in the region of La Libertad downed tools to protest the growing number of COVID-19 cases at the mine and a lack of testing. Workers fear they could transmit the disease to their families when they go on break, according to a statement from the FNTMMSP, the national mining and metallurgical workers union.
The population of Tambo Valley initiated protests opposing the reactivation of Southern Copper’s Tia Maria copper project, in the southern region of Arequipa for fear of further infections and concerns over toxic waste contamination.
Social organizations and peasant communities denounced an “excessive presence” of trucks transporting minerals for Las Bambas mining company, in the region of Apurimac that exposed workers and communities to COVID-19.

Earlier in the year, the government responded to the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic by implementing “Reactiva Peru,” a program worth some 60 billion soles (US$16.9 billion)—an amount equal to 11 percent of GDP. Its main purpose was to prevent a collapse in private credit through establishing a loan guarantee fund for business. Paltry handouts from these large sums were promised to the poorest, as more than one third of the workforce lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

In a spiraling economic and political crisis, President Vizcarra was forced for the second time in less than a month to reshuffle his cabinet after a vote of no confidence by the opposition-controlled Congress last week. Vizcarra replaced pro-mining Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano with retired Gen. Walter Martos, who made clear that his priority will be a continuation of the agenda of reopening the economy under conditions in which Peru’s central bank forecasts a 12.5 percent drop in the gross domestic product this year.

“The economy has to be revived gradually. We have to be very careful, but I think that returning to a total quarantine, at this time, would be very complicated,” Martos told TV Peru.

The Peruvian government, like its counterparts in other Latin American countries heavily tied to extractive industry exports, has sought to keep the mines operational. In March, while the giant domestic and international businesses that exploit Peru were obliged to reduce their workforces, they did not stop functioning. By July, as Vizcarra sought to reopen the economy despite the spike in cases, the Energy and Mines Ministry reported that mining was 90 percent operational.

Mining is the dominant sector of the Peruvian economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars of direct investment have flowed into mining exploration and exploitation over the past 20 years, and another US$58 billion were to be directly invested for FYI 2020-2021 before the pandemic stalled exploration activities. The government has earmarked another 30 billion soles (US$8.4 billion) to reactivate the mining industry.

Peru is among the world’s major producers of mineral commodities, which account for more than 60 percent of the country’s exports and 10 percent of its GDP. Copper and gold are the most important mineral exports by value, but there are also enormous reserves of silver, zinc, lead and tin. The mining sector, directly and indirectly, employs an estimated 1.5 million workers.

China is the largest foreign investor in Peru’s mining projects, but US, Canadian, Australian and British imperialism assert immense influence through the consortiums that control multibillion-dollar mining operations and projects. The most significant global players, including Anglo-American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Glencore, Freeport-McMoRan, MMG, Newmont, Pan American Silver, Barrick, Gold Fields, Southern Copper, Doe Run Peru, Consorcio Minero Horizonte, and ZINSA, enjoy some of the world’s most lax corporate laws.

Peruvian laws and regulations do not discriminate between national and foreign companies. There are no restrictions on repatriation of earnings, international transfers of capital, or currency exchange practices. The remittance of dividends, interests and royalties has no restrictions. Under a revised fiscal system, mining companies now pay royalties based on their operating profits rather than on sales.

“The fiscal changes introduced were largely supported by mining companies and according to industry analysts they have not adversely affected investment decisions or the degree of Peru’s mining sector competitiveness compared to other countries,” reports a website dedicated to providing investment intelligence for the mining sector.

Such is the dependency that, in the middle of this health and social catastrophe, Vizcarra has sought to facilitate further exploitation of the nation’s untapped riches by modifying regulations for mining activities, dispensing with even a modicum of ecological protection and allowing the consortiums to ride roughshod over the needs of the populations.

Pro-business Gestión reported that an amendment to the Environmental Protection Regulations for Mining Exploration seeks to provide “predictability” in decision-making, reduce transaction costs for mining licensees and help increase investment in the sector. In other words, any exploration project will go ahead with little state interference.

Driving this insatiable and criminal reopening of the economy is the 20.4 percent plunge in copper production in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Gold production fell 34.7 percent and zinc 23.7 percent. Lost profits need to be recouped, no matter the consequences. This is especially pressing today as the price of gold has reached a historic high and copper surpassed US$6,000 a tonne in June, up about 30 percent since March as both China and Europe begin reopening.

Mining activity always poses environmental risks. However, it is possible to scientifically foresee dangers and determine the safest methods of extraction to prevent deadly impacts upon workers, communities and the environment. This does not enter the calculations of the transnational and domestic mining giants or the governments that serve their interests. Countless catastrophic disasters caused by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Barrick, BP et al., due to the anarchy and irrationality of capitalist production for profit, are only a taste of what is to come in Peru and Latin America and the rest of world if the working class does not politically intervene with a socialist program to resolve the political, social and economic crises facing humanity.

Nikki Haley Post Office Sabotage Backfires

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWs-Wv36_4A

“They are treating us all like pawns—we are the ones who suffer”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/heal-a11.html

Protesting health workers in UK speak to World Socialist Web Site

By our reporters
11 August 2020

Thousands of health workers took part in dozens of demonstrations and rallies in cities and towns across the UK Saturday, demanding a pay rise and adequate protection from COVID-19.

Despite years of pay cuts, the Johnson government last month excluded health workers from a miserly increase awarded to public sector workers. The decision has provoked widespread anger among workers who have risked their lives throughout the pandemic.

Saturday’s events were promoted by Keep Our NHS Public (KONP), a campaign group backed by sections of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy. But neither Labour Party officials nor health unions openly associated themselves with the demonstrations, which were largely coordinated via local Facebook groups.

Under ten years of Tory austerity, pay has declined by 20 percent. A long awaited 2018 pay increase of 6.5 percent over 3 years saw health workers’ pay tied to performance, slashing incremental pay progression. Enhanced pay for unsocial hours was cut and sickness payments were reduced.

Along with the dismantling and privatization of the NHS, the attacks on pay and conditions have proceeded with the tacit support of the health unions and the Labour Party. In 2016, the British Medical Association betrayed months-long industrial action, including all-out strikes, by 50,000 junior doctors against vastly inferior contracts. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his backers in the trade unions refused to mobilise in their support.

At Saturday’s protests, the same 13 health unions which promoted the 2018 rotten pay deal as the “best deal in 8 years” tried to creep into the events. Members of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party were on hand to bolster the trade unions’ sagging credentials.
Bournemouth

More than 100 nurses and health workers rallied in Bournemouth. Most banners were homemade, with slogans hostile to politicians’ hypocritical statements during weekly “clap for carers” and “clap for the NHS” events. Placards included, “Heroes to 0%”, “Claps don't pay the bills,” “Pay NHS a fair wage—you owe us,” “Some cuts don't heal,” “Stop clapping start talking” and “A nurse is for life, not just for Covid19.”

Health workers spoke of their anger over the deaths of more than 500 of their colleagues from COVID-19 across the UK and the absence of Personal Protective Equipment, access to tests and a liveable income.

Prior to the protest, the local Unison branch sent notification to its members that they were not endorsing the event due to social distancing concerns—although the union has shown no similar concern for its members inside the hospitals.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) tried to keep its members in the dark about the protests but delivered some T-shirts and placards with the RCN logo. Hospital workers turned out in defiance of the union’s efforts at sabotage, and despite their own concerns about COVID-19.

Kevin, an NHS worker from a local day hospital, told the WSWS, “I’ve got [COVID-19] antibodies now, but I was off sick for two months. I’m well over retirement, I’m 69 now, but I love my job and care about the NHS and we’ve got to protect it as best we can. I’m here for the younger nurses because the salary is pitiful. I’ve worked for the NHS for over 21 years. I can show you my wage slip and you’ll be shocked at the rate. It’s less than £12 an hour.”

Sarah, a student nurse from Yeovil, spoke about the Tory government’s 2017 scrapping of the bursary for student nurses. “I went into nursing 20 years ago and I didn’t have fees to pay,” she said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t see it through and here I am 20 years later and looking at £60,000 of debt. They are reintroducing the £5,000 bursary, but it’s still not enough. I still have to pay over £9,000 a year in tuition fees plus maintenance loans.

“I have five children. I need to be able to feed them. I don’t want to be working alongside studying and my placement, but I might have to in order to survive and that could affect my performance on the ward. It’s a scary time and my passion is to do this, regardless of the cost, but at the same time I am going to fight for what’s fair.”

Asked about the deaths of NHS workers from COVID-19, Sarah replied, “The health worker deaths, each of the 540, physically hurt me. Wasted lives, and now their professionalism and their knowledge are lost from our NHS because our government just don’t care about people. They only care about their pockets.”

Sarah said of the ending of the national lockdown, “Yes, ‘Eat Out To Help Out’—let’s send the poor people out to the restaurants, give them discounts, and we can pay them to be guinea pigs! That’s what that is. I do not believe it’s safe to be out there yet. I know that businesses are important, but they will recover. The NHS won’t. You can’t bring back a dead NHS worker.”

Chris, who worked on a COVID-19 ward at Bournemouth Hospital said, “It was a really scary business. We had friends that had been upstairs on the ventilating machines, and we didn’t know if they’d survive or not.”

Asked whether they had enough PPE, Chris replied: “They kept changing [the advice]. At first, we had to have a new mask every time we saw a patient, and then it was, ‘You have to use your mask as much as possible as we are running out.’ We were working in extreme heat, and some patients were deaf and couldn’t hear us, so that was an added pressure. It scared a lot of older patients. They didn’t know what was going on. They’d been through wars, but this is something else. This is unprecedented.”

Speaking about the Johnson government’s response to the pandemic, Chris said, “They ignored the science. The scientists were trying to give us the message and they were just laughing at it. They are treating us all like pawns in a game because they are safe. We are the ones who suffer. Boris Johnson was laughing at it from the start, making little jokes. It’s not a joke. People are dying.”
Cambridge

Around 100 health workers protested in Cambridge. Nurses spoke from an open microphone pointing out that the police, military and MPs get pay rises all the time, but not NHS workers. Some nurses described having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from seeing their colleagues die, while they had to go on working. During a march, cars honked in support, including a couple of fire trucks. This prompted chants of “Firefighters need a pay rise too!”

Charlotte, a mental health nurse, delivered a moving speech, “For too long we have sat silently, with the government expecting that we would stay silent and complicit … Well, I say the time that ends is now.

“I vividly remember writing my whole dissertation on night shift, trying to fund my degree. And then you think that things are going to change when you qualify, and that finally that hard work, to get a decent wage, will be over. Well how wrong we were.

“Every politician, every MP that I’ve seen, spouts Agenda for Change, and that we have a pay deal. Well, no one told my bank account that I had a pay rise. It didn’t show in my pocket, it didn’t pay my rent. Many of us were worse off … I will have no increments and no raises for four years, yet I am expected to take on more and more responsibility, more and more pressure, and more and more stress.

“Too many of us have lost friends and family to COVID-19. All while we saw the government saying we have adequate PPE and how well stocked we were. How many of us sat on wards with no PPE, terrified we were going to pass something on to our family? How many of us were told how fantastic we were, and how we were heroes? We’re not heroes, we’re not something from the fairy tales, we’re nurses, and we’re people.

“And there is only so far that you can push us before we snap. Too many nurses are coming with PTSD symptoms. Too many nurses are breaking down and leaving the profession. It’s too tough for us, and I think now is the time to say that we stand, and we cannot work in these conditions any longer.”
Manchester

Up to 150 people assembled at Piccadilly Gardens in central Manchester. Calls for strike action were met with applause.

Many spoke about how hard it was to get PPE, and that migrant workers were being scapegoated during the pandemic. Some talked about doing unpaid overtime and said that if they didn’t, the NHS would collapse.

Jas, a student nurse, said she would be £60,000 in debt when she qualifies. The only protection she had at work was a mask. Both she and her partner caught COVID-19. She called the pay deal “a kick in the teeth.”

Another female student nurse said, “I will graduate in 2021. By then I will be £90k in debt as I did a degree prior to this one. My NHS student debt is £60k. I work long hours to pay my bills. Once I worked 90 hours over 9 days. I haven’t seen my family or friends since before Christmas.”
Glasgow

Hundreds of health workers and their supporters rallied in Glasgow Green. Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) member Ritchie Venton spoke from the platform, promoting the trade unions discredited 2018 “pay rise.” “This should be a platform for the intervention of the trade unions to get involved to fight for what you deserve ... I would advise you all to read the TUC policy brought out during the pandemic demanding a £2 an hour increase.”

A nurse described how the NHS was running on the goodwill of staff, arriving early and staying late without pay, forgoing breaks to care for patients, or giving up annual leave due to understaffing. During the pandemic, she would come home exhausted and numb, knowing she wasn’t able to give the care she should due to an inadequate system.
Leeds

More than 200 health workers protested in Leeds. Several health workers spoke of the decimation and privatization of the NHS. A nurse with 40 years’ service held a banner which said, "Enough is Enough."

A mental health nurse described the effects of COVID-19 restrictions on her elderly patients and said it was outrageous that mental health wards and beds were being closed during the pandemic.
Sheffield

Around 200 to 250 attended a rally and protest in Barkers Pool, in Sheffield city centre. Not a single trade union placard was present, just a few flags. Around 90 percent of placards were homemade, and these included, “You clapped for us now you crapped on us,” “Nurses are being exploited #Pay rise" and “Clapping won’t pay my bills” and “NURSE—Neglected, Underpaid, Refused, Suppressed and Exhausted.”

Representatives of pseudo-left groups spoke without identifying their political affiliations, presenting themselves as activists or union officials. They spent most of their time excusing the shameful role of the unions, including their role in delivering a rotten three-year pay deal. The unions “should” be organising national demonstrations and should “get off their knees,” declared one pseudo-left demagogue, claiming that pressure was already being productive with the unions agreeing to take up a 15 percent pay increase demand.

Two minute’s silence was held at 12 noon in memory of the 540 health care workers who have been killed by coronavirus in the UK.

“Prisons Are Not Fit for Human Occupation”: San Quentin Prisoners Speak Out as Virus Deaths Reach 25

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPEiuR-HE

King Juan Carlos flees Spain to avoid corruption probe

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/11/juan-a10.html

By Alejandro López
11 August 2020

Former King Juan Carlos I de Borbón, who reigned from November 1975 until his abdication in June 2014, has fled Spain to evade investigation on charges on kickbacks and fraud.

Last week, the Royal Family posted a letter by Juan Carlos I to his son, King Felipe VI, informing him of his “well-considered decision to leave Spain”, adding: “It is a decision I take, with deep feeling but great calm. I was king of Spain for 40 years, and during all those years I have always wanted the best for Spain and the Crown.”

Now Juan Carlos has fled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he reportedly occupies an entire floor at Abu Dhabi's five-star Emirates Palace hotel, under the protection of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Juan Carlos’ departure is a humiliation for the Spanish ruling class and comes amid mounting infighting in the European bourgeoisie. Backed by Washington and the European Union, he was promoted as a leader who led Spain from fascism to democracy after dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975—stopping a military coup in 1981 and serving as head of state for nearly 40 years. His decision to flee Spain like a thief, to avoid a corruption probe after Swiss and Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation of his Swiss bank accounts, exposes the entire regime.

The crisis erupted two years ago when a British conservative newspaper, the Telegraph, leaked recordings of Juan Carlos’ mistress, businesswoman Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, speaking to retired Spanish police chief José Manuel Villarejo. Villarejo is currently in jail awaiting trial over “Operation Tandem,” an investigation into two decades of illegal phone taps and other invasions of privacy on behalf of wealthy clients, corporations and banks against politicians, businessmen, judges and journalists.

Sayn-Wittgenstein claims Juan Carlos received kick-backs from commercial contracts in the Gulf States for the construction of the €6.7 billion Haramain high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia and kept the cash in a bank account in Switzerland. She also claims the head of the Spanish intelligence threatened her life and those of her children if she spoke of her ties to Juan Carlos.

The Spanish judiciary intervened to shelve the investigation. Prosecutors claimed the activities mentioned in the conversation occurred before Juan Carlos’s abdication, when he was still immune from prosecution. Almost simultaneously, Swiss prosecutors opened an investigation into a multi-million-euro donation received by Sayn-Wittgenstein from a Swiss bank account. She told investigators that the money was a donation from the former Spanish monarch.

In June 2019, Juan Carlos announced his intention to retire from public life in a letter addressed to Felipe. This was the first attempt of the Royal House to distance itself from Juan Carlos.

In March this year, as COVID-19 raged throughout Spain and Europe after decades of cuts in public health care budgets, the Telegraph reported that Felipe VI was a beneficiary with Juan Carlos of a foundation which received €65 million from Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia.

Soon after, the Royal Household issued a statement claiming that Felipe VI would renounce any inheritance from his father. The former king also reportedly lost his stipend from the State’s General Budget—another attempt by Felipe VI to publicly distance himself from Juan Carlos.

Two months ago, the public prosecutor’s office of the Spanish Supreme Court opened an investigation against Juan Carlos regarding Saudi kickbacks.

In last week’s letter, Juan Carlos makes no statement of guilt or of regret. He claims, laughably, to be fleeing Spain in order “to serve the Spanish people.” His lawyer stated that “he remains at the disposal of the Prosecutor’s Office.” Juan Carlos also reportedly refused the option of settling his back taxes, which would mean handing over 60 percent of his wealth to the state.

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, the Royal Household and the media have intervened to defend the former monarch and his “historical legacy”. A press release signed by Felipe VI stated: “The king wants to highlight the historical importance that his father’s reign represents, as a legacy, political work and institutional service to Spain and to democracy.”

El País, the leading pro-PSOE daily, stated in an editorial that “the former king’s disappointing and less than exemplary behavior during the last years of his reign must not make anybody forget his irreplaceable contribution to the progress and freedom of all Spaniards during nearly half a century.” It called for national unity: “It is thus irresponsible to fan the flames of this institutional crisis at a time when the country needs stability, and when everyone should come together to deal with a devastating economic crisis that’s already here, as well as with a health crisis that refuses to go away.”
Juan Carlos and Spain’s Transition from fascist to parliamentary rule

In fact, the inglorious flight of Juan Carlos exposes the rotten regime set up by the NATO imperialist powers in the 1978 Transition from the fascist Francoite regime to Spain’s current parliamentary regime.

Juan Carlos was born in Rome in 1938 to the exiled pretender to the Spanish throne amid the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) launched by the fascist coup of General Francisco Franco. During this three-year war, in which Franco allied with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, at least 200,000 people died. Another 700,000 to 1 million people passed through nearly 300 concentration camps during and after the war. Another half-million fled Spain as refugees.

Franco restored the monarchy in 1947, and Juan Carlos was groomed as his successor. In 1969, he swore loyalty to the fascist Movimiento Nacional (National Movement); he was crowned two days after Franco’s death in 1975. Amid mass strikes and revolutionary struggles in Spain and across Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, factions of the regime led by Juan Carlos worked with the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain (PCE) to pilot a transition to defend the capitalist state and block a struggle of the working class for power.

The PCE played the central role in preventing a revolutionary reckoning with fascism and devising a new constitutional monarchy. Under the monarchy, Spanish fascism’s crimes were to be forgiven and forgotten, and capitalist property preserved. In 1978, a constitution was adopted that protected the king from any prosecution.

To this day, the Podemos leadership hails the leader of the Communist Party from the 1950s to the 1980s, Santiago Carrillo, for his role during the Transition. Carrillo, a mentor of Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias, became close friends with Juan Carlos and a regular at his palace. The king reportedly called him “Don Santiago.”

By 1981, however, the Transition regime was already on the verge of collapse amid rising discontent in the working class. The press and sections of the ruling elite began to discuss the need for a “National Salvation” government under the premiership of General Armada, Juan Carlos’ chief mentor. This meant a supposedly non-violent removal of the democratically-elected government by the military, backed by a broad-based coalition cabinet including the PSOE.

On the evening of February 23, hundreds of Civil Guards burst into Parliament, brandishing pistols and sub-machine guns, taking the government and all 350 deputies hostage. To this day, it remains a state secret how much Juan Carlos new about the coup plotters’ intentions. The coup plotters claimed they acted in the name of the monarch. A German diplomat subsequently stated that Juan Carlos had told him he was in broad agreement with the plotters’ aims.

The PSOE, the Communist Party and its trade union, CC.OO, reacted with calculated impotence, refusing to call strikes or mobilize workers against the coup. Faced with a fascist coup, they simply called on workers to remain calm, defining the assault to parliament as an isolated event.

The coup did not succeed, however, as the majority of the bourgeoisie feared that installing another military junta would have provoked a response from the working class that had lived under fascist rule for four decades. Despite the PCE and PSOE, workers had already started organising defence committees in Andalucía and Asturias; strikes broke out in Barcelona, Madrid and other major cities. On February 26, demonstrations of more than 3 million participants, the most massive in Spain’s history, swept across the country.

Although it formally failed, the coup helped cement the post-Franco Transition regime. The PSOE won elections in 1982 with the backing of the PCE and of the forces from the post-1968 middle class student movement. Together with the right-wing Popular Party, these forces formed an entrenched pro-capitalist political duopoly committed to austerity and war.

For four decades, the Spanish population was routinely bombarded with claims that the king opposed the coup, and that his televised address calling for law and order and the continuation of the elected government—six hours after the coup began—saved democracy from fascism.

Already at this time, Juan Carlos was busy using his position to receive kickbacks. These date back to at least 1973, during the first oil crisis, when Franco sent him to Saudi Arabia to bargain with the House of Saud to cut the prices of Spain’s oil imports.

During the 1980s, Juan Carlos was known as “the king of Socialists” in the 1980s and 1990s due to his close ties to PSOE Prime Minister Felipe González. The González government let Juan Carlos continue his lucrative kickbacks and corruption deals involving the weapons trade, real estate and the arts. He also received large commissions for promoting products and tourist destinations.

His largest kickbacks came from his trips to ex-colonial countries with executives from Santander, Telefónica, BBVA, Inditex, Ibderdrola, OHL, Repsol—the biggest corporations in Spain’s Ibex-35 stock market. In these trips to promote “Spanish brands,” they struck deals worth billions of euros, looting these countries in the process. These looting operations handsomely benefited the king personally.
Podemos defends the Spanish monarchy

The crisis of the monarchy intensified particularly amid the mounting social inequality and social anger caused by deep EU austerity measures that followed the 2008 economic crash. In 2014, Juan Carlos abdicated after years of scandals, including his hunting trips worth thousands of dollars in African countries as workers in Spain and across Europe saw their jobs and meager wages slashed, or the Nóos corruption case involving his daughter, Princess Cristina.

Today, Podemos is intervening to defend the 1978 consensus and the Monarchy. Last December, Iglesias claimed that Monarchy “is not in crisis, and I speak as a republican.” He also hailed Felipe VI’s daughter, Leonor, “who aspires to be head of state, speaking in perfect Catalan.”

Now, desperately trying to cover its tracks amid rising social anger, Podemos leaders are claiming that they were not aware that the government supported the former monarch’s decision to flee, even though Iglesias is deputy Prime Minister. Their complaint is that this is an embarrassment for Spain. In words of Iglesias, the “flight” was “an unworthy attitude of a former head of state,” which Iglesias fears will leave the monarchy “in a very compromised position.”

Podemos is now flirting with calls for a referendum on the republic or a monarchy, even though the party’s parliamentary spokesperson, Jaume Asens, declared this “practically impossible” due to the opposition of the government partner of Podemos, the PSOE.

The main aim of such debates is to boost their tattering left credentials as the PSOE-Podemos government is increasingly associated with austerity, pro-militarist policies, regime change in Latin America and attacks on democratic rights.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Podemos has championed back-to-work, back-to-school and deconfinement policies. Its most recent action has been to hail the recent EU bailout funneling €750 billion to the banks and corporations. The package imposes austerity across Europe, while laying down the axes on which the European imperialist powers will pursue militarist and economic policies targeting China and the United States.

Juan Carlos’ decision to flee corruption charges in Spain only underscores the profound corruption of the entire social and political order defended by Podemos and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias.