NO BRITISH DU SHELLS TO UKRAINE!

UK is supplying depleted uranium (DU) shells to Ukraine to be used by the Challenger tanks Britain is sending. DU ammunition was first deployed by the United States in the 1990 Gulf War. In that war and the 2003 Iraq War 300 metric tons of DU weapons were used, and 10 metric tons were used in the 1999 NATO military action in Yugoslavia. DU weapons were also used by the US military in Syria in 2015.
    Significant increases in horrific birth defects, leukaemia and other cancers, kidney damage, and mental illness in children have been recorded in areas where the munitions were used.
    In 2001, the World Health Organisation (WHO) completed a scientific review that concluded that depleted uranium is both chemically and radiologically toxic.
    The DU used in battle is spread throughout the environment including the soil and water tables, and remains radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years.
    The rich Western countries which dominate and control the UN and its bodies have promised to clean up the DU in Iraq, but have failed to deliver.
    It is likely that the people of the former Yugoslavia and Iraq will be living with the tragic consequences of the use of DU for generations to come, unless the rich nations come forward to finance environmental cleansing and monitoring on a massive scale.
    But we can try to stop DU weapons being used in yet another NATO-backed war, a war which the entire NATO alliance is prolonging with billions in arms deliveries and active support for the Kiev regime through intelligence and undercover forces operating in the country.
    We are calling on the British government to reverse its decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, and ensure that DU ammunition already sent to Ukraine is not used in battle.


Look for the Golly...

...the Golly on the jar” was the jingle when Robertson’s used a “golliwog” to promote their jams and marmalade. Generations of kids collected the golliwog tokens needed to get a seemingly endless series of enamel Golly badges.
    Back in the news following a row over their display in a south Essex pub we’re told – at least in some quarters – that these rag-dolls are “loveable” mementos from the “good old days”. In fact these hideous frizzy-haired dolls with their bulging eyes and bright red lips are nothing more than offensive racist caricatures of black people.
    The landlord of the White Hart Inn in Grays wonders what all the fuss is about when the police followed up complaints about his collection of gollywogs displayed behind the bar – including two hanging from a beam above. He denies there’s any racist motive behind the display of his wife’s collection of these dolls. He says "a mountain has been made out of a molehill" and that the dolls were "part of our history".
    It certainly is part of our history – but not one that there’s anything to be proud of. The gollywog comes from the American slave-owning past seen through the spectrum of pre-war British colonialism, the “white man’s burden” and “lesser breeds without the law”.
    We have, of course, moved on from those days. The Empire has gone along with the colonial and racist ideology that was taught in our schools to justify its existence. The racist and Nazi movements that flourished in the 1970s have been marginalised by mass action on the street. Even the golliwogs have gone. They were eventually removed by Robertson’s in 2002. But the fact that there’s any discussion about this at all in the bourgeois media shows we’ve still got a long way to go.