Time to face facts: Assange played the left like a fiddle on TPP

[Jim Lane]

10. Assange did the people of the United States a huge favor.

Assange leaked documents that were supposedly late-stage drafts of the TPP.
Various NGOs analyzed these drafts from the points of view of health care, environmental protection, etc., and pointed out the problems that would arise.
Those criticisms were aired on DU.

In response, the TPP defenders on DU -- or maybe they should be called the anti-anti-TPPers -- said these purported documents had no official sanction and might just be complete fabrications by Wikileaks, and anyway even if they were accurate they were just drafts so everything might change. We TPP opponents pointed out that WikiLeaks had a track record of accuracy, not fabrication, and that drafts reflecting several years of negotiations weren't going to be substantially altered in the last few months.

Once the final official text was released, we heard no more about these smears of Assange and WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks release was, as every sensible person expected, essentially identical to the final version.

Let's remember the TPP context:
* Negotiations were conducted in secret.
* Well, secret from the public, that is. Various big-business interests were at the table and using their participation in the working groups to help shape the final agreement in the way that would promote their profits.
* The fast-track legislation meant that, if the proposal had been sent to Congress for ratification, it would have been rammed through on a preposterously abbreviated schedule. The proponents of the approval bill (the administration and the corporados) would have known of its contents for years and could have their arguments and their political organizing ready. The opponents would have had to start from scratch under a very tight deadline.

In this context, the WikiLeaks release merely leveled the playing field somewhat. Progressives were still largely excluded from the negotiations but at least the analysis of the agreement and the raising of public alarms could begin. The fast-track deadlines were never triggered, because the TPP was never formally submitted to Congress, and it's probable that one reason it wasn't was that the opponents, aided by the WikiLeaks release, had had enough time to develop and present their arguments.

That's the democratic process.

As for this Yellow Peril argument that China will now somehow take over, I personally don't buy it, but TPP proponents are certainly free to press that contention. Assange and WikiLeaks didn't stifle anyone's right of free speech. No one went to prison or is in exile in Russia for providing a leak that helped inform the public debate on a major policy issue -- well, correction, no one suffered such a fate because of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks doesn't have the power to try to suppress information by going after whistleblowers.