But that blog does at least have some facts posted on it, which is more than this thread had originally.
I'm confident of that because anyone here who can read - which most of us can, it seems - can see that you've been taking prosecution and media comments at face value and giving them the benefit of the doubt at every point, while not offering the same courtesy to Assange himself.
Who is surely guilty of rape - no, sexual molestation, no, er, molestation, no, make that non-specific but definitely non-sexual harrassment.
According to the prosecutor's office. And the very reputable newspaper that ran the story, when a former employee mentioned it to them in passing.
You're right about one thing - if it's a smear job, it's a fiasco.
Perhaps someone should start a lol-spooks site? I can haz tradecraft n meeja skillz?
I'm confident you're trying - in an entertainingly ham-fisted and downright transparent way - to smear Assange and blow clouds of fud around the issue.
ET contributors enjoy the presumption of good faith, until they've demonstrated the contrary. And while I disagree with some of the particulars, fairleft's line of reasoning in this thread is not absurd. Stubborn, perhaps, but stubbornness in pursuing a line of argument does not show bad faith as long as the data remains open to interpretation. Which it does as long as we're relying on press clippings.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Good faith would be 'Well - this is dramatic, but let's wait and see how it plays out.'
And now it's clear that there is no rape case, there was no rape case, and that any case that remains is so ambiguous and poorly defined that not even the prosecutor is sure what exactly Assange is supposed to have done.
Admittedly, this may change. But with what's known today, it's a fair guess that it's not looking likely.
But still - I'm curious why Fairleft followed through this diary through with such persistence.
What was the point? Why keep repeating 'They say there's no smoke without fire...' over and over?
I don't think it persuaded anyone that Assange is a rapist or pervert, or that Wikileaks is a bad thing, or that the war in Afghanistan is a good thing.
I don't even think it convinced anyone that Assange might be a rapist, given the chance.
I'm more perplexed by the energy expended on a diary with no clear point to it - beyond a nonsensical one - than about the details.
There's a fine line in dealing with this sort of cases: On the one hand, the accused and the witnesses enjoy the presumption of innocence and good faith (resp.). On the other hand, the police and the press do not. How far one should go in digging into witnesses' background in pursuit of deconstructing the official police and press line is at least partly a matter of personal taste.
Now, in my personal opinion, the fact that one of the witnesses went to the press herself (and to Expressen of all places) makes her a perfectly valid target for enquiry. But reasonable people can disagree on that point, particularly given the hearsay/fact ratio of the information we have on everyone involved at this point.
