North Korea flashpoint

The Trump administration has ratcheted up tensions with North Korea to a new high. An American armada has been sent to the Korean seas. The US has put in place a sophisticated missile defence system in South Korea. And Trump has issued several warnings to North Korea. The provocation is said to be North Korea's attempt at testing a missile that could hit California.

But there is a history to North Korea's nuclear missile programme that finds little mention in the western media. The western media paints North Korea's ruler Kim Jong Un as a madman bent on self-destruction and his country as a poor, backward nation that could collapse any time.

An article in RT sets the record straight in respect of the above:

As Bruce Cumings, the leading Western academic expert on the DPRK, puts it:
"North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea… Why on earth would Pyongyang not seek a nuclear deterrent? But this crucial background doesn’t enter mainstream American discourse. 

....An internal CIA study almost grudgingly acknowledged various achievements of this regime: compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular; “radical change” in the position of women; genuinely free housing, free health care, and preventive medicine; and infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries.
Life expectancy at birth is 70.4 years. Hospital bed density (number of hospital beds per 1,000 of the population) is 13.2 – quadruple that of the United Kingdom. The entire population has access to improved drinking water. The literacy rate is 100 percent. Think these statistics come from the DPRK’s ministry of propaganda? They’re from the CIA World Factbook. Most developing countries would be very happy to achieve such figures.

North Korea has a no first use policy on nuclear weapons. The US will not reciprocate. The US will not offer a non-aggression pact either. It won't withdraw its troops from South Korea in exchange for a nuclear deal with North Korea. What the US will do is intimidate and bully. North Korea refuses to be bullied.

Let me add what Paul Craig Roberts, a respected journalist and former policy maker has to say on the subject:

The Chinese government has said that the moronic Americans could attack North Korea at any moment. A large US fleet is heading to North Korea. North Korea apparently now has nuclear weapons. One North Korean nuclear weapon can wipe out the entirety of the US fleet. Why is Washington inviting this outcome? The only possible answer is moronic stupidity.
North Korea is not bothering anyone. Why is Washington picking on North Korea? Does Washington want war with China? In which case, is Washinton kissing off the West Coast of the US? Why does the West Coast support policies that imply the demise of the West Coast of the US? Do the morons on the West Coast think that the US can initiate war with China, or North Korea, without any consequesnces to the West Coast? Are even Americans this utterly stupid?

Roberts' indictment of successive US presidents is scathing:

It has become embarrassing to be an American. Our country has had four war criminal presidents in succession. Clinton twice launched military attacks on Serbia, ordering NATO to bomb the former Yugoslavia twice, both in 1995 and in 1999, so that gives Bill two war crimes. George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and attacked provinces of Pakistan and Yemen from the air. That comes to four war crimes for Bush. Obama used NATO to destroy Libya and sent mercenaries to destroy Syria, thereby commiting two war crimes. Trump attacked Syria with US forces, thereby becoming a war criminal early in his regime.