US/UK PSYOPS

KIM PETERSEN—As A.B. Abrams expressed with crystal clarity in his excellent book, Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power, North Koreans are well aware of how American imperialism works, of its military depravity, and its proclivity for disinformation. North Koreans have demonstrated resistance, resilience, and self-reliance. It has served them well since the armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. North Korea is an economically sanctioned country, yes, but it is not an economically stunted country.

JANICE KORTKAMP—WDRVM’s name comes from the first letters of the Elias family members involved in this tremendous effort: Father Walid, mother Denise, son Rabi, and daughters Valirina and Marquize. It was Valirina who fearlessly climbed out the top of the 80m high turbine with the Syrian flag.

What didn’t exist in Syria, they made. Skills and expertise in the wind energy field were hard to find there, so they trained Syrian engineers and scientists and factory workers to become experts. Women and men, Syrians from all backgrounds working together to produce something to help provide much-needed electricity and jobs as well as a model for future businesses.

At meetings between senior Trump administration officials after WikiLeaks started publishing the Vault 7 materials, Pompeo began discussing kidnapping Assange, according to four former officials. While the notion of kidnapping Assange preceded Pompeo’s arrival at Langley, the new director championed the proposals, according to former officials.

Pompeo and others at the agency proposed abducting Assange from the embassy and surreptitiously bringing him back to the United States via a third country — a process known as rendition. The idea was to “break into the embassy, drag [Assange] out and bring him to where we want,” said a former intelligence official. A less extreme version of the proposal involved U.S. operatives snatching Assange from the embassy and turning him over to British authorities.

Such actions were sure to create a diplomatic and political firestorm, as they would have involved violating the sanctity of the Ecuadorian Embassy before kidnapping the citizen of a critical U.S. partner — Australia — in the capital of the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally. Trying to seize Assange from an embassy in the British capital struck some as “ridiculous,” said the former intelligence official. “This isn’t Pakistan or Egypt — we’re talking about London.”

STEPHEN COOPER—Like many countries in the world, Syria has legislation against cybercrime. The central plank of anti-cyber terrorism legislation is the Cybercrime Law 17/2012, updated in 2018. This law established the responsibility for monitoring cybercrimes in Syria and assigned it to the National Agency for Network Services (NANS). This responsibility is implemented by CERT Syria, which is the national Computer Emergency Response Team.

The 2018 amendment to the law required a cadre of judges in the intricacies of technology. This addressed a lack of comprehension of technical issues that previously made the judiciary incapable of properly adjudicating cybercrime cases.

The need for updated processes to combat cybercrime originates with a hacker team called the Syrian Electronic Army. This group is the main threat to internet security in Syria. However, their activities are sporadic, and the group has fallen dormant for long periods.

The Syrian Electronic Army has often been labeled by anti-Assad activists, writing from Western nations, as a branch of the Syrian government. However, no one has ever come up with any proof of a link.

PEPE ESCOBAR—The US federal report on prison labor actually states, unambiguously, that “all able-bodied sentenced prisoners” are required to work. The operative word is “required”.

UNICOR, which operates no less than 110 factories in 65 federal prisons, is blandly described as the trade name for the Federal Prison Industries (FPI) in the US, a “self-sustaining government corporation that sells market-priced services and quality goods made by inmates”. Including, of course, weapons for the industrial-military complex.

According to 2019 figures, the US government – which de facto operates the prison factories – funded ASPI with $1.37 million.

Unisystems, an IT firm that sells interphones for US prisons, also funded ASPI from 2005 to 2019. Inmate labor may be dirty cheap, but if they want to place a call to their lawyers or their family they need to shell out up to $24 for 15 minutes.