How the world has changed in the seven years Julian Assange was holed up
It is almost seven years since Julian Assange and his cat walked into Ecuador’s embassy in London seeking asylum.
A lot has changed since then.
The Wikileaks founder took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid being forced to go to Sweden over a sexual assault case.
He feared it would lead to him being extradited to the US due to his involvement in leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents.
He didn’t leave the embassy once until Thursday when Ecuador removed his asylum after repeated violations of international conventions.
When Assange stepped foot in the building June 2012 there was a different Pope, a different Archbishop of Canterbury, and Prince Harry was a single man.
Seven years of politics
At the time Barack Obama and David Cameron were both in their respective first terms as US President and Prime Minister.
Nelson Mandela, Robin Williams, Alan Rickman, Joan Rivers, Neil Armstrong, David Bowie, and Gene Wilder were all still alive.
Saying the word ‘Brexit’ to someone on the street would leave them wondering what you were on about.
If you were discussing freeing yourself from an out of touch political elite you would be thinking more about the push for Scottish independence, rather than the UK’s exit from the EU.
First Minister Alex Salmond was leading the Scottish National Party’s attempts to get a referendum at the time but now he works for Russia Today, the Russian state broadcaster.
Perhaps the most explosive political story we could look forward to was Tory MP Andrew Mitchell allegedly calling a police officer a “pleb”.
June of that year was also the month Vladimir Putin became president of Russia again, after serving four years as prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev.
Angela Merkel was only halfway through her tenure as Chancellor of Germany and at the height of her popularity.
Back then no one took Donald Trump seriously when he said during the 2012 United States general election: “I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and, ultimately, the general election.”
Changing tech
When Assange first entered the Ecuadorian embassy, computers were only running Windows 7, and during his time holed up there, there have been 16 types of iPhones.
Uber had not yet launched in London, and Deliveroo did not exist. This was a pre-Tinder era, where people met each other in bars, clubs or even through friends.
Pop culture in 2012
Netflix had only just arrived in the UK, the first Avengers film had only just been released, no one really thought there would be more films in the magical Harry Potter universe.
The charts saw Cheryl Cole, Coldplay, and Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth Band all in the top five.
Since then, a judge ruled that Gary Barlow had been engaging in tax avoidance schemes, Cheryl Cole has married, divorced and had a child with One Direction star, Liam Payne, while Coldplay have gone on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide.