From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   an hour ago:   
   This past weekend marked a critical anniversary. On October 22, 1962,   
   sixty years ago, US President John F. Kennedy delivered a nationwide   
   televised address announcing that the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear   
   missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the Florida Keys.   
      
   During the week that followed, the world stood on the brink of nuclear   
   war. Much has been written about the events of October 22-28, 1962, but   
   few know just how close the world came to a civilization-ending   
   catastrophe.   
      
   Both Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were keenly aware, as   
   Robert Kennedy observed, that while the leaders “had initiated the course   
   of events,” they “no longer had control over them.”   
      
   On October 27, just five days after Kennedy’s speech, US Navy destroyers   
   began dropping depth charges on the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba with   
   the aim of forcing it to surface. Unbeknownst to the American warships,   
   B-59 was armed with a nuclear torpedo. As one officer on the submarine   
   described it:   
      
   "They surrounded us and started to tighten the circle, practicing attacks   
   and dropping depth charges. They exploded right next to the hull. It felt   
   like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly   
   blasting with a sledgehammer."   
      
   The captain of the boat, Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, ordered the   
   ship’s nuclear torpedo to be armed. “We’re going to blast them now! We   
   will die, but we will sink them all—we will not disgrace our Navy,”   
   Savitsky yelled.   
      
   The firing of the nuclear torpedo was only averted by chance, however,   
   because the chief of staff of the brigade, Vasili Arkhipov, was aboard the   
   submarine and countermanded the order. Daniel Ellsberg observed in The   
   Doomsday Machine:   
      
   "Had Arkhipov been stationed on one of the other submarines, there is   
   every reason to believe that the carrier USS Randolph and several, perhaps   
   all, of its accompanying destroyers would, within minutes of the agreement   
   by Savitsky and [his second in command], have been destroyed by a nuclear   
   explosion…   
      
   The clear implication on the cause of the nuclear destruction of this   
   antisubmarine hunter-killer group would have been a medium-range missile   
    from Cuba whose launch had not been detected. That is the event that   
   President Kennedy had announced on October 22 would lead to a full-scale   
   nuclear attack on the Soviet Union."   
      
   Humanity narrowly averted catastrophe 60 years ago. That outcome was   
   attributable both to the horrific memory of the bombing of Hiroshima and   
   Nagasaki, which had taken place just 15 years before, and the fact that   
   both Khrushchev and Kennedy had no doubt that nuclear war threatened the   
   destruction of human civilization.   
      
   While the world was nearly brought to the brink of destruction 60 years   
   ago, the actions of Kennedy and Khrushchev look positively restrained when   
   seen in the light of the present war.   
      
   Putin, having massively miscalculated the degree of NATO’s commitment to   
   war in launching the invasion, has been pushed into a corner, threatening   
   to use nuclear weapons to prevent a Russian defeat.   
      
   The Ukrainian government, staffed with far-right forces and whose actions,   
   if the US press is to be believed, are not fully under the control of its   
   American paymasters, could at any moment launch a provocation on an even   
   greater scale than the August 20 murder of Daria Dugina outside Moscow.   
      
   And the NATO powers, beset by economic, social and political crises to   
   which they have no solution, are rapidly escalating their involvement in   
   the conflict.   
      
   Powerful forces within the US political establishment are pushing for a   
   direct NATO intervention and are looking for some pretext, whether real or   
   concocted, to intervene. In an interview with the French newspaper   
   L’expresse, former CIA director David Petraeus was asked, “What is the red   
   line beyond which NATO must become more involved in the conflict?”   
      
   To this Petraeus replied, “I think it is possible that Russia could take   
   an action in Ukraine that would be so shocking and so horrific that the   
   United States and other countries might react … as a multinational force.”   
      
   It was unclear what action Petraeus was referring to, but a hint was   
   provided by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said that any   
   attack by Russia on the Ukrainian leadership should prompt an attack on   
   Russia by the US and NATO.   
      
   “Look, if you hit Bankova [the street in Kyiv where the presidential   
   office is located] there will be a strike on where you are,” Zelensky   
   said. “If you do this, then in a second, regardless of the result of your   
   attack, there will be a strike on the decision-making center of your   
   state.”   
      
   Earlier this month, Zelensky called for NATO to carry out preemptive   
   strikes on Russia to prevent the “possibility of Russia using nuclear   
   weapons.”   
      
   On Friday, CBS documented the deployment of the US Army’s 101st Airborne   
   division to the border of Ukraine, concluding, “If the fighting escalates   
   or there’s any attack on NATO, they’re fully prepared to cross the border   
   into Ukraine.”   
      
   https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/10/24/pers-o24.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)