Kennedy Tapes of Cuban Missile Crisis Released

[mastodon]

from TheMoscowTimes.com:

Kennedy Tapes of Cuban Missile Crisis Released

The Kennedy Library on Wednesday released newly declassified tapes of U.S. President John F. Kennedy conferring with aides about the 1962 crisis over Soviet missiles in Cuba that pushed the nation close to nuclear war...

[Vladimir_Ilich_Ulyanov]

Classic U.S. tactic. Hold information for twenty years before telling the public the truth. In the Gulf War, U.S planes bombed a mental hospital thinking that it was a military target. A reporter got the story and was going to run it in his paper, but the U.S. government shut the paper down before the story ran, and put the reporter, his editor, and anyone else who had seen the story in jail for the duration of the war. They have absolute control over the media, and after Viet Nam they will never release any real information or footage of war ever again.

(BTW, U.S. had an interesting strategy in Nam: We don't have to occupy land to hold it, we just have to walk through it every couple of days. The Viet Kong won't come back and lay traps...)

[vorosilov]

Why would they let the public know certain things?
Every goverment has something to hide from their people and let the people know only what proves the goverment's rightfullness.

[Greg_P]

The U.S. Military has control of our newspapers? That's funny! You obviously know nothing about the U.S.A.!

It is widely believed in America that the Russian (or Soviet, in the recent past) government has absolute control over the press in Russia. I can't say either way since I have never BEEN to Russia.

Looks like we believe the same things about each other's country! Ha! I'd say that most what the average Russian "knows" about the U.S.A. is rubbish, and the same for what the average American "knows" about Russia.

My ex-wife was Director of Marketing Communications for a world-wide telecommunications firm in Arizona, U.S.A. and we entertained many international clients in our home for about 10 years. In the 1990's, those international clients included Russians who were shopping for satellite modems, uplinks, downlinks, and power amplifiers for your telecommunication systems.

During that time, I came to realize that nice people were nice people the world over. I met nice people from China, Tibet, Russia, and a lot of other places. We swapped stories about each other and each other's beliefs.

We laughed a lot at the misconceptions that were all too apparent when the parties were sitting together around a swimming pool talking about it while drinking beer.

So, all you Russians out there, Americans are NOT evil people who think that only WE contributed to the development of mankind, but we are proud of our country and achievements just like you are proud of yours. Our country is just over 200 years old. Yours is a lot older. We know that we have a very high technology base, and have assumed in many cases that it has been higher than yours at the time. I bet YOU have assumed the same in reverse.

It could be we're both wrong and both right, depending on the subject.

The time I spent with Russians talking about ideas made me realize that we have much more in common than I ever thought possible.