Private Manning was tortured. As sure as if they’d strapped her down and set upon her flesh with fire and steel, she was tortured.

United Nations special rapporteur on torture Juan E. Mendez stated unequivocally in 2012 that Manning’s treatment at the hands of the US government during her imprisonment was “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” after 295 legal scholars had already signed a letter in 2011 declaring that she was being “detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.”

Humans, like all primates, are evolutionarily programmed to be social animals, which is why solitary confinement causes our systems to become saturated in distress signals as real as pain or fear. Studies have shown that fifteen days of this draconian practice causes permanent psychological damage. Manning was in solitary confinement for nearly a year.

Manning attempted suicide in July of 2016. To punish her for her attempt to end her misery, they tortured her some more. She attempted suicide again three months later.

The same sadistic regime which inflicted these horrors upon Manning has during the current administration prioritized the arrest of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, and the international arms of the US power establishment have been working to facilitate that aim. The Guardian reports that Ecuador’s foreign minister is now saying Assange’s continued stay in the nation’s London embassy has become “untenable” and is seeking international mediation, to which a spokesman for the UK government has responded that “The government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.”

Justice. A government whose international operations are uniformly indistinct from America’s wants Assange to leave political asylum and trust his life to an international power establishment that tortures whistleblowers in the name of “justice”.

Julian Assange isn’t hiding from justice, he’s hiding from injustice. What sane human being wouldn’t? Time after time after time we are shown that whistleblowers, leakers, and those who facilitate them are not shown anything remotely resembling justice by this depraved Orwellian establishment. Which is why Australia must intervene and protect him.

Julian Assange is an Australian citizen. He is being arbitrarily detained. He has committed no crimes. His arrest is being openly pursued by a government that tortures whistleblowers. The government of the embassy that he has stayed at for the last five and a half years is seeking international mediation. What more reason do you need?

At some point, my fellow Australians, we are going to sorely regret not insisting on our own national sovereignty. Being Washington’s basement gimp will only imperil us. Today it’s Assange, but tomorrow it will be you or someone you know. The next senseless war the Americans start (and you know it’s coming) will kill our sons and daughters, our nieces and nephews, our husbands and wives, and fill our country with another generation of darkened souls and broken minds unless we cease participating in the global domination scheme of the US-centralized oligarchs.

We have everything we need here and our borders couldn’t be easier to defend. We don’t need to put up with Canberra’s endless sycophancy to Washington anymore. If we can’t protect our own citizen from injustice and torture after all he did was tell the truth, we are not a real country. Might as well ask America for statehood so at least we can get representation in their fake congress and votes in their fake elections.

Being a defense/intelligence asset to a foreign government which has never had our interests at heart isn’t serving us. We haven’t even pretended to be our own country since Whitlam, and it needs to change. It’s either follow the Americans off the cliff this trajectory inevitably leads over, or restore our national sovereignty to the point where at the very least we can protect our own citizens from arbitrary detention and torture.

Come on, Aussie.

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