Wordle's Limited Shelflife

[For those without a lot of time or patience, the gist of this post is: WORDLE is running out of valid words.  A problem exacerbated because they let people play already used words, even though they can't 'win.']

I've been through different phases of WORDLE playing.  I started with random words, then moved to starting with words that had high frequency letters.  The idea of starting with the same word everyday, in hopes that one day I'd get the word on the first round, didn't hold me for long.  It got boring.  Even  WORDLE has switched the word it starts with several times.  

For a few months now, my first word has been coming from Spelling Bee.  I pick one of the five letter words, with preference for the ones that have the most frequently used letters.  I skip the words with double letters - that seems like a waste.  Yes, they do use words with double letters now and then, but it would be really lucky to the the right double letter on the right day.  Sometimes there are no words that have five different letters.  Then I pick a four-letter word I can make a new word by adding a letter.  Often I'm stuck with a word that has one or two low probability letters.  And sometimes one of them is in the word and I get a leg up.  

My goal in the last few months has been to have more games I complete with three words than with fours.  I was going after having my total count of 3s higher than my total count of 4s.  I reached that goal a few days ago.  But it's getting easier to do that.  

Let me explain.  Yesterday was the 1054th WORDLE.  (Each WORDLE is numbered)

WORDS THAT DON'T WORK

There are some rules about the words they pick.  

1. No profanity.  But I was surprised the day they used PRICK.  Yes, it has normal meanings, and I guess that was their logic. 
2. They also don't seem to choose words that are demeaning to various people.  
3. No proper names (unless it has another meaning as well)  DAVID and SUSAN won't work.  RANDY will.  

In all three cases, when you type in such a word, it's rejected altogether.  You won't lose a turn if you type in one of these invalid words.

Then there's another class of words that aren't used 

1. Past tense words that end -ed.  You can play these words, but they won't win.   Irregular past tense words like WROTE are ok.  
2.  Regular plurals that end with an 's'. 
3. Words that have already been the winning word in past WORDLE games.  

These #3 words can be used, but words that have already been used, aren't eligible to win again.      On the one hand, such words can be useful when you are trying to choose a word that will eliminate help you find or eliminate letters, The -ed words and the previous winner words  are even used in their analysis section when they show the words still possible after each round. (This only happens after you are done and choose 'Analyze.")

I'm not sure how I know these things.  Partly by trial and error.  Maybe I found a website with tips like this.  I just don't remember.  I did just look at WORDLE's help page, but it only says it has to be a valid word.  

1054 - Why is this important.  

While English has lots of words, the number of five letter English words, as I've explained above, a that are valid and that can win is smaller.  In the ANALYSIS section (after you finish for the day)  WORDLE tells you how many VALID words are left.  I don't recall there being much more than 1000 ever shown after my first word.  That would mean that the five letters I just used in the first word, would raise the total, if they were still in play.  But by that much.

Are you getting my drift ye?.  WORDLE is going to run out of words.  

With over 1000 games already played, there are already over 1000 words that are no long valid.  That is, you can play them, but they can't be the winning word.  

In my eyes, that's somewhat unfair.  Well, not somewhat unfair.  Just unfair.  People new to WORDLE have no idea of what words have already been winners.  Even long time players can't remember all those words.  

But they internet knows.  There are websites that list the already used words - in alphabetical order and in chronological order.  I use Five Forks.   And since those words cannot be winners again, I've decided it's ok for me to look up the possible words on my list for the next round, so I don't waste guesses on words that can't win.  

Do I feel guilty?  Sure, there is something about this that doesn't feel quite right.  But the idea that perfectly legitimate words (not proper names, not plurals ending in 's', not slurs) simply cannot win because they've won already, seems even less fair. It's ok that WORDLE doesn't allow repeats, but that they don't disqualify them as invalid (since they can't win they should accept them on the list.)

And that's why I say WORDLE has a limited shellfire.  It's going to run out of words,  And by using the lists of past WORDLE words, it's easier now to get a 3 than in the beginning.  

That doesn't mean I'll always get a 3.  But I now have more 3s than 4s.  OK, There's a lot more 5s than 2s and more 6s than 1s.  

Not sure how many more of these I'm going to do.  

Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part II

This is a truly touchy topic all around.  I'm listing here some of the aspects that I feel are critical to understand (no, be aware of is a more realistic goal).  Assume that I am torn in different directions and not pushing an answer one way or the other.  

Part I of these posts gives an intro to these posts and covers:

 1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

PART II

4.  GENOCIDE

The word "genocide" was coined to give a name to what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.   

"Seventy years ago this fall [2014], the word "genocide" made its debut into the English language, on page 79 of the 674-page Axis Rule in Occupied Europe [which you can find here in Reading 3], in a chapter called "Genocide—A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations."

The writer was Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who had fled the persecution of the Holocaust and moved to the United States in 1941. A few months after his arrival, he heard a radio address in which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told listeners about the horrors of World War II. . .

[Lemkin] decided to create a name for the crime without a name. He came up with genocide, which he defined as the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he created the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). In 1948, nearly three years after the concentration camps of World War II had been closed forever, the newly-formed United Nations (UN) used this new word in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," a treaty that was intended to prevent any future genocides."

The US Holocaust Museum defines the term in more detail 

"Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

• Killing members of the group
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing."

Netanyahu would argue that his intent is to secure Israel from terrorist attack, not to kill Palestinians.  

Whether what's happening in Gaza is genocide or one of the other crimes listed probably doesn't matter too much, but I'm sure those fighting against Israeli bombing in Gaza are relishing the irony of charging Israelis with genocide.   

Since I wrote these words on genocide, the South African complaints about Israeli genocide to the  International Court of Justice has become available.  In it, starting from page 60, they quote a number of Israeli officials, in different ways saying things that suggest Israeli intent to obliterate Gaza.  Here's just one example from Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.  And we do remember."

"The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses."

This is the tenor of the evidence of intent that the South African complaint offers to International Court of Justice.  And as I write this, I always keep in mind the possibility that this whole document is a fake, that the quotes are fabricated.  But I don't think so.  Some of the Prime Minister's remarks are almost identical to the "Civilization versus Savages" theme  I posted above in Section 2 on Netanyahu that appeared in his 1995 book.  

But remember, these are like the prosecutor's opening argument.  It's their side of the story.  The defense hasn't yet had a chance to put things in context or to refute the arguments.  

Because I'm taking forever to write this, I can add the Israeli response.  Ha'aretz, the oldest Israeli newspaper, has this report on the Israeli response to the South African allegations.

[Being mindful of Issue #1 - Propaganda, Misinformation - the first link in the previous sentence is to the Encyclopedia Brittanica  article on Ha'aretz.  The second links to their report.]

5.  ZIONISM

This is another term that gets bandied about.  I'm not going to try to define it here, but you can see a couple of differing definitions/commentaries at the links below.

Wikipedia's treatment

The Foreign Policy Institute's take

The Promise and Failure of Zionism

Many people seem to have trouble distinguishing between Zionists, Jews, and Israelis and use two or all of those terms interchangeably to mean the same thing.  As though all Christians believe the same thing or act the same way.  People who identify (or are labeled) Jews come in many flavors, beliefs, ideologies, lifestyles.  The same is true of Israelis.  

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

After World War II much of the world was shocked to learn of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis.  (If you don't believe the Holocaust happened, don't comment here.  I'll delete it as soon as I see it.  Rather educate yourself and get past your ignorance.)  Among Jews, the campaign to create a Jewish state in historic Israel was not universally supported.  But after the war, with many displaced Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, sentiment supported establishing the state of Israel.  The newly formed United Nations approved. 

For the first years, the world heard heartwarming stories of the "Land of Milk and Honey," of the miracle in Israel making the desert bloom  When Israel was attacked in 1967 by surrounding Arab countries, Israel fought back and quickly defeated their enemies and kept the territory they took.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero, easily recognized with his black eye patch.  

But from the beginning the story wasn't so rosy.  Jews forced Arabs to abandon their homes and land.  Many fled to other Arab countries.  Over the years attempts to establish peace were thwarted by Palestinian rejection of the idea of Israel even existing.  Israeli supporters in the West used this rejection to show the Arabs were intransigent.  But it's clear that from the Arab perspective, the creation of Israel was similar to other colonial conquests where the indigenous people were simply removed for the colonists.  Even if the colonists were themselves a displaced people.

In the last 20 years or more, Israel has increasingly been a very oppressive ruler over the occupied territories.  Israel's annexation of West Bank Arab lands to build settlements for Israelis has exacerbated things.  People began talking about an Israeli apartheid. One can easily see similarities between the occupation and the way Black Americans are frequently treated by the police in the US.  

It's clear that many Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians with disdain. There are many places you can read about this, but I would offer Colum McCann's Apeirogon as a good place to start. [I highly recommend  reading Apeirogon]  It's the story of one Palestinian and one Jewish father who have both lost teenage daughters to the violence in Israel.  They are brought together and work with a group that advocates for peace and understanding.  There are very detailed descriptions of the indignities that Palestinians suffer daily.  

I believe that this treatment comes from 

• Israelis always feeling threatened (and Hamas does its best to stir up those fears) and 
• the ethnocentrism evidenced in Netanyahu's belief they are fighting a noble war between civilization and savagery.  [See Part I on Netanyahu]

As I mentioned in the post on The Battle of Algiers, people with little or no power, dominated by another people with lots of power, have few options other than guerrilla warfare.  

I'd also mention that other Arab countries tended to not take Palestinians as refugees into their countries.  One explanation was that by making Israel the collective enemy of Arabs, they could distract the Arab world from intra-Arab conflicts, and they could distract their own citizens from protesting their own authoritarianism.  Another explanation has been they simply didn't think they could handle the influx of so many Arabs with a somewhat different history in their own countries. 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

There are lots of articles about how Palestinian schools teach hate, such as this 2022 Times of Israel headline:

"UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog

Israeli organization says that rather than taking the material out of the 2022 curriculum, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has merely taken it off its public education portal"

It takes a little more digging to find counter arguments such as this one from The Palestine Chronicle by Rima Najjar:

Zionism is an insidious ideology. Its ideologues often gain traction by well-placed and oft repeated constructs – in films and TV series, in posts and comments on social media, and even in academia. So, it is no wonder that people end up having ideas about certain things, like the nature of Israel, the Zionist Jewish state, or the nature of Palestinian Arab culture and identity, or the nature of Jewish culture and identity, as if by osmosis.

One of these “memes” in the air, if you will, is the oft repeated comment by hasbara agents on social media that says Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews. This notion can also be found in numerous attacks on the Palestinian Authority curriculum with the same accusation of “teaching children to hate Jews”, when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda (see Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education – Library of Modern Middle East Studies).

My understanding is that 

"'teaching children to hate Jews', when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda"  

doesn't mean the Palestinians teach their kids to love Jews, but rather means that Israelis teach their kids to hate Palestinians.  

Michael Kaplan gave this example, in 2014, of Jews teaching their kids to hate Palestinians.  When Israelis Teach Their Kids To Hate. 

Two, more thorough, academic studies of Israeli text books suggest it's more subtle, but just as invidious.  

Here's the abstract of 2012 book by Nurit Elhanan-Peled

"The present book presents a critical multimodal study of one aspect of the Israeli-Zionist narrative as it is reproduced in school books of three disciplines: history, geography and civic studies. It consists of an analysis of the visual and verbal texts that represent the 'others' of Zionist Jews, namely Palestinians – both the citizens of Israel and the non-citizens who have been living under a military regime in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.The book shows that Israeli textbooks use racist discourse, both visually and verbally to represent Palestinians."

I only could find a few passages at the link to the publisher, but here's one to give you a sense of the book:

"... Texts present Palestine before 1948 as barren land and empty territory, abandoned since biblical times, waiting for Jews to redeem it while expunging Palestinian history and culture transforming 'Palestinian Arab students into "present absentees" as they learn about "the land of Israel"' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 24) without them. These texts are 'designed to "de-educate", or dispossess, Indigenous Palestinian pupils of the knowledge of their own people and history' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 17;Al-Haj, 2015;Mazawi, 2011;Peled-Elhanen, 2012;Raz-Karkotzkin, 2001). Textbooks construct Palestinians as 'backward, unproductive and untrustworthy; or even more negatively as murderers or rioters' while Jews engage 'in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refused to accept or acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel' (Abu-Saad, 2019: 101; Bar-Tal, 2001;Meehan, 1999). ..."

A 2020 Ha'aretz article - eight years later than the Elhanen book -  describes a Tel Aviv University study:

"Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation 'interpretive denial.'”

Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation “interpretive denial.” . . .

In most textbooks, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about,” he writes in an article to be published in a book on teaching history edited by Eyal Naveh and Nimrod Tal. . . .

Ben-Amos says the textbooks’ ignoring of the occupation or attempts to normalize it stem from self-censorship. In the absence of clear guidelines, nobody wants to be blacklisted and denounced, which was the fate of teachers and publishers who tried to convey a more nuanced message than the one permitted by the Education Ministry. . . .

Elhanen has continued writing articles on the subject of how 'the other' is treated in Israeli schools and textbooks.  You can see a list of books and articles here, some with links to full text.

I did find one more book- Palestinians in Israeli Textbooks (2016) - which seems to  say that it was bad in the past, but things are much better now.  

It's hard to find ways to peace when Palestinian children are regularly taught in schools and in the streets  to hate Jews and when Jewish children are given texts that either omit Palestinians or reinforce the idea that Jewish superiority over Palestinians is the natural order of things. 

Though as one Palestinian responded (paraphrasing), "Palestinian kids don't need to be taught in schools to hate Jews.  They pick that up by living under Israeli occupation."

Part III is still being written.  Here's the link.  

Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part I [Updated]

I've avoided posting about the Israeli-Gaza war for a number of reasons. (The one exception is this post recommending folks watch the Battle of Algiers.) 

The LA Times screenshot below articulates the thoughts behind my hesitation. 

Not that I'm either, but it does feel like people are being forced to pick a side and then attacked for it.  For many nuance is a copout.  

I've been thinking about this post since Hamas attacked Israel.  I've been writing it for about six weeks. Writing, at least the way I write, forces me to learn, to confront those statements I'm not certain about (most) with internet searches and trying my thoughts out on friends.  

The post has been growing organically.  As I write some things, later news events cause me to look up other assertions relevant to all of this.  

This post isn't supposed to be answers, but rather an annotated list of things (yes, I'd like a better word than that, suggestions?) people should know about before taking a firm position on the situation.  Each item is worthy of its own book length discussion. Most of these issues are intertwined.  Separating them into discrete items makes it easier to talk about them, but can be misleading, so read with caution.  Here's the list as it stands today (January 18, 2024)

1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

4.  GENOCIDE

5.  ZIONISM

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

8.  RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS AND ISRAEL'S RIGHT WING TILT 

9.  IGNORANCE 

10.  HAMAS

11.  GUERRILLA WARFARE

12.  WHY GETTING JEWS OUT OF ISRAEL SEEMS EASIER THAN NATIVE AMERICANS GETTING EUROPEANS OUT OF THE UNITED STATES

I've 'finished' 1-8.  I've decided that this is too long for most readers, so I'm going to break it down into several posts, starting with 1 through 3B.  A version of 11 - Guerrilla Warfare - is already up offering you the movie Battle of Algiers.  

1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

Democracy requires citizens have access to information - how organizations work, who has power and how they use it - that enables us to make intelligent choices in how we lead our lives and who we vote for to represent us in government. 

Politicians and citizens have always bent the truth in their favor, but today the truth is almost unrecognizable. Trump's Republican Party realizes their ideas are outmoded and they can only win major elections by lying and subterfuge.  Right wing billionaires scheme to protect their wealth and ability to do as they please without regard to others.  Foreign authoritarian governments (ie Russia, Iran, China) have an interest in 'proving' to their citizens that democracy cannot work and destroying democracy in the US would be their greatest victory.  

Here's an Anchorage Daily News headline Dec. 19 2023 on a Washington Post story:

"The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader’"

The story it makes my argument:

"Historically, propaganda operations have relied on armies of lowpaid workers or highly coordinated intelligence organizations to build sites that appear to be legitimate. But AI is making it easy for nearly anyone — whether they are part of a spy agency or just a teenager in their basement — to create these outlets, producing content that is at times hard to differentiate from real news."

So, starting off this discussion, I'd note that from even before the Hamas attack on Israel, false information was being spread to support and attack anyone who ventured to comment on this topic.  Russia sees it as a way to peel off voters from Biden to improve Trump's election to a second term knowing Trump would much more vigorously support Russia's plans in Ukraine and the world.  

It's also a way to divert world attention away from Ukraine and onto Israel.  (This may be just a brief sentence, but I suspect it's an important factor.)

While I think today (in January) the outline of the war is clearer than it was when I started, there is constant misinformation spread in mainstream media as well as social media.

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

Before Netanyahu was ever prime minister I found a book he authored on the bargain table at Borders Books in Anchorage.  So this was before 1996 when he first became prime minister.  I read the book and was appalled.  What I remember most vividly was a sentence where he said something to the effect of "I never met an Arab I could trust."  I didn't keep the book, but I've looked on line to see what books he wrote before 1996.  Wikipedia lists Netanyahu's books.  Here are the ones published before 1996:

• International Terrorism: Challenge and Response. Transaction Publishers. 1981. 
• Terrorism: How the West Can Win. Avon. 1987.
• Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1995.

All these are edited books, with Netanyahu providing the introduction.  What I recall was more of an autobiographical work.  But I can't find any reference to such a book by Netanyahu before the 2022 autobiography.  

But I did look at an online preview of Terrorism: How The West Can Win. [click on Preview at the link].  This is an edited volume and Netanyahu introduces other speakers at a conference, so these excerpt probably cannot be directly attributed to Netanyahu.  But he has organized this conference and invited the presenters.  Netanyahu edited the book and presumably decided what went in and what didn't. [And we'll see later that this sentiments reappear in the current crisis.]  

The book ignores the idea of terrorism being the last resort of an oppressed people who have no legal way to protest their condition or change it.  Rather it is Civilization versus the Savages.  He quotes Gibbons of the fall of the Roman Empire 

Then he goes on to say that the same dynamic is happening today - civilization vs. the savages.  

This is the language that Europeans used to justify conquering non-Christian lands in the 16 and 1700s.  It's how the US government justified removing Native Americans from their land and killing those who resisted.  And one might argue, how the current Israeli government seems to treat Palestinians in the West Bank as they confiscate their property to make room for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

I don't know what Netanyahu says about the Jewish terrorists who fought against the British occupiers of Palestine in the first half of the 20th Century.  The deadly bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 was organized by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  The book preview does include the index which does list   "King David Hotel Incident on page 45", but the preview on line doesn't go to page 45. In fact it has no page numbers.  He specifically rejects the idea that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."  But what about the Colonists who threw tea into Boston Harbor, or Ho Chi Minh who fought the French and then the Americans to free Vietnam from colonial rule?  

Netanyahu has also  been the subject of criminal prosecutions and huge public demonstrations against his weakening of the judicial branch of government.  Some have argued that pursuing this war is a way for Netanyahu to distract the nation from his legal problems.

It would be interesting to know the relationship between Netanyahu and Henry Kissinger about whom Netanyahu Netanyahu said we "have known one another for 'many years,'”  They seem to be kindred spirits.  

"Kissinger believed in power and disdained abstract ideas about progress, fraternity, democracy and freedom, ideas that America disseminates around the world. In his 1994 book “Diplomacy,” he justified national interests as the desired basis of foreign policy, calling on American leaders not to abandon this even after winning the Cold War.

His approach was congruent with Israel’s foreign policy, which since the days of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion believes in force while harboring deep reservations about international institutions and norms such as human rights and weapons control. That is why the harsh criticism of Kissinger by the left as the person directly responsible for mass murder, atrocities in Cambodia, Laos and Chile, Bangladesh and Timor, and for the bloody and needless prolongation of the Vietnam War, is heard in Israel only among a small circle of anti-American leftists."  (from Haaretz)

My sense of Netanyahu is that he is an absolutist on Arabs and terrorists and sees the civilian deaths resulting from the bombing of Gaza are, in his mind, completely justifiable as he attempts to rid Israel of terrorists.  

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

I don't want to go through the history of anti-semitism here.  Go to the link if you need a briefing.  I mention it here only to say that the reactions to the Israeli-Gaza war are aggravated by the latent pool of historic anti-semitism that persists in the world today.  

Further we have the conflation of Israeli, Jew, and Zionist.  And the assumption many have of Israelis, of non-Israeli Jews, and Zionists being a unified organism that all support Netanyahu's policy of bombing Gaza.  Each of the groups has divisions and groups who support and oppose, to varying degrees, the bombing.  

It's easy for people who know little or nothing of other countries to group all the people as being united.  But just as the United States has many divisions, so do all other countries. 

I mention this because there are people with strong opinions about the war who really have little or no experience with or understanding of the many different types of Jews or Israelis, who know nothing about the history of the geography and politics of the Middle East, particularly the land where Israel is located.  

Many Jews feel - and the current tolerance on the right of Neo-Nazis verify those feelings - that anti-semitism is alive and well today in the world and that no matter what Israel does they will be vilified.  An Orthodox Jew told me once, he didn't care what the world thought, because it didn't matter what Israel did, they would always get blamed.  

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

The details in this section are a little rough, but I think the general point is valid.

The loss of 6 million Jews during WW II, seems to have stirred the world to allow the establishment of a Jewish state in what had been the British held territory in Palestine.  There was a moral high ground that Jews had.  And they managed to tell a story of a people who escaped hell on earth to create the Land of Milk and Honey and the miracle of Making the Desert Bloom.  In 1967, these survivors repelled the attack from various Arab neighbors.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero. 

But things went downhill from there.  I suspect part of the problem was that Israelis wrapped themselves in the story of surviving the Holocaust and slogan "Never Again."  They used these to justify taking Arab property and forcing many Palestinians to flee as protecting themselves from another Holocaust.  And Arabs who refused to acknowledge the right of a State of Israel to exist, gave some legitimacy to this idea.  

But in refusing to become the victims ever again, they slipped into the role of the oppressors in the West Bank and Gaza.  There's enough fault on both sides, but using the Holocaust to justify their treatment of Arabs to the world and to themselves, meant that they began losing the PR war among the rest of the world.

[Update - January 19, 2024, I found this comment today in an article by Nurit Elhanan of Hebrew University:

"The only thing that unites the antagonistic Jewish ethnic groups in Israel is fear of the enemy and the quest for a Jewish national 'purity' along with the belief only a Jewish majority and a strong Jewish army can prevent another Holocaust, this time perpetrated by the Palestinians or other Muslim powers, such as Iran." [emphasis added]

So, this is the end of Part I.  Part II is now (1/21/24) up.   Part III is now done.  Still more parts will appear soon.  

". . .the spoken word is no more than breath."

 In No Time To Spare Ursula LeGuin writes about her fascination with words.  

"When asked to talk about what I do, I've often compared writing with handicrafts - weaving, pot-making, woodworking.  I see my fascination with the word as very like, say the fascination with wood common to carvers, carpenters, cabinetmakers - people who find a fine piece of old chestnut with delight, and study it, and learn the grain of it, and handle it with sensuous pleasure, and consider what's been done with chestnut and what you can do with it, loving the wood itself, the mere material, the stuff of their craft.  

"Woodworkers, potters, weavers engage with real materials, and the beautify of their work is profoundly and splendidly bodily.  Writing is so immaterial, so mental an activity!  In its origin, it's merely artful speech, and the spoken word is no more than breath.  To write or otherwise record the word is to embody it, make it durable, and calligraphy and typesetting are material crafts that achieve great beauty.  I appreciate them.  But in fact they have little more to do with what I o than weaving or pot-making or woodworking does.  It's grand to see one's poem beautifully printed, but the important thing to the poet, or anyhow to this poet, is merely to see it printed, however, wherever - so that readers can read it.  So it can go from mind to mind."

I put my Ukrainian English learner through the opening charges of Jack Smith's indictment this morning. His English isn't good enough to do that alone, but he can grasp the key points of this historic document with the help of a guide. There are words he should know, and I'm trying to connect him to the fact that he is living when we are facing the most important trial in US history. 

We examined words like defendant and prosecutor.  "Claim falsely" made sense when I pulled him back from his wrong turn ("falsely is like waterfall?", no, false is the opposite of true) and after several attempts to explain 'claim' he realized he knew the term from 'baggage claim.'  I started the lesson with a slice of bagel and a gob of raspberry jam, which I spread with a knife.  So I could use the image when we came to 'the Defendant spread lies . . .'  

Smith's indictment is amazingly clear for a legal document.  He (and his associates) knew it had to be understandable to the average American adult.  It's not dumbed down, but rather most of the legal jargon is couched as tangibly as possible with sentences as grammatically simple as possible.  Not the long convoluted sentence encrusted with Latin terms you often see in legal documents.

'The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.' [Link to the indictment]

OK, 'outcome-determinative' is not an everyday term, but 'outcome' of an election is not hard to get. 'Determinative' is clearly related to 'determine' which is fairly common and not to hard to make clear.  I talked to a lawyer friend and asked if perhaps that term 'outcome-determinative' was a translation from the Latin.  He said, "No" but suggested it was probably a legal term of art that has been an important phrase in other cases. That led me to Google and I found this sentence in 

"An "outcome-determinative" test was set forth, the essence of which was that if the determination of an issue would have a decisive influence on the outcome of the case, then that issue was one of "substance." [from a 1965 North Caroline Law Review article]

 While in the indictment sample above says the defendant has the right to publicly say falsely there was 'outcome-determinative' fraud and even to say he actually won, the indictment uses this term eight more times later on to demonstrate that Trump knew his attempts to overturn the election were based on lies about election fraud and lies that he had won.  The term is used in a list of presidential advisors who told him there was no evidence of 'outcome-determinative' fraud, starting with:

"The Defendant's Vice President-who personally stood to gain by remaining in office as part of the Defendant's ticket and whom the Defendant asked to study fraud allegations-told the Defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud."

Earlier in a previous LeGuin chapter "Readers' Questions," the author writes that it is relatively easy and interesting to respond to vary specific questions of 'imaginary fact,' like one about her use of the name Sparrowhawk.  

"Is this the New World sparrow hawk, Falco sparverius, or one of the Old World kestrels . . .?"

But that more general questions are much harder to respond to - questions like, 'why do you write?" and the most vexing questions are about meaning.

"Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I m seeking.  What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the book, this story . . .?  Tell me what it Means.

But that's not my job, honey.  That's your job. . .

"Meaning in art isn't the same as meaning in science.  The meaning of the second law of thermodynamics, so long as the words are understood, isn't changed by who reads it, or when, or where.  The meaning of Huckleberry Finn is."

I imagine law fits in somewhere between fiction and science.  Ideally, much closer to science, but the current Supreme Court majority has moved it much closer to fiction.  And legislation in some Republican dominated states to change how history is taught, or medicine is practiced, are also attempts to create fiction - an alternative reality.  

Terms  like 'outcome-determinative' come to have specific meanings in law, in an attempt to make it more science-like and less interpretive than fiction.  But even science articles are only attempts to capture reality in words.  Sometimes they are successful, over even close.  Other times new discoveries prove the old writings inaccurate.  

For those of you concerned about why I chose the title of this post, I can only say it was the most poetic phrase I found in LeGuin's paragraph on words.  But my brain took this post in other directions.  But it's still the most poetic phrase.  Would you rather I title this Outcome-Determinative?  Even 'outcome-determinative' when spoken is no more than breath.

How Wisely Did The No Constitutional Convention Campaign Spend Its Money?

The Alaska Constitution requires a ballot measure on the ballot every ten years, asking voters whether there should be a new constitutional convention.  This year Alaska held the sixth such election.  

Those pushing for an election had two main goals:

1.  To make abortion illegal by either cutting out the Constitution's privacy language, adding new language that would outright ban abortions and/or say the privacy section doesn't cover abortions.

2.  Make the process for choosing judges more political so they could get judges who will not interpret the privacy clause to allow abortions.

There were any number of additional far right goals that they would love to tamper with if they got the chance.  

The measure lost decisively on Tuesday.  Mail-in, absentee, and questioned ballots are likely to make the No vote even higher and there's no way they could change the outcome.  

 

An Anchorage Daily News article today tells us:

"Defend Our Constitution dominated spending 80 to 1.

They recently reported spending $4 million and raising $4.7 million. The donations came mostly from Outside organizations like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is based in Washington, D.C. and has been described as a left-wing dark money group.*

Convention YES spent about $50,000, usually from small contributions from individual Alaskans, allowing them to make small ad purchases."

So, how effectively did both sides spend their money?  It's hard to know.  But since we've been voting on this question every ten years now since 1972, we can at least look at the margin of victory for the NO vote over the decades:

Alaska Constitutional Convention Question (1972)
Result		Votes	Percentage
No		55,389	65.49%
Yes		29,192	34.51%

From Ballotpedia

Alaska Measure 1 (1982)
Result		Votes	Percentage
No		108,319	62.93%
Yes		63,816	37.07%

From Ballotpedia

Alaska Constitutional Convention Question (1992)
Result		Votes	Percentage
No		142,735	62.70%
Yes		84,929	37.30%

From Ballotpedia

2002 was 72% No;  28% Yes.  [This image from Alaska Division of Elections because I couldn't find the 2002 election from Ballotpedia.]

Alaska Ballot Measure 1
Result		Votes	Percentage
No		179567	66.59%
Yes		90079	33.41%

From Ballotpedia 2012

Alaska Ballot Measure 1
Result		Votes	Percentage
Yes		62,985	30.15%
No		145,937	69.85%

From Ballotpedia   2022   [These numbers will change when all the mail-in and absentee ballots are added in.]

So, the highest NO vote has been 72% NO in 2002.  The lowest No vote was 62.7% in 1972.  

I'm guessing they could have spent $2 million and still defeated the measure soundly.  Probably $1 million.  The extra $2-3 million could have done the state a lot more good spent on the governor's race and a few of the state legislative races.  

I suspect a lot of money was wasted in this campaign.  Sometimes you don't know, but in this case we have ten years of election results suggesting Alaskans aren't interested in a Constitutional Convention.  

*I'd note that "has been described as a left-wing dark money group" is just troublesome language.  Use of the passive voice allows you to say something happened without saying who did it.  "Has been described as" could be pinned onto nearly any phrase.  And 'dark money group' is a short hand cliche that means 'bad'.  I'd bet half the readers would have trouble giving an accurate definition and they certainly wouldn't all define it to mean the same thing or in a way that would accurately describe the Sixteen Thirty Fund.  

What Words Are (And Aren't) In The US Constitution

[The gist of this post is to point out the many words that are NOT mentioned in the Constitution.  Since the so called 'Originalists' who have gained a majority of the Supreme Court want to base their decisions strictly on the words found in the Constitution, then it would seem they would have to overturn many past decisions - including Citizens United.]

 A few weeks ago I announced a contest about how often different words showed up in the Constitution.  I guess I was asking a lot more of readers than they were willing to do.  I only got one response - which was a comment suggesting I should have checked out the word 'gun.'  (Gun is not mentioned, 'arms' is mentioned once.) I figured enough people had gone over that already and the part that includes 'a well regulated militia.'  

My point here was to support the belief that the so called 'Originalist' faction is a sham created to give radical conservative Supreme Court Justices their own way to spin things.  As you go through the list below, think about how many words NOT mentioned in the constitution seem to have Supreme Court decisions that ignore the fact they aren't mentioned.  

[Originalists basically argue they want to interpret the Constitution by using the words the Founding Fathers wrote.  I've covered it in several earlier posts:

Thursday, February 25, 2016   I Think Scalia's Originalism Is Like Intelligent Design Of Constitutional Theories

Monday, March 20, 2017    As Neil Gorsuch Takes Center Stage, What Exactly Is Originalism About?

Monday, October 12, 2020     Revisiting Originalism ]

I took an online copy of the Constitution and the searched it for each of the terms.  Here's my list of words and how often they show up:

	In Constittuion?		How often?	Contest Notes
	YES	NO
MAN		√	0	Manner = 11
WOMAN		√	0
CORPORATION		√	0
INDUSTRY		√	0
PERSON(S)	√		49
CITIZEN	√		22
LIFE	√		4
LIBERTY	√		3
ECONOMY		√	0
CAPITAL	√		1	“Capital or otherwise infamous crime”
CAPITALISM	√		0
MARKET	√		0
MARRIAGE	√		0
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE		√	1	Along with invasion
BUSINESS		√	1	“Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business”
TAX	√		10	Tax or taxes
VOTE	√		36
COMMERCE	√		2	“Regulation of Commerce”
BANKRUPTCY	√		1
SECURITIES	√		1
SEX	√		1
RELIGION	√		1
CHRISTIAN		√	0
WELFARE	√		2	“General welfare”
THE PEOPLE	√		9
GOD		√	0

Let me mention the context notes first.

1.  Man - I also checked 'men' and 'women'.  'Manner' was the closest thing to 'man' that showed up. Basically the constitution never mentions 'man' or 'woman.'  It talks about 'persons' and 'citizens.' Even the 18th Amendment (women's suffrage) doesn't mention women directly.

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

No where could I find person to refer to anything other than an individual human being.  Not to corporations (which are never mentioned.) 

2.  Capital - This word is mentioned in the context of 'capital punishment.' Neither capital (in the sense of money) nor capitalism are mentioned in the Constitution. 

3.  Domestic Violence - is mentioned once.  Not to mean violence within a household, but rather more like the January 6 insurrection.  It's mentioned along with 'invasion.'

4.  Business - The only mention is in regards to  needing a quorum for Congress to conduct business.  It is not used to refer to business enterprises, just as the words 'corporation,' 'industry,' 'economy,' or 'market' are used.  

5.  Tax - is mentioned 10 times

6.  Commerce is mentioned twice - both times in the phrase 'regulation of commerce.'

7.  Welfare is mentioned twice.  First in the Preamble that lists 'promote the general Welfare' as one of the goals of establishing the Constitution.  Second, 'general Welfare' is one of the reasons for levying taxes.  

8.  

Considering all of the Supreme Court decisions that give corporations rights that are reserved for persons -most egregiously in Citizens United - it's hard to imagine how this is done by so called 'Originalists.'   I'm not a lawyer and I haven't studied the evolution of business law, but it seems to me attorneys wanting to overturn Citizens United might take an Originalist approach and point out that corporations are not even mentioned in the US Constitution.  Nor are businesses or enterprises.  

But 'regulation of commerce' is listed.  

Promoting the general Welfare is listed.  That would seem to be a strong bases for including things like universal health care and many other programs that improve people's lives.  

I realize the law is complicated. My suggestion that since corporations aren't mentioned in the Constitution and 'person' only refers to actual human beings, Citizens United should be overturned, probably faces many obstacles I've overlooked.   But the lack of these terms in the Constitution seems to me to be one more way to show the silliness of the Originalist approach.