The value of the Queen’s land and property has been written down by more than half a billion.

The Crown Estate encompasses London’s Regent Street and St James’s as well as malls and retail parks around the country, alongside the rights to seabeds around the British Isles. However, the coronavirus pandemic has forced it to consider the value of its holdings as retailers and office tenants struggle to make rental payments. The group wrote down the value of its portfolio by £552.5m to £13.4bn in annual results.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/18/queens-property-holdings-crown-estate-500m-writedown-fall-rental-receipts

 Unaffordable water bills and the threat of disconnection causes significant psychological distress for Americans, according to a new study published in the Journal of Public Health.

A Guardian investigation into 12 American cities found the price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two-fifths of residents in some cities living in neighborhoods with unaffordable bills.

 In Detroit, at least 141,000 have been disconnected since the city filed for bankruptcy in 2014 as part of a widely condemned debt-collection policy targeting mostly poor black residents. Nowhere has the unfolding affordability crisis hit harder than Detroit, where water rates have increased by up to 400% in the last 20 years. Almost four in 10 Detroit residents live in poverty, the highest rate among the 20 largest US cities. The UN described the mass shutoffs as “contrary to human rights” and condemned the disproportionate impact on African Americans, who account for 80% of the city.

“Water is vital to health, of course, but also to human dignity. For the world’s wealthiest country to be segregating access, it takes a toll. We’re only beginning to appreciate the level of water worry that poor people in this country carry,” said Nadia Gaber, lead research from the department of anthropology, history and social medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/us-water-bills-psychological-distress-study

 Is there really a difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party? Many Americans believe the current electoral system is rigged. These two capitalist parties have made it nearly impossible for any other party to participate in elections. The first hurdle is simply to gather sufficient signatures to get on the ballot. A national candidate is obliged to go through a daunting process in every state with each state having its own rules for ballot access. It is a system that excludes by its very nature and by subterfuge a viable third party. 

 Progressives candidates often run as Democrats and have gained seats from city councils to Congress. They think that it is possible for progressives to capture the Democratic Party and make it into a radical party of the people. The Democratic Party would never allow a takeover or even a significant influence to grow within it. The Democratic Party, just like the Republican Party, belongs to capitalists, just as does almost everything else in the country. The DNC demonstrated it power when it dealt with that interloper Bernie Sanders. They soon had him toeing the party-line.

But even if it was possible for the left to take control of the Democratic Party, the result would be a mass migration of conservative Democrats to the Republicans, subsequently strengthening it. However what we do witness happening, is disenchanted anti-Trump Republicans supporting the Democratic Party. We have the Lincoln Project and at the Democratic convention a series of Republican politicians endorsed Biden. The Justice Democrats were side-lined. So when faced with a right-wing threat from Trump, the Democratic Party swings to the right, not the left.  Progressives can no longer pretend that their presence within the Democratic Party offers any real power over policy. The Republicans and the Democrats nearly always agree on the big issues of foreign policy and domestic economics.

The two corporate parties represent their Wall Street and Big Business donors, and they continue to undermine the rights of workers and let employers get away with breaking labor, health, and safety and environment laws. The “lesser evil” Biden offers half-measures, but nothing of substance and nothing that will save the planet or mitigate the ecological vandalism. Biden will not create social justice nor end violent conflict, racism. He will not  banish hunger and malnutrition, eliminate student debt. He will fail to house the homeless. Biden will not provide justice, support and solidarity to asylum seekers and migrants. It is impossible to comprehend that Biden possesses any vision. He is tied to the existing institutions and its capitalist ideology. He cannot heal our communities.

 It is time turn our attention to re-imagining society and building a new system from the one we presently live under. We must establish a better way of living together. We need to demand changes that move humanity in a new direction completely. Transforming the world seems impossible at first. The obstacles appear insurmountable at the outset. Nevertheless, as the English socialist William Morris explained:

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

Our world is one of disruption, dislocation, destruction and chaos. It is another era of the Robber Barons. But even a criminally unequal society still requires a certain degree of the consent of the governed in order to function. Police brutality alone won’t work as Trump is discovering. So some of our masters decide the good cops are the better option and send in Biden and Harris. 

 Spain has the highest number of cases in Western Europe, with more than 610,000, while more than 30,000 have died.

Less well-off communities like El Raval are being hit harder, with the gap between poorer and richer areas at the heart of a tense debate in Spain over how to curb the increase in cases, as some cities envisage targeted lockdowns that would focus on the more affected – and therefore often poorer – areas.

At the peak of the pandemic, Barcelona’s district with the lowest income had 2.5 times more cases than the richest while across the Catalonia region the mortality rate was five times higher among the poorest, two studies showed.

In Madrid, the infection rate in a northern district is almost six times lower than in a southern district with a lower average income and a higher migrant population.

Pedro Gullon, a Spanish Epidemiology Society board member, said the inequality gap, fuelled by housing and labour factors, was not the only reason behind Spain’s high infection rate, but the increase in cases had made those disparities more visible.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-spain-poverty/in-hard-hit-spain-the-poor-suffer-even-more-from-the-pandemic-idUKKBN2682VQ

 More than 197,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and more than 50m Americans have lost their jobs, 23 million have no health insurance, and 13 million are hungry

Over the same period, the already vast fortunes of America’s 643 billionaires have soared by an average of 29% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has at the same time laid waste to tens of millions of jobs around the world.

The richest of the superrich have benefited by $845bn , according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies.

The report calculated that 643 billionaires in the US had racked up $845bn (£642bn) in collective wealth gains since 18 March, when lockdowns began across the US and much of the rest of the world. The collective wealth of the billionaire class increased from $2.95tn to $3.8tn. That works out to gains of $141bn a month, or $4.7bn a day.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, who was already the world’s richest person, has benefited most from the pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns. His personal fortune, as estimated by Forbes magazine, has risen by $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn. That 65% increase results mostly from the soaring value of Amazon shares as more people turn to the delivery service. In just one day in July, Bezos saw his fortune increase by more than £10bn. Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic

Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of electric car company Tesla, has also benefited from the pandemic. His estimated fortune has risen by 274%, to $92bn.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has seen his wealth increase by 84% or $45.9bn to $100.6bn.

Bill Gates has seen his estimated fortune grow by 19% to $116bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/17/wealth-of-us-billionaires-rises-by-nearly-a-third-during-pandemic

 Rich nations have already bought up half of the promised COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report from Oxfam. The countries represent just 13% of the global population, but have dominated orders from big pharma companies for a potential vaccine.

About 50% of these have been preemptively bought by countries and regions including the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, Switzerland and Israel. The remaining 2.6 billion have been bought by or promised to developing countries including India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to new levels of discrimination against vulnerable communities in Asia, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned on Thursday.

A survey of 5,000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Pakistan found that half of respondents blamed a specific group for spreading the coronavirus. Many respondents blamed Chinese people, immigrants and foreigners.

“It is particularly concerning that both national migrant and foreign workers are blamed for the spread of COVID-19 as they are quite vulnerable already,” researcher Dr Viviane Fluck told Reuters news agency.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-rich-nations-buy-half-of-promised-vaccine-supply/a-54956400

 The world’s poorest children are getting even poorer, according to UNICEF and Save the Children. And they warn that the situation could get a lot worse in the coming months. The coronavirus crisis has plunged 150 million more children into poverty according to an analysis published by UNICEF and Save The Children on Thursday.

The number of children living in poverty in low and middle-income countries increased by 15% to 1.2 billion during the corona pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures. 

Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director, explained the importance of the report’s results saying, “families on the cusp of escaping poverty have been pulled back in, while others are experiencing levels of deprivation they have never seen before. Most concerningly, we are closer to the beginning of this crisis than its end,” she added.

https://www.dw.com/en/unicef-coronavirus-poverty-children/a-54956153

 New Zealand is in its deepest recession in decades. The country’s GDP shrank by 12.2% between April and June as the lockdown and border closures hit. It is New Zealand’s first recession since the global financial crisis and its worst since 1987.

Stats NZ spokesman Paul Pascoe said the anti coronavirus measures implemented since 19 March have had a huge impact of some sectors of the economy.

“Industries like retail, accommodation and restaurants, and transport saw significant declines in production because they were most directly affected by the international travel ban and strict nationwide lockdown,” he said.

Treasury forecasts released yesterday suggested massive debt and continuing disruptions are likely to delay a full recovery.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54186359

If history is anything to go by, then we know who will pay the costs of this recession – we will – the working class 

 The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has committed systematic human rights violations including killings and torture amounting to crimes against humanity, United Nations investigators said.

Reasonable grounds existed to believe that Maduro and his interior and defence ministers ordered or contributed to the crimes documented in the report to silence opposition, the investigators said.  They had information indicating Maduro ordered the director of the national intelligence service SEBIN to detain opponents “without judicial order”, Francisco Cox of the UN fact-finding mission told a news briefing.

The report was based on more than 270 interviews with victims, witnesses, former officials and lawyers, and confidential documents. They included the former head of the National Intelligence Service, General Christopher Figuera, whose testimony was corroborated, the report said.

 Most unlawful executions by security forces and state agents have not been prosecuted in Venezuela, where the rule of law and democratic institutions have broken down, the investigators said. They said other national jurisdictions and the International Criminal Court, which opened a preliminary examination into Venezuela in 2018, should consider prosecutions. 

“The mission found reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have since 2014 planned and executed serious human rights violations, some of which – including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture – amount to crimes against humanity,” panel chair Marta Valinas said. The panel found that officers in the military, police and intelligence had committed extrajudicial killings and called on the government to disband the special actions forces of the police known as FAES.

The panel said it had reasonable grounds to believe the intelligence service falsified or planted evidence on victims, and that its agents tortured detainees. They included opposition lawmaker Fernando Alban, who the government said committed suicide in 2018 but whose party said was murdered. Navy Captain Rafael Acosta was believed to have died of torture in the custody of the military intelligence agency DGCIM last year, the UN experts said.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/maduro-security-forces-committed-crimes-humanity-200916221539434.html

Back in 2015, the Socialist Standard drew attention to the high suicide rates for indigenous peoples. An article in the current Lancet medical shows very little has  improved. 

In January, 2019, seven Aboriginal children died by suicide in Australia. By March, at least 24 young Aboriginal people were reported to have taken their lives, including three children younger than 12 years. Despite Australia’s wealth, the health statistics for Aboriginal peoples are dire and alarming. High rates of suicide and a disproportionate burden of disease and injury for Aboriginal peoples is an ongoing and disturbing trend. Mental health inequities in Australia are similar to those faced by Indigenous populations in other countries. Globally, racism, poverty, unemployment, and disenfranchisement substantially affect the mental health and wellbeing of Indigenous young people.

 Across Australian states and territories, the proportion of Aboriginal young people who reported high-to-very-high psychological distress was greatest in Western Australia (44%, or 7400 people).