Fact of the Day

World Health Organization (WHO) said tobacco was the world's leading cause of preventable death, killing 7 million people each year.

"That's equivalent to wiping out the entire population of Bulgaria or Paraguay every year. That's not acceptable," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the report's launch in New York. Victims include 890,000 people who die annually from second-hand smoke exposure.

No aid, no reporting

20 civilians have been killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition while attempting to escape fighting in Yemen, according to the UN and witnesses. Survivors said a vehicle packed with families fleeing battles between government forces and Houthi rebels near the city of Taiz was hit on Tuesday. Officials said many of those killed were from the same family, including women and children.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths in the Mawzaa district, where civilians had been displaced by intensified hostilities in the nearby port of Mocha. 

“Nowhere in Yemen safe for civilians,” said UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo. “Each of Yemen's mainland governorates is affected by conflict and tens thousands have been killed and injured. We have been advocating incessantly for respect of international humanitarian law and protection of civilians in Yemen. More must be done.”

Saudi Arabia is using British-manufactured weapons in the offensive, sparking failed legal challenge by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade in the High Court. Judges found that the Saudi-led coalition was “not deliberately targeting civilians” and alleged massacres were under investigation, concluding that it had not been established that there was “a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.

UN officials said the coalition barred one of its flights to Yemen's Houthi-controlled capital, Sana’a. The plane was going to bring aid workers and BBC reporters from Djibouti.

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Falling standards

shitty food

It's an area about the size of Germany: 29.3 million hectares (72.4 million acres) of cropland worldwide is mainly irrigated with what's flushed down the toilet, a study published in "Environmental Research Letters" reports.

That translates into a major health risk for all people who eat the food that grows on that farmland. As many as 885 million urban residents are being exposed to dangerous pathogens, including parastites and bacteria, according to the researchers'. Untreated wastewater might contain parasite eggs or bacteria leading to cholera, but mostly bacteria causing diarrhea. According to Drechsel, children below the age of five are the most sensitive to diarrhea, often with fatal consequences. Apart from a health risk, it is also an environmental issue. If sewage enters lake and rivers, it can contaminate waters and harm wildlife. Wastewater also contains high amounts of phosphates and other substances which fuel algae growth, taking up even more oxygen and creating a so-called "dead zone" where fish and other animals cannot live.

Irrigation with untreated wastewater is especially an issue around bigger cities without proper sewage treatment, and - according to the recent study - particularly in China, India, Pakistan, Mexico and Iran.

In Ghana, farmers around large cities mainly grow vegetables, Drechsel says.

"Vegetables are cash crops number one, especially exotic leafy vegetables." Such crops  require regular irrigation, unlike most staple foods such as grains.

Nearly a million people in urban Ghana eat vegetables produced with polluted water every day, he says.

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Understanding Socialism

The Media

Don't vote for your masters

FREE YOURSELF FROM WAGE-SLAVERY

Unlike the usual election manifesto, this is addressed to those who do not a vote as well as to those who do. Its object is to gain, not your vote, but your understanding. It is evident that none of the is worthy of your support.  Your party should be democratic. It should have socialism as its programme and the class struggle as its guiding principle.  Its candidates should be controlled by the rank and file. It should devote its energies to converting the workers to socialism, and to organising them for the conquest of political power for its realisation. It should never compromise with capitalist parties, and should refuse to barter away the workers’ salvation for crumbs that profit not. That is the party that you should support. Only one party answers to that description in this country—The SOCIALIST PARTY.

 But since the ground must be well tilled before the good harvest can be reaped, that party is putting no candidates forward in Scotland during the present election. Even the poverty which impedes the activity of the working- class party is in itself only a reflex of the present unreadiness of the electorate. Therefore the principles of Socialism must be more widely propagated and the workers more fully organised, before candidates of the Socialist Party can usefully enter the parliamentary arena. 

if you realise that your policy must be distinct from and hostile to all capitalist politics and that Socialism alone can help your class, then it is your duty to join the Socialist Party and take a democratic share in its work; thus advancing the day—not far distant—when it will place its own candidates— your candidates—in the parliamentary field to wage uncompromisingly the fight for socialism. But until you can thus vote for yourselves and strike a blow against exploitation, it is clearly your duty to spoil your ballot-paper. To do otherwise would be to support the system that crushes you.

Go to the polling station but only to write 'Socialism' across your voting paper; for if you cannot vote now for what you want, it is folly to vote for what you do not want. The vote, like the razor, is an instrument for a purpose. If you cannot for the moment use it to your advantage, it is madness to cut your throat. And by voting for your enemies, for traitors and charlatans, you are surely cutting your throat.

 However, whether you have a vote or not, realise how much depends on you and how much remains to be done. A vote, even for a candidate of the Socialist Party, is of no value unless it expresses a socialist consciousness. Understanding must precede action, for socialism is impossible until the workers become class-conscious socialists. There is, therefore, work for you to do. There are outlets for your energy infinitely more profitable to your class than voting for the defenders of exploitation. The army of socialism must be recruited, and your place is within the ranks of the organisation of your class, taking your part in the battle in the class war for the emancipation of your fellow-workers from wage-slavery.