BERTRAND ARTHUR WILLIAM RUSSELL, 3RD EARL RUSSELL

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May 18, Saturday: Bertrand Russell was born in Wales to John and Kate Amberley, as a grandson of Lord John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, who had twice been the British prime minister.

Richard Wagner wrote to his father-in-law Franz Liszt, extending an olive branch by inviting him to the laying of the foundation stone of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

Two songs by Gabriel Faure were performed for the initial time, by the Societe National de Musique: Lydia op.4/2, to words of de Lisle, and Seule! op.3/4 to words of Gautier.

05-18-72 [Bayreuth] in the afternoon arrival of Prof. Nietzsche,Herr v. Gersdorff, and the Ritters. Herr Heckel of Mannheim isalso here, is spending the night at the Fantaisie with Richter.Cheerful, companionable atmosphere, we all belong together. Manyof the musicians already here. (R. writes to my father and insplendid words invites him here.)

1872

COSIMA’S DIARY, ON F. N.

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Bertrand Russell’s mother and sister died of diphtheria.

1875

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Eighteen months after the deaths of Bertrand Russell’s mother and sister of diphtheria, the father of the family also died. Henceforth, Bertrand and his brother Frank would live with grandparents.

1876

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From this year into 1894, Bertrand Russell would be studying mathematics and moral sciences at the Trinity College of Cambridge University.

1890

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Bertrand Russell graduated from college.

December 13, Thursday: In the Quaker meetinghouse in St. Martin’s Lane in London, Bertrand Russell got married with Friend Alys Whitall Pearsall Smith, scion of a well-off family of Philadelphia (the couple would separate in 1911 and divorce in 1921).

1894

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Fall: At a family Thanksgiving dinner in Philadelphia, Bertrand Russell had an opportunity to meet and be approved of by his wife Alys’s Quaker-American relatives:

While at Bryn Mawr, I gave lectures on non-Euclidian geometry,and Alys gave addresses in favour of endowment of motherhood,combined with private talks to women in favor of free love. Thiscaused a scandal, and we were practically hounded out of thecollege. From there we went to Baltimore, where I lectured onthe same subject at the Johns Hopkins University. There westayed with her uncle, Dr Thomas.... There was another daughterwho had remained a pious and very orthodox Quaker. She alwaysalluded to those who were not Quakers as “the world’s people.”They all of them used “thee” in conversation, and so did Alysand I when we talked to each other. Some of the Quaker doctrinesseemed a little curious to those not accustomed to them.I remember my mother-in-law explaining that she was taught toconsider the Lord’s Prayer “gay.” At first this remark causedbewilderment, but she explained that everything done by non-Quakers but not by Quakers was called “gay,” and this includedthe use of all fixed formulas, since prayer ought to be inspiredby the Holy Spirit. –The Lord’s Prayer being a fixed formula,and therefore “gay.” On another occasion she informed thedinner-table that she had been brought up to have no respect forthe Ten Commandments. They also were “gay.” I do not know whetherany Quakers remain who take the doctrine of the guidance of theSpirit so seriously as to have no respect for the TenCommandments. Certainly I have not met any in recent years. Itmust not, of course, be supposed that the virtuous people whohad this attitude ever, in fact, infringed any of theCommandments; the Holy Spirit saw to it that this should notoccur. Outside the ranks of the Quakers, similar doctrinessometimes have more questionable consequences. I remember anaccount written by my mother-in-law of various cranks that shehad known, in which there was one chapter entitled “DivineGuidance.” On reading the chapter one discovered that this wasa synonym for fornication.

1896

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My impression of the old families of Philadelphia Quakers wasthat they had all the effeteness of a small aristocracy. Oldmisers of ninety would sit brooding over their hoard while theirchildren of sixty or seventy waited for their death with whatpatience they could command. Various forms of mental disorderappeared common. Those who must be accounted sane were apt tobe very stupid. Alys had a maiden aunt in Philadelphia, a sisterof her father, who was very rich and very absurd. She liked mewell enough, but had a dark suspicion that I thought it was notliterally the blood of Jesus that brought salvation. I do notknow how she got this notion, as I never said anything toencourage it. We dined with her on Thanksgiving Day. She was avery greedy old lady, and had supplied a feast which required agargantuan stomach. Just as we were about to eat the firstmouthful, she said: “Let us pause and think of the poor.”Apparently she found this thought an appetizer....America in those days was a curiously innocent country. Numbersof men asked me to explain what it was that Oscar Wilde had done.In Boston we stayed in a boarding-house kept by two old Quakerladies, and one of them at breakfast said to me in a loud voiceacross the table: “Oscar Wilde has not been much before thepublic lately. What has he been doing?” “He is in prison,”I replied. Fortunately on this occasion I was not asked what hehad done.... Against my will, in the course of my travels, thebelief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridgegradually wore off.

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In this year Herbert Spencer yet lived, and Bertrand Russell supposed he could hear that man’s voice speaking out of the whirlwind in the BOOK OF JOB — well, he didn’t much like what he thought he heard:

Some, though they feel the demands of the ideal, will stillconsciously reject them, still urging that naked Power is worthyof worship. Such is the attitude inculcated in God’s answer toJob out of the whirlwind: the divine power and knowledge areparaded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint.1

1902

1. Cf. “A Free Man’s Worship,” THE BASIC WRITINGS OF BERTRAND RUSSELL, NY, 1961, page 68.

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Bertrand Russell laid the foundation for his place in the world of philosophy with his THE PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS.

1903

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From this year until 1913, the three volumes of Alfred North Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA.

1910

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Bertrand Russell wrote an article on “The Ethics of War” for The International Journal of Ethics. As has been well expounded by the biographer Ray Monk in BERTRAND RUSSELL: THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996, pages 383-4), this was not the pacifist tract one might have expected of “Better Red than Dead” Bertie:

[Bertrand Russell] told Ottoline before he began the paper:“I don’t think war always wrong.... I think our [Brit] Civil War& the American Civil War were justified on one side. I thing itis always wrong when it is for mere national self-interest.But I find I can’t take Tolstòy’s extreme position.” In fact,the position he took justifies a surprising amount of bloodshed.Categorizing wars into four main types –wars of colonisation,wars of principle, wars of self-defence and wars of prestige–he argued that, when war furthered civilisation it was justifiedbut otherwise not. This, according to him, justified most warsof colonisation and of principle, some wars of self-defence(those against an inferior civilisation), but no wars ofprestige. Thus, “the conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris, and other aborigines in temperate regions” are,for him, the very paradigm of just wars, for, though oftenruthless and “devoid of technical justification,” they arejustified by their consequences: “if we judge by results,we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... [for] itis chiefly through such wars that the civilised portion of theworld has been extended from the neighbourhood of theMediterranean to the greater part of the earth’s surface.”Accepting that such wars were for the most part little more thanarmed theft and that “many humane people will object in theoryto the justification of this form of robbery,” Russellnevertheless insisted that, for example, “the process by whichthe American continent has been acquired for Europeancivilisation” is entirely justified by the fact that, in thisand other cases, there is “a very great and undeniabledifference between the civilisation of the colonisers and thatof the dispossessed natives.” Armed theft is virtuous, it seems,so long as the victim is of an “inferior” civilisation. TheEnglish and American civil wars were, in Russell’s view,justified as wars of principle, where “the progress of mankinddepends upon the adoption of certain beliefs or institutions,which, through blindness or natural depravity, the other sidewill not regard as reasonable.”... What shocks the reader nowabout this article –its view that the forcible seizure ofa people’s land and property is justifiable when committed byan advanced civilisation upon a primitive one– went unremarkedupon at the time of its publication.

1914

WORLD WAR I

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“...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....”

— Bertrand Russell,THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915

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May 17, Wednesday: Agnes Carol Zens was born.

England introduced Daylight Savings Time.

Bertrand Russell had authored a leaflet for the No Conscription Fellowship and 6 men had been condemned to varying terms of imprisonment at hard labor for distributing it. On this day Professor Russell placed a notice in the London Times asserting that he had been the author of this leaflet and “that, if anyone is to be prosecuted, I am the person primarily responsible.” In consequence the professor would be dismissed from his lectureship at Trinity College of Cambridge University and then denied a British passport to travel to the US in order to earn a living by lecturing at Harvard University.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1916

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

Lord Russell “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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While doing six months in prison for having damaged “His Majesty’s relationship with the USA,” Bertrand Russell wrote an INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY.

(Gosh, it sounds like everything was in prison except his mind!)

1918

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In England, a Dangerous Drug Act attempted to implement the agreement entered into by the Hague Convention in 1912 by restricting opiate distribution to medical channels, while continuing to affirm the doctor’s right to possess and supply controlled drugs in the provision of medical care.

Bertrand Russell visited China.

Receiving an MA from Harvard University, Lin Yu-t’ang went to work with the YMCA in France.

1920

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His divorce from Friend Alys Whitall Pearsall Smith Russell having become final, Bertrand Russell was able to remarry, with Dora Black. A son, John, was born.

1921

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A daughter, Katharine, was born to Bertrand Russell and Dora Black Russell.

1923

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Bertrand Russell and Dora Black Russell established an experimental Beacon Hill School.

1927

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A “Slave Memorial” was erected at the spot where the Mount Vernon plantation’s slaves had been buried (refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm).

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin established the 1st Soviet forced-labor camp. Slave labor in the following three decades would construct 12 new railway lines, 9 new Russian cities, 6 new centers of heavy industry, 3 new hydroelectric stations, 3 new ship canals, and 2 new highways (forget about the partridge in the pear tree).

It seemed that Bertrand Russell had not been adequately offensive, so in this year he issued his MARRIAGE AND MORALS in which he opinioned nicely that women are on the average stupider than men:

“Women are on the average stupider than men....”— Bertrand Russell,

MARRIAGE AND MORALS, 1929

Having taken the bit of sexism between his teeth as above, he proceeded a certain distance toward racism:

“It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensable, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable.”

— Bertrand Russell,MARRIAGE AND MORALS, 1929, page 209

Also in this year, in MYSTICISM AND LOGIC, the British philosopher famously opinioned that he was right and anyone who disagreed with him was wrong:

1929

GEORGE WASHINGTON

SEXISM

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That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the labors of all the ages, all the devotion, all the aspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

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Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, 2d Earl Russell, Bertrand Russell became 3d Earl Russell. (That’s the way it works. Don’t ask me, I don’t know.)

1931

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Lord Bertrand Russell got married a 3d time, with Patricia Spence.

1936

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A son, Conrad, was born to Lord Bertrand Russell and Patricia Spence Russell.

1937

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In his A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, Bertrand Russell remarked that Omar Khayyam was the only person of whom he was aware, who had been both a poet and a mathematician.

1945

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Lord Bertrand Russell’s Order of Merit.

1949

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Lord Bertrand Russell’s Nobel Prize for Literature.

Lord Russell’s essay “The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed” was published in this year in a collection titled UNPOPULAR ESSAYS. By the terms of the fallacy described, conquering nations (or, their ruling classes) tend to build comforting and congratulatory myths around the subjects of their oppression –once these peoples have been discarded, of course, so that they no longer represent a threat to the hegemony– simply in order to assuage their guilt. Thus it is that in America we now have a mythology of the once-upon-a-time ecological wisdom of the vanished native American — and, had the Third Reich won World War II, we would now be enduring endless encomiums to the once-upon-a-time fiduciary skill of the extinct German Jew.

1950

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Lord Bertrand Russell got married a 4th time, with Edith Finch.

By the end of World War II growing alarm over the consequences of population growth, particularly in the Third World, had renewed interest in efforts to build an international birth control movement, propelling Margaret Sanger out of retirement. There are too many little brown people! Working with family planning leaders in Europe and Asia, in this year she helped found the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and she would serve as its president until 1959.

1952

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December 15, Thursday: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Herbert A. Simon had been trying to develop heuristic, rule-of-thumb strategies for simplifying problem-solving. He was doing this because computer scientists had become acutely aware that sheer number-crunching, which was what they had been able to train their devices to perform very well, involved so many sequential time-consuming steps that some very real computational tasks, such as figuring out the next move in a game of chess for one fine example, simply could not yet have been calculated by a Turing computer capable of performing one step per second, that had been turned on and given that problem to solve and left to crank and crank at the instant at which our universe had begun to expand some fifteen billion years earlier!

On this day Simon found a heuristic that would strategize the proof of theorem #2.15 of Alfred North Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA, and formed the idea that his heuristic might be programmable. A computer could be taught not merely to number-crunch by the numbers, but instead follow a real shortcut discovery strategy!

1955

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August 9, Thursday: A news item in the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN: J. Clifford Shaw’s program “Logic Theorist,” running on the JOHNNIAC computer at RAND, produced its first complete proof, of theorem #2.01 of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell’s PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA.

1956

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From this year into 1963, Lord Bertrand Russell would be serving the cause of peace as president of a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and of a Committee of 100, and in consequence, with his 4th wife Edith Finch Russell would be imprisoned for inciting civil disobedience (their sentence would, because of the severity of the harm which they had inflicted, be commuted to one week).

A statue of Sadako Sasaki, who had in the previous year died of the A-bomb disease leukemia, holding aloft a golden crane, was dedicated at Hiroshima Peace Park.

An initial cruise under North Pole ice was accomplished by 4-year-old US atomic submarine Nautilus.

NASA began its space program by putting a US satellite into orbit (something about “throw weight” was really

1958

THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

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causing us to turn on and tune in).

Peter George’s novel about nuclear war, RED ALERT, was published under a pseudonym in the United Kingdom as TWO HOURS TO DOOM: A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE (the plotline of this novel would become the basis for the 1964 Stanley Kubrick black comedy film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb).2

2. In the novel there is no Doomsday Device. Also, the ending in the novel differs from the movie — the Pres-ident of the United States of America offers to allow the Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicsto destroy Atlantic City, New Jersey in exchange for the Soviet target of our sole remaining onrushing B-52,but then this bomber fails in its mission and Atlantic City is thereby preserved.

TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

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September 20, Sunday: Bertrand Russell addressing a rally organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Trafalgar Square. Presumably it was at about this point that he began to appeal for unilateral disarmament, using as a slogan “Better Red than Dead.”

1959

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Fall: The conflict in Vietnam was widening as 26,000 Viet Cong launched several successful attacks on South Vietnamese troops, and President Ngo Dinh Diem urgently appealed for more military aid from the administration of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

With US help, the South Vietnamese Air Force initiated herbicide operations. President Ngo Dinh Diem’s request for this sort of “help” initiated a policy debate in the White House and the State and Defense Departments, a policy debate during which we learned that such poisons were not unprecedented as weapons of war: the British had already employed such herbicides and defoliants during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s. Gosh, so actually, we may be doing something evil — but we are not doing anything that has not been done before. How utterly reassuring!

My petition for Conscientious Objector status was denied on the basis that it was a federal crime of Selective Service fraud, punishable by years in prison, to attempt to transit from a 2S Student Deferred status to a CO status (it didn’t matter that the “2S” classification was something imposed on me, John Paul Smith, by Local Draft Board #60 in San Jose, California when I reached 18 years of age, rather than having been in 1955 my own election). I (Ashley Edward Meredith) was classified as ready for my obligatory military service. Despite my twisted spine, which had been categorized by the Selective Service physician as “pes planus, asymptomatic” while I was explaining to them that I was a Conscientious Objector, I was ordered to report for induction processing as an Army private — so I started moving from town to town one jump ahead of arrest by one or another local sheriff.

Each time they caught up with me I would simply get on a bus and go to some different town. Meanwhile I kept after the Marine recruiters as to whether I was going to be acceptable as a Marine Officer, on the basis of my college education and test scores. It is so simple to explain to you now, why I needed to do this! During the course of my 24 years, from birth in 1937 to 1961, I had been bashed a number of times by other males my own age or slightly older. I had been beaten once in 1st grade at Brown Military Academy north of San Diego –beaten with sticks shaped and painted to resemble rifles for training and marching purposes– and my left forearm had been cracked and my upper jaw crushed and one of my front baby teeth knocked out. Then during my Junior High years other schoolboys in Wabash, Indiana had purchased #1 hard-lead pencils, sharpened them to needle points, and made a practice of jabbing these pencils into my thighs and buttocks in the halls of the school (I still bear inside the muscle tissue of my left leg the marks of pencil-lead from pencils that had their sharp points snapped off against the long bones of my legs). Then during my High School years in Wabash I had been bashed during a gym class and my nose utterly crushed, filling my nasal passages with bone fragments and making me an obligate mouth-breather. –I had gone into public education deformed and physically very ill due to my bout with bovine tuberculosis and had come out of public education no longer physically ill, but not merely deformed any longer, having been subsequently disfigured. All these attacks had

1961

SECRET MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

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occurred because of a personal appearance which others found disgusting, the boys calling me “Commie Queer” since my appearance was something like a centaur. (My upper torso and my lower torso, during my adolescence, appeared to be from different bodies that had somehow gotten pasted together at the beltline, with the bottom half hugely muscular and the top half puny. Believe me, the last thing in the world that you want to have is a physical appearance that can be sexualized by attackers!)

This being my appearance and my consequent history, I expected that were I put into a prison, or into an army barracks as a private, I would again find himself being physically abused on the basis of my bodily appearance, and might even possibly be called “Commie Queer” again as I had been in public school, and be ganged up on again, and stomped again. So my attitude at the time was that this application for Marine Officer Candidate School, using my higher education to my advantage, might be what it would take to preserve my life and health if in fact I were to be inducted into the Armed Forces of the United States of America. I didn’t want to be taken out behind a barracks and stomped to death by a gang of other Army privates.

I scored very highly on the Marine Officer written test. The recruiting sergeant at Navy Yard in Boston told me that I had scored quite a bit higher than the highest that this recruiter had personally ever previously seen, in his 14 years experience. So he sent me over to the doctors at the Navy Yard, and I had the first real rigorous physical examination that I had in his 24 years of my life ever received. They classified my Potts Disease physical defects, due to my past bovine tuberculosis, again as “asymptomatic,” the same way these defects had originally been classified when I had turned 18 years of age — as it was clear to them not only that I was no longer infectious but also that I could readily accomplish any physical requirements that military service places upon its young recruits. That is, it was easy for me to pass and even to excel, at the standard military “Physical Readiness Test,” since this merely required a certain number of push-ups, a run of a certain distance (two or three miles in a quite generous period of time under a rather light load, as I recall), etc.

Nevertheless the Marines then rejected me as physically unfit. The ruling was in effect that although I was physically fit to be a private in the US Army –that being a position of appropriately low status– I was not physically fit to be a 2d Lieutenant in the USMC — that being a position of a status incompatible with such a disgusting personal bodily configuration. I couldn’t look good in the uniform. So I appealed this ruling, alleging that it was not actually a medical response to my physical condition but was, rather, a prejudiced rejection on grounds of personal appearance alone. I cited various remarks they had made to me about the importance that a Marine Officer look like a Marine Officer, that the standard uniform fit properly, etc. I pointed out that I had scored very highly on his written examination, and pointed out that despite my twisted spine I had easily been able to accomplish each and every task required in the standard military Physical Readiness Test. I pointed out that I had been working on a Texas road surveying crew as a sledgehammer-man, and that for sure no “disabled” person would have been able to work all day on caliche roads in that hot sun swinging a sledgehammer. I pointed out that as a youth I had made myself a set of weights out of cement poured over scrap metal in buckets, and had developed a series of exercises which I had rigidly followed daily in order to strengthen myself to cope with my “nonstandard” physical configuration. I pointed out that I could raise my left shoulder, at least in appearance if that was what counted, simply by using extra padding in the uniform blouse for that shoulder. Etc.

Did I exactly want to become a Marine infantry officer, was that what I had decided to do with my life? –Well, no, but considering the actual alternatives actually available, I was simply struggling to limit my risks.

My medical dossier went on appeal and made its way up through the offices, while I was moving from town to town evading the local sheriffs and ignoring letters and telegrams demanding that I report for induction into the US Army as a private.

Every once in awhile I would fire off a letter asking the status of my appeal. Finally I received a response

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directly from the Surgeon General of the Navy. The Surgeon General concurred that to reject such a candidate on appearance grounds alone would be to reject him prejudicially. The Surgeon General required that the USMC send me to their Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia, to determine there, by actual candidacy, whether I would be physically and mentally qualified to be a Marine infantry officer.

My appearance at the Marine Officer Candidate School and subsequently at the Marine Officer Training Course, in Quantico during Fall 1961, was obviously distressing to the officers in charge there. One of the very first things that happened was that they discovered that I was embarrassed to be seen in the nude, or in my “skivvies” — and that I had brought pajamas with me to the enlisted Marine barracks used by these Officer Candidates. In the barracks I was quickly and forcibly stripped of these nighttime modesty garments so that my platoon mates could get the full impact of my physical deformity. (They even put a tape measure to me, and among themselves they marveling at how much more huge the muscles in my legs were than their own leg muscles.) The officers there quickly professed to have discovered my political attitudes and to have found these attitudes treasonous, and threatened to award me a general court martial. They put a great deal of time and attention into the fact that in college I had been a student of philosophy, and my “DI,” an Apache Indian named Sergeant Wolf Mule, posed questions such as “How could we possibly trust you? How would we know

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what you are thinking?”

Here is how this “treason” gambit was developed. At an Effective Presentation class, DI Mule assigned to me the topic “Better Red Than Dead — Bertrand Russell.” He gave me precisely the standard 3 minutes to prepare.

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I went to the front of the classroom and delivered my 3-minute effective presentation.

I said something about Lord Russell’s attitude toward the current global predicament. He believed that the world was poised to destroy itself in an exchange of nuclear warheads by intercontinental ballistic missiles, and he believed that mutual disarmament was unlikely. He therefore proposed that the Western powers resort to unilateral disarmament, and embrace the Communism of the Eastern powers as our ideology. Soon, he urged, the ideology of Communism would collapse of its own dead weight, because as an ideology, Leninism/Stalinism was intellectually impoverished. It could no more sustain itself as a viable ideology long term than, say, Nazism or Fascism or Shinto, three other intellectually impoverished ideologies. By unilaterally disarming and embracing the ideology of our “enemies” we would, granted, be subjecting ourselves to some short-term intellectual discomfort, but within a matter of decades the world that such a step would create would be a world of peace and safety.

I said that and sat down, meeting I think my 3-minute requirement, and the “turd” seated next to me stood up and delivered his own 3-minute Effective Presentation on the basis of whatever it was that DI Wolf Mule had written on his own file card 3 minutes before.

At the conclusion of this Effective Presentation class I was marched to the office of the Company Commander and processing began for a General Courts Martial, in that allegedly by virtue of this classroom effective presentation I had been attempting to convert other military personnel to pacifism. I had expressed disloyal thoughts to these other Marine officer candidates who had the temporary status of enlisted men, causing them to doubt and reducing their effectiveness in combat, and oh boy, that is indeed treason. I said “Fine, I’ll plead guilty.” They said “You'll what?” I said “I’m guilty of treason, because I obeyed the direct order of my superior when that order was an unlawful order. That’s the Nürnberg Principle, in case you didn’t know. I’m as guilty as Goebbels and fully deserve the same punishment.”

I pointed out, in that Company headquarters at Marine Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia in 1961, that this was a fine turn of events. Everybody could be happy, everybody would get what they needed. You folks need to establish the Nürnberg Principle as a basic principle of the United States Military Code of Justice, known as the “Red Book.” I need to devote my life to doing something worthwhile that will be of benefit to society — and sitting out the remainder of my life in a prison cell in a military brig for having established the Nürnberg Principle as a basic principle of the United States Military Code of Justice would be an excellent way for me to devote my life to doing something worthwhile that would be of benefit to society. This would be a fine thing, fine for you and fine for me. “So,” I said, “let’s get along with my trial for treason by general

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courts martial. I’m guilty, Your Honors, guilty as sin. I throw myself on the mercy of the court. Thank God we’re not at war, so I cannot be hanged. Do with me as you will.”

I mentioned something that I had had no chance to mention during the 3 minutes of my Effective Presentation, that the slogan “Better Red Than Dead” was not something that had been originated by philosopher Bertie but was merely a repudiation of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’s slogan “Lieber tot als rot” — and therefore it would be possible for the popular media to construe the Commanding Officer’s disagreement with Bertie as being in sympathy with the Nazis.

They went “Well, but, uh, do you believe what you said in class?” I replied “Not a word of it. I had only 3 minutes, only long enough to make a brief statement of what Professor “Better Red than Dead” believed, not what I personally believe. Professor Russell was a Conscientious Objector during World War I — but while he waiting out that war in prison in England I had not yet been born.” The Commanding Officer, and the base attorney, then purported to feel relieved, when they discovered through further questioning that actually I did not agree with Russell, that actually I considered Bertie’s “better Red than dead” polemic to have been a stupid self-defeating one, and that I had delivered my 3-minute Effective Presentation as being in favor of such a posture only because in standard debate mode one is supposed to adopt the “pro” or the “con” position that one has been assigned to represent, and that I had considered that it had been intended that I was to deliver the difficult “pro” argument rather than the easy “con” argument. The two of them expressed themselves as so relieved, that actually I didn’t believe any of that “better Red than dead” stuff! This had all been the most dreadful mistake! The Quantico school disposed of this problem by handing me my shiny golden 2d-Lieutenant bars, which I affixed proudly to my shoulders, and by sending me off on my after-graduation leave of absence. I went to a military airport near Washington DC in my new Marine officer green formal winter uniform, to search out a free standby seat on one or another military aircraft and go home to Wabash, Indiana and show off.

I was directed to a propeller-driven cargo plane sitting on the runway with propellers whirling, ready for takeoff. Three military personnel in uniform chased after me, shouting abuse. They attempted to hound me into the plane’s whirling propeller, but I managed to evade them because, fortuitously, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel happened to be just inside the door of the aircraft, and he reached out and grabbed me. He was angry, he thought I was just stupid, because he supposed I had been unaware of the rotating propeller. I heaved my duffel bag into the side door of the aircraft, and clambered aboard. There was just room for the airplane’s hatch to swing open and shut without being struck by the invisible blades. Safely inside, I looked back through the window and the 3 military personnel in uniform who had been chasing after me shouting abuse had vanished, were nowhere to be seen. I went to a window on the opposite side and looked out, and likewise on that side, they were nowhere to be seen. Although I was intending to go home to Indiana for my post-graduation leave to show off my new uniform and the new golden bars on my shoulders, as I soon discovered, this cargo plane to which I had been directed was headed not for Indiana but for New Orleans, carrying a load of folding bleachers — there was not even a seat in which I could sit, so I needed to lie down across my duffel bag atop a pile of metal pipes. Clearly, I had not been intended to get aboard that cargo plane alive.

(I am omitting here a description of the mandatory cosmetic surgery to which I would be subjected due to my offensive appearance in Marine uniform, at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, since that is covered in a section of this database dated early in 1962.)

During the entire period of my military obligation, three and a half years, the Office of Naval Intelligence and

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the FBI would be conducting a full-scale Background Investigation on my entire life, from the point of birth on September 17, 1937 onward, attempting to discover any factoid on the basis of which they could demand that I resign this officer’s commission.

I would be interrogated with regularity, in rooms with one-way mirrors and a lie-detector machine, on Navy Pier in San Diego. They would manage to get a few things on me, basically various fringe political attitudes that I had taken, plus the fact that during my college education the Communist Manifesto had been assigned reading in one of my classes, plus the fact that my mother would tell the nice men who came to visit her on the farm, in suits, that when I had been a teenager I had masturbated. They would manage to establish that I had an unsatisfactory attitude, one proof of that being that on a security form I had been required to fill out, stating my exact address at every point since January 1, 1937, my first entry on the form had been:

January 1, 1937 — September 17, 1937: in utero

This they would evaluate as my “trying to make a joke out of the national security of the United States of America,” thus placing our national security at risk.However, they never would get enough on me that I felt I had to accept their demands that I resign my commission. To the best of the information I have available to me at this point, I was the first deformed person to serve as an officer in the USMC, and seem in addition to be the sole such person — even to this day. I would manage despite them all to complete his period of military obligation, and without being sent to prison. –And then starting in 1965, my “military obligation” completed, I would be freed to dispose of my uniforms and struggle to get on with my life.

ASSLEY

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A REPLY TO AN EMAIL LIST: The inimitable ex-Marine sergeantLawrence Helm has commented on Henry Thoreau’s civildisobedience:

... the Civil Disobedience defined by its creator HenryDavid Thoreau as an activity surely destined to drawblood? My argument there was that “passivity” was alater addition and doesn’t properly define the activityas created by Thoreau. I believe this discussion was inregard to whether “Passive Resistance” was “non-violence.” I deny that it is.

I want to say that I have over the years made myself somethingof an authority on Thoreau, and Helm has it exactly right here.Indeed the sort of activity intended by Thoreau in refusal ofthe system of violence (in his day he was particularly concernedover human enslavement) was violent, was essentially violent,was only violent. The responsible American citizen was toproclaim “I will not in any way, shape, or manner cooperate withsuch a system of violence, regardless of what you may do to mein retribution for this refusal,” and the responsible citizenwas to issue this proclamation by action and by example in suchmanner that the authorities who maintain such a system ofviolence will be hooked by the horns of a dilemma: either theymust destroy this patriotic resister and then suffer whateverpolitical consequences follow from their act of suppression ofa martyr — or they must abandon their system of violence.Thoreau, the ultimate practitioner of personal responsibility,violently intended to allow to these governmental perpetratorsof systemic violence no third option.

Having gotten Thoreau right, however, our badass ex-Marinesergeant has gone on to say also:

Nevertheless, to be herded into buses & told to line upholding hands & singing Cum Baya in order to block anactivity that is sure to be blocked is different fromwalking into the Marine Corps recruiting depot duringtime of war and enlisting — it seems to me.

Such words strike a particularly sensitive spot in my heart.In 1961, when I left behind my formal education, I was presentedby my local draft board #60 in San Jose, California with thisoption, that option, and no 3d option. I could either “serve mycountry” in the military for my allotted period, or I could dona jumpsuit of prison orange. There was no other possibility.

What could a young man with a badly twisted spine have done, toinsert himself into such an absurd predicament? The answer tothat can be straightforward. When, at the age of 18, havingcompleted public high school, in the Year of Our Lord 1955, Iappeared at San Jose’s Draft Board #60 to register for the draft,I had told them I had conscientious objections to engaging inwarfare. I should not have done that, for obviously, with mybadly twisted spine, I was 4F ineligible for military service.

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The military would not want me, would not want to be responsiblefor me — but, this young man had asked to be a CO. Thatinfuriated them to the extent that they refused to medicallyclassify me as ineligible. Instead they permuted my lordotic,scoliotic, disfiguring spine into mere “Pes Planus,Asymptomatic.” A severely twisted spine was recorded as “thiskid has flat feet but it’s not a problem.” This was their wayof displaying contempt for a young American who wanted to be aCO, a young American who was so cowardly and selfish that hewould seek to refuse to give his life for his country.

They said to me “Don’t do this to yourself, kid. You’re aboutto enter college, let us give you a 2S Student Deferment. Then,after four years of education, if you still want to throw yourlife away, you can come back to us and give us your ridiculous‘I don’t believe in war’ CO shit-talk again.” So I left the DraftBoard in San Jose, that day in 1955, with a draft registrationcard that said 2S, not at my choice but at theirs. Then the yearsof education passed, and I became as of 1961 a young man with acollege degree in Philosophy, and I went back to the Draft Boardand again asked that I be classified as a conscientiousobjector. Their response in 1961 was very different from theirresponse in 1955. Their response was “Now we’ve got you, you sonof a bitch! You are guilty of Selective Service fraud, inaccepting a deferment when actually you were a cowardly andselfish refusenik. You, sir, are going direct to prison for thecriminal offense of Selective Service fraud!”

In threatening me in such a manner, of course, these denizensof the draft obviously were expecting such a young man to wethis pants in fear. They had me figured. —And they had me figuredright: that is exactly how under this pressure I did respond.Instead of making the honorable and responsible choice andallowing them to slap handcuffs and leg chains on me andincarcerate me in their prison, I took the coward’s way out — Iallowed these San Jose psychopathic pseudopatriots to fit meinto a military uniform. “Oh,” they said, “You’ll be so gladsomeday that you listened to reason and decided to do thehonorable and decent and manly thing, and serve your country inits time of need.”

I had what I thought at the time was a great idea. Faced withthe alternative, put on the national military uniform or put onan orange prison jumpsuit, I formed the notion that of all themilitary services, the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard, the AirForce, the branch with the very most impossible physicalentrance requirements would be the United States Marine Corps.So I took the oath to enter the USMCR, figuring that with mydeficient spine, I would flunk their physical requirements andbe freed from all this madness. However, when I actually tookthis test, I found it was over almost before it began. They hadme do a bit of this and a bit of that, and before I had evengotten into a sweat they had me out on a 3-mile jog at a moderatepace, and then they surprised me, saying it was over and I hadpassed. I was physically fit for military service, having easily

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met their minimum requirements.

Then, in answer to the fact that the USMC didn’t want me,obviously was horrified at the idea, didn’t want such adisfigured body to appear within their honorific Dress Blues andDress Whites military parade uniforms, they forwarded my medicalcase all the way up to the Surgeon General of the Navy. Thisguy, you should see him, he will look just disgusting in ourhonorific uniform! From that high office in Washington DC cameback a remarkable response: if this young man has passed thestandard military Physical Readiness Test then you simply cannotreject him on the grounds of a disgusting appearance in uniform.That would be prejudice. That would be unfair. It would be likediscriminating against someone merely because they are ugly. Youcan’t get out of your military obligation simply because you arenot as pretty as Ollie North. You are going to be the 1stphysically disfigured Marine in uniform!

I can only thank whatever Gods there be that the Marineexpeditionary brigade I was sent off on, our mission to effectan amphibious landing near Guantanamo de Cuba and capture aseaport through which the 5 divisions of Army dogfaces waitingin Florida could pass in order to conquer the island of Cuba(this happens to be the closest to global nuclear war that wehave ever come, with an estimated chance of death of 40%), wasturned aside at the ultimate moment — so that in my personallucky case my cowardice did not result in my now having bloodon my hands.

I have reached the age of 80 and have all my life regretted thisyouthful cowardice –donning USMCR dress blues rather than anhonorable prison yellow jump suit– and sought to atone for it.

— A.E. Meredith,former groundpounder 1st Lieutenant,USMCR serial number 083522

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October 23, Tuesday: The Soviet government announced that any aggressive move by the USA against their friends in Cuba could result in global thermonuclear war. The USSR placed its military on alert. All leaves were canceled.

The US issued a pronouncement that any nuclear warhead launched from Cuba would be considered as if it were a Soviet attack requiring global retaliation. Results of a Gallup pole indicated that 84% of the US public favor the blockade while only 4% opposed it. At the same time, roughly one out of every five Americans considered that the quarantine would lead to World War III.

The Organization of American States voted 19-0-1 to support a US quarantine of Cuba to prevent the shipment of offensive ballistic missiles. US military forces worldwide were put on alert. Fidel Castro termed the US quarantine “a violation against the sovereign rights of our country….”

8:00AM: TASS began transmitting a Soviet government statement. At the same time US Ambassador Foy Kohler was called to the Soviet Foreign Office and handed a copy of the statement with a letter from General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This is what he was handed:

I must say frankly that the measures indicated in your statementconstitute a serious threat to peace and to the security ofnations.... We reaffirm that the armaments which are in Cuba,regardless of the classification to which they may belong, areintended solely for defensive purposes in order to secure [the]Republic of Cuba against the attack of an aggressor. I hope that the United States Government will display wisdom andrenounce the actions pursued by you, which may lead tocatastrophic consequences for world peace.

10:00AM: At a meeting of the ExComm, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy approved plans for signing an official quarantine proclamation. In anticipation of a possible reaction to the blockade from the Soviet government, Kennedy directed John McCone to prepare an analysis of the effects of a comparable blockade on Berlin. The ExComm then examined the question of how the United States would respond were a U-2 spy plane to be shot down. If such an event occurred and “evidence of hostile Cuban action” had been established, the ExComm decided that the surface-to-air missile site responsible for the downing would be attacked and destroyed. Continued harassment of U-2 flights, it was agreed, would probably result in attacks on all the surface-to-air missile sites on the island. Following the ExComm meeting, President Kennedy established 3 subcommittees: on crisis communications, on advance planning, and on Berlin contingencies.

4:00PM: At a special meeting of the UN Security Council, Adlai Stevenson issued a sharply worded statement

1962

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in which he characterized Cuba as “an accomplice in the communist enterprise of world domination.” Cuban representative Mario García Incháustegui responded by denouncing the quarantine as an “act of war,” and Soviet representative Valerian Zorin called US charges of Soviet missiles in Cuba “completely false.” Zorin submitted a draft resolution demanding an end to US naval activity near Cuba and calling for negotiations to end the crisis.

5:40PM: Fidel Castro announced a combat alarm, placing Cuba’s armed forces on their highest alert. Cuban armed forces, following a massive mobilization effort, reached a size of 270,000 men.

6:00PM: The ExComm held a brief meeting prior to the president’s signing of the quarantine proclamation. The group made slight revisions to the proclamation and approved a new message to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. ExComm members were informed that an “extraordinary number” of coded messages had been sent to Soviet ships on their way to Cuba, although the contents of these messages were not known. In addition, John McCone stated that Soviet submarines had unexpectedly been found moving into the Caribbean. According to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy, the President ordered the Navy to give “the highest priority to tracking the submarines and to put into effect the greatest possible safety measures to protect our own aircraft carriers and other vessels.”

6:51PM: A new message from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was transmitted to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev via the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Kennedy, stressing that it was important that both sides “show prudence and do nothing to allow events to make the situation more difficult to control than it already is,” asks the Soviet Premier to direct Soviet ships to observe the quarantine zone. (Document 33, President Kennedy’s Letter to Premier Khrushchev, 10/23/62)

7:06PM: In a ceremony at the White House, the President signs Proclamation 3504, formally establishing the quarantine. The Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Forces was directed to enforce the blockade beginning at 10:00 the following morning.

8:35PM: Fidel Castro, in a 90-minute speech, told the Cuban people that Cuba will never disarm while the United States persisted in its policy of aggression and hostility. He refused to allow outside inspection of Cuban territory, warning that any inspectors had “better come ready for combat.”

Evening: At a Soviet embassy reception in Washington DC, Lieutenant General Vladimir A. Dubovik appeared to suggest that the captains of the Soviet ships heading for Cuba were under orders to defy the blockade. Ambassador Dobrynin, arriving late at the reception, declined to refute Dobovik’s comments, saying, “he is a military man, I am not. He is the one who knows what the Navy is going to do, not I.” US intelligence also noted a statement by the president of TASS during the day warning that US ships would be sunk if any Soviet ships were attacked.

At a debriefing for State Department officials, Edwin Martin emphasized to U. Alexis Johnson the importance of preventing exile groups from creating an incident in Cuba during the crisis. Martin suggested that Johnson raise the issue of halting covert activities with CIA Director of Plans Richard Helms as well as with the ExComm. The issue of ending OPERATION MONGOOSE activities and checking the action of independent Cuban émigré groups did not, however, appear to have been seriously discussed in the ExComm. OPERATION MONGOOSE activities were not in fact shut down until October 30th, too late to prevent a sabotage mission against Cuba from being carried out by CIA agents on November 8th.

9:30PM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy, at the suggestion of the president, met with Anatoly Dobrynin in the latter’s office at the Soviet embassy. According to his memorandum on the meeting, the attorney general called the Soviet missile deployment “hypocritical, misleading, and false.” Dobrynin told

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Kennedy that, as far as he knows, there were still no missiles in Cuba, and said that he was not aware of any change in instructions to captains of Soviet ships steaming toward Cuba.

10:15PM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy related his conversation with Dobrynin to President Kennedy and British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, who was meeting with the president. Robert Kennedy recalled that his brother 1st talked about the possibility of arranging an immediate summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, but then dismissed the idea as useless until Khrushchev “first accepted...U.S. determination in this matter.” Ambassador Ormsby-Gore then reportedly expressed concern that the naval quarantine line reportedly has been set at 800 miles from Cuba. Ormsby-Gore recommended drawing the interception line closer to the island in order to give the Soviet government more time to analyze their position. The President agreed and called Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara to shorten the line to 500 miles. It was unclear whether the 800-mile line was ever actually planned; diaries from the quarantine commander, Admiral Alfred Ward, show that he considered even a 500-nautical mile line “excessive.”

Low-level reconnaissance flights over Cuba began for the initial time, supplementing high-altitude U-2 photoreconnaissance. Navy and Air Force F-8U and RF-101 aircraft would fly some 158 low-level missions between October 23d and November 15th. The Soviet Union would respond to the low-altitude flights by employing camouflage where possible.

Moscow placed the armed forces of Warsaw Pact countries on alert. The Soviet government also deferred the scheduled release of troops in the Strategic Rocket Forces, air defense units, and the submarine fleet, and announced that “the battle readiness and vigilance of all troops” had been raised.

A Gallup poll survey taken on October 23d showed that 84 percent of the US public who knew about the Cuban situation favored the blockade while only 4 percent opposed the action. At the same time, roughly 1 out of every 5 Americans believed the quarantine would lead to World War III.

October 24, Wednesday: 6:00AM: A CIA report based on information as of 6:00AM states that communist reaction to the U.S. quarantine against Cuba has “not gone beyond the highly critical but noncommittal statement” issued by the Soviet government on October 23. Official world reaction was reported to be generally favorable, particularly in Latin America. Surveillance of Cuba indicates continued rapid progress in completion of IRBM and MRBM missile sites. No new offensive missile sites have been discovered, but nuclear storage buildings are being assembled with great speed.

Early morning: Soviet ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appear to have slowed down, altered or reversed their courses. Sixteen of the nineteen Soviet ships en route to Cuba at the time the naval quarantine was announced, including five large-hatch vessels, reverse course and are returning to the Soviet Union. Only the tanker Bucharest continues toward the quarantine line.

Morning: William Knox, a U.S. businessman, has a 3 1/4-hour interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at Khrushchev’s request. Khrushchev states that it was now too late for the United States to take over Cuba, and that he will eventually give orders to sink a U.S. vessel enforcing the blockade if Soviet ships are stopped. (The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology July-November 1962, 6/18/63; Khrushchev’s Conversation with Mr. W. E. Knox, President Westinghouse Electric International, Moscow, October 24, 10/26/62)

9:35AM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy has a brief conversation with his brother Robert, during which the president reportedly expressed deep concern that Soviet ships appeared ready to challenge the quarantine:

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It looks really mean, doesn’t it? But then, really there was noother choice. If they get this mean in our part of the world,what will they do next?” “I just don’t think there was anychoice,” [Robert Kennedy] said, “and not only that, if youhadn’t acted, you would have been impeached.” The Presidentthought for a moment and said, “That’s what I think—I would havebeen impeached.”

It was quickly verified that the 20 Soviet ships closest to the quarantine line had either stopped dead in the water, or had reversed direction.

10:00AM: The ExComm meets to consider the situation in Cuba. According to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy’s memoirs on the crisis, the meeting “seemed the most trying, the most difficult, and the most filled with tension.” Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara told the group that Soviet ships approaching the quarantine line showed no indications of stopping and that 2 Soviet ships, the Gagarin and the Komiles, were within a few miles of the line. Naval intelligence then reported that a Soviet submarine has moved into position between the ships. McNamara stated that the aircraft carrier USS Essex has been directed to make the 1st interception, and that antisubmarine tactics, including the use of small explosives, has been ordered to prevent the Soviet submarine from interfering with the blockade.

According to Robert Kennedy, the president asked, “Isn’t there some way we can avoid our 1st exchange with a Russian submarine—almost anything but that?” Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara replied, “No, there’s too much danger to our ships.... Our commanders have been instructed to avoid hostilities if at all possible, but this was what we must be prepared for, and this is what we must expect.”

10:25AM: Anew intelligence message arrived and John McCone announced: “We have a preliminary report which seems to indicate that some of the Russian ships have stopped dead in the water.” Dean Rusk leaned over to McGeorge Bundy and said, “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.” The President directed that no ship be intercepted for at least another hour while clarifying information was sought.

11:24AM: A cable drafted by George Ball was transmitted to US Ambassador to Turkey Raymond Hare and US Ambassador to NATO Thomas Finletter, notifying them that the United States was considering a Turkey-for-Cuba missile trade. The cable stated that while the comparison of missiles in Turkey with those in Cuba was “refutable,” it was nonetheless possible that a negotiated solution to the crisis might “involve dismantling and removal” of the Jupiters. Each diplomat was requested to assess the political consequences of the removal of the Jupiters in a variety of different circumstances. Finletter would present his recommendations on October 25th.

2:00PM: In his 1st communication with President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the crisis, UN Acting Secretary General U Thant sent identical private appeals to the leaders, urging that their governments “refrain from any action which may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war.” U Thant’s plea, made at the request of more than 40 nonaligned states, called for voluntary suspension of arms shipments to Cuba together with voluntary suspension of the naval quarantine for between 2 and 3 weeks.

5:15PM: A Defense Department spokesperson announced publicly that some of the Soviet Bloc vessels proceeding toward Cuba appear to have altered their course.

Evening: TASS released an exchange of telegrams between Professor Bertrand Russell and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In his 1st public statement since the onset of the crisis, Khrushchev warned in his telegram that if the United States carried out its program of “pirate action,” the Soviet Union would have no alternative but to “make use of the means of defense against the aggressor.” Khrushchev also proposed a summit meeting with Kennedy to discuss how to end the conflict and “remove the threat of the unleashing of a thermonuclear

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war.”

9:24PM: The State Department received a letter for President Kennedy from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

10:52PM: The message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was read to President Kennedy: “If you coolly weigh the situation which has developed, not giving way to passions, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot fail to reject the arbitrary demands of the United States.” Khrushchev warned that the Soviet Union viewed the blockade as “an act of aggression” and that, as a consequence, he would not instruct Soviet ships bound for Cuba to observe the quarantine.

At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, SAC increased its alert posture to DEFCON 2 for the first time in history. Thomas Powers, the commander-in-chief of SAC, believed, as he later wrote, that while discreet preparations had been appropriate before, it was now “important for [the Soviets] to know of SAC’s readiness.” Consequently, Powers decided on his own authority to transmit uncoded messages to Strategic Air Command commanders noting that SAC plans were well prepared and that the alert process was going smoothly.

At the request of the President, the Defense Department drafted 2 separate plans to increase civil defense preparations during a possible military engagement with Cuba. The 1st outlined civil defense measures that could be taken in the vicinity of targets close to Cuba under attack with conventional weapons, while the 2d suggested measures that could be taken in response to possible nuclear attack within medium-range ballistic nuclear missile range.

In Tokyo, 0’0” for any player, by John Cage, was performed for the first time, directed by the composer. The most important part of the score read, “IN A SITUATION PROVIDED WITH MAXIMUM AMPLIFICATION (NO FEEDBACK), PERFORM A DISCIPLINED ACTION.” For this simultaneous composition and first performance, Cage authored a manuscript. The work was dedicated to the young Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and his wife Yoko Ono.

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May 2, Tuesday: The US was condemned by a mock war crimes tribunal organized in Stockholm by Lord Bertrand Russell. (During this year, and in the following two years, would be issued the three volumes of Russell’s autobiography.)

“I thought that people would not like the prospect of being fried with their families and their neighbors and every living person that they had heard of. I thought it would only be necessary to make the danger known and that, when this had been done, men of all parties would unite to restore previous safety. I found that this was a mistake. There is a motive which is stronger than self-preservation: it is the desire to get the better of the other fellow.”

— Bertrand Russell’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY(3 Volumes, 1967, 1968, 1969)

1967

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February 2, Monday: Bertrand Russell died in Wales.

In retaliation for an increasing number of Viet Cong raids throughout South Vietnam, our B-52 bombers carpet-bombed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: December 20, 2017

1970

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.