DC has record low crime, yet Trump is acting like it is out of control and using exaggerations to take over the policing of the city. He describes how people do what they want to police, yet he pardoned the January 6th attackers who were actively trying to hurt police.
A doctor in Gaza says all his patients are noticeably not eating enough food. He says Gaza has violent gangs that work for Israel.
“Huge numbers of Palestinians need something to eat. Can Israel do more to get them some food?
“It’s as if anything that doesn’t qualify as famine isn’t a problem,” one humanitarian organization official told me. A second aid official said the Israelis in particular talk about such hunger crises as if “it’s a binary — on, off — rather than a sliding scale. It’s a sliding scale.”
Words are among the many tools being weaponized by multiple sides in several ongoing global conflicts. “Famine,” “genocide,” “terrorism,” “antisemitism,” “occupation” and “apartheid” are just some of the terms whose definitions inspire public relations, legal and policy fights.
The war of words is increasingly exhausting and alarming to policymakers and others who deal with humanitarian issues. Several told me they worry the semantics — especially in a conflict such as Gaza — could hurt efforts to save lives or forge peace, including by hardening the positions of people accused of wrongdoing.
…
Activists who push to use the term “genocide” often seem to suggest that if any label short of that is used, it means that a group’s suffering doesn’t matter.
This is unfortunate, Malinowski and others say, because other legal terms that could apply, such as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity,” are still very grave offenses whose perpetrators should be held accountable.
A government’s decision to accuse another country of genocide often comes down to politics.”
In Syria, both Druze and Bedouins committed atrocities against civilians.
The Druze are not united. Some groups want increased autonomy from the Syrian government and are mostly anti that central government. Others want to work with the central government.
“Russia is increasingly using chemical weapons in Ukraine in an effort to subdue the country by causing as much pain and suffering as possible, Europe’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Tuesday.
…
Most countries around the world, including Russia, have signed a 1993 international convention banning the use, production, development or stockpiling of chemical weapons. Russia is one of 65 countries to have not only signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, but also ratified it.”