After seven years of the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange emerged, like a mythical hermit, bearded and ranting, to be dragged into a police van, charged and rapidly found guilty of jumping bail.
Where are the people who supported him in 2012 and stumped up the bail money for him?
Where is Jemima Goldsmith, then a friend who’d said she was “as surprised as anyone” when Assange suddenly claimed asylum? She hadn’t tweeted yesterday. Nor has there been any word from Bianca Jagger, also once a powerful advocate for him.
Sure, the internet still beats the drum for him, the hackers and slackers who’ve always liked his style. But those who worked with him or were close to him have ditched him. The Guardian, the first outlet for his diplomatic cable leaks in 2010, was first — he dumped on them in return. His old WikiLeaks colleagues made films exposing him. Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks 141 times — it very helpfully released the Democratic National Committee emails to embarrass Hillary Clinton during the election campaign.
But where’s the credit now? Trump says he “knows nothing” about WikiLeaks and has “no opinion” on Assange. And Ecuador, under new President Lenin Moreno, wants the room back. He has one great champion left: Pamela Anderson.
The trouble is that what Assange and WikiLeaks set out to do — to hack away at the established power of the US — worked. Along with a little bit of help from Russian propaganda, they succeeded in disrupting normal operations, muddying the US’s reputation and embarrassing a presidential candidate. But to what end? To the one in which Donald Trump became President, with their assistance. That was not exactly what his Leftie bail-posters had been expecting. How innocent 2012 seems, and how innocent they seemed.
Lest we forget, there was one other visitor to the embassy after all the other visits dried up. That was Nigel Farage in March 2017. Will he now speak up for Assange?
Do the walk over your fares, TfL
TFL, I’ve had an idea. The Tube interchanges are packed and we all need to walk more. How about changing how Tube pricing works?
At the moment, the long and necessary journeys cost more. But why not make those fares cheaper and charge more for the short hops? For example, if you are only going two Tube stops in Zone 1, that’ll be £5. Getting on at Covent Garden to change at Holborn, to go out to Stratford? Make it a fiver to Holborn — you could have just walked — and then £1.50 to go out east.
Just think of it as a penalty fare for laziness.
Women seen emerging from black hole
Ahem, shouted the internet, why has Dr Katie Bouman’s name fallen into a black hole? The New York Times had not mentioned her in its article on the team that captured the first photo of one, though a number of male colleagues got their names in print. Before long we were straight into that other black hole of an argument: do women not get the credit they deserve?
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#katiebouman began trending, the women activists rose in her defence and The New York Times was pilloried. But was it accurate? Not quite. Dr Bouman had written some of the algorithms — but in the end they weren’t the ones used. And she was part of a team of 200, around a fifth of which were women.
How do I know this? Because The New York Times, sticklers for accuracy, retold the story today explaining her part in it and naming other women involved. Scientists will appreciate the diligence of this approach but activists should congratulate themselves. In the end, they’ve had not just one but four of the women scientists named by The New York Times. Job done.
Breakfast club is a winner all round
Twice a week the team who help me run The Trouble Club, my talks club, meet in a café in Soho to work together. One of the perks is me buying breakfast for them — it’s far cheaper than renting deskspace.
This has become a rolling gastronomic tour of the area — from cinnamon buns at the Swedish-style Cafe Söderberg in Berwick Street to Italian pastries at Princi in Wardour Street, and sometimes even eggs at Dean Street Townhouse.
Going to work is a chore. Eating breakfast out is an indulgence. Combine the two and everyone is happy.