I know you are trying but it does not seem even handed. I'm screenshotting a whole collection of them examples if seeing them together would be helpful.
I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.
Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160571
Personally I'd rather non-tech world news stay off HN completely but I'm calling it out because as someone who is up on world news I see quite a double standard unraveling here and that seems unfortunate.
I just wrote a long explanation of how we approach the question of flags on stories like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344. If you read that and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to hear it.
If you do read it, you'll notice that one factor is whether there has been a major thread about the topic recently. That's important here because the current enormous thread isn't even 2 days old. HN can't handle a major discussion about this topic very often. So while I've turned off the flags, I don't think another story about this topic should be on the front page yet.
If it helps at all, before I saw your comment I was just responding (by email) to someone asking why https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39160743 was flagged, and I answered the same way: that is, (1) I turned off the flags, but also (2) explained why HN can't have another frontpage thread about this two days after the last one.
I know a pair of cases is a small sample but I hope it can count as a sign of how we try to be even-handed. I've learned the hard way that it's simply impossible to avoid perceptions and accusations of bias on divisive topics; even the most neutral moderation is going to generate such perceptions (actually it's worse than that—it's going to generate more). I'm not claiming to be at that level but I can tell you for sure that we do work hard at being even-handed.