sounds unlikely?
That’s because it fucking is. In the most egregious case of “we’re doing it for the wimminz!” since the invasion of Afghanistan, the USA is seeking to eliminate political enemies by hijacking a feminist issue, thus actually doing great damage to it. Already the misogynist left is all over the women, claiming that they’re CIA spies who “tricked” Assange and that the accusations are therefore false.
Because women do that, and these particular ones were “radical feminists”, and wrote about how to get back at ex-boyfriends, and all sorts of things that somehow make it completely impossible that a risk-addict and someone who defies people and breaks social rules pretty much for a living could possibly actually have committed what he’s accused of.
Because of all the likely ways a CIA operative could have “trapped” a target, an accusation that under other circumstances wouldn’t have gotten him to trial in an American court, or even arrested (and in many other countries, as well) was, like, the best they could do? Polanski didn’t get arrested in forever for what was undeniably and invariably a rape, of multiple kinds (i.e. both a statutory rape for the age of his victim, and “rape-rape” for the fact that she said “no” and he ignored it), so the CIA decided to go with an even less likely charge, i.e. that of refusing to stop after the woman changed her mind?
In most cases, that wouldn’t even have been considered rape by anybody. In fact, I’m mildly curious about how the Right will react to this, since acknowledging that what Assange was accused of would, on the one hand, fit into the “Assange is evil” narrative; on the other, it would require admitting that “sluts” can be raped, too, and that consent to sex can be withdrawn at any time (instead of just being buyer’s remorse).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not precluding that Assange is guilty; but I don’t find it impossible that he could be guilty, especially since none of the reasons why he supposedly isn’t are anything other than the standard slut-shaming themes. I’m also more than a little pissed off that a feminist cause (getting the world to take rape seriously, even when perpetrated by famous people doing important things) is being so cynically abused for political reasons. Because let’s face it. He didn’t get arrested for sexual assault; interpol didn’t look for him for sexual assault. We feminists WISH the world would take the violation of women this seriously.
And just like with the “we’re liberating Afghanistan’s women!!” narrative, it will become impossible to disentangle the two, thus making anyone who is against the political imprisonment of Assange into a “rape-defender”, shutting down any reasonable discussion on the point.
The whole thing just fucking stinks.
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UPDATE: I just noticed Amy Goodman had an excellent interview with Glenn Greenwald on this issue, so I’m linking to it for clarification purposes
Jadehawk's Blog 
Well I’d link this on facebook but you fucking had to curse, didn’t you?
Katrina linked to it, it seems to stay up, so we’ll see…
Well, like everyone else, he’s entitled to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
I certainly won’t make excuses for him if it transpires that he did commit rape (and I was pretty sickened by the people who made excuses for Polanski, for instance). But thus far, we really don’t know that, and we won’t know until the evidence comes out at trial. I’m keen to avoid jumping to a conclusion in either direction.
Facebook doesn’t let you curse???!!!???
On the topic, what Walton said. I hope the trial* will be fair, because, as you say, there’s plenty of motive to make it unfair either way (and both motives come from the same political side, funnily enough).
* Assuming there will be one. No charges have been filed yet, the Swedish police just wants to interrogate him, says the article you link to.
BTW, is there any information out there on how Wikileaks works? How much does it need Assange in person? Understandably, http://www.wikileaks.ch/about.html doesn’t tell.
WL doesn’t need Assange for anything but publicity to bring in funding and to provide a public face for people to attack.
I’m not touching anything on this topic, as my feelings are conflicted in much the same manner Jadehawk’s are. I’d like rape to be treated seriously, but it’s horribly obvious that teh wimminz aren’t why these cases are being pushed through (as I recall the one for intercourse without a condom when the woman said he had to use one if he wanted to fool around, and the other for intercourse with someone sleeping (although I haven’t been able to determine if she was otherwise generally willing, not that that is an excuse unless she said “have at, just don’t wake me up”)).
In the unthinkable event that you don’t read my bloggie, here’s 2 informative links on the topic :
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-13/the-bogus-julian-assange-rape-case-hurts-women/
and
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/13/rundle-timeline-of-assanges-visit-to-sweden-and-events-that-followed/
thanks for the links. currently don’t read much of anything, being limited to two hours of internet a day, on average.
soon, this torture will be over, but until then, basics only :-p