How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him?
Assange was traveling between lots of countries at the time. It's not as if he was permanently based in Sweden. And Assange being accused of a crime in Sweden does not in any way make it easier for the US to extradite him from Sweden on other charges.
edit: Also, the usual conspiracy story was that the CIA/the Illuminati/whoever had directed Sweden to reopen the rape case after Assange had arrived in the UK. (The case was dropped before he left Sweden, then reopened shortly after he arrived in the UK.)
Jailing him undermines him directly by restricting his freedom. A charge of sexual misconduct will discredit him particular in the mostly-left-at-the-time circles that supported him. Having him in jail in a "friendly" nation also gives you time to prepare your proper, "iron-clad" extradition warrant... because if he is free who knows where he will be once you get your stuff ready.
Note that Assange was in the UK, in full reach of the authorities, for over a year before he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The story you're cooking up simply makes no sense in that context.
>There are far simpler ways of assassinating someone's character than manufacturing rape allegations in a foreign country.
Actually, I don't think there are. Rape is met with near universal disapproval, and unless the accused can prove where they are at every single moment of their life, it is difficult for them disprove the claims.
Code that would modify the browser history to do such a thing was posted on hackernews a couple years ago. I just thought you would find that interesting. I'm undecided on what to think when it comes to julian.
Well if it's just creating disapproval you want then you only need to plant the story in the press.
[Fake] "Wikileaks computer IPs associated with child porn ring: was Assange using Wikileaks as cover for child porn, CIA revealed they found evidence of several Wikileaks computers uploading to child porn sites"
It is a cynical and paranoid viewpoint admittedly but not all that irrational when it is in the playbook of spies willing to commit very dirty tricks. Their secrecy and known misconduct creates a void where speculation becomes disturbingly "reasonable". Note rational and right are two different things - Stalin's father was convinced near the end of his life that his son was evil and going to murder countless people - he was right in the end.
Even if not true it is rational to consider in the same way asking "Why would a mob boss choose to have an enemy killed?" is kind of a dumb question - the question is why not at this point.
Granted it is important to keep the speculations well ordered as there are crucial differences between levels like "proven to have done it", "proven to have done somthing like this before", and "are responsible for everything bad in the world".
Venezuela is a good example for a baseline. The regieme has proven themselves complete incompetents that have had to replace sections of civilian industry with untrained military and the CIA has toppled many South American governments. Thus while it is technically possible the CIA sabotage created a power outage maladministration is a more likely culprit especially since blaming foreign powers for internal problems to hold power is a time "honored" tradition.
For a counterfactual if the outage was followed by an invasion it would be hard to believe the CIA didn't cause if their plan was just "wait until it collapses for a peacekeeping causus beli".
I don't know the truth of what happened either, but only 2 days after he applied for a residency two girls he slept with went to the police to try to "contact him to get him to get tested for STDs" and this turned into "rape and molestation" charges claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them. I can not tell if a condom falls off either unless I look, and I generally don't have sex with the light on. I'm not sure if I'm weird or not, but the investigation was closed.
Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation. He ended up going into the Ecuadorian Embassy soon after the release of "Global Intelligence Files" because the USA and private intelligence agencies were after him.
None of this has anything to do with the rape charges though. He is being sent to the USA over the 2010 Manning releases because he was communicating with Manning while she was stealing the docs. If she wasn't such an attention whore, she wouldn't have even been arrested. She bragged about it on IRC...
> claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them.
One woman claims he intentionally tore a condom. That was a lesser charge whose statute of limitations expired a while ago.
The other claims that, after insisting reportedly they use a condom, he waited for her to fall asleep and then started having unprotected see with her -- something he knew she would not consent to. That's the rape charge.
> Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation.
The alleged rape victim was initially overwhelmed (not uncommon for a rape victim) and didn't want to press charges. A few days (not months) later, she hired an attorney to represent her who got the case reopened.
Almost all the information the public knows about the case has come directly from Assange (and thus supports his conspiracy theory explanation), since the Swedish protecting authority doesn't comment on pending cases.
How do you reconcile your "only to tell him to get tested for STDs" with today's announcement by one victim's layer that she wants the rape case re-opened?
Not saying that the Swedish charges were all manufactured, just following your hypothesis.