On a similar note, please stop voting for Michael Vick in the NFL Pro Bowl fan voting.

Or, consider that the reverse can be true as well... and stop reflexively telling people to stop voting for Michael Vick for reasons unrelated to the poll.

THANK YOU! Also with the implying that he couldn't be guilty of rape because it hadn't been followed up before. Because after all, NO ONE ever in the history of EVER has failed to be tried for a rape they actually committed.

Strongly agreed.

That said, if Assange is quickly extradited to the US to face espionage charges and the rape charges are quietly never followed up on, I will not be the most surprised person on the planet. (And this statement presupposes neither knowledge of whether the charges are true nor any belief that such a course of action would prove anything about them.)

Oh, totally! I fully believe that the sexual assault charges are politically motivated. That doesn't make them totally false is all I'm saying.

Both things are possible, simultaneously. But the persecution could account for the 'rape' charges without any real rape -- official international persecution which does not apply in most cases.

The police could not agree on whether the claimed actions constituted 'rape'. At least one of the women thought it did not. It was a police idea to apply that label. So I think it's reasonable for us to have differing opinions also.

This is not to criticize the women, who imo were telling the truth -- but were not charging rape. They had gone to the police for information about forcing Assange to be tested for STD.

Your scare quotes around the word "rape" are telling. The lack of differentiation of types of sexual assault is a relic of the US's regressive views on sex and sex crimes. The charges aren't, as I understand them, rape, but categories of sexual assault that we don't recognize here in the US. He can, indeed, be both persecuted and a sexual predator, as you say, as well as a brilliant person and many other things as well.

Thus the scare quotes. Also, officialdom is not a monolith. More than one country would like to capture and/or discredit him -- and there may be some ambitious local prosecutors/lawyer involved as well.

As I understand it, the Swedish prosecution is considering going ahead with rape charges as opposed to the lesser assault charge initially filed, because having sex with someone who is asleep and using force to hold someone down so you can continue fucking them if they've said no are both solid grounds for rape charges.

It's almost as if...

You know, I'm too angry to even finish that thought. Thank you for saying this.

Except that the woman 'held down' by his weight had this to say.

Despite what has happened, the woman [Miss A, Anna Ardin] who organized the event and had Assange stay at her apartment told [the Swedish newspaper] Aftonbladet that she never intended that Assange be charged with rape.
"It is quite wrong [to say] that we were afraid of him. He is not violent, and I do not feel threatened by him," she told the newspaper in an interview that did not identify her by name. "The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man who had attitude problems with women."
See http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article7652935.ab

I think the whole "rape by surprise" thing is largely equivalent to rape by fraud, which we totally have in the United States. The allegations against Assange may be the kind that would never go anywhere here, but they still make out the elements of a crime. As always, we have a problem with the fact that people can't distinguish between the word "rape" as used in every day language, and the word "rape" as a legal term of art.

Frankly I'm not surprised that someone who has the arrogance to publicly wage a personal war against government and corporate secrecy might have trouble respecting rules and, ya know, other people, in other contexts. Things would be a lot easier if everyone involved in this weren't so darn human.

Is it OK to think that he actually does something awesome, but he's only so far been accused of committing crimes?

only to abuse it for his own selfish purposes.

I fail to understand why people are continually either surprised or in denial about this. Power corrupts. It's not uncommon.

I'm not sure it's a power corrupts thing. It appears that he met one of the women he's accused of assaulting through Wikileaks connections, but the other woman was just a random bar hookup as far as anyone has said.

Assange has always had a big ego and has hacked off more than a few people due to that. As I wrote in my own LJ, I honestly hope he's not guilty not because I like him but because his being a criminal would discredit things I care about. But I am doing my best to keep my personal hopes from getting confused with actual truth.

I'm with you 100%.

Well said. Have you read Kate Harding's essay on this? She's fantastic as always.