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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

> When Assange’s popular recognition fell, and Ecuador’s political incentives changed, the asylum was rescinded.

An important side note: this is the why the state always attacks the personality and popularity of activists, and why it's important to defend personalities and people.

For example, let me say that, having met Cody Wilson several times and spending several hours with him on a couple of occasions (and moderating a panel on which he sat), I found him to be an absolute standup guy. He seems like a genuine patriot to me and a person of big heart and bravery.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20061064 and marked it off-topic.

Fair enough.

This guy? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/texas-indicts-co...

It's absolutely routine for basically anyone accused of sexual assault to find a whole bunch of men reporting that they seemed to be a standup guy. That doesn't mean they remain a standup guy when left alone around women.

Why can't they just be a standup guy that has issues dealing with women in specific circumstances? Why are they defined by that specific case and not their holistic behavior?

Why can’t Josef Stalin just be a standup defender of the arts that has issues with killing people in specific circumstances?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Judging someone for their holistic behavior doesn't mean ignoring their sexual assault. What are you even asking?

> That doesn't mean they remain a standup guy when left alone around women.

Agreed, of course. I'm just speaking of my own experience.

Well that's quite a lie you've made here. He didn't sexually assault anybody, it was consensual with a minor.

Consensual sex with a minor isn't by definition. I mean, even the _charges_ say 'sexual assault', so this is not something the GP is inventing out of thin air.

The fact that different countries have different cutoff ages for statutory rape (the girl was 16, whereas some countries set the limit to be as low as 15, in particular most of Europe is 16 or below) makes this much less of a clear cut than your comment implies.

It really isn't a lie. The state of Texas considers a 30 year old man fucking around with a "girl younger than 17 years" to be sexual assault. He has been charged with 4 counts of sexual assault.

He met the girl via a website that claimed to be age-verified. Turns out she lied about her age, and the site didn't actually (properly) verify her. He still should've verified her age himself, but it kinda changes the narrative.

The girl was 16, which means what he did is perfectly legal in most of Europe.

Interesting choice of examples. Cody was accused of sexually assaulting an under-age girl and fled to Taiwan to avoid arrest...

Innocent people don't run. Especially not before they've even seen what the evidence against them is.

> fled to Taiwan to avoid arrest

“He had not been charged when he went to Taiwan, so he is not considered to have fled the country“ [1].

Based on the original story, there should be plenty of evidence forthcoming. No need to jump to conclusions.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/business/cody-wilson-arre...

Police have said that Wilson flew to Taipei before they were able to interview him about the allegations. He never took his scheduled flight back to the United States.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/21/3d-printed-gun-desig...

> Innocent people don't run.

I don't think this is a fair or universal generalization.

Snowden ran. Leary ran. Rushdie ran. The Dalai Lama ran. Sometimes innocent people run.

None of your examples are comparable.

Snowden ran after charges were filed against him. He admits to his actions. If he had stayed, he could have beaten the charges in court, because it is a defense to prosecution for a lesser crime to be committed (improper process of whistleblowing) to prevent a worse crime (various). But while Snowden is not innocent of the crime, he's simply got a valid defense to negate a guilty finding.

Rushdie fled a fatwa issued by a religious cleric, not the government, following the publication of The Satanic Verses. He was not charged with a crime by the government, but numerous individuals attempted to assassinate him for what they viewed as blasphemy of their religion.

The Dalai Lama, the then-legitimate ruler of Nepal, fled the Chinese occupiers of his country and set up a government-in-exile. He has never been charged with a crime by China.

Timothy Leary actually did commit a number of drug-related crimes including distribution, and ran because he was quite guilty. He also got caught a number of times and saw the inside of a number of jails and prisons...

> The Dalai Lama, the then-legitimate ruler of Nepal

Tibet

This is a heinous notion. Innocent people flee prosecution when it’s biased or political as well. You law-and-order types can xxxxx my yyyyy.

My grandfather fled a certain regime decades ago in order to avoid prosecution. His horrible crime was being born in the wrong race. Sadly my great-grandfather did not have the same luck, and his whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Not fleeing did not really help in proving his innocence. Remember, being innocent is in eye of the beholder.

Anyway, he might be accused of sexual assault but he actually did nothing immoral. He just visited a legal site and had consensual sex with someone who claimed to be an adult at the time, and is in fact an adult now.

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