To the Editor:
As a proud U.S. Marine Corps veteran, I will not sit idly by while Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Sununu sells out Granite Staters to support a war that is not important or critical for our national security, is directly hurting the lives of Granite-Staters, and has been boosting his personal wealth.
As of May 11th, 15 of my brothers and sisters have died and hundreds more have been wounded in Trump’s ill-planned war in Iran which involves our New Hampshire Air National Guard 157th Air Refueling Wing.
Mr. Sununu has repeatedly expressed support for Trump’s war, calling it “important and critical” and saying Trump’s approach has been “very effective,” even as the conflict makes life harder and more expensive for Granite Staters.
While the “excursion” rages on in Iran, prices for gas and heating oil are skyrocketing here in New Hampshire, adding to an assortment of rising costs that make it even more challenging to put food on the table.
Rather than representing our troops or the residents of our state, Mr. Sununu seems to only be representing his investments.
Reporting shows Mr. Sununu had significant investments in Big Oil corporations when the Trump administration struck Iran.
As oil and gas stocks skyrocketed following the attack, the value of Sununu’s stock holdings swelled. Mr. Sununu’s wealth keeps expanding at the expense of Granite Staters.
WMUR recently calculated that Sununu could have as much as $36.3 million in assets right now, at least $35 million more than the maximum he reported when he left office.
We don’t need more wars without clear objectives and we certainly don’t need any more “leaders” that value their wealth more than their constituents.
Curtis Register
Durham, N.H.
Curtis:
Barring big upsets in both primaries, the general election will likely come down to Chris Pappas against John Sununu. Pappas has a slight edge in the polls now, but at this point that’s meaningless. Come November, this could go either way.
Needless to say, based on Supreme Court nominations alone, the last thing Congress needs is another Republican. So, we thank you for this rather eye-popping detail about Sununu’s net worth.
It really is incredible. Every fortnight since he left the Senate—while his would-be constituents have watched in dread as their property taxes, health care premiums, and child care costs have soared—this guy’s net worth has gone up an average of $80,000.
The Editor
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Wonderful Things
To the Editor,
Donald Trump was elected in 2024 because he promised a number of wonderful things. Among them: immediately bring consumer prices down, quickly lower the rate of inflation, and perhaps most importantly, keep us out of foreign wars. Sixteen months into his presidency prices are up, inflation is up, and, somehow, we are involved in a foreign war that few in this country support. Additionally, Trump has threatened to exit NATO, alienated most of our long-term allies, threatened to attack Cuba, and apparently decided to abandon Ukraine, all positions that run counter to prevailing public opinion. And, Trump and his family members appear to be raking in huge amounts of cash and other valuables from inside deals.
This coming November there is a very important election. If you are pleased with what has transpired over the last 16 months, love waking up each morning to a new manufactured crisis, and enjoy unending chaos, by all means vote to keep the same crew in charge of the Congress for the next two years. These are the folks that, by rubber stamping everything the administration does, have brought us to this new upside down world. If, on the other hand, you would like a return to some form of normalcy, you might want to consider electing candidates who will abide by their sworn oath to follow the Constitution, and who value principle over allegiance to some wannabe dictator.
Arlo Gambell
Rye, N.H.
Arlo:
A “return to some form of normalcy” is not high on our wish list. “Normalcy” is what brought us here. We need a radical change of direction. And we’re not just talking left and right, here. We’re talking up and down.
The Editor
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It Takes a Village…
To the Editor,
Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars—Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman—have all identified Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Yet, I can find no evidence that any of these scholars, including Bartov, who teaches at Brown University, has been invited to testify before Congress.
Moreover, according to Adam Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, in the two-year period after October 7th, major Sunday morning news shows like Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash featured no Palestinian guests at all. Face the Nation had just one, with the Palestinian Authority’s British ambassador appearing on November 5, 2023.
It takes a village to sell a genocide.
Terry Hansen
Grafton, Wisconsin
Terry:
Sometimes it seems there’s an unasked question in the air, suitable for aiming at both politicians and journalists: “Are Palestinians human beings?”
The Editor
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The Destructive Child
Dear Editor,
Trump has paid two billion dollars of our tax money for contractors to stop building wind-power stations off our coasts. While energy prices explode, like bombs in the unplanned, unnecessary Iran war, trump canceled new, non-polluting energy sources. Destruction with no plan.
Now, as the climate crisis reaches irreversible proportions, trump increases our dependence on oil-based energy. Is he purposely destroying our air and our climate? We won’t know for sure because he closed down four major atmosphere observatories that were measuring CO2 pollution.
The White House East Wing’s rubble, destroyed with no rebuilding plan, is another remnant of this destructive child’s tantrums that we taxpayers must pay for. So is DOGE’s trail of useful government agencies gutted and shuttered.
Democracy itself is being destroyed by trump and his billionaire backers, but they do have a plan: to rule as oligarchs in a dictatorship based on coercion, not cooperation.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont, Calif.
Bruce:
He didn’t just shut down observatories. Because of budget cuts at the weather service, meteorologists have had to cut back on the number of forecasting balloons they can use. Predictably, that’s putting the lives of his own constituents in Tornado Alley at greater risk.
The Editor
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What We Remember on Memorial Day
To the Editor:
Memorial Day means different things to different people. For some, it’s attending a military parade or visiting a cemetery or grilling burgers or going to the beach.
As a U.S. Navy veteran, on this solemn day, I will be remembering all those who have “fallen” in America’s wars. Moreover, I will honor those who have had their lives taken from them while being sent overseas to participate in illegal, immoral or unjust actions.
Gene Glazer, a World War II medic, and a member of Veterans for Peace, as I am, once said, “We have a responsibility to educate the public on the human cost of war, the lives shattered, broken, and lost. We stand as witnesses to this terrible cost and we say to our fellow citizens there is a better way. Join us as we walk the path of peace.”
WW II General Omar Bradley stated that “It is easy for those of us who are living to honor the sacrifices of those who are dead. For it helps to assuage the guilt we should feel in their presence. Wars can be prevented as surely as they can be provoked, and therefore we who fail to prevent them share in guilt for the dead.”
While we mourn our dead, who pauses to remember the innocent civilians, especially children, whose lives were also taken during our military actions? Remembering Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice) and now Iran. I recall a quote that reads “Memorial Day is a day when the horrors of war are wrapped in flags to justify them.” I concur, and also agree with former member of the British Parliament Tony Benn that “All war represents a failure of diplomacy.”
If one looks at post WW II wars/conflicts, there really hasn’t been a single war or conflict that was about protecting our freedoms. Lest we forget, we have a Constitution that protects our freedoms though we have a president and Congress and Supreme Court that seem intent on curtailing some of those freedoms.
In 2026, as we commemorate Memorial Day, we also note that war and preparation for war has resulted in enormous profits to the weapons makers and their political allies. Does it matter to these war profiteers as to which side wins or loses? Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” starts with “Come, you masters of war, You that build the big guns, You that build all the bombs…”. Dylan exposes the war profiteers who manufacture weapons but who never wear the uniform and are never held accountable for millions of deaths, ours and others, including innocent civilians.
WW II veteran Professor Howard Zinn once said that “Memorial Day will be celebrated by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers from future wars. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.”
In the 21st century, the U.S. has been involved in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, in Syria, Libya, the Balkans, Yemen, Somalia, and now in Iran. Who has gained the most? It is firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, RTX (formerly Raytheon), L3Harris, Boeing, General Dynamics, and BAE Systems. They and their shareholders have profited immensely from wars and for preparing for future ones. They and politicians often remind us that “freedom isn’t free” and that some heroic Americans paid the price. If the dead could talk, they would deny that, as almost all wars are based on lies. Those would include the Spanish-American War, World War I, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, even Iran today.
William Hartung and Ben Freeman‘s recent book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine exposes the perfidy of our War Department as it details the profligate spending of this unaudited entity. And, in 2026, the 47th president has asked for a new war budget of $1.5 trillion dollars!
Yes, let us honor our dead on Memorial Day, but also reflect on the millions who have died in many countries as a result of U.S. military actions. According to an analysis by the Cost of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, U.S.-led wars since 2001 have directly caused the deaths of about 940,000 people across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other post-9/11 conflict zones.
Isn’t it time to Wage Peace and to stop erecting memorials to War?
Will Thomas
Auburn, N.H.
Will:
As it says on the T-shirt, “The first casualty of war is the truth. The rest are mostly civilians.”
The Editor
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A New Sherman Act – Or a New Sherman
To the editor;
For millennia, the sole source of sustenance and growth for human societies was the earth. The food, timber, and minerals that contributed to wealth all came from natural resources. Value was created by the labor of peasants, serfs, and slaves who cultivated crops, mined minerals, and exploited forests for energy and shelter. The Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century introduced a new source of wealth generation in the form of capital. Capital, invested in factories and new manufacturing technologies, combined with an industrial labor force to produce massive quantities of diverse products. This form of economic organization, capitalism, substantially boosted the material welfare of industrial societies and still characterizes much of modern life today. Both modes of wealth generation provided products and services that increased the material well-being of society.
We have entered a third era of wealth creation defined by internet technologies and the emergence of large online platforms such as Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. Unlike factories which purposely combine technology and labor to create useful products, cyber platforms do not produce anything, rather they serve as virtual locations which enclose the activities of platform users. For example, users of social media platforms generate content such as videos and information about friends and relatives that attract other users. Moreover, users generate data related to their online activities that can be collected and sold by platform owners to advertisers. Thus, owners collect rent from users who create the value of the platform in the form of direct fees and valuable user data.
In the land and capital modes of wealth generation, parties emerged to extract wealth without adding social value. The feudal system was a means of wealth extraction by kings and lords who claimed ownership of the land and expropriated rent from serfs’ labor. In the era of capital, control of markets was seized by monopolies that extracted value in the form of excess profits, as illustrated by Gilded Age railroads and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. In these cases, the ability to extract wealth led to massive riches for royal families and landed aristocracies and for the industrial monopolists of the Gilded Age.
The modern online platform offers exceptional opportunities for wealth extraction. Platforms like Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon achieved their size and influence because of network effects which increase the value of the platform as new users join. Amazon provides an example: as more buyers join the platform, more sellers are attracted, and with more sellers, more buyers become members, creating a virtuous cycle increasing the size of the network. Industries characterized by network effects have been referred to as natural monopolies since the process eventually leads to only one competitor. As platforms move towards monopoly status, lock-in occurs, when the cost of leaving the network in terms of lost contacts or opportunities becomes too high. The owners of today’s technology platforms do not generate profits by introducing new and better products or services but by collecting rents from users who have become locked into the platform. In this sense, they are little different from feudal landlords.
The ability to extract wealth from the ownership of platform technologies is impressive. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta rank in the top ten for business profitability; eight of the ten richest people in the world have derived their wealth from related technology endeavors. The tech barons are not shy in flaunting their wealth, nor are they reticent about boasting of their technological brilliance. Yet the enormous profits of their platforms are based on the monopoly power inherent in the structure of digital platforms. Rather than brilliant entrepreneurs, our digital overlords more resemble lottery winners.
In the late 19th century, legislators passed the Sherman Act to reign in the excesses of industrial monopolies. Subsequent enforcement efforts were successful in breaking the Standard Oil monopoly and restoring competition in other industries. The monopoly power of the digital Robber Barons is at least as threatening as the industrial barons. It is past time for Congress to pass a modern-day Sherman Act to control the digital monopolies. As part of this legislation, control over their own data must be restored to the users of digital platforms.
Robert D. Russell, PhD
Harrisburg, Pa.
Robert:
What you propose would certainly be welcomed by us. Please don’t be offended if we don’t hold our breath as we wait.
Your mention of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act over-heated our editorial thinkbox: if only William Tecumseh Sherman could come back from the dead and sort these bastards out!
The Editor
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Where Is the Justice for USS Liberty?
To the Editor,
On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, was attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats while operating in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War. The assault killed 34 Americans, wounded more than 170, and nearly sank the ship. A Navy court of inquiry convened soon after the attack concluded that it was a case of mistaken identity, though the incident has remained controversial ever since.
One matter of contention is whether the American flag was clearly visible to the attackers. However, a declassified National Security Agency document states: “Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag—and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification.”
Importantly, in a 2004 signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired Navy Captain Ward Boston, chief counsel to the Naval Court of Inquiry, stated that Admiral Isaac Kidd told him President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had ordered the inquiry to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.” Boston added that this conclusion was reached despite “overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer served 41 years in the U.S. Navy, including as Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the only officer in Navy history to command both the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets. Admiral Moorer also chaired the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, introduced into the Congressional Record on October 7, 2004 by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan.
The Moorer report, a damning indictment of the official narrative, concludes that Israeli aircraft attacked the USS Liberty for about 25 minutes using napalm, cannon fire, and rockets, while jamming U.S. distress channels. It also asserts that Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned firefighters, stretcher-bearers, and life rafts. It further states that the White House recalled military rescue aircraft while the ship was under attack,
Crucially, the Moorer report contends that crewmembers were threatened with court-martial and imprisonment if they revealed the truth, and that “to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify about the attack.” (Emphasis mine.)
According to USS Liberty survivor Glenn Oliphant: “I specifically remember… Admiral Kidd coming over to us and saying, ‘I don’t ever want you guys to talk about this again.’ That was a terrible tragedy for many of us because, when you go through this traumatic stress syndrome, you need to talk about it.”
An October 2, 2007 feature article on the Liberty incident in the Chicago Tribune notes that, even after four decades, many of the more than two dozen survivors interviewed were unable to discuss the attack “without shouting or weeping.”
Furthermore, USS Liberty Captain William McGonagle was severely wounded early in the attack, suffering heavy blood loss. Yet he commanded his ship for over 17 hours, maneuvering her while directing damage control, fire suppression, and care for his wounded crew.
Although it is customary for the Congressional Medal of Honor to be presented by the President in a public ceremony, Captain McGonagle instead received the United States’ highest award for military valor from the Chief of Naval Operations in an unpublicized ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard.
Returning to the Moorer report, it concludes that “Fundraising and election pressures have prevented an honest investigation from being conducted for the past 36 years.” That sentence still rings true today. The same political currents that shaped the original inquiry have continued to shape the silence that follows.
The report also calls for a new Court of Inquiry by the Department of the Navy to take public testimony from surviving crewmembers and thoroughly examine the attack, as well as for June 8th to be proclaimed USS Liberty Remembrance Day. These are not radical demands; they are minimal steps toward accountability and closure.
If we claim to honor all who wear the uniform, then we must also have the courage to confront the full story of the USS Liberty. Our military veterans, and the integrity of our democracy, deserve nothing less.
Terry Hansen
Grafton, Wisconsin (home to the USS Liberty Memorial Public Library)
Terry:
It makes the mind boggle that this attack happened in the first place, but the record is right there—thanks first and foremost to the surviving crew members. Their courage made the record available for all to see. Like many horrors, once seen, it cannot honestly be denied.
Honesty is a funny thing, though. It has great value, but somehow people without political power seem to be the only ones who can afford to use it.
The Editor
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Don’t Fund ICE, CBP, or the East Wing
To the editors:
I believe all voters should be strongly opposed to the legislation, as currently proposed, that would fund ICE and CBP and provide $1B for the replacement of the East Wing.
There should be no funding whatsoever for ICE or CBP without stronger requirements and regulations regarding the human and legal rights of detainees.
And there should be absolutely not one dime authorized for the construction of whatever building that replaces the former East Wing of the White House. Trump demolished the former building and said that the replacement would be paid for by his supporters. We don’t need his garish ballroom. National Security Issue? B******T! We have other Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities [SCIFs]. Not one cent of tax payer’s dollars for the replacement structure or a SCIF beneath it! He wrecked it and Congress should make him fix it. Any member of the U.S. Congress who votes for this should be forced to face his/her constituents regarding their vote on this legislation.
Paul Cully
Dover, N.H.
Paul:
Tell ’em.
The Editor