In recent days, the Supreme Court hearings continue for the crimes of “insulting the Crown” by the twelve rappers of La Insurgencia, Pablo Hasel, and Valtonyc, among others. Meanwhile, the ex king prepares his luxurious exile in the Caribbean.
The Bourbon family were made kings of Spain by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. Beginning with little money the ex king Juan Carlos now has over 2000 million euros, according to Forbes, and his legal impunity plays a key role in the continuing looting of Spain by the elite oligarchy. (top Right photo) Prince Juan Carlos of Bourbon and Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco participating in the Victory Parade in Madrid on June 10, 1971, ((bottom R) King Juan Carlos addressing the nation following his abdication on June 2, 2014 at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid. Spain’s former king Juan Carlos, who turned 80 on January 5, 2018, accusedof multiple corruption, has taken a secondary role since his son Felipe ascended the throne in 2014, putting an end to his nearly four decades-long reign.
“The person of the King is inviolable and is not subject to liability.”
The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of nine months in prison for rapper Pablo Hasel for the crime of insulting the Crown and the Security Forces. Regarding the twelve rappers of The Insurgency, the Supreme has met this week to decide on the sentence of nine months in prison.
Generalised Corruption: Of the hundreds of Spanish politicians charged with corruption in the last decade NONE are now in prison.
The rapper Valtonyc escaped and is in exile iun Belgium. The Belgian Court of Appeal will announce the final decision next September 8 after meetings on Tuesday with the defense of the Mallorcan rapper. Valtonyc fled the Spanish State with the aim of avoiding a sentence ratified by the Supreme Court of three and a half years in prison for, among other things, insulting the Crown.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Supreme Court has finally agreed to take up the investigation opened by Anticorruption on the role of ex King Carlos in the construction of the High Speed Train lines in Saudi Arabia, without considering, however, the clarification of corruption cases.
If the money laundering resulting from those commissions occurred before 2014, Juan Carlos will remain, once again, unpunished as a consequence of the “inviolability” of the monarchy.
Several sources affirm that the judicial investigation on the former Head of State may be accelerating his decision to leave Spain to settle in the Dominican Republic.
While the recent rebellion against the police and white supremacy has been historical, it has also been coupled by an attempt by the State to drown the uprising in a sea of tear-gas and rubber bullets. While demonstrations and actions continue, the State is now gearing up for a more long-term strategy of repression, as a vast network of FBI agents, attorneys, and local police comb through hours of footage and social media, looking for targets.
Already, over 10,000 people have been arrested across the so-called US and around 75 currently have federal charges; many of which carry extensive prison sentences. Moreover, there are reports of FBI door-knocks and visits to those that have recently been arrested. Often times people are being asked if they are involved in “antifa” while some are even propositioned with becoming informants.
As the Pentagon readies for the rebellions to come, its important for us to begin to map out and prepare a strategy of long-term movement defense of all rebels swept up during the uprising. Reaching out to our legal correspondent, we sat down to discuss just what is happening and what we can expect.
IGD:Broadly speaking, what has happened, repression wise, since the rebellion? We know that there has been a slew of federal charges and lots of door knocks by the FBI, can you talk about both?
So much has happened. Across the country, police have unleashed incredible violence against protesters, rebels, journalists, and bystanders. Countless people have been arrested and are facing all sorts of state charges in local courts. I read that the number was over 10,000 arrests nationally.
Additionally, at least 74 people across the country are facing federal charges for their alleged roles in the uprisings. This is particularly concerning because federal charges tend to carry much more severe penalties than comparable state charges, and are less likely to get lenient plea bargains. So that’s 74 uprising participants who are facing very serious prison time, just in a couple weeks. Countless more people have been visited or contacted by federal agents, usually FBI or ATF but also Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, or DEA.
There’s a long history of this repression, especially against Black liberation movements and to a lesser extent anarchist movements. The FBI has always been a political police force. Their headquarters is named for J. Edgar Hoover who founded the FBI to fight communists and anarchists, and then orchestrated COINTELPRO to destroy the Black freedom movement for close to three decades. Crushing this uprising, this movement, is in their very DNA.
People are arrested in Hollywood, California, on June 1st, 2020. So far, more than 10,000 arrests have been made. AFP via Getty Images, shared with thanks
But the more we understand their repression, the better we can fight back against it. So I started compiling information about all the uprising-related federal prosecutions and sharing it with other people involved in legal support and anti-repression efforts around the country.
IGD: How are these investigations unfolding? What tactics and strategies are being used to identify people?
Most of the cases I first reviewed seemed like pretty low-hanging fruit, prosecutions of opportunity. But this week I’ve seen cases where the feds together with local law enforcement put in quite a bit of effort to investigate and identify people. One example was a case out of Philly where a woman is accused of burning two cop cars. The lengths they went to in order to connect this unidentified person at the protest to an identifiable person through online shopping records, social media accounts, promo videos from work, government and commercial databases, etc. surprised even me.
BLURRING faces on your photos helps, easily done free on GIMP
I think this is where we see a significant connection to the J20 inauguration prosecutions in 2017-2018. The government is willing to invest a lot of resources into scouring the internet for photos and videos from protests, analyzing them in excruciating detail to find any unique identifying features that they can, and then scouring social media and other sources for a match. This is the full weight of the surveillance state bearing down.
Other ways they’ve been able to allegedly identify people recently include:
Graffiti artist Banksy has created a sketch for a slavery memorial in Bristol that would incorporate slave-trader Edward Colston and the protesters who tore his statue down.
Western countries see the rest of the world as their playing field fit only for exploitation.— Pramoedya Ananta Toer in conversation with Andre Vltchek, in Jakarta, 2004 The “global playing field” is “level” only from the perspective of the west.— Robert H Wade
The success of Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite (2019) has drawn attention to his back catalogue, in particular his first mainly English-language film, Snowpiercer (2013).
Snowpiercer is a fast-paced movie about a train on a global circular train track, set in the future after a climate change engineering experiment goes wrong. Ice cold temperatures freeze the world into a new ice age. The train is designed and run by the magnate Wilford to circumnavigate the planet perpetually. The passengers, the earth’s only survivors, are segregated: the elites in the luxurious forward cars and the poorest in the grimy tail compartments.
The tail-enders, led by Curtis, decide to revolt and make a plan to get through the fortified doors of each carriage to take over and control the train. However, after battles with the train guards take a heavy toll on the insurgents, a select few are brought to the front of the train to meet Wilford.
This doesn’t come out of nowhere. We had British nationalist fascist thugs sending bullets and parcel bombs through the post in 2011. We had threats to journalists writing about their beloved fitba club in 2012.
We had British nationalist fascist thugs attacking peaceful independence supporters in 2014. We had British nationalist fascist thugs attacking Irish republicans in 2019.
And in 2020 we have seen British nationalist fascist thugs run rampage in the centre of Glasgow, because they know that they’ve got away with it before, and they’re convinced they’ll get away with it again. For far too long the authorities in Scotland have appeased them, covered up for them, tried to blame ‘both sides’ when it’s only British nationalists fascist thugs who are guilty of violence.
And for generations we’ve had institutionalised anti-Irish racism masking itself as sectarianism, as a problem for the fitba, as a problem for the West Coast.
Yet again British nationalist fascist thugs have rioted in the centre of Glasgow, and yet again we see the intimate connection between racism, anti-Catholic bigotry, so-called loyalism, and British nationalism. And yet again the Conservative party in Scotland is conspicuous by its silence. For all the hand wringing about the independence movement, Scotland’s racism is tightly bound up with British imperialism. For far too long the media and establishment in Scotland have turned a blind eye to Scotland’s problem with British nationalism. It’s time that ended
And generation after generation, year after year, it goes on and it goes on because the media and authorities in Scotland are too afraid to call this out for what it is. This is not a Scottish problem. This is not an Irish problem. This is a problem with British nationalism and its violent entitlement.
Let’s be clear. The violence in George Square is not Scotland’s shame. This is a problem which belongs to British nationalism in Scotland. This is a British problem. Britishness owns it. Sectarianism and racism are a disease of British nationalism. Rule Britannia is the song that they chant while they’re kicking our heads in.
As police violence intensifies alongside the inequalities it exists to enforce, some communities are mobilizing to defend themselves, while others have yet to understand why this is necessary. In response, we’ve prepared this poster stressing the structural role the police play in maintaining capitalism. A large full-color poster printed on white book paper to decorate the walls of your city! The back contains the essay Seven Myths about the Police.
This week far-Right and vigilante violence against Black Lives Matter demonstrators ramped up.
We’ve got reports of someone shot at a statue protest in Albuquerque, New Mexico by a militia member;
Proud Boys attacking someone in Seattle, WA;
violent Trump supporters clashing with a rural Black Lives Matter demonstration in Ohio;
neo-Nazis pulling a gun on people outside of Pittsburgh;
and a Unicorn Riot reporter attacked by white vigilantes while the police watched and then threatened to arrest the reporter for “inciting a riot.”
Meanwhile, a Boogaloo PR manual has been leaked, a slew of arrests have taken place following previous far-Right incidents and attacks and we got doxxes of Operation: Werewolf, the Three Percenters, and more!
note> the Twitter posts and videos don’t reproduce here or without media.. see original HERE>This Week in Fascism
Without further ado, let’s begin!
News
Albuquerque Militia Member Opens Fire at Protest Calling for the Removal of Spanish Conquistador Statue, Injures One
Protesters attempting to pull down a statue of Conquistador Juan de Oñate, a brutal colonial governor who oversaw Spanish rule and the 1599 Acoma Massacre, faced off against heavily armed members of the New Mexico Civil Guard today. At one point, a counter-demonstrator took out a pistol and was pushed away from the statue by demonstrators, after which he opened fire, injuring one person who was taken to the hospital.
#Albuquerque activists IDing shooter as son of former sheriff who once ran for City Council because he “felt compelled to seek his first elected office out of fear [of] the community… becoming a “third world country.” Also attended #GOP convention in 2016 as an alt-delegate. https://t.co/mAX3Mk2MEGpic.twitter.com/uzMENWgfg
