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[McTraveller]

I'm not sure I understand the merit of this line of the discussion - everyone's just talking past each other.

Gaza is basically under siege; of course there is going to be famine in the besieged group. That's one of the methods by which a siege realizes its goals.

War sucks, for many reasons. This is one of those reasons.

[hector13]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[anewaname]

Enough grass or wood you can burn to boil water? Probably used by others.

Eating your daily amount of calories but also having dysentery while you are resting under a sun-shelter made from a bed sheet and a few tent poles, how does that work?

Applying nutrition standards to "households" implies a few other things... a house, potable water, some amount of sewage control, etc...

[Strongpoint]

Gaza is basically under siege; of course there is going to be famine in the besieged group. That's one of the methods by which a siege realizes its goals.

No, there is NO famine in Gaza. Under any reasonable definition of this word. Sure, if you define famine as "there is less access to food than in a normally functioning society at peacetime." there is a famine but it is not what this word means in any source with any credibility. It is not how a random person understands it. It is not how humanitarian organizations define it.

Like, UN's definition of famine is 2+ starvation-caused deaths out of 10000 people per day. Therefore, to claim that there is famine in all of Gaza, you need to provide evidence of 400+ people dying of starvation daily. Declaring famine in some parts of Gaza is easier but it still requires a lot of dead and malnourished people. They are simply not there.

[anewaname]

Ok... try not using the word "famine".

If you limit the food and water intake for people for a long period of time, people die at a higher rate, but they also end up looking emaciated.

Put the word "emaciated" into google and surf the images you find. Then, put "emaciated holocaust" in google and surf those images. You'll get the idea...

[hector13]

“Nuance” is not in Strongpoint’s vocabulary.

[Strongpoint]

Ok... try not using the word "famine".

If you limit the food and water intake for people for a long period of time, people die at a higher rate, but they also end up looking emaciated.

Put the word "emaciated" into google and surf the images you find. Then, put "emaciated holocaust" in google and surf those images. You'll get the idea...

I am confused. My point is that I see no evidence of any significant number of emaciated people present in Gaza. Something I expect to see in an area with a famine. I am sure that if we had thousands of emaciated people, Al-Jazeera would show them (or their corpses) 24/7.


You seem to misunderstand what annoys me in this situation. I hate lies and propaganda especially when they are using real tragedies. There are food shortages. Those shortages are caused by Israel, as I wrote somewhere above - the occupying force has a duty to provide basic necessities to civilians on territories they occupy.

There are deaths and suffering caused by the very real lack of food, there are people who experience very real starvation.

But many things are simply not true.

1) Israel is using hunger as a weapon in a medieval-style siege

It does not. Starvation is caused not by lack of food imports. It is caused by the collapse of infrastructure, lack of order, HAMAS being HAMAS, and a sad fact that a trip for food is dangerous for your life. Problems are way more severe in the north than in the besieged south.
Perhaps war would be already over with fewer casualties if Israel did go for total blockade leaving HAMAS with no supplies but it never happened.

2) There is a terrible, terrible famine in Gaza, worse than in Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, and many more places.

No, there is no terrible famine in Gaza.

3) There WILL be a famine in Gaza in 1-2 months

This prediction has been repeated again and again since October. It never happened. One may say that those predictions themself caused pressure on Israel\mobilize the international community and prevented the famine. But the fact is that those predictions are wrong every time and it is time to be sceptical.


___________________


To add something else...

A large Israeli-Lebanon war looks inevitable. I don't believe that Israel will show restraint and limit itself to precision strikes for much longer.

[anewaname]

Ok... try not using the word "famine".

If you limit the food and water intake for people for a long period of time, people die at a higher rate, but they also end up looking emaciated.

Put the word "emaciated" into google and surf the images you find. Then, put "emaciated holocaust" in google and surf those images. You'll get the idea...

I am confused. My point is that I see no evidence of any significant number of emaciated people present in Gaza. Something I expect to see in an area with a famine. I am sure that if we had thousands of emaciated people, Al-Jazeera would show them (or their corpses) 24/7.


You seem to misunderstand what annoys me in this situation. I hate lies and propaganda especially when they are using real tragedies. There are food shortages. Those shortages are caused by Israel, as I wrote somewhere above - the occupying force has a duty to provide basic necessities to civilians on territories they occupy.

There are deaths and suffering caused by the very real lack of food, there are people who experience very real starvation.

But many things are simply not true.

1) Israel is using hunger as a weapon in a medieval-style siege

It does not. Starvation is caused not by lack of food imports. It is caused by the collapse of infrastructure, lack of order, HAMAS being HAMAS, and a sad fact that a trip for food is dangerous for your life. Problems are way more severe in the north than in the besieged south.
Perhaps war would be already over with fewer casualties if Israel did go for total blockade leaving HAMAS with no supplies but it never happened.

2) There is a terrible, terrible famine in Gaza, worse than in Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, and many more places.

No, there is no terrible famine in Gaza.

3) There WILL be a famine in Gaza in 1-2 months

This prediction has been repeated again and again since October. It never happened. One may say that those predictions themself caused pressure on Israel\mobilize the international community and prevented the famine. But the fact is that those predictions are wrong every time and it is time to be sceptical.


___________________


To add something else...

A large Israeli-Lebanon war looks inevitable. I don't believe that Israel will show restraint and limit itself to precision strikes for much longer.

Yes, using real tragedies for lies and propaganda is bad and should be stopped.

In my last couple of posts, I was trying to show the situation in Gaza is something other than a binary choice between "famine" or "not famine". And yes, if there were enough emaciated people, Al Jazeera would play it non-stop. Emaciation is a slow process and I'm fairly sure some of those "emaciated holocaust" images were of people who survived several years in that condition.

When the definition of a word involves an arbitrary percentage, like that UN definition, it causes problems because manipulative people will change numbers to meet their political/economic objectives of choosing the binary result they want, but everyone else will see only see the binary result and not the original details. In Gaza, food shortages are combined with other problems (water, sanitation, fresh air, and shelter), and people will die from that. Do you remember those countries reporting covid deaths? Manipulators were changing numbers so they choose the binary result of "it is not a pandemic". The same will happen with Gaza deaths caused by food shortages, they will be hidden as other deaths.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One of the stories I heard maybe 20 years ago was of a Palestinian milk-smuggling ring in some town, where an Israeli businessman didn't want the Palestinians to have their own source of milk, so a law was made and Israeli soldiers were searching for "illegal" cows and the Palestinians had some trick to protect them.

The three false narratives you rejected (and that I mostly will reject)...
1) Yeah, Israel is not using hunger as a weapon, but hunger was going to happen and they were going to be blamed for it. Before Oct 7th, Gaza was a net importer of food and economically poor. There would be little reserves in a supply system like that. With Gaza's extremely high population density, those reserves were always going to run out quickly. But Israel couldn't do things differently because Hamas was well-supplied, so Hamas's jungle needed to be bombed and its people chased away.
2) The internet puts Gaza's 2023 population at 2 million and the Rafa camps at 1 million, so many are not in Rafa. Aid trucks may deliver to the camps but they don't want to be shot at. Some of those not in Rafa are becoming emaciated.
3) There won't be a "famine" using the UN's definition of "famine"... but there is a shortage of food for a many and they're going to emaciate, and many will gain diseases and long-term health effects, and some will die.

No matter how things go, Hamas will always say "famine" and Israel will always say "not famine"; while many others will choose based on political/economic allies rather than facts.

[martinuzz]

Putin and Kim sealed an official defensive alliance pact. An attack on North Korea is now an attack on Russia.

[Strongpoint]

Putin and Kim sealed an official defensive alliance pact. An attack on North Korea is now an attack on Russia.

Well, Ukraine will enjoy possible South Korean military aid. I am confident that such diplomatic moves are not beneficial for Russia. It is not like they can't get North Korean stuff without this pact but it is a sure way to sour relationships with South Korea and Japan.

[McTraveller]

Putin and Kim sealed an official defensive alliance pact. An attack on North Korea is now an attack on Russia.

Who would even attack North Korea in the first place? Or is this one of those "we will count it as an attack on NK, and therefore Russia, if NK attacks someone else and they retaliate" kind of things?

[Starver]

Putin and Kim sealed an official defensive alliance pact. An attack on North Korea is now an attack on Russia.

Who would even attack North Korea in the first place? Or is this one of those "we will count it as an attack on NK, and therefore Russia, if NK attacks someone else and they retaliate" kind of things?

Well, it does have the smell of the whole "Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry" thing.

But, being a Mutual Defense Pact, maybe it's a Russian play to add to the Cubans/Indians/etc that they are famously routing into their side of the meat-grinder, and that any (perceived or actual) attack upon Russian territory would allow Best Korean boots to be 'officially' sent over to 'defend the Motherland'.

From KJU's perspective, he'll probably have surplus conscripts that he only really needs 'on paper', at least until any more local balloon goes up. And, if it does go up, then he'll then have had the benefit of official technical help with his homegrown technical development for all the fancy toys he's wanting to have, like spacetech of various kinds. (Probably things that the Chinese were always less willing to share.) Plus, of course, he'd be expecting Russia to obliterate parts of SK (and/or US military bases)...


There are probably less extreme and more pragmatic outcomes to this new strand in the web of alliances, but there will of course be "this won't happen only because they won't let that happen because otherwise we'd have to let this other thing happen" which makes the perhaps unthinkable end-game an important thing for everyone to actually think about (just so that it never does occur, ideally). And, in the meantime, there's a military alliance that can be spun to both leaders' advantage. (Noting that Putin's going elsewhere in SE-Asia, also, pressing the flesh and looking for allies/non-hostiles in his own particular cause. Even if it's only going to mean he escapes the locally unpopular demands of wider Russian conscription for that little bit longer... Sending a few Russian 'specialists' over to his allies, in exchange for some canon-fodder/meat-shields, might be a deal that each leader could find beneficial and be considered acceptable/tolerable to their nations.

[StrawBarrel]

A NBC twitter video on abuse in Sde Teiman Camp.
https://x.com/allinwithchris/status/1799442067409523185

• I think Chris Hayes does a good job showing parallels of US torture in Iraq and Israel torture.
  
• 3:29 of the video was shocking to me as a person was tortured to death.
• The Times reports that 35 people have been reported killed at Sde Teiman.
• I like how Hayes ends with a call to action “to not look away”.
• This was a very good news segment from NBC news.

[EuchreJack]

I think Chris Hayes does a good job showing parallels of US torture in Iraq and Israel torture.

Oh, so those who aid Israel in getting away with the torture will be rewarded, and those who expose Israel's transgressions will be jailed? Awesome 

[feelotraveller]

I think Chris Hayes does a good job showing parallels of US torture in Iraq and Israel torture.

Oh, so those who aid Israel in getting away with the torture will be rewarded, and those who expose Israel's transgressions will be jailed? Awesome 

At least Julian Assange is free... 12 years later.

Personally I read the Plea Deal as face saving on the part of the American government.

Still a hugely sad day for global press freedom.