Military Affairs

Has WWIII Started?

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via Strategic Culture

The fact that NATO is stepping up its combat support for the Ukrainian military in Britain and on other member states’ territories is clear proof that the U.S.-led axis is at war with Russia. This is no longer a proxy war, but rather a full-scale multi-level war.

“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine.” So said U.S. President Joe Biden back in March this year while also bragging at the same time about pumping Ukraine with lethal weapons to ensure that the NATO-backed Kiev regime would not be defeated.

Biden’s nationwide speech added with a foreboding intonation: “A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something that we must strive to prevent.”

We should have expected that appalling, fatuous contradiction to sooner or later become manifestly untenable. Indeed, the American people and the world have been conned by a warmongering puppet in the White House.

In reality, it looks like the Biden administration and its NATO partners have done everything to strive toward making war against Russia happen. This American president’s words (like those of his predecessors) have no credibility. Despite his apparent grave warning about preventing WWIII, the manikin in the White House has facilitated this very outcome in the abject service of U.S. imperialist interests. Biden has been a loyal servant of American warmongering for over 50 years, supporting every criminal war that U.S. imperialism has waged. However, it’s a mistake to blame Biden personally, a so-called Democrat. He is but the figurehead for a system that needs war in order to function. If for talk’s sake, Donald Trump or some other Republican politician happened to be in the White House, we would no doubt see the same despicable dilemma.

There are increasing reports of military attacks on Crimea and other parts of the Russian Federation. The Belgorod Region neighboring Ukraine has been bombed several times with villages being evacuated. A Ukrainian drone also reportedly tried to attack the Kerch Bridge which connects the Russian mainland with Crimea. The 19-km bridge was opened in May 2018 by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cost of $3.7 billion.

It is not clear yet what are the exact causes of these explosions. Initially, Russian authorities claimed they were accidental fires, but now they are admitting acts of sabotage being committed. Western media reports claim U.S. and NATO missiles or drones are involved. The United States is increasing its supplies of long-range offensive weapons as well as C-4 explosives for sabotage operations. Up to $40 billion worth of munitions has been pledged by the U.S., Britain, Poland, Germany and other NATO powers to support the Nazi-infested Kiev regime in its war against Russia. Ukraine has descended into an orgy of Western militarism.

The Kiev regime’s military conduct is being overseen by American and British intelligence. Attacks on Crimea and presumably other parts of the Russian Federation are approved by Washington and London.

In addition to an unprecedented flood of NATO weapons into Ukraine, it is increasingly apparent that the U.S.-led axis is training Ukrainian forces.

This week it was reported that Ukrainian soldiers are being trained in Britain to go fight. At a Copenhagen conference last week, British recruitment and training programs for Ukraine were supported by other NATO members including Denmark, Canada, Poland and the Baltic states. The U.S. and its NATO allies have been running combat training in Ukraine for years. That was partly the reason why Russian forces went into Ukraine in February this year to neutralize a growing national security threat.

The fact that NATO is stepping up its combat support for the Ukrainian military in Britain and on other member states’ territories is clear proof that the U.S.-led axis is at war with Russia. This is no longer a proxy war, but rather a full-scale multi-level war.

Another ominous development was the deployment of American B-52 long-range bombers to Sweden this week. The Nordic country is a soon-to-be new member of NATO along with Finland. The combined move is intended as a calculated threat to Russia’s Arctic region. The Arctic has long seen increasing NATO forces menacing Russia, but the first-ever deployment of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Sweden is an “important signal”, as Sweden’s Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist gloated.

All of this shows a heinous, relentless logic for war. Biden’s public misgivings about World War Three were just contemptible piffle. The United States has been gearing up for hostilities against Russia since at least the CIA coup d’état in Kiev in 2014. It really doesn’t matter who sits in the White House. Obama, Trump, Biden, like others before them, are all just message boys for U.S. imperialism. The American ruling regime has a desperate addiction to war to revive its diminishing global power and failing capitalist economy. That’s why Washington is hellbent on recklessly stoking dangerous tensions with Russia and China, as Russia’s Putin pointed out this week.

The sheer array of military involvement in Ukraine and the new, dangerous phase of striking Russian territory means that the U.S.-led NATO axis is de facto at war against Russia. The axis consists of 30 nations (not including Sweden and Finland) plus other non-NATO allies such as Australia and New Zealand. Weapons of increasing long-range offensive capability, as well as training of military forces, are flowing to Ukraine from all of these U.S.-led nations.

Last December, Russia appealed for a diplomatic resolution of long-held strategic security concerns regarding NATO and Ukraine. Those appeals were arrogantly shunted away by Washington and its vassals. Earlier apparent reservations among NATO members about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine have been jettisoned too. Evidently, so too abandoned are erstwhile reservations about starting an international conflict.

The United States, Britain and other imperialist powers are callously turning on the taps to make a bloodbath in Ukraine. The fascist regime they are backing in Kiev is wantonly using nuclear terrorism by attacking the largest nuclear power station in Europe at Zaporozhye. And yet the Western sponsors continue to double down on the provocations to Russia, provocations that now appear to include military strikes on Russian sovereign territory.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that “decision-making centers” will be targeted if its territory is attacked. That warning implies Western capitals are vulnerable. Russia has also warned that if its national security is threatened then it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for defense. The unthinkable is becoming thinkable. Western states are in thrall to a warmongering agenda and media system that acts like a propaganda ministry for war. Shamefully, there are scarcely any political voices in the West calling for diplomatic negotiations for peace.

The madcap U.S.-led Western powers do not seem to recognize any boundaries. The whole conflict over Ukraine demonstrates the relentless logic of belligerence towards Russia that the Western ruling regimes are addicted to, in the same way as they are towards any other nation that is perceived as an obstacle to global power ambitions. The Western regimes are helplessly, hopelessly charted for war regardless of the democratic interests and wishes of their populations or the constraints of international law. So much for rules-based order! Western rulers and their puppets in office are leading their people and the rest of the world over the abyss.

Incredibly, it seems, the same vile political and economic forces that created two previous world wars are salivating again. And they are unleashing their apocalyptic desires with the same lies and self-righteous deceptions.

Energy Wars

And the Looting by the US Continues . . .

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The US continues to export Syrian oil. Today, SANA sources reported that the US armed forces, together with local formations controlled by them, carried 137 tankers with oil stolen from Syrian oil fields to their bases on Iraqi territory. On August 14 , they wrote, the US stole 233 tankers.

The interdepartmental coordination headquarters of Russia and Syria condemned the US policy in Syria, in particular the looting of the country’s oil reserves, which is the main cause of the difficult humanitarian situation. It is noted that it is the US sanctions, especially against organizations that are engaged in the reconstruction of water and electricity supply facilities, healthcare and other infrastructure facilities that create difficulties for the country’s recovery.

The United States does not comment on its actions, but simply continues to steal oil and support the separatists.

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

The Likely Case will be Ongoing Advance through Odessa to Transdnistria and the Romanian Border

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John Mearsheimer’s latest article on Ukraine in “Foreign Affairs” – a critique

By Gilbert Doctorow

Gilbert Doctorow

A few days ago, the most widely read journal of international politics in the United States, Foreign Affairs published an article by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer entitled “Playing with Fire in Ukraine: the Underappreciated Risks of Catastrophic Escalation.” The online version is accessible here – https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/playing-fire-ukraine

This publication was a major event in itself given FA’s orthodox spin on everything to do with Russia and the challenges to the Washington narrative made by Mearsheimer ever since his article “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” appeared in the autumn 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs. At the time, that article prompted a paroxysm of rage among the hardliners who form the majority of the American foreign policy community and of the journal’s readers.

The video of a speech on the same subject which Mearsheimer made in 2014 shortly after the article came out has been viewed by more than 12 million visitors to the www.youtube.com site. An updated version of the same speech presented on youtube during this spring has attracted more than 1.6 million viewers. It is safe to say that John Mearsheimer is the most widely seen and listened to academic disputing the conventional wisdom on the Ukraine war today.

I freely acknowledge the merit of Mearsheimer’s new article: to warn how the conflict in Ukraine could easily spin out of control and escalate to a nuclear war. The White House team of inexperienced and ignorant advisers must be shaken from their complacency and anything published in Foreign Affairs will necessarily be brought to their attention, whereas a piece published by www.antiwar.com, for example, will be burned before reading.

However, this does not excuse Mearsheimer from basing himself on the same restricted and distorted sources of information as are used by mainstream media and mainstream academics, while ignoring other sources of information that would give greater depth to his analysis and possibly change his conclusions substantially. To be explicit, I believe he has been listening too closely to Washington and Kiev’s rosy forecasts of a counter-offensive that will result in a stalemate, possibly in a Russian defeat, and he is not listening to Russian reporting on the progress of their campaign on the ground, which points to a slow and steady grinding down of all in their path to conquest of the Donetsk oblast, meaning the capture of the entire Donbas.

The Russian advance is only slightly slowed by diversion of troops to the Kherson region to nip in the bud that well advertised Ukrainian attack. The latest news is of the Russians approaching the strategic strong points of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the cradle of the Donbas independence movement in 2014. By taking these central region cities, they are cutting off the supply of weapons to the most heavily fortified Ukrainian positions just outside Donetsk city, which have been bombarding residential districts and killing civilians daily for the past eight years. This explains their finally overrunning and destroying Ukrainian positions in the town of Peski just two kilometers from the DPR capital this past week.

The capture of Peski was not reported in Western media just as the war crimes nature of its activity, concentrated on civilian targets in violation of international conventions on conduct of war, was never reported. Thus, the Russian advance carries no hint of ‘shock and awe,’ which is to say the Russians are doing nothing to grab headlines and force the hand of Biden to implement some disproportionate escalation.

The Russians’ latest timetable, as announced in their leading televised talk shows, is to complete the liberation of the Donbas by year’s end. After that, if there is no Ukrainian capitulation, the likely case will be ongoing advance through Odessa to Transdnistria and the Romanian border, at which point no peace treaty would be needed by anyone. The Zelensky regime could be left to die on the vine as mutual recriminations shake his power base.

Mearsheimer’s article goes into great detail over the many possible scenarios for dangerous if not catastrophic escalation of the conflict. But these are myriad and largely unforeseeable, so that he ultimately covers only a fraction of the possibilities for things to go haywire. They are, as he admits, not very likely to occur. Amen.

One of those possibilities for catastrophic escalation that has captured the attention of global media at present is the stand-off at the nuclear power plant in Russia-occupied Zaporozhie, Europe’s largest such power plant. Both sides to the conflict are playing up the threat inherent in artillery and rocket strikes on a nuclear installation for propagandistic purposes, to paint the other side as madmen: the Ukrainians speaking of the Kremlin leadership as nuclear terrorists and blackmailers, the Russians speaking of the Ukrainian forces firing on the power station as ‘apes carrying grenades.’ Surely damage to the plant followed by the release into the atmosphere of radioactive substances was on the mind of Mearsheimer when he formulated his article. However, let me be perfectly clear: this is a phony issue, just as the alleged Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports supposedly was forcing starvation on African nations that were failing to get grain they had ordered from Ukraine before the conflict. The fact is that the nuclear reactors are encased in meter-thick concrete walls which are impervious to all the projectiles which the Ukrainians are capable of launching. The risks are to the administrative buildings and cooling systems. The Russians are fully capable of shutting down the nuclear reactors at any time to prevent a catastrophe.

Now let me turn attention to the nuclear risk that Mearsheimer identifies in the article. He has taken up exactly the same argument as mainstream commentators in the United States, namely that Russia might resort to nuclear weapons in case the campaign turns against them due to higher levels of Western intervention including troops on the ground. We all know that troops are already on the ground, namely the ‘instructors’ who are directing fire for HIMARS. We know that senior American and other Western officers liaising with their Ukrainian counterparts were recently blown to bits by the Russian rocket attack on Vinnitsa. That was all hushed up and the only tip-off of this disaster for Washington was the firing of the Ukrainian intelligence leadership the next day.

Of course, no one knows what might yet force an escalation. But there again, Mearsheimer misses some important considerations. Why does he assume the Russians must escalate to nuclear options and why those options would be directed against Kiev and not, for example, against London? More to the point, he is missing the fact that the Russians have hardly begun to fight, as Putin recently said publicly. They have not mobilized and put out draft notices, they have not put the economy on a war footing. And they have not deployed their most consequential weaponry. Instead, they have held it back, ready for use if necessary in a direct war with NATO. This is massively destructive conventional payloads carried by hypersonic rockets and similar.

Then there is another dimension to the conflict which Mearsheimer does not address in his article though it will exert a decisive influence on whether Washington or Moscow wins the tug of war: the economic damage from sanctions on Europe through blow-back that is about to become politically unsustainable as the fall and winter heating season arrives. The Baltics and Poland are and will remain immune to reason, led as they are by delusional Russophobes. However, when the inevitable street demonstrations come in France, the most volatile of the major EU states, followed by Eastern Germany and even by Belgium, a more passive country, as I hear from the local elites I talk to, then the politicians of Europe will head off in contradictory directions and unity will collapse. The Russians are sure to win this psychological war despite all the efforts of EU state media to put a lid on it. The day when Scholz gives the go-ahead to opening Nord Stream II will mark the Russian victory and put an end to US-driven suicidal decision making here in Europe.

For all of the above reasons, I urge professor Mearsheimer and his followers to pay closer attention to what the Russians are saying and less attention to the hot air coming out of Washington.

Capitalism in Decay

American “Economy” is Nothing but Naked Plunder

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by Daniel Kovalik

The author teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-releasedNo More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests.

In the name of sanctions, geopolitical interests or the so-called “rules-based order”, colonial powers do what they do best – plunder those they see as weak and insubordinate

There is an old joke which still has resonance. A child asks his parent, “Why are there pyramids in Egypt?” The parent answers, “Because they were too big to take to Britain.” Of course, many a true word is spoken in jest. Indeed, there is an apocryphal story that back in the day when Vladimir Lenin was in exile in London, he would enjoy taking friends to the British Museum and explaining to them how and from what far-flung lands all the antiquities there were stolen.

One might have thought that these days of colonial plunder had ended, but one would be very wrong. Current examples abound. A notable one is, of course, the freezing by the US of $7 billion from the Afghanistan treasury – monies the US continues to hold even as it watches Afghans begin to die from starvation. Apparently, the US believes that, after laying waste to Afghanistan through 20 years of war and, even before that by supporting the mujahideen terrorists, it is entitled to some compensation. This upside-down type of reasoning abounds in the minds of those in the West who simply believe they can take whatever they wish.

Similarly, the US is now plundering Syria – another country utterly devastated in no small part by Washington-backed militants in a campaign to overthrow the elected president – of most of its oil, even as Syria suffers from severe energy blackouts. Thus, according to the Syrian Oil Ministry, “US occupation forces and their mercenaries,” referring to the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), “steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” amounting to around 83 percent of Syria’s daily oil production.

According to the ministry’s data, the Syrian oil sector has incurred losses of “about $105 billion since the beginning of the war until the middle of this year”as a result of the US oil theft campaign.

Additionally, the statement added that alongside the financial losses incurred by the oil sector were “losses of life, including 235 martyrs, 46 injured and 112 kidnapped.”

One of the biggest heists the US has carried out is against Russia. After the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the US seized an incredible $300 billion of Russian treasury funds which were deposited abroad. This was done, of course, without any due process, and to the great detriment of the Russian people – and with barely a critical word from Western pundits.

The US treatment of Venezuela abounds with other examples. As I write these words, the US is maneuvering to seize a commercial 747 airliner from Venezuela on the grounds that it once belonged to an Iranian airline which had some connection to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (which Washington has designated as terrorists) – which might sound like a tenuous justification, but the US really needs no reason. And this is simply the tip of the iceberg. The US has already seized Venezuela’s biggest single source of revenue – its US-based oil company CITGO – and is now in the process of selling off this company in pieces, even as Washington lifts restrictions on Venezuelan oil to shore up its own economy. The UK, meanwhile, has decided to keep over $1 billion in gold which Venezuela naively deposited in the Bank of England for safe-keeping. To add insult to injury, the US continues to criticize Venezuela for the hardships its people endure as a direct consequence of this plunder.

Meanwhile, the US continues to persecute Colombian businessman Alex Saab for trying to obtain food and medicine for the Venezuelan people , denied such amenities by US sanctions. Saab was captured at the behest of the US in Cabo Verde in 2020 as he was flying to Iran to negotiate a deal for humanitarian supplies, including medicine to confront the coronavirus pandemic, on a mission he was employed to perform by Caracas. Saab has since been removed to a federal prison in Miami, Florida, despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the US and Cabo Verde, and he continues to languish in prison as the wheels of US “justice” turn at a snail’s pace to resolve his case. In short, not only has the US freely stolen from Venezuela, but it is also going to great lengths to stop those who try to acquire the basic necessities for the Venezuelan people.

All of this illustrates that colonial habits die hard, and the US is always ready to turn to the tried and trusted traditions of plunder – whether to dig itself out of one of the worst economic crises in years, or to coerce other nations to serve its own geopolitical interests. The fact that the US is allowed to get away with this demonstrates that in the Washington-imposed “rules-based order” rule of law is nothing but a tool employed by the mighty to keep the weak down.

Military Affairs

Provoking China, Stage One

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The West trying to provoke and force China to launch a military operation against Taiwan

  1. Foreign delegations from Canada, Great Britain and Denmark are expected to visit Taiwan in the coming months.

  2. Western countries operate according to a proven scheme. First, China “swallowed” the flight of Nancy Pelosi, then the American congressmen, and then everyone else is going to fly.

  3. Everyone realized that it was possible to push further, their goal was to demonstrate China’s weakness by provoking military actions that the globalists had been planning for a long time.

  4. If China is not provoked by trips, they will move on to the second stage, raising the level of provocations. Sabotage is not excluded.

On the Road to Serfdom ?

WEF Is Now Present in Your Living-room

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) has announced it has recruited hundreds of thousands of “information warriors” to control the internet, policing social media and forums for “misinformation” and conspiracy content which will then be systematically shut down.
According to Klaus Schwab’s WEF, misinformation on the internet is an “infodemic” that is “potentially deadly” and requires a “cure.” The definition of misinformation, according to the WEF, is anything they disagree with. This means the information warriors will essentially be engaged in the act of shutting down dissent.

Conspiracy forums and Youtube comments sections are being targeted by the “digital first responders”who pretend to be ordinary users of the platform, but are actually working to disrupt proceedings and support the ideology of Klaus Schwab’s WEF.

Announcing the news on a WEF podcast, UN communications director Melissa Fleming said “So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels.”

The WEF are subliminally influencing the masses in order to push their narratives onto the people.

You can listen to the podcast in question here.

Also on the podcast, mainstream journalist Mark Little sets out potential solutions to the “infodemic.”

Little has worked for Twitter and founded Storyful, a social media news agency closely linked to the fact-checking program. He has now launched Kinzen, a company which is threatening to use artificial intelligence to censor online content.

“I‘ve started to see the spread of misinformation as a global health crisis,” Little tells World Vs Virus. “Misinformation is that serious a threat to our society.

“Misinformation is happening within our friends and families. So we have to find strategies to, first of all, recognize it. And, secondly, as active citizens, just like we wear masks to protect others, we need to be the good citizen, the active vector fighting back in our daily lives.”

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

US Marines Support Russia

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John Mark Duggan, a journalist and former Marine, said that a lot of former Marines in the US are on the side of Russia and don’t believe the lies of the western media.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

We Are Looking at a Long-Term World Destabilization by the Sore-Loser, the US

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The US is trying to establish control in the Asia-Pacific region and destroy its security architecture

This was stated by the first deputy chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff Viktor Poznikhir.

He noted that the Pentagon has already increased the number of military personnel in the Asia-Pacific region to 400,000 people.

According to Poznikhir, by 2028 Washington plans to deploy ballistic missiles, including hypersonic missiles with a radius of up to 5,500 km, on the territory of Asian states, primarily in Japan, and this poses a threat to the military security of the Russian Federation.

Earlier today, Vladimir Putin called Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan part of a conscious US strategy to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

A Multipolar Expo Shows Unipolar Wreckage

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via Moon of Alabama

Currently the 10th Moscow Conference for International Security is taking place. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin gave a speech there during which he painted the big picture of international dynamism that is driving the war in Ukraine and elsewhere:

The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.These objective processes are being opposed by the Western globalist elites, who provoke chaos, fanning long-standing and new conflicts and pursuing the so-called containment policy, which in fact amounts to the subversion of any alternative, sovereign development options. Thus, they are doing all they can to keep hold onto the hegemony and power that are slipping from their hands; they are attempting to retain countries and peoples in the grip of what is essentially a neocolonial order. Their hegemony means stagnation for the rest of the world and for the entire civilisation; it means obscurantism, cancellation of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism.

They are using all expedients. The United States and its vassals grossly interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states by staging provocations, organising coups, or inciting civil wars. By threats, blackmail, and pressure, they are trying to force independent states to submit to their will and follow rules that are alien to them. This is being done with just one aim in view, which is to preserve their domination, the centuries-old model that enables them to sponge on everything in the world. But a model of this sort can only be retained by force.
…
They need conflicts to retain their hegemony. It is for this reason that they have destined the Ukrainian people to being used as cannon fodder.
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It is obvious that it is only possible to reduce tensions in the world, overcome military-political threats and risks, improve trust between countries and ensure their sustainable development through a radical strengthening of the contemporary system of a multipolar world.I reiterate that the era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. No matter how strongly the beneficiaries of the current globalist model cling to the familiar state of affairs, it is doomed. The historic geopolitical changes are going in a totally different direction.

In parallel to the conference the Army-2022 International Military-Technical Forum, an international weapon sales show, is taking place.

Next to Russian weapons, all battle tested in real wars, the exhibition showed a few pieces weapons that visitor should better not buy.

Here is a U.S. M-777 howitzer in very pristine conditions. It was most likely purchased for little money from some Ukrainian patriot.

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A short video of the gun can be seen here.

There was more such captured or otherwise acquired stuff, partly in a bad state, on display:

Maya @MayaSashenka – 4:34 PM · Aug 16, 2022They have opened an extra exhibition dedicated to the captured weapons today. It will be soon open for public too.
Sadly I missed it, but RIA made a short video for public.
Video

I am pretty sure that multipolar visitors will make some fine jokes about those unipolar exhibition pieces.

Woke Lunacy

UK Hospitals Now Call them ‘birthing people’

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A third of England’s state-run maternity hospitals have adopted terms such as ‘birthing people’ or ‘pregnant people’, in addition to or in place of ‘mother’ or ‘pregnant woman’, according to the Daily Mail. Such de-gendered language is promoted by powerful and influential LGBTQ organizations.

The British newspaper submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the 124 NHS hospitals in England with maternity units, and found that 42 of them have adopted this language. Only 29 still exclusively use the words ‘women’ or ‘mother’ to talk about pregnancy, while 15 are considering giving their literature a woke makeover.

Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals told the Mail that they combine gendered and woke terms in the phrase “women and birthing people,” in a bid to “be as inclusive and representative as possible.” However, they could not say whether a single one of their patients has ever identified as anything except a woman.

Liverpool Women’s Hospital told a similar story, saying that while it has transitioned to using the “more fully inclusive language of pregnant people,” it has never recorded a single transgender patient using its maternity services.

Other hospitals are avoiding the word ‘woman’ in creative ways, with Southampton hospitals speaking of pregnancy in the second person – using terms like ‘you’ and ‘your pregnancy’ to avoid ‘woman’ or ‘women’.

The NHS’ official guidelines are unclear. While the health service’s website uses female terms in most of its maternity literature, individual hospitals have issued complex rules on when and where to avoid them. The NHS has also published information describing breastfeeding as ‘chestfeeding’, and removed the word ‘women’ from its online advice on menopause and ovarian and cervical cancers.

As of earlier this year, NHS hospitals were asking male patients if they were pregnant before certain procedures, as policy dictated that this question be asked to all patients, “regardless of how you may identify your gender.”

The scrubbing of gendered language has been fiercely opposed by some feminists, who argue that transgender-inclusive language erodes what it means to be female. However, it is supported by some of the UK’s most influential LGBTQ organizations. Stonewall, which ranks Britain’s workplaces by their LGBTQ-friendliness, advises employers to use gender-neutral language, and specifically urges healthcare providers to offer female-only procedures to men.

Mermaids, an organization focused on transgender youth, has lobbied the British government to add gender-neutral language to a bill on maternity allowance for ‘mothers or expectant mothers’.

The use of these terms, used throughout the entirety of recorded history to describe people who can give birth, constitute “a deliberate exclusion of trans men and non-binary people who may get pregnant,” the organization said.