If you are civil and respectful, you can make any point you want here. You failed that first test, though.

I imagine he was down modded for his weak use of sarcasm and abrasive way of making a weak point.

Gizmomagico seemed to be saying 'assange wouldn't have committed what he allegedly did; as it would retard his ability to move freely and he is too smart for that' -- which may or may not be true, and is irrelevant as evidence.

As a side note; getting offended about the content of a joke is really sort of silly. People seem to act like joking about something is somehow akin to 'doing' the thing. I don't think an argument can be made that a joke about rape makes rape any more likely; and while it may be crude and unfunny: making the claim that something is 'off limits' is really weak.

For example: 'statistically 9/10 people enjoy gang rape'

the more sensitive the topic under discussion, the more careful you have to be to avoid offense.

Additionally, I need not "tease out a scenario" where it "might be okay" to make a rape joke. I am knee deep in such scenarios (unless you actually believe jokes about rape to be morally wrong, rather than merely distasteful; I know I don't). Less common are scenarios where I can make a rape joke without negative social consequences, but there's still no shortage of those, either.

You assumption is that one would want to avoid offense. (note that I don't mean 'not cause deliberate offense') Western newspapers were told to not run the Mohammed cartoons, so as to 'not cause offense'. Feel free to defend the position that people shouldn't make rape jokes, but basing that on 'you shouldn't cause offense' is not an argument.

The idea was just to point out the ridiculousness of the bullshit political maneuvering, not to imply that the only reason why he would not rape someone is because it would hinder his movement.

Would it also be terrible to be falsely accused of rape, in an internationally public manner?

The problem here is that mine was the first comment to allude to the whole debacle being disgusting bullshit.

There weren't almost any comments in the thread, possibly because if you really wanted to discuss this, you'd have to discuss the whole thing being bullshit, and facing the bullshit-laden reality we live in is unpleasant.

HN doesn't want to discuss unpleasant realities.

That may actually be a good thing for maintaining the high quality of discussions on other, more pleasant subjects - who knows. But on the other hand, spreading awareness of bullshit being bullshit would do us all good in our role of ordinary citizens of various governments.

You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused. If you'd put it that same way, like I just did, you would have likely generated some discussion on the topic. As it is, you merely said something inflammatory and inappropriate.

A couple of weeks ago, this site featured a story about a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875718

I did acknowledge the potential quality issue, which is what you spent your message talking about. You didn't really address anything I said. I bet I guessed your nationality right, though, didn't I?

> You are not the first person here to suspect that Assange may be falsely accused.

As I said, I was the first one to hint at that quite likely possibility.

> a woman who accused a man of groping her at ApacheCon. If there is a more loaded topic for discussion than that, I can't think of it. Yet this community managed to have a very civil discussion about it, due to those rules you are disparaging.

That's nice, but what did you think the civil discussion might have devolved into? Hypersensitive overreacting about "assault"?

This Assange -story, on the other hand, is not only about alleged rape, but also about the place where conspiracy-theories and reality meet.

Also: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1917913

Shouldn't you go demand more "proof" from him too, or is it just easier to pile on the heavily downvoted guy?

It shouldn't be too hard to see this is all bullshit, and that's what I originally got downvoted for trying to point out (in a less-than-HNesquely-eloquent manner).

Productive discussions demand evidence and you provided none.

Yet he did murder his wife. Some hardcore fans denied his guilt up (some claiming his mild autism was exploited by the prosecution to make him appear guilty) until the very point where he lead the authorities to where he buried the corpse of his wife.

Assange's actions would not be a crime under US law, and would by no means be described by anything close to the word rape.

Source? The NYT article says nothing about the legal criteria here.

Assange did not force anyone to have sex or physically violate anyone. Swedish law calls it "rape" when a woman has regrets about sex later on.

Well we don't know, do we. You seem to be very certain he didn't, I'm wondering what you're basing that on. It seems like the conspiracy theory is the only 'reason' being given.

"Swedish law calls it "rape" when a woman has regrets about sex later on."

Right. Do you feel a claim like that passes the smell test? Or do you have any other sources that are not Assange himself or his lawyer? You seem to be referring to one of the articles that basically quotes one of these two, I have yet to see one that actually substantiates this. Furthermore I haven't seen the lawyer say what you are saying, either; he's just claiming that there was no rape, that it was consensual.

Then again I'm not following it any closer than the most prominent articles that make the popular nerd news sites, and a mainstream headline here or there, so it's very well possible that I'm not up to date on all aspects.

They have both stated that the sex was consensual.

That's not how most legal systems work. The prosecution is the one with the burden of proof. That said, for all I know, Assange may indeed be guilty. Perhaps we'll find out.

The OP was, as I understood it, not making a legal claim, but merely stating his opinion on whether or not what he is accused of did or did not happen. Proof on this position can come from both sides, but claiming that it must not have happened because the government is after him does not pass Ockham's razor.

I have to say, high profile person embarassing a lot of people... I'm a little more skeptical than usual. I'm not dumb enough to give him a free pass just because of who he is, but I'm sure as hell not defaulting to assuming guilt.

However - pitting women against enemies - either to seduce them or to just get them out of the way (via extortion) has happened before.