Stop the confrontation at Standing Rock
An opportunity exists for the president and others to halt the confrontation near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation before it gets out of hand. Native Americans have been badly treated and lied to by the U.S. government. Treaties have been violated or simply ignored since the first one was consummated 250 years ago. The Dakota Sioux have every reason not to believe the assurances that the Dakota Access Pipeline presents no threat to their people, to their water supply or to their historic ancestral grounds.
What is really clear and has been ever since confronting peaceful domestic protest became an appealing alternative to genuine machismo is that, given the slightest chance or provocation, a countless number of our men will be way too eager to don the communal gear and bravado of warfare and pick on unarmed American men and women.
Backed up by the kind of motorized armored vehicles that are customarily seen only in real battles with real foes, clothed from head to toe in protective gear and armed to the teeth with guns, billy clubs, concussion grenades, tear gas and high powered fire hoses, they line up under an American flag hanging limply — how else might we expect it to hang? — and chafe, waiting for the command to advance on peaceful protesters exercising their freedom to do so here in the United States.
Our president has the authority to stop Standing Rock from becoming Wounded Knee, and if he wants to exit with his head held high, he should do so.
Phil Crossman
Vinalhaven
Trump’s conflicts of interest
Isn’t anyone worried that Donald Trump’s children, if given security clearance, would be privy to information they might use in making decisions about his business interests, information other businesses would not have?
We know the stock market jumps up or down in response to events abroad. Suppose a Trump child gets word — from, say, the CIA — of an event taking place somewhere before anyone else and decides to buy or sell property or stocks to their advantage while others do not have that advance warning. This would be a worst-case scenario of “insider trading.”
I suggest the Trumps cannot have it both ways: Manage the family business from Trump Tower while having access to White House secrets. Absent a blind trust, this would further open the Trump family to suspicion of corruption on a worldwide scale.
John F. Battick
Dover-Foxcroft
Maine and the American Revolution
I enjoy reading the Today in History feature, but I must point out a factual inaccuracy from the Nov. 25 edition. On this date, it said, “in 1783, nearly three months after the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American Revolution, the last British soldiers withdrew from New York City, the last British military position in the United States.” But this is incorrect.
On Jan. 15, 1784, the British flag was lowered at Fort George in Castine, and the garrison abandoned the facility. The Treaty of Paris, thanks in large part to John Adams, had granted to the United States the eastward districts of the borderlands in Maine, and they were indisputably part of the U.S. upon the signing of the treaty.
I suppose this is just an obscure fact but in the larger picture it matters to set the record straight. Although Maine is fortunate to have a vibrant, exciting historical tradition of scholarship and published works in the nation, as a whole, the role of the district of Maine in the American Revolution is ignored, marginalized and misunderstood as we can see in this Today in History column.
At the Game Loft, the youth development program my wife and I direct in Belfast, we studied the impact of the American Revolution in Maine last year. We learned that Maine played a critical and complicated role in the war. Our youth appreciated learning this.
Ray Estabrook
Belfast