Today various news agencies are reporting that Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, is wanted in connection to rape allegations.

Coincidence? Well, maybe.

People have been pretty quick to come up with various conspiracy theories; the ones I'm seeing in my usual online haunts tend to be along the lines of "looks like a setup/smear". I am sure that in other places they are sure it is a Wikileaks "cookup".

In fact in a few threads I saw some quite elaborate theories. After all, so soon after Wikileaks pissed off the US govt. is a really big coincidence. Right?

Not really. One thing I have learned in my job is that coincidence happens all the time. Huge coincidental things happen to people every day - mostly we never really notice them.

The thing that most annoys me about it, though, is that hours after this hit the media we already have lots of polarized theories without any form of factual basis. As a smart guy once [sic] said:

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data
Lets work with the facts - and at this point they are very bare. We have accusations, we have a denial. The point is that now someone finds out the truth. Preferably quickly.

Sure, Assange has enemies - most of them are smart enough to figure out how quickly something like this could backfire (I mean; Wikileaks isn't hitting the mainstream media with daily leaks, the public aren't really aware of them. He's not a critical threat surely). Similarly, while Assange often strikes me as the type to think up a stunt like this it also seems pretty unlikely. He's not thick either.

The only odd thing is the way this has hit the media so quickly; usually Sweden is pretty good at keeping such cases low key.

My thinking? Well occams razor suggests this is probably what it appears to be - a rape allegation (either it is true, the women are lying or, more likely, something in between). What I suspect has happened (and, yes, this is my speculation) is that someone political saw the accusations and saw their chance - this sort of thing happens all the time.

But, taking my own bitter pill, that is just idle thinking.

Lets stick to the facts and leave it to the media make fools of themselves, we don't want to make a "capital mistake", eh? ;)