Cuban Missile Crisis, Forty Year Reunion, Compared to Ukraine War
Current Events and History

Cuban Missile Crisis, Forty Year Reunion, Compared to War in Ukraine

Goodwin recalls, “That President Kennedy had handled the Cuban Missile Crisis with assurance, wisdom, and skill remained the prevailing opinion of the conferees four decades later. By choosing a quarantine of Soviet ships instead of air strikes to be followed by an invasion, Kennedy had bought time to cut a deal with Premier Nikita Khrushchev, averting a potential nuclear war. The Soviets would remove the missiles which had been installed in the Cuban countryside within striking distance of Florida; the United States would pledge that there would be no invasion of Cuba. If all these conditions were met, Kennedy gave his word that the US would remove nuclear missiles from Turkey, which stood within striking distance of Russia.”
The danger of a nuclear war was very real. In 2022, we learned that a Soviet submarine was compelled to surface during the crisis. She had been unable to communicate with Moscow while underwater, and two out of the three officers on board agreed to fire their nuclear weapons in response to practice depth charges being detonated, which they thought were real. But the third refused to unlock the button, and the submarine surfaced, and peacefully withdrew from Cuba. […]

Civil Rights

Was WEB Du Bois a Communist? The Later Years of WEB Du Bois

Was WEB Du Bois a communist? The answer is YES: When he turned 93, he joined and paid his dues to the CPUSA, Communist Party. Most people are born in the first chapters of their autobiography; but no, WEB Du Bois, being ever the contrarian, chooses to extol the virtues of communism in the opening chapters. Personally, I am quite angry with him, why did he do that? It is political poison for a black leader to announce he is a communist, and now I must explain it. We will reflect on his growing embrace of communism over the course of his life. […]