Some commentators would have you think that if you give any credibility to the fear of extradition keeping Julian Assange in an Ecuadorian Embassy, you may be of the creepy persuasion, crudely insensitive to the charges of sexual miconduct filed in Sweden. So do film directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore also have gropey rapey hearts?

Some commentators appear not to consider it reasonable to believe BOTH that Assange should present himself in Sweden AND that the US, the UK and Sweden (one or all three) should expedite this by clarifying their intention regarding extradition to the US.

Surely, if the position taken by Assange, and clearly believed by the two prize-winning directors, is just self-serving fabrication (myth, as a recent blog in the New Statesman reports ), it should be straight-forward to issue such a statement? Oh, the infuriating bollix of it all!  [ The op-ed in full ]

* Women Against Rape write in The Guardian

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* A satirical Italian blogger gave vent to his frustration with the conflation of issues in the recent news cycle by commenting on a fictitious warning by Pope Ratzinger that the unwanted union of Julian Assange and a member of Pussy Riot might have given birth to a new Antichrist … Such has been the fevered focus on issues of gender, sexual transgression , the law and even religion in the news cycle.

In the restless dreaming of AnonimoConiglio the cast of characters included a local political oddity called Roberto Formingoni (ever oleaginously pious but clearly fraudulent), but he could as easily have cast the often self-serving UK MP George Galloway (Assange is rude, not rapey) or Todd Akin, the potty wannabe US senator who for a while this weekend claimed to believe in “legitimate rape”.

Keeping each tweet distinct in the cacophony that chirps 24/7 these day is clearly getting harder all the time.

* Since writing this both The Telegraph and The Guardian have run timely editorial columns on “getting it wrong on rape.”