JJJ

@KeithE.Truesdell You're welcome. :) At this point we have enough candidates to actually have some choice though you're still welcome to join in. And of course, to you and to everyone else, don't forget to vote. :D (voting should open in 24 hours or so)

@ShadowWizard Yea we actually got some choice :D Also, thanks for considering joining in. :)

@MTL Ah no worries, thanks for considering. :)

@NapoleonWilson Unfortunately, yes. I think Coffee's problem is that there's not a lot of new stuff going on that lends it to easy Q&As. As such, traffic is rather low even if users have a genuine interest in coffee. So yeah, those are the only users (except for a few I pinged elsewhere) that have candidate score 2 or more and have visited the site in the last year.

@ShadowWizard Ah that's great to hear :D

Hey, we’re having an election on Coffee and we’re still short one candidate to make the election competitive. I'm reaching out to you because you meet the requirements to run on Coffee and you have a candidate score of 2+. If you're interested in joining our mod team, there's still a few more days left to sign up for the election. :)

@Mayo @daniel @KeithE.Truesdell @RMac @IvanKapitonov @ShadowWizard @Nathan @technical_difficulty @MTL @Jerry101 @TrustMeI'mARabbi @speedfranklin @WilliamMoore @Möoz @NapoleonWilson @DCTLib

@hardmath Nice, welcome! I think we need one more candidate to make the election competitive. I'll try to reach out to some more eligible users to see if they can be persuaded to join in (and help make the election competitive).

Yea, I'm present as well. Feel free to ping me with questions or to have a little chat about the election. :)

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@wrod Famine is a very dire situation and the downplaying on your part gets rather close to the code of conduct prohibition on denying newsworthy events. News reports about starving in Gaza date back to as early as December last year. And yes, you are not showing yourself to be very trustworthy because you outright dismiss a lot of evidence claiming that its source is biased. I don't see much point to this discussion either. If you think there's a moderation issue I suggest you use the contact form.

@wrod it's not that I'm not interested. It's that I don't have the time to go in depth on the report & what data they used to draw their conclusion, etc. Without that, I have two competing reasonings in front of me. First is your disputing the report within three hours of my posting it. Second is the experts who wrote the report and the general vibe among others (such as Israel's allies) that food has to reach Gaza now to avert the worst. In that comparison the 'they interpreted their estimate as fact' and 'everyone who claims otherwise is biased and as are most on this site' is unconvincing.

@littleadv please don't ping individual mods when new issues need attention. Just use the flag system so it will show up for all the mods.

@wrod Let me say it more clearly. I am not interested in debating with you their assessment. As a moderator, that report and other (more recent) statements on this Wikipedia page are sufficient for me to allow the statements on famine as made in the question on main. If you wish to dispute it to the point where we should remove such statements as misinformation you will have to be more convincing. You can also escalate it to the CM team using the contact form or I can ask another mod to have a look at it.

@wrod I don't have the knowledge or the time to fully review their methodology. I would expect them to make an assessment based on the best data they have available. You say it doesn't stand up to scrutiny because not enough people are dying for that classification to apply. They seem to say not that many people are dying yet because that takes time. Nevertheless, for a part of the population they estimate their food insecurity to be at the highest classification level. If you want to dispute it, maybe ask it on Skeptics.SE?

@littleadv no, those concerns have been addressed. As the occupying power of Gaza Israel has incurred certain responsibilities under IHL. I don't think this is the place to have a long discussion about the specifics, but those would probably be good questions for the main site or Law.SE.

@wrod They say from the outset: "Even though the levels of acute malnutrition and non-trauma related mortality might not have yet crossed famine thresholds, these are typically the outcomes of prolonged and extreme food consumption gaps." You're welcome to dispute their analysis, but the statement made in the question is not unreasonable to the point that it violates the code of conduct.

@littleadv well, they evacuated half of Gaza forcing many people into refugee camps. Then they control what goes in and out (e.g. food) limiting the amount that can get in even if it's provided by externally funded aid organizations. The most efficient way would be to get food in by truck. That's option is limited to the point where other countries are airdropping rations and the US is building a temporary port. By taking control of the area Israel has a duty of care. See e.g. ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-55

@littleadv Those are two separate matters. Hamas is responsible for the terrorist attack and Israel has a legitimate case to retaliate against the terrorists and their support network. On the other hand, Israel is not allowed to use siege tactics against the whole of Gaza because its civilian population enjoys certain protections in IHL. It also doesn't help Israel's case because their siege tactics are hurting their support among allies. I'm also not saying there's an easy alternative. Anyway, this discussion is kind of getting off-topic, probably better for the chat room on this conflict.

@wrod No, the whole population of Gaza is not at level 5. But according to IPC, 25% of the population was at level 5 in February. This is also the source referenced on the Wikipedia page I referenced earlier btw.

@littleadv Per Wikipedia: "According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food." I don't think 'mass starvation' is an official term but the words indicate a more advanced stage of famine in which people have died in large numbers due to famine. See the 3rd paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Gaza famine to see what classification that's at.

@wrod well, mass starvation hasn't happened yet. Malnutrition and famine are definitely widespread and starvation is starting to happen. This is the relevant Wikipedia article with a lot more recent quotes. It's not demonization to criticize state actions.

@wrod then there's no issue right? The question and answer mostly talk about starvation. The only mention of mass starvation in the answer talks about the possibility of that happening in the future. I somewhat address in this answer here on meta, though perhaps not carefully enough, that starvation is a result of the Israeli limitations on aid making its way to those who need it.

@wrod If you're interested in recent positions from different countries, see this summary of a UNSC meeting 2 weeks ago. I don' think there's much point in discussing it further here.

@wrod So are you seriously arguing that it's not true? Clearly they can't produce much food on their own in Gaza and Israel is severely limiting the the amount of aid getting in over land. That's why the US is going for the inefficient sea port option (that will still require local distribution which the US cannot do) and others opting for aerial food drops. As for other sources, see the reactions listed on Wikipedia. I don't think it's contestable because of the sheer numbers.

@littleadv the quote doesn't say that children are targeted. It says that children die in mass quantities as a result of the bombings.

@wrod The answer addresses that as well saying that mass starvation doesn't happen linear in time. The mathematics of over a million people not having access to food for a prolonged period of time can only lead to mass starvation. And an analogous more acute reasoning exists for drinking water. Clearly the US sees the urgency by making a deep sea port after failing to convince Israel to open more border crossings. Once starvation gets out of control it will be too late to act and then the political ramifications can't be overseen either.

@άνθρωπος Well I disagree, but I'll reply in detail some other time. Feel free to ping me if I forget. ^^

@άνθρωπος Yep, I don't think we're going to end up agreeing on much of this discussion. I'm going to call it for today, but just so you know there's another room dedicated to the conflict with more participants so there's definitely room for more discussion chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/134420/ukrainian-conflict-2022

@άνθρωπος I don't think it's a hidden message if he's going to talk about nukes and the war in the Ukraine in the same speech. And I also think it's a step backwards from cold war era rhetoric where everyone would be very careful to suggest using nukes because neither side wanted to escalate.

@άνθρωπος Nope, I haven't seen anyone suggesting giving Ukraine nukes. I've seen suggestions that Russia wouldn't have invaded if they still had the Soviet nukes they gave up, but nothing about new nukes or others using nukes to defend Ukraine.

@άνθρωπος that's not what I was referring to. I mean that Russia's nuclear doctrine allows the use to counter aggression with conventional weapons if it threatens the existence of the Russian state. But then he reasons that the Ukraine war is also needed because it threatens the existence of the Russian state. And then saying he will do all that is necessary to defend Russia (which in his reasoning now includes part of Ukraine?). All of that considered it seems quite threatening to me.

@άνθρωπος sure, but the same reasoning was used to invade Ukraine. That is, the same reasoning used to justify the invasion can be used to go nuclear. See point 23d here (don't have a link to the original decree) realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/06/23/…

@άνθρωπος It's this sentence that stuck people in the linked speech ('all means at our disposal'): "Мы будем защищать нашу землю всеми имеющимися у нас силами и средствами и сделаем всё, чтобы обеспечить безопасную жизнь наших людей." In the Reuters link the whole speech is about nuclear treaties in combination with comments like 'Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield' (paraphrased)

anyway, this is kind of straying from the topic. I guess we've discussed it as much as we should and it seems your question's been reopened.

@άνθρωπος It's this stuff I mean reuters.com/world/… and there's a bunch of other speeches where he refers to all means at Russia's disposal (e.g. here kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69465).

@άνθρωπος you think fighting ISIS terrorists is bad?

@άνθρωπος well, only one president who I've heard threaten others with nukes lately.

@άνθρωπος It's an interesting take you present there. I think other countries aren't sympathetic to Syria's point because they agree with the US's objective of countering ISIS. You can see a lot of countries are willing to help Ukraine for example when the invasion is a lot less just and there are plenty of human rights violations.

@άνθρωπος why "not ever"? Isn't it how it works here? I think it's exactly how it works here. If it was the other way around, if Syria was the stronger country, then they would just (declare war on the US and) kick them out.

@άνθρωπος yea if that's what they said then they probably prefer it if the US leaves. That's also how international relations work. One country wants this, the other wants that. The one with the power to force their will gets what they want.

@άνθρωπος What who thinks? The US position seems clearly outlined in Fizz' answer on the duplicate question. Syria (the government) probably doesn't like it, but they probably don't mind that much either because ISIS is no friend of theirs either and they got a lot of other stuff going on. It's a complicated situation with many actors (most of which probably aren't keen on an ISIS resurgence).

@άνθρωπος Well that's your reading maybe, the US doesn't seem to think so.