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<\/a><\/p>\nI think we already know the answer.\u00a0 We need to go further and try and understand what this partially veiled, but completely serious, US and UK destruction of a modern journalist means for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n Assange is an advocate for whistleblowers, a promoter of information access and information security for everyone, not just governments and major government-connected corporations.\u00a0 He, with the help of information security specialists, codewriters, truthtellers and witnesses around the world, received and published material that embarrassed and exposed a number of powerful organizations, including the US government and its many cronies and beneficiaries.<\/span><\/p>\n Why is he being tortured<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>to death?\u00a0 Why is he still being subjected<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to new and experimental variants of BZ fresh from Porton Down<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and deprived, not only of friends, relatives, and unsupervised access to his legal team, but to food and basic care?<\/span><\/p>\n The short answer is that he is being held on behalf of the United States and he is being chemically and physically interrogated in Belmarsh<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (the British Gitmo) in order to reveal his private cryptographic keys, and the names and cryptographic information relating to others within the Wikileaks information network.\u00a0 The arrest of Ola Bini<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in April with new charges<\/strong><\/span><\/a> filed last month, and the re-arrest and incarceration of Chelsea Manning<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, speak to part of the effort to find the anonymous leakers of information from the NSA vaults, specifically their hacking tools cache<\/strong><\/span><\/a> leaked in 2016.\u00a0 This is generally indicated but not completely put forth in the US indictment<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n It is fascinating that the plea deals of two recent NSA \u201cspies\u201d \u2013 government employees who took home and \u201choarded\u201d vast quantities of NSA material were remarkably mild, when compared to what Julian Assange is going through, and how Bini and Manning have been and are being treated.<\/span><\/p>\n A Mr. Pho, a 67 year old who worked as a developer for NSA\u2019s Tailored Access Operations<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, pled guilty to one count of willful removal of defense information, and was free on bail prior to his sentencing in early 2018<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to 66 months.\u00a0 The NSA bit-hoarder extraordinaire, Harold Martin, recently was sentenced to nine years, for his \u201ccrimes against the state<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Even Reality Winner, who was tried under the Espionage Act and did not plea out, received a relatively light sentence<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, to be completed in a prison close to her home with promises that she can be treated for bulimia.\u00a0 John Kiriakou did little more than reveal what the whole country already knew about torture conducted by the CIA, and he was sentenced to 30 months<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of prison.<\/span><\/p>\n The best practice in the US, in case you are interested in this line of work, is to cop a plea.\u00a0 Otherwise, best you be a flag officer who swore to uphold the Constitution (like Petraeus<\/strong><\/span><\/a> or Clapper<\/a><\/strong><\/span>) or an elite politician like Hillary.\u00a0 Barring that, be sure you are tried publicly on weak charges, and perhaps you will avoid chemical interrogation, physical and mental torture, and indefinite detention by the US government and its lackeys.\u00a0 Otherwise, like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, one needs the protection of a powerful non-US government to fend off US death squads.\u00a0 Edward has that from Russia, and Julian had that from Ecuador, but it came with a price \u2013 and no price is too high for the US taxpayer<\/strong><\/span><\/a> when it comes to the security of the USG.<\/span><\/p>\n In the case of Assange, while no damage was done to the world or to human life, the US Government experienced significant embarrassment through the release of USG hacking tools<\/strong><\/span><\/a> by the Shadow Brokers hacking group.\u00a0 Those tiered releases<\/strong><\/span><\/a> indicate what the NSA and other parts of the US Government (and their Five Eyes<\/strong><\/span><\/a> allies) were and are capable of doing, and are doing, to all of us.\u00a0 The 2016 retroactive legalization of UK surveillance<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of its citizens indicates the scope and the concern of existing governments that are engaged in self-preservation in difficult times.\u00a0 The updated USA Freedom Act of the same time frame reveals much the same concerns by the US state.<\/span><\/p>\n The Shadow Brokers revelations also suggest that another Snowden caliber leak may exist within the NSA.\u00a0 Thanks to Assange, Snowden and others, the NSA feels almost as technologically transparent and vulnerable as the average American.\u00a0 This must not stand!<\/span><\/p>\n Because this must not stand, Assange and those who may have worked with him will be interrogated with the full capability of the state (physical, mental and chemical torture).\u00a0 They will not be tried, represented or defended in a public court, and as noted here for Assange, they will never be released<\/strong><\/span><\/a> regardless of what is discovered through various interrogations.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether or not a mole, or moles, remain inside the vast US Intelligence conglomerate is, at this point, irrelevant.\u00a0 One or more must and will be found, and as part of that search, many people \u2013 to be found among traditional or non-traditional 21st<\/sup> century journalists, aggregators, bloggers, communicators, tweeters or researchers and the vast population of government employees and contractors \u2013 must be destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n As with the convoluted intelligence bureaucracies of East Germany, the Soviet Union, Iran under the Shah, and a long list throughout human history, once the disease of government secrecy and hidden crime metastasizes, there is no resolution but death, destruction and eventual collapse of the system, and a slow, painful and inconsistent recovery of human society.<\/span><\/p>\n On the other hand, there will be no slow painful recovery for Julian Assange.\u00a0 He has been reduced to the mental capacity of a drug-addled rubberhead, and some of these effects will be found to be permanent.\u00a0 Physically he is reported to be underweight (under 100 pounds) with food and water being used as bargaining chips in his continued interrogation.\u00a0 Ironically, even the prisoners at Gitmo, as part of the tender care by the USG, were force-fed when they tried to starve themselves to death.\u00a0 Julian\u2019s government caretakers are using food and water to break him completely.<\/span><\/p>\n Is there any good news?\u00a0 NPR\u2019s Terri Gross presented an interesting historical perspective on CIA drug experimentation just last week<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Well worth a listen, as all change is but evolution.\u00a0 Interestingly, as with the end of Sidney Gottlieb\u2019s employment, if the sponsor of evil within a government is removed, sometimes their entire cadre is cleared out.\u00a0 More often than not, illustrating Robert Higgs\u2019 \u201cratcheting effect\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, it is simply relocated elsewhere in the government, or even expanded among several agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n Modern day government power is fundamentally related to its \u201cbelievability.\u201d\u00a0 This believability, this trustworthiness, is teetering everywhere \u2013 in part to the valiant work of honest people everywhere \u2013 and make no mistake, we are indeed everywhere.\u00a0 The hopeless and evil persecution of Julian Assange signals just such a believability crisis.\u00a0 When a building, or an institution, begins to crumble, there are many urgent jobs to do to save lives and ensure a happier future.\u00a0 Find one of them and start doing it.<\/span><\/p>\n Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail<\/a><\/span>], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n