A New Kind Of Tyranny: The Global State’s War On Those Who Speak Truth To Power OpEd – Eurasia Review

By John W. Whitehead*

What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights.Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny.The choice is ours.John Pilger, investigative journalist

All of us are in danger.

In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.

The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.

Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.

Take Julian Assange, for example.

Assange, the founder of WikiLeaksa website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sourceswas arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classifiedmilitary documents that portray the US government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

Included among theleaked Manning materialwere theCollateral Murder video(April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantnamo files (April 2011).

TheCollateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two US AH-64 Apache helicoptersengaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The drivers two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by US forces, suffered serious injuries.

This is morally wrong.

It shouldnt matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins andwar profiteering.

In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machines seedy underbelly.

Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prisonin solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a daypending extradition to the US, where if convicted, he could be sentenced to175 years in prison.

Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison wallspsychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillanceits wearing him down.

In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.

Its not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.

Manning, who was jailed for seven years for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month,sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jurys 18-month term expires, and fined$1,000 for every day she remains in custody, a chillingand financially cripplingexample of the governments heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.

This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.

Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the publics right to know.

Yet while this targeted campaignaided, abetted and advanced by the Deep States international alliancesis unfolding during President Trumps watch, it began with the Obama Administrations decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-oldEspionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and insteaduse it to prosecute government whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administrations attack on whistleblowers. It hasinjected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroidsand let it loose on the First Amendment.

Heres the thing: we desperately need more scrutiny and transparency, not less, in order to shed light on government actions and make the obscure, least transparent reaches of government accessible and accountable.

Of course, transparency is futile without a populace that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law.

For this reason, it is vital thatcitizens have the right to criticize the government without fear.

Thats where the First Amendment comes in. The First Amendment gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.

The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.

The governments ongoing war on whistleblowers and journalists is not merely a legalistic exercise over whether these individuals are part of a protected class under the Constitution. Its a struggle that speaks to the very real question of how long we the people will remain a protected class under the Constitution.

Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

We dont have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights ofallindividuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

What the First Amendment protectsand a healthy constitutional republic requiresare citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

As I make clear in my bookBattlefield America: The War on the American People, the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

Be warned: this quintessential freedom wont be much good to anyone if the government makes good on its promise to make an example of Assange as a warning to other journalists intent on helping whistleblowers disclose government corruption.

As George Orwell recognized, In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

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A New Kind Of Tyranny: The Global State's War On Those Who Speak Truth To Power OpEd - Eurasia Review