Julian Assange is now acting as a tar-baby of the left: people who previously, whatever their credentials on other topics, were not likely to be found splitting hairs about acceptable and unacceptable forms of rape are now doing just that. Their love for Assange, or at least for his anti-imperialist credentials, means that they have to defend not just the movement, but also the man. The problem is, they can't quite figure out what it is they feel that they have to defend. They can't make their mind up whether he's been fitted up on trumped up charges, or whether the charges are real but aren't really serious, or why they're being pursued. The first problem they don't seem able to explain is why Sweden, previously famed for its transparent, liberal and generally right-on nature (Volvos, Ikea, Wallander) is suddenly a crooked patsy of the US. Not only the Swedish government, but the entire Swedish justice system from their supreme court all the way down to a local prosecutor, is in thrall to the Great Satan. Why? Why would Swedish jurists do bad things solely for the benefit of the repressive end of the US government? Why would the US, even accepting arguendo that they want to get their hands on Assange, do so via a route which requires the sign-off of the UK and the Swedish governments, when they can just do it via the UK? And what do the US (represented by Barack Obama who, until recently, was like Sweden a darling of the progressives) want with him any way? At worst he's guilty of the same acts as Daniel Elsberg wasn't prosecuted for, and a prosecution based on publishing leaked documents would fail on straightforward constitutional grounds. Even if the entire US legal system from the supreme court down was in on the same conspiracy that encompasses the entire Swedish legal system and, for all I know, the entire UK legal system, why wouldn't they also prosecute the New York Times --- which has a US mailing address and is staffed by US citizens, publishing in the US --- as well? Then we come to the contentious matter of rape. There are two coherent positions, neither of which Tony Benn or George Galloway have managed to reach: 1. Assange is being fitted up, so whether the crime is parking offences or being the unindicted third Moors Murderer, it's irrelevant, as he didn't do it. The alleged victims are stooges of the US. As to why Swedish women would shred their reputations in order to fit up an Australian who's wanted by the US, who knows? But in any event, it renders discussion of the nature of the crime irrelevant: whether he's being charged with , he didn't do it anyway. 2. Assange is a hero of our times, and even if he is the unindicted third Moors Murderer, it doesn't matter, as he's a hero. We might call this the "Roman Polanski" defence. Again, this renders the nature of the exact crime he's charged with moot: whatever it is, no matter how serious, his status as a hero of our times means that the crime doesn't justify arrest or punishment. The remaining positions are completely incoherent, as they revolve around the precise crime being alleged. He's being accused of a serious crime in the eyes of the UK supreme court (yeah, I know, they're in on the conspiracy too). If you think it's a stitch up, then it doesn't matter what the crime is. If you think he's a hero, it doesn't matter what the crime is. The only reason you would be worried about the precise nature of the crime is if you accept that he might have done it, or something similar, and that for some of those possible crimes, his hero status isn't enough. In which case, isn't a court the place to decide that? Is the contention, seriously, that the Swedish legal system, for some long a byword for decency and transparency, can't be trusted to do that? We're in the territory of the 9/11 troofers who, after an evening of laser holograms and pre-rigged explosives and invisible cruise missiles and secret airfields, leave you thinking "wouldn't it be easier just to hi-jack a couple of planes and crash them into a tall building?" Sweden's a liberal democracy which is bound by the ECHR so can't extradite without due process and assurances that neither the death penalty nor torture will be used. So's the UK. If the CIA under Obama is going to breach all known legal standards, they would just have executed Assange in the street, or fitted him up for a violent child rape/murder which would render this whole debate moot. The whole reason it's cluttering up the courts is because Assange is being given due process. In the meantime, rather than accept that Sweden is a decent country, Tariq Ali is bigging up the human rights records of Venezuela, Galloway and Benn are making schoolboy jokes about women who want it really (Galloway's formulation would mean that no marital rape case could ever be brought again; Benn wants to bring back the "she was just a slut who probably wanted it anyway" school of rape cases) and in the centre of it, Craig Murray is slut-shaming alleged rape-victims as though he were working for the Sun in 1973. Why is Assange such a tar baby that he makes people forget their decency?