Jim Hopkins: White WikiLeaker knight of the Empire

By Jove, these spies are a crafty bunch. Cunning as a two-toed sloth in a jandal factory they are, always creeping about, undercover, bugging this and moling that.

One minute they're slipping some hot Russian totty into the House of Commons to seduce a particularly dim Lib Dem with more beard than brains, the next they're embarrassing the ruddy Aussies - even more than the Pommie cricketers - by letting the nuclear cat out of the diplomatic bag.

Because leaking private communiques which reveal he (Kevin) told her (Hillary) about it (China) and said she (H) should be prepared to use the b (bomb) if the need arose is, without doubt, the stuff of espionage. It's what spies do. Which means this Julian joker, the WikiLeaks founder, is one of them. He's a spy too - not for a country, true, but certainly for a cause. Pursuing that cause seems to have offended many VIPs.

The Kevins and Hillarys of this world do not take kindly to having their confidential comments reprinted willy-nilly in the leftie pinko press. They apparently take umbrage. As do others.

Grave dangers are predicted. Yon Julian is denounced as a reckless cyber-terrorist, a man so malevolent that one uncharacteristically belligerent Canadian has even suggested he should be axed, iced, snuffed, waxed, wasted, roasted, toasted, terminated, debriefed, debreathed and generally assanginated.

He hasn't been assanginated. Not yet. But he has been arrested.

He could be sent to Sweden in the middle of winter - a fate more dire than any proposed by the mountybank from Montreal. No one likes Sweden in winter, not even the Swedes. Many prefer to sit outside, stark naked, watching morose Bergman movies until they freeze to death rather than face the season's brutal rigours. Such is the fate that awaits Mr Assange.

Or so it would appear. But appearances are never what they seem, especially in the smoke and mirrors world of spies. We know this.

We're not silly. We didn't come down in the last Shah. We're more Bond than blonde. We know about M and Q and the KGB. We know about the Illuminati and how they rule the world. We know about Blofly and his evil organisation, Smerf and how it rules the Illuminati.

We know you can sharpen dentures by leaving them overnight in a pyramid and we know there's a secret alien breeding programme in an underground laboratory at Area 51. They can't fool us. We know things. Things the people who control the things we know don't know we know. That's why we know there's more to this WikiLeaks business than meets the bus.

Follow the money, that's the answer. Well, in this case, not the money but the benefit. Who wins? Who loses? That's where you'll find the smoking gun. We know how it works. And we know China doesn't emerge from Wikigate smelling of roses.

Privately indicating you're happy to throw North Korea to the running dogs of capitalism isn't exactly a shining example of worker solidarity. The same goes for Saudi Arabia and others urging America to "cut the head off the snake" in Iran. They look every so slightly like a bunch of hypocrites. Russia's exposed as a wholly owned subsidiary of Mafia Inc, and Putin is, well, Putin. No winners there either.

But there is one clear winner. Uncle Sam. Yes, siree, the good old' US of A. comes home at a canter. It doesn't look any worse than it did before. Mind you, it couldn't. America's always been the bad guy.

The world's eggheads have always known America's to blame for everything. You can't get a job as an egghead if you don't think that. No one likes America. It's not allowed.

America's full of Americans. They're all obese and come from Texas. They all wear lycra and like Oprah. They all adore Sarah Palin (who's probably another Russian totty). And Mr Assange has outed them, good and proper!!

Or has he? See, it doesn't matter what the world thinks of you. What matters is what you can do in the world. And now America can do whatever it likes. When "somebody" drops a hand grenade into the pocket of Mr Ahmadinejad's dinner jacket and the Saudis go spare, we'll say, "Yeah, right" and get on with our Christmas shopping.

When a bunch of Seoul mates kidnaps the famous North Korean broadcaster Kim Jung Hill and China starts ranting, we'll all snort, "That's not what you say in private, Comrade chum."

So the Empire strikes back. It gets what it wants. With egg on its face, for sure, but everyone thinks its face is all egg anyway, so that's irrelevant. Which is why John le Carre fans who know espionage is a labyrinth of ambiguities, betrayals and ploys, are well aware the spy who's going into the cold is not what he seems. Mr Julian Assange is not a freedom fighter, folks. He's a CIA agent, Obama's secret weapon.

We know. It all fits. Ten years from now, he'll have a new identity and be living in Dargaville. You heard it here first.