How this site decides what is true

A site that sells merchandise attached to live conflicts is in an awkward position. It has a commercial interest in those conflicts seeming urgent. That is a real conflict of interest, and pretending otherwise would be the first dishonest thing on the page.

So here is how the writing on this site is done, stated openly enough that you can hold it to the standard.

Claims are attributed, not asserted

Where something is contested — and in these six cases a great deal is contested — the site says who found it rather than declaring it settled. “A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded” and “Amnesty International has concluded” are doing real work in those sentences. They tell you the source of the claim so you can weigh it yourself.

This is not hedging. It is the difference between reporting and asserting. A reader who disagrees with Amnesty International can discount the sentence accordingly; a reader faced with a bare assertion has nothing to work with but our say-so, and our say-so is worth very little.

Sources are ones a sceptic would accept

Preference goes to United Nations bodies, established human rights organisations, and reporting from outlets with corrections policies and named authors. Where an organisation has a stake in the outcome, that is noted.

This rules out a lot of material that circulates widely and is emotionally compelling. Unverified footage, viral casualty figures with no provenance, and claims that exist only on social media do not go on this site, however much they might sell shirts. If a claim cannot be traced to something checkable, its absence costs less than its presence would.

Governments are named regardless of which side they are on

Several of these populations have been harmed by their own governments as well as by foreign ones. The Sudanese Armed Forces have bombed civilian areas. The Houthi authorities detain aid workers. Lebanon’s political class presided over the destruction of the currency and the port of Beirut. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both suppress Palestinian dissent.

Leaving those facts out would make for cleaner slogans. It would also make this propaganda. A description of a conflict that only ever assigns blame outward is not a description, it is a position paper, and readers can tell the difference faster than the people writing them usually expect.

Numbers carry their uncertainty

Casualty figures in active conflicts are estimates, often produced under conditions that make counting nearly impossible. Where this site gives a number it gives the range and the body that produced it, rather than picking the most striking figure available and presenting it as a count.

Corrections are made publicly

If something here is wrong, tell us and it will be fixed, and the fix will be visible rather than quietly slipped in.

This is the part that matters most. Any site can claim rigour. What distinguishes one that has it is what happens when it is caught being wrong. A page making claims about ongoing wars has an obligation to be correctable, and that obligation outranks the appearance of certainty every time.

Why bother, for a shop

Because the alternative is the thing this site exists in opposition to: six flags printed on cotton by someone who could not tell you what happened in any of those places, sold to people who would like to care and are given nothing to care about.

The context is not marketing attached to the products. The products are how the context gets funded.