Trans-Pacific Partnership

Keeping up the pressure for Fair Trade! TPPA negotiators tweeted!

Our US friends at Citizen Trade Campaign (CTC) created a new program that allowed the public to send twitter-style messages to the trade negotiators at the latest round of Trans Pacific Partnership talks in Lessberg, Virginia.

Individuals sent their own personal tweet via the CTC website which were then projected up on a wall inside the resort where TPPA negotiators were meeting on Sunday, September 9.

Tweets such as "#TPP threatens the economy, the environment and democracy, not to mention the lives of millions!! I have a right to know what is being proposed in my name. #openTPP", sent by one individual on Sunday, helped send a powerful message, reminding negotiators that the world is watching them.

Check out the full stream online
 

Australian High Court rules against big tobacco on plain packaging

AFTINET welcomes the High Court decision against big tobacco's challenge to plain packaging legislation as a vindication of the Government’s right to regulate tobacco as an addictive substance that still kills 15,000 Australians per year.

But the government still faces two more legal challenges from big tobacco, which is desperate to stop Australia setting an example by implementing the plain packaging recommendations of the World Health Organisation.

The Philip Morris tobacco company is currently suing the Australian government over its tobacco plain packaging legislation, using an obscure 1993 Hong Kong- Australia investment treaty despite being a US-based company. Big tobacco is also reportedly providing legal advice and funding to the Ukraine and Honduras Governments which have launched a complaint in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the grounds that the Australian legislation is contrary to a WTO intellectual property agreement.

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