Educating Obama

Julia Gillard at the White House teaching Barrack Obama about real football.

The assimilation begins. Resistance is futile.

News of the Day

"A Catholic brother who molested two boys in their beds at a boarding school in Victoria more than 40 years ago has been jailed. Peter Paul Van Ruth was 22 years old and in his first teaching job when he indecently assaulted the boys at Salesian College in Sunbury in 1969. On Tuesday, 42 years later, Van Ruth was jailed for 28 months in the Victorian County Court."

Anguish has a long memory, sport.

"The new leader of the French far right, Marine Le Pen, has sent shockwaves through France after a poll suggested she could win an unprecedented first round victory in presidential elections. Just two weeks before the regional elections known as the cantonales - the last real electoral test before next year's presidential round - the lawyer daughter of National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen has eclipsed President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry, with 23 per cent of the vote."

Just what Europe needs... a neo fascist France.

I'm not too worried, because somehow I don't think it will happen.

''Simply, I've come as a friend to reinforce your best instincts. To say, 'Be bold. Stay optimistic. Yours remains what it has always been, a nation which is exceptional in every way - above all, in your unfailing ability to confound predictions of decline'.''

- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to US Chamber of Commerce.

This isn't Marlboro Country

Corporate scumbaggery... Not their worst unfortunately.

Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, are trying to insert "investor state" provisions in the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

The background of this is that Australia and the United States signed off on a Free Trade Agreement in 2005. As is normal with our puppy dog desire to be a good mate to our immensely more powerful friend, we rolled over and had our balls scratched on some of that deal.

There was one thing about which, however, that we said "no".

We will NOT sign up for "investor state" provisions, those being provisions that allow corporations to sue governments that happen to legislate in ways that limit their business activities.

So, for example, if it should be found that certain building materials are found to be bad for bushfire prone areas, and those materials are excluded from new safe-building codes, the producer of those materials, who could be a foreign company, cannot sue our government.

Sorry... make better materials. Not "sorry... we'll compensate you because you make crap".

In effect Philip Morris, dedicated as they are to getting my children addicted to their carcinogenic filth, want to take my taxes as recompense for being frustrated in the attempt.

"Negotiations relating to the trade agreement - between the US, Australia, New Zealand and six South American and south-east Asian countries - intensified last year and are expected to be completed in September.

In a submission on the proposed trade agreement last year to the Office of the US Trade Representative, Philip Morris cited Australia's plain packaging laws among ''initiatives of concern''. The company said it supported laws to reduce the harm caused by tobacco (yeah sure...), but opposed, ''extreme and disproportionate regulation … which has the effect of violating international law and expropriating intellectual property rights''.

Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, said the company's stance was consistent with the tobacco industry's history of attempting to use trade agreements to defeat individual countries' health laws.

''It's yet another sign of the degree to which the industry will go to defeat and delay any measure that will actually work to cut smoking rates,'' he said.

He said the World Trade Organisation's Uruguay Round had established the right of countries to put health considerations above international trade considerations.

The laws that Philip Morris are getting stroppy about related to packaging regulations.

"Craig Emerson, the federal Minister for Trade, would not commit to insisting investor state provisions be excluded from the regional trade pact, saying he was not prepared to make policy on the run. But he said Philip Morris would be ''whistling in the wind'' if it tried to undermine national anti-tobacco laws.

''I will not be recommending the empowering of Philip Morris or any other tobacco company to overturn Australian government policy on plain packaging of cigarettes.'' "

Not exactly stone-cold determination.

What if this costs us the treaty...?

"Patricia Ranald, the convener of the Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network, an alliance that advocates on human rights and environmental issues, said Australia would receive little export benefit from the treaty, because it already had AUSFTA and strong trade partnerships in the region."

Screw it then. By the way... Marlboro is the biggest selling cigarette brand in the world, and is made by Philip Morris.