Thursday, January 29, 2009

Khrushchev reacts to American blockade to Cuba

In these two translated telegrams, Soviet Premier Khrushchev responds to President Kennedy's announced naval blockage of Cuba.

From the Library of Congress: "According to Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, in May 1962 he conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

"After obtaining Fidel Castro's approval, the Soviet Union worked quickly and secretly to build missile installations in Cuba. On October 16, President John Kennedy was shown reconnaissance photographs of Soviet missile installations under construction in Cuba. After seven days of guarded and intense debate in the United States administration, during which Soviet diplomats denied that installations for offensive missiles were being built in Cuba, President Kennedy, in a televised address on October 22, announced the discovery of the installations and proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union and would be responded to accordingly. He also imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of offensive military weapons from arriving there."

You must post at least one comment about the letters that can be found at This Link. You may comment on the letters or comments left by others (or both). You may post more than once. This will be a graded exercise.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Obama Inauguration newspaper coverage


If you'd like to see the front page inauguration coverage of major U.S., Canadian, and world newspapers, check out the link below. It's really interesting stuff!

Click Here

Loose, Strict, and "Re-Contructionist"?



Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Presidential Inaugural "words"

I was sent this link by Parisa Zarringhalam ('12). It's a really interesting look at the words used by our presidents in their inaugural addresses, weighted to reflect how often they were used. Please poke around a bit and identify something that was interesting to you and put the address or the choice of words into some historical context. Then post your thoughts here. The link to the NY Times article is here.....just click.