How Julian Assange And Wikileaks Took On The US Empire

The story of Julian Assange and Wikileaks has unfolded like a Hollywood thriller complete with classified secrets, surveillance, court cases and chases alongside a who’s who of presidents, contenders, provocateurs, controversialists and spies.

The images of a bearded, bewildered Julian Assange, looking haunted as he was frogmarched out of the Ecuadorean embassy, have been beamed across the world. He was seemingly in poor health and looked every bit the political martyr persecuted by the ‘deep state’. On closer inspection, it turned out that he was fittingly carrying a copy of the late Gore Vidal’s History of The National Security State. Admittedly, Vidal was a former insider pouring scorn on the US empire from the perch of his self-imposed exile on the Amalfi coast in Italy. Whilst Assange has always been the proverbial outsider; a man effectively without a country exiled even to the fringes of the internet counterculture.

Once he had been manhandled into the police van, he managed a wave and smile to his supporters, with an unmistakeable twinkle in his eyes, despite the gravity of the situation. He now faces possible extradition to the United States and a long…