Today is a dark day for journalism, as WikiLeaks editor in chief Kristinn Hrafnasson has said.

Today is the day that Julian Assange was pulled from inside the Ecuadorian embassy and into the full, harsh sunlight for the first time in seven years in a sad playing out of a scenario long dreaded and feared.

Assange was ripped from inside the embassy of a country that once valiantly stood against US imperialism and has since succumbed on its knees to Trump’s America in the hope of handouts and a pat on the head from the empire that destabilised and waged coups upon its South American neighbours.

The UK police who arrested Assange belong to a force that has cost the state at least £10 million in round the clock surveillance and years spent lying in wait for a man with a warrant for breaching bail conditions. If only it had applied one percent of that manpower or taxpayer money on pursuing more pressing crimes and injustices.

The UK police smiled as the frail but still fighting Assange was pulled into a van, deluded with a feeling of job well done, when the job they are doing is carrying out the shame-filled bidding of the US.

The UK government today showed that it is, in the words of Pamela Anderson, “America’s bitch,” just like it was when Tony Blair vowed the pathetic, “I will be with you, whatever,” to George W Bush as they were about to bring us to war based on lies of non-existent WMDs. A war that millions marched against, a war in which we learned the true crime and horrors of thanks to the cables and documents released by Assange. The ones that revealed, in horrifying video, the rules of engagement employed by soldiers inside a Apache helicopter, as they laughed and joked and gunned down a cameraman, a journalist, civilians walking on the street, and the father to who came to help those brutally executed by the US, as his children watched and were wounded themselves.

The video revealed the truth behind a coverup that the US military engaged in to stop Reuters from finding out what happened to their employees. The video was just a single snapshot from a single day of a war fought on lies, a war that the US and UK brought us into in a dangerous alliance that continues strong as ever, as evidenced today.

The Collateral Murder video was just one of the many revelations Wikileaks published about the truth of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, and the war logs were just a fraction of the state department cables, government documents, global intelligence files, political revelations and corporate secrets that have been released by WikiLeaks.

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning provided WikiLeaks with the war logs and diplomatic cables, and she paid a horrific price for her noble act. Manning saw wrongdoing and wanted to do something about it. In return, she was subjected to years in solitary, in conditions akin to torture, before she was tried in a military court and convicted on espionage charges, despite her actions being patriotic.

WikiLeaks ’ publishing of Manning’s revelations shocked the world. The media fed on the content, relishing in reporting on the shocking details, not to mention the commendations it received for publishing reports on said revelations, publishing, just like Assange.

The same media have embarrassed and brought shame to the profession in their snide and smug abandonment of Assange, in the dismissive and biased reporting on the WikiLeaks founder.

These same journalists of the UK press displayed this embarrassment as they gathered to listen to a press conference on the eve of Assange’s expulsion. ‘Isn’t ironic that Assange is concerned about leaks?’, ‘Do you regret helping Trump win?’, ‘All he has to do is walk out of the embassy’, ‘Do you have “hard evidence” of US spying?’, ‘Will you listen to me ramble for two paragraphs without a question just so I can feel like a big man and forget that I am supposed to be gathering information?’

These same journalists are today enjoying surging traffic as the public devours news of Assange’s treatment. These same journalists despair over Trump calling CNN fake news, but have no concern that a publisher is being sent to the US to face draconian punishment for publishing information, information that they too published.

Today is a sad day for journalism and for Assange, and yet the WikiLeaks founder, who has endured seven years of worsening conditions and hysterical accusations of electing Trump, and has been cut off from the internet, his lifeblood, for months, remains spirited and up for a fight.

Assange carried Gore Vidal’s ‘History of the National Security State’ in his pale hands as he was carried from the embassy. He gave the thumbs up as he sat in a police van on his way to learn about the US extradition request he has long warned was coming. “I told you so,” Assange told his lawyer Jen Robinson to tell us, and told us so he did.

If anyone can endure the cruel and unfair wrath of a US government populated with the likes of Mike Pompeo (who just three years ago shared WikiLeaks content himself but has since come out baying for his blood), not to mention the US prison system, if anyone can get through it all with fighting spirit intact, my money is on Assange.