To the Editor:
I am very disappointed in the New Hampshire Gazette for not taking the genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians as seriously as is warranted. Imagine we are back in the thirties. As the Holocaust is being carried out only a few articles appear in the press about it… wait, that actually did happen. It’s horrible to see the same thing happening with Gaza accompanied by attempts by fanatic zionists and the power elite to silence or marginalize critics of Israel’s genocidal actions in which over 25,000 have already died, the majority of them women and children… i.e., civilians.
One Israeli official tried to justify this slaughter by pointing out that the U.S. did similar things to Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki during World War II. Thus any mass murderer could justify their actions by citing the fact that there were previous unpunished horrific mass murders prior to theirs! The attempt to slap critics of Israel’s atrocities with anti-semitism, including even Jews like myself, is laughable were the situation we’re criticizing not so chilling.
Yours has been a voice for reason and change but you’ve fallen so short of the situation I felt the need to remind you what the priority of everyone who supports social justice should be right now. Don’t be diverted by the 2024 political race which, as always, is a pointless horse race leading to a lot of BS but no real change.
As Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches I urge you to remember how the Holocaust was treated when it was actually happening and apply this lesson to what you do with the Gazette. As Americans we have a special duty since our government, led by Joe Biden (now dubbed “Genocide Joe”) is supplying the very weapons that are killing tens of thousands and rising as well as providing political cover in international organizations like the United Nations, preventing a cease fire and making sure no significant humanitarian aid will reach the victims in support of Israel’s intention to ethnically cleanse itself of the original inhabitants of the space it now occupies as an Apartheid colonial settler state.
Sincerely,
Roger Rudenstein
Durham, N.H.
Roger:
We beg to differ on one point here, namely the 2024 presidential election. If that goon put forward by the GOP manages to get his tiny mitts on the levers of power again, that may be all she wrote for democracy. And, given what’s at stake with the climate, we will need to have a sane person in that position. Not that Joe’s been great on that front either, but… .
Those quibbles aside, you’re right.
Since you wrote, Holocaust Remembrance Day has come and gone. But that’s no excuse for ignoring the ongoing U.S.-supported genocide underway in Gaza.
Rather than taking up time and space in a futile effort to explain why we cannot go down the road of attempting to accede to readers’ requests that we cover certain subjects in certain ways, we will instead encourage you to address this topic, in this space, on a regular basis.
The Editor
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Hey, GOP: Put Up or Shut Up on Border
Dear Editor:
As the saying goes; “it is time to put up or shut up.” A bipartisan group of Senators has almost completed a comprehensive border security bill that also includes aid for Ukraine and Israel. The bill will be ready for a Senate vote next week.
For months Trump and Republicans have been using the situation on the southern border as a key political tool against President Biden. Now, with a real opportunity to do something concrete to secure the border, Republicans are facing a real delima. Mr. Trump has been lobbying members of the Senate to oppose the legislation, not based on policy considerations, but solely based on politics. It shows that he is more interested in his personal political future than actually protecting the nation. Trump has said that Senate Republicans should oppose this bill because they need “a perfect bill” or nothing at all. This begs the question as to why Trump and Republicans never put forward a “perfect” immigration bill when he was president and they controlled the Senate?
Considering how Republicans have turned the immigration issue into a national crisis, how can they now reasonably justify not doing what is necessary to address that crisis? They cannot have it both ways, either there is a crisis that needs to be addressed now, or there is not an immediate need to address the problem. The time has come for Republicans to put up or shut up about immigration and the securing of our border. The time has come for them to finally put the nation ahead of politics and Donald Trump.
Rich DiPentima
Portsmouth, N.H.
Rich:
Since your letter arrived, Republicans, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa among them, have made it quite plain that they’re willing to harm the country in order to get the leader of their cult back into the White House.
Which is illuminating, when you think about it. They’ll damage the country to get their guy in, who’ll then proceed to do further harm to the country.
It’s as if their underlying motive is simply to harm the country.
The Editor
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Round Up the Usual Scapegoats
To the Editor,
That what America has been “great” at since its inception is violence and belligerence is reflected in a recent statement by Texas Governor Greg Abbott: “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
European colonists came into possession of the North American continent through the slaughter of indigenous populations, animal and human. John James Audubon recorded flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon passing “in undiminished numbers… for three days in succession,” and a population of bison estimated at 60 million that ranged for thousands of years from Alaska to Mexico which was reduced by the late 1800s to fewer than 600 animals. The human inhabitants, being unwilling to cede their continent graciously, were placated with treaties that served to buy time until the encroaching settlers were ready to expand their occupation further. The southwest and west coasts were occupied, and, when the country to which they belonged objected, weere annexed by force.
After subjugating the Native Americans and expelling the Mexicans, the new “native” Americans embarked on an explicit program of xenophobia. Freed by a civil war, African Americans were nevertheless “kept in their place” by laws that enforced a dual-class society in the South, and while discrimination against immigrants from “lesser” (albeit “white”) European cultures gradually morphed into acceptance, the Chinese, notwithstanding significant contributions to the fledgling nation’s economy, were summarily subjected to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Japanese Americans, during the Second World War, to the indignity of internment camps (perhaps you’ve seen photos of such camps with well-dressed Japanese pictured in modest but respectable living conditions; these were the exception, the preponderance of such camps being places of abject squalor in which detainees had to bathe and relieve themselves in the open).
Immigrants, moreover, are the perennial scapegoats for the excesses and depravity of American capitalism. When reckless speculation and deregulation beget economic catastrophe, the capitalist culprits are bailed out and immigrants blamed. Given Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the subject, it’s not surprising that a recent survey found little concern on the part of corporate executives about a second Trump presidency.
Although his rhetoric has lately been likened to that of Adolf Hitler, Erika Lee in America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States (p. 143) recounts how “the Nazis frequently praised the United States for standing ‘at the forefront of race-based lawmaking.’ They admired not only America’s system of Jim Crow segregation but also its immigration and naturalization laws and the creation of de jure and de facto second-class citizenship for African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and the subjects of American colonies like Filipinos.” She continues: “In his unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf… Hitler applauded the 1924 [U.S.] Immigration Act as an effort to exclude the ‘foreign body’ of ‘strangers to the blood’ of the ruling race.” Which makes America the ultimate source of the rhetoric Trump is said to be appropriating from Hitler.
If I haven’t said much good about America it’s because that can be found in history books, some of which, of course, is not really “good” but simply gussied up “bad” (the doctrine of manifest destiny, for example, merely a refined rationale for continued violence and belligerence). “White Americans,” writes Mary Trump in The Reckoning, “worry that by acknowledging the atrocities of the past, the guilt of the actual perpetrators will somehow attach to us, while it’s the failure to acknowledge those atrocities that makes us complicit. We as a nation cannot begin to heal unless we face our past head-on with complete honesty” (p. 157). History is what happened, not what we wish might have happened. A history of a “great” America, not “again” but, in a positive sense, perhaps for the first time, is a history it’s up to us to make.
John Simon
Portsmouth, N.H.
John:
“…it’s the failure to acknowledge those atrocities that makes us complicit.”
Hard to believe that the person who wrote that line is so closely related to a food-flinging sociopath.
Makes you wonder if genealogy may be an entirely meaningless pursuit.
The Editor
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Biden Is Your Pocket Book’s Friend
To the Editor:
It is astounding how much Biden has done for working America and how little credit he seems to get. There are many examples of the ways he has made life easier and helped people feel more secure.
Prescription Drugs: Part D of medicare, established under George W. Bush, was designed by big pharma and adopted by the Republicans. One provision big pharma insisted on was that the U.S. Government could not negotiate the price of drugs! Because of this Republican provision, Part D is incredibly expensive. In addition to what Part D costs participants, it cost taxpayers a whopping $747 B in 2022!
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) gave Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices for the first time in history, cutting down on out-of-pocket expenses and reducing government spending by billions. If the Republicans take over, negotiations will end and the pharmaceutical industry will again set the prices without any “government interference.”
Insulin: Also under the IRA, insulin price gouging ended for seniors under Medicare. Insulin costs were capped at $35 per month. About 4 million seniors have benefitted. Many saved $100s per month without the price gouging.
Junk Fees: Under Biden, the Federal Trade Commission proposed new rules to prohibit junk fees. These hidden, bogus and mandatory fees are added to concert and sports tickets, bank fees, airline charges, cable costs, and… everything. These hidden fees cost consumers tens of billions of dollars each year.
Lets give Brandon some credit!
Michael Frandzel
Portsmouth, N.H.
Michael:
Biden’s marketing team… does he even have one? Did someone cut off their coffee supply? For that matter, is there anyone home at the DNC?
Twitter—screw you, Elon, it’s Twitter to us—is full of graphs comparing job growth under Republican and Democratic presidents. Those alone should be enough to effectively nuke GOP candidates. Not to mention similar graphs on debt and deficits. But nooo… .
The Editor
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Trump is Worse Than Victor Orban
To the Editor:
As a dual citizen and Hungarian American I have twice voted against the party of Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban. While I do not support Mr. Orban’s style of governing, he has not rejected elections nor advocated for undemocratic laws. He is abiding by the laws of Hungary, with a coalition government of approximately 60 percent in parliament.
The opposition parties are, however, making steady progress in their attempt to replace his government. Mr. Orban has used religious themes and Hungarian nationalism to rally support. This even though Hungarians are not particularly religious and Hungarian nationalism is more a myth than a fact. The Hungarian nation was initially founded by a mixture of various ethnic groups among which were Magyars (the Hungarians).
Also, it seems that most Hungarians want to remain part of the European Union (EU), which has lavished financial benefits on Hungary. That is why Mr. Orban often attempts to violate EU rules, but then retreats by way of some compromise.
So, while democracy is struggling in Hungary, there is much to suggest it will survive.
Donald Trump on the other hand clearly has authoritarian tendencies and poses a grave threat to American democracy.
Peter Somssich
Portsmouth, N.H.
Peter:
Thanks for this illuminating perspective.
The Editor
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“Operation Catalonia”: Spain’s Dirty War
To the Editor:
The PSOE, a party in the Spanish government, has changed its stance on Catalan independence, and that is opening a loophole through which uncomfortable truths are surfacing: Spanish nationalism has been fraudulently using justice, for political purposes, to try to destroy the Catalan independence movement. The twist is due to the fact that, to govern Spain, the PSOE needs the 7 votes of Junts, Puigdemont’s Catalan pro-independence party. Currently the PSOE has hardly any representation at any other institutional level, neither regions nor important cities, therefore it needs to govern Spain in order to be able to place in government positions a large number of people from its party and thus subsist economically. This has forced the PSOE to recognize implicitly that it had falsely accused the independence movement of being coup plotters, violent terrorists, racist supremacists, of making a pact with Putin to weaken the EU… and, as it knew that all this was invented, it has now needed to clarify the falsity of these accusations so that the citizenship accepts the pact, also recognizing that the Catalan independence movement has suffered “lawfare” (judicial dirty war). The only “crime” of the Catalan independence movement has been to offend the aggressive and intransigent nationalism that is part of the Spanish DNA.
We knew, from an ex-agent, that the PP government organized “Operation Catalonia,” using reserved State funds, to try to find crimes that could have been committed by the Catalan pro-independence activists and, not finding them, bribed, fabricated and spread totally fabricated accusations with the help of the Spanish press. Now some newspapers have published contrasted information on the ways in which the then president of the government, Mariano Rajoy, was receiving the information of this operation of the State’s sewers. We have also learned of a list of people under investigation, not because they are suspects, but because of who they are politically. “Operation Catalonia” made it possible for allegedly, innocent political leaders to be accused. It tried to influence electoral processes, made an Andorran bank go bankrupt, paid to hide information about a jihadist group that ended up attacking Barcelona in August 2017… .
After Franco’s dictatorship, the incipient Spanish democracy had to fight against the Basque terrorist group ETA and resorted to all kinds of dirty war (torture, human rights violations, stigmatisation of what was Basque, and even state terrorism by the GAL group) and, with a peaceful and democratic movement, such as the Catalan pro-independence movement, they have decided to activate the same pattern of dirty war by the state but now applied against a movement that has not committed any crime. As this attack has brought together the speeches of the political parties, the judicial and police actions and the stories fabricated by the media, it is difficult to unravel the truth in the open and to judge it. Moreover, the same PSOE, which is now interested in uncovering the irregular actions of the PP government, in its own government has also practised illegal espionage and “lawfare” against the Catalan pro-independence movement. In any case, this case is unsolvable within Spain because how can the very top of the judiciary itself be tried for a crime? That is why it is necessary for the EU to get involved: penalise Spain and force it to accept a democratic solution in the form of a referendum.
Jordi Oriola Folch
Barcelona, Cataluña
Jordi:
You ask, “how can the very top of the judiciary itself be tried for a crime?”
Yeah, we can relate.
The Editor
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Ewing: Still in Bizarro World
To the Editor:
People who have grown rich and powerful from our big, bloated, controlling, and wasteful Federal government will make up and say anything to stop Trump from making our government work for everyone.
[Don: No one has grown more “rich and powerful from our big, bloated, controlling, and wasteful Federal government” than those who fund the GOP. Take Harlan Crow, for example. who now owns a significant share of the Supreme Court. Also, you seem to think Dolt #45 is trying to “make our government work for everyone.” That is only true in the sense that for Dolt #45, no one really exists other than himself.]
Biden feigned outrage when he falsely alleged that Trump slandered our fallen soldiers in France…
[Don: Here you have the gall to cite a clip of Kayleigh McEnany, speaking at a White House press conference, as your source. As the saying goes, “there’s your problem.”]
Don Ewing
Meredith, N.H.
Don:
Sadly, due to lack of space, we had to jettison 225 drivel units from this, your latest fan fiction entry.
The Editor