Fight! Fight!

Y’see, this is how it happens. You read a blog post the first time and make a good humoured and mildly sarcastic comment. Then you check back a little while later and read a couple of other comments. But, crucially, you than get called away to change a nappy or give the kid a bath or something. And because these aren’t the most intellectually stimulating activities, your mind rehashes and dwells upon whatever it was you were thinking about last.

When your parental duties have been discharged, you return to the post and start to write a reply containing everything you’ve been kicking around for the last half-hour or so. A reply so witty, erudite, and compelling that only the most entrenched ideologue would fail to be convinced by its brilliance. And then you realize that, for all its brilliance, it’s probably going to be close to a thousand words long. There’s a word for people who leave thousand word comments on other people’s blogs. Several words, in fact, none of them good. So then you hit delete.

But, fortunately, you have your own blog as well. 1000 words isn’t crazy on your own blog, it’s just ‘joining the debate’. So with apologies to Ant of the unpronounceable Greek squiggles, because frankly he deserves more than well-meant but slightly condescending sarcasm, I present some thoughts on this post and subsequent comments. It’s about Julian Assange and the current fun and games in Knightsbridge, but it’ll make much more sense if you head over and read the build up in situ. Please try to avoid noticing the fact that the original post and comments combined are shorter than what I’ve written here. ‘Joining the debate,’ remember.

Also, as you read this please also bear in mind that most of it was composed whilst wiping up human shit.

It took a while, all right?

"- presume, against evidence, that Sweden pursues all accused 'date-rapers' so vigorously"

This is not the entirety of anyone's argument, it must be stressed. But this specifically is a line of thought with dangerous implications. If you want to invoke Occam's Razor, then the simplest explanation is surely that the women believe they were raped and the authorities are pursuing it to the extent that they are because, what with the global media and political attention, they can't afford to be seen not to.

It's commonly agreed that rape is massively under-reported, and part of that is because police forces the world over fail to take accusations as seriously as they deserve to be. In this case they're undoubtedly pursuing it to the extent that they are due to other factors, but that's exactly what they should be doing all the time. If anything it's setting the bar for rape investigations at the level it should be at anyway. I would argue that that’s a good and desirable thing.

As excuses for scepticism go, 'it's a global political and media conspiracy,' is certainly a step up from, 'she was asking for it 'cos she was wearing a short skirt.' But I would be very, very careful about dismissing rape allegations with such a necessarily partial understanding of the situation as we all have. Assange is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. But equally those women deserve a chance to test that innocence or guilt.

Britain’s veiled threat to ‘invade’ the embassy was a worryingly clumsy misstep. My own view is that it was no more than bluster, but it has left many people quite rightly appalled at the potential unilateral skirting of diplomatic legalities by a sovereign nation. But Assange also unilaterally rode roughshod over diplomatic niceties when he chose to publish the embassy cables, and has twice sought to evade the due process of law, in two separate countries.

Actually, make that three, because remember that he’s technically seeking asylum from Australia. The man gives every impression of trying to have his cake and eat it. If this is about freedom of expression, he perhaps wants to think about exactly where he's running from and where he's running to. The three (four? Should we include the US yet?) countries he's avoiding clearly all have serious issues with press and information freedom, but everywhere does, and these ones are all significantly more free than Ecuador.

Maybe it's like when David Beckham went to play in Los Angeles. It wasn't due to purely selfish reasons, no, he was motivated by the prospect of improving the standard of the domestic league. Maybe that's it? Assange want to help the plucky little South Americans raise their game, and thinks he's just the man to do it?

I wouldn't be surprised, frankly. Every time I've seen him speak, he's come across as a self-aggrandizing prick. Again, this proves nothing either way, and those images I’ve seen are mediated by other people with their own agendas and biases. But this affair long ago stopped being primarily about freedom of speech and information and became primarily about Julian Assange. And I get the distinct impression Julian Assange is just fine with that.

A mediated image

He's not a hero. He's been party to some heroic acts (the blackhawk video for one), but my own feeling is that his own hands are very far from clean and he has consistently shown only a minimal regard for the consequences of his actions for anyone but himself. 

It’s all very well sticking it to The Man (no really, it is and that deserves recognition), but eventually The Man’s going to stick it back and Assange seems wholly unconcerned who gets it in the neck, as long as it’s not him. As long as he can find another Man to wield a stick on his behalf, no matter how unpleasant the new Man's stick might be. I think that's my biggest issue. The sticks. Sorry, the inescapable air of self-obsessed hypocrisy. I may well be falling for the old trick of believing the ‘narrative’ instead of focusing on the facts, but the man himself is just so hugely unsympathetic.

While I don't agree with those who assert that he should just stand up and face the consequences of his actions (regarding Wikileaks) when those consequences threaten to be so massively disproportionate, I also have a good deal of sympathy with the claim that he's been quite happy to piss on everyone's chips and let others take the fall while he hogs the limelight. Not least because the other actions he’s failing to stand up and face are alleged to involve rape.

If the US tries to extradite him after any Swedish trial I'll be the first on the (metaphorical) barricades. But for the time being every action he takes to avoid the process of law in Sweden is a small but real blow to the agonizingly slow progress being made towards treating rape allegations with the seriousness they deserve.

I'm sure you'll let me know if you disagree.

Credit where it's due.