Vladimir Putin is a war criminal that must be stopped!

Vladimir Putin will have a sad and tragic ending: the sad and inevitable tragic thing about the opportunity he lost.

Vladimir Putin’s rise from a mid-level KGB officer to the autocratic leader of Russia ...he has spent his career cultivating his ambition to become an "Accidental Czar", constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe and in Ukraine. (Andrew S. Weiss)

Echo letter to the editor of the Lowell Sun newspaper, in Massachusetts:
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Putin's surprising rise to power, it was widely accepted that there would be an economic integration with the West and that Western institutional norms, in terms of the criminal justice system and democratic processes, would follow. In the United States, governmental accommodations were developed to facilitate cultural and commercial exchanges. 

Chamber of Commerce affiliates offered workshops, and universities and colleges developed special programs with their Russian academic counterparts.

I was a member of the staff at Mount Wachusett Community College at the time and recall our vice president and members of the criminal justice staff visiting Russian colleges. In exchange, Russian professors arrived at the Gardner campus. They sat in on classes, toured area grammar and high schools, had lunch engagements with faculty and staff, and friendships developed. 

But Putin’s poisonings and killings of rivals and journalists, and his crimes against humanity with genocidal wars in Chechnya, Syria and now Ukraine have sealed his fate. He is an outcast on the world stage and no amount of outsized yachts or palatial estates will repair his reputation or fate.

— Genevieve Fraser in Orange Massachusetts

American immigration and the Holocaust

Maine Writer: This echo opinion letter published in the Lowell Sun, a Massachusetts newspaper, reminds me to recommend reading "On Tyranny", a very short series of 20 essays describing how history is at risk for repeating itself.

The Ken Burns documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust”* was absolutely right — and very true. The atrocities that were carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany were accompanied by shameful attitudes and actions in this country. 

Deep-rooted prejudices led to sad failures to offer a helpful hand to refugees who were fleeing the horrors of 1930’s Europe. If nothing else, it was a regrettable episode in American history.

How easy it would be to take the attitude that we are still the land of the free and the home of the brave. How tempting it is to point to our free elections, to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and feel that we still set a bright example for the rest of the world. We are a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, are we not?

Not as much as we may think we are. There were certain other facts in the Burns documentary that Mr. Kramer did not mention, but he could have. It seems that Hitler was knowledgeable about American society and history. He studied the methods and practices of Jim Crow-era discrimination against black people in the southern states. The segregation, the colored rest rooms, colored bus stations, colored schools, denial of voting rights, and numerous other examples appealed to Hitler; and they formed the basis of how the Nazis regarded Jews, set them apart from other people, and ostracized them as a race.

Hitler was also quite interested in the history of American settlers and pioneers. He knew about their relations with the indigenous native tribes they encountered as the nation expanded to the west. The native people were terrorized and driven off their traditional lands and hunting grounds. They were forced to migrate elsewhere, and ultimately herded onto reservations. That history formed the inspiration for the establishment of the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw, Krakow, and numerous other cities in Nazi-occupied lands. The concept expanded to concentration camps, beginning with Dachau in southern Germany, which started as a detention center for anyone who was known to oppose the Nazi regime. It culminated with the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps — enormous factories whose only product was mass murder.

Sometimes we Americans become blinded by the stars and stripes and deafened by the “Star-Spangled Banner.” 

We fail to realize that our actions have consequences, and the examples we set as a nation may be followed by other nations. 

To protect our interests, we do as we please. To advance our agenda, we invade where we please. With the dust still settling on the wreckage of Iraq, we find ourselves blustering and scolding the Russians and telling them how wrong they are to invade another sovereign nation which has never threatened them.

Do as we say, not as we do. History never stops repeating itself.

— J.F. Dacey in Lowell Massachusetts 

*The U.S. and the Holocaust is a three-part, six hour series that examines America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Americans consider themselves a “nation of immigrants,” but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust genocide of Jews unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people who sought refuge. Through riveting firsthand testimony, witnesses and survivors who as children endured persecution, violence, and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America.

Deny history and we are doomed to repeat it: Holocaust warnings

Echo opinion essay published in the Lowell Sun, a Massachusetts newspaper:

An op-ed essay by Steve Kramer in the Saturday October 1, newspaper about the powerful Ken Burns documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust” was absolutely right — and very true. 

In fact, the atrocities that were carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany were accompanied by shameful attitudes and actions in this country. (Check the history about the 1939, Nazi rally held in New York City's Madison Square Garden.)

Deep-rooted prejudices led to sad failures to offer a helpful hand to refugees who were fleeing the horrors of 1930’s Europe. It was a regrettable episode in American history.

How easy it would be to take the attitude that we are still the land of the free and the home of the brave. How tempting it is to point to our free elections, to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and feel that we still set a bright example for the rest of the world. We are a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, are we not?

Not as much as we may think we are. There were certain other facts in the Burns documentary that Mr. Kramer did not mention, but he could have. It seems that Hitler was knowledgeable about American society and history. He studied the methods and practices of Jim Crow-era discrimination against black people in the southern states. The segregation, the colored rest rooms, colored bus stations, colored schools, denial of voting rights, and numerous other examples appealed to Hitler; and they formed the basis of how the Nazis regarded Jews, set them apart from other people, and ostracized them as a race.

Hitler was also quite interested in the history of American settlers and pioneers. He knew about their relations with the indigenous native tribes they encountered as the nation expanded to the west. The native people were terrorized and driven off their traditional lands and hunting grounds. They were forced to migrate elsewhere, and ultimately herded onto reservations. That history formed the inspiration for the establishment of the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw, Krakow, and numerous other cities in Nazi-occupied lands. 

The concept expanded to concentration camps, beginning with Dachau in southern Germany, which started as a detention center for anyone who was known to oppose the Nazi regime. It culminated with the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps — enormous factories whose only product was mass murder.

 History never stops repeating itself.

— J.F. Dacey in Lowell, Massachusetts

Those Who Forget Their History Are Condemned to Repeat It