Sgt Cold, am I imagining, or have you completely changed your political views since you joined the forum? Good for you, either way!
I have changed my views too - but not so much my political views - more my views on Russia which I didn't know much about.

I think you are right about the US having gone down the drain: Essentially - Americans are tricked by media and propaganda to believe their country stands for great (although very vague) values such as freedom and democracy. While its' actual behaviour supports pretty much the opposite around the world, and while domestically, large corporations gain more and more influence and fund their excesses at the expense of the state/people. Seems that only a small minority of Americans have really noticed this - and the rest probably won't wake up and smell the coffee until they are dirt poor and thoroughly despised across the world. But there is great contemporary literature about all this by people like Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Zlavoj Zizek, Derrick Jensen etc.

We in Europe are not far behind so I am certainly not pointing the finger.

One of the cool things about Russia is that nobody seems to believe a word of what media, the state, the church or anyone else says... hence; they have no illusions whatsoever; about their own country, politics or economics.

So am I right to think you changed your views, or did I just misunderstand you earlier?

For the record: I am Swedish and I read the blogs etc of these two girls when I started this thread. I honestly don't think either is a CIA spy. The main accuser is a pretty serious socialist; has been active in the Red movement since her early teens. Her friends say there is NO way she'd do anything for the CIA. Apparently she told her friends that she wanted to sleep with Assange because he was cool. Later she complained that he was in fact lousy in bed... but never about rape. The other girl also had some kind of hero crush on him. The first girl is a rather extreme feminist - and she's not even accusing Assange of rape per se; the accusation is about failure to use adequate protection. They whole incident is so ridiculous - the CIA would have done a much more thorough and convincing job if they really had set him up - which would have been super-easy from the sound of things.