Castro on Korea

My Italian publisher, Zambon, sends me stuff from foreign progressive websites.  Today I received Fidel Castro’s latest post, on North Korea’s nuclear threats.

This man in his late eighties so often pronounced dead by his enemies, has the most cogent take I have encountered: http://en.cubadebate.cu/category/reflections-fidel/.

Castro starts by noting how old our solar system is, and points out that we shouldn’t confuse the existence of life with that of intelligent life.  That’s a great example of someone who thinks in terms of the Big Picture, but not in order to conquer the world.

Castro goes on to say that five of the seven billion people in the world live in the area that would be most affected by a nuclear war.  I don’t know how he arrives at this figure, but it hardly matters.  The man who led the Cuban Revolution more than fifty years ago and outlasted seven presidents not counting Obama, called the present situation the most dangerous since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

He also noted that the Korean War began only a few years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, and the fact that President Truman rejected General MacArthur’s request to nuke North Korea.

While the world community waits for China to find a way to calm Kim Jong Un’s impetuosity, the Cuban leader salutes the North’s technological achievements while reminding its youthful leader of his obligations toward those who have been his friends, and noting that it would be ‘unjust’ for him to forget that a conflict would kill 70% of the world’s inhabitants.

Even-handedly, he concludes that a Korean conflict would paint the American president in a sinister light, and that it is his obligation and that of the American people to avoid such a tragedy.