It's not as if governments haven't been doing shit like this for ages.
Indeed, the simplest explanation is the most likely.
Until this hit the wires I figured Assange is just a bit too paranoid, this charge is so over the top that I'm no longer convinced he's paranoid but that he was right all along.
After all, not one but two rape cases out of the blue reported by two women that know each other just when wikileaks is about to release a bunch of incriminating material after refusing to budge under pressure?
It's technically possible, but that's the only thing this charge has going for it at this point in time, evidence is what it is all about.
Scenario 1.2: Someone who knows his every move is being watched (by the media, if nothing else) rapes one woman and sexually harasses another one in under two weeks.
The simplest explanation is often the correct one, but that doesn't mean we should restrict ourselves to just two possible explanations.
Also your second scenario doesn't match the currently known facts: the women who filed the reports aren't made up, regardless of whether the charges are.
Scenario 1.3: Assange parties with two women, gets slightly too fresh with them and the ensuing sex wasn't completely as agreed on.
Scenario 1.4: Assange parties with two women and the morning after, they decide he's a douchebag and gets worked up that he took advantage of them and what happened was really, actually rape.
I do not necessarily believe this scenario but since where throwing possibilities out there.
(1) an average man is accused of rape (say in a year)
(2) a person who a government would very much like to bring down is the subject of made-up allegations
Regarding (1), i don't have figures for Sweden but in the UK there are c. 14k reported rapes a year versus 25M adult males, so P = 14k/25M = 0.00056
Regarding (2), I don't have figures but suggest off the top of my head that 0.01 is reasonable.
0.00056/(0.00056+0.01) = 0.053
So Bayes' theorem suggests a roughly 5% probability that the accusations are real and 95% that they are concocted by the US or some other government.
Probability of two unrelated rape cases coming to light just at a time convenient for the US authorities -- about as likely as me getting pocket aces in every hand during a poker evening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadow#Cot_death_trial_cont...
Indeed not, and I never said they were. Indeed if a rapist rapes one woman, then he's more likely to do it again than a man who has never raped.
My point was that it's less likely that a man will be accused of two unrelated rapes at the same time, than just be accused of one rape.
This isn't unusual - most rape accusations are false, since there are a lot of sociopaths out there (who have no shame), and the real victims are too ashamed to step forward.
That does a disservice to the very large number of rape victims out there.
Some rape accusations are false, but to claim the majority of them is false would require a citation I think.
For instance:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/166281.php
reports that most of the 'good' (as in done in a scientific setting) studies report 8 to 10% of rape accusations are false.
See also:
You are attempting to shut down discussion by asking for sympathy for rape victims. It is logically a non-sequitur and is just an appeal to emotion.
According to the wikipedia summary of the studies, 8% of accusations where the accuser cooperates result in the police concluding they were false.
These numbers explicitly exclude cases where the charges are dropped or where the accuser does not cooperate with the police. Since false accusers are likely to do both those things (to avoid being revealed as a liar), the scenario being studied excludes many false accusations. Additionally, there are likely to be false accusations where the police are unable to determine whether they are false.
8% is almost certainly a lower bound.
> You are attempting to shut down discussion by asking for sympathy for rape victims.
No, I merely pointed out that there are plenty of rape cases that are real and that pretending that the majority of rape cases are faked is not exactly realistic.
Rape is a tough thing to confront, even if it is real and there are a very large number of rape cases that are never even brought to the stage of accusation.
True rape cases also have many instances where charges are dropped or where the accuser will not cooperate with the police because it is simply too painful.
At least 1 in 10 rape accusers are liars. Pointing out this fact does not do a disservice to actual rape victims. It simply gives us a prior for determining whether these women are actually rape victims.
(I.e., before knowing any facts about this case, we can conclude that a rape accuser is 92% likely to deserve sympathy and 8% likely to deserve jail time.)
That does a disservice to the very large number of rape victims out there.
Some rape accusations are false, but to claim the majority of them is false would require a citation I think.
Indeed. I've often heard that claim from people who don't (or don't want to) believe that in most cases of rape the victim knows the perpetrator. According to statistics in Sweden, only one third of rapes are performed by someone unknown to the victim[1].
There was a case like this on TV here recently, where a young boy who has been found guilty of rape (twice!) gets a lot of sympathy from his community while the victims are trash-talked along the lines of "she actually wanted it and changed her mind later"[2].
1: (swedish pdf) http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&...
2: (more swedish) http://www.google.se/search?q=uppdrag+granskning+v%C3%A5ldt%...
[edit, added]
Oh, I also forgot one very interesting question: why would a woman falsely accuse someone of rape? In the case of a custody battle I can see the logic, but what would be the gain of accusing an acquaintance (who account for a third of reported rapes)? If it's a case of "did something she later regrets", wouldn't it be a lot easier to just deny that it ever happened?
Not that it happens often, but sometimes it really does.
I think it's more likely to be a case of denying to herself that she wanted it in the first place.
And that number is way, way more than 10% percent.
But that wasn't clear from my comment.
Scenario 1: Two Swedish women really are pressing charges against Mr. Assange.
Scenario 2: The U.S. Pentagon is so upset by Wikileaks that they've convinced a Swedish prosecutor to file baseless rape charges, without actual victims, against the Wikileaks spokesman.
The simplest explanation is the most likely.