Uruguay
<p></p><p>may 2018 the nation see pink tide</p><p>...</p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Latin America’s socioeconomic transformation under the Pink Tide is no less impressive. Just before the economic downturn of 2012, Latin America came tantalizingly close to becoming a middle-class region.</b> According to the World Bank, from 2002 to 2012, the middle class in Latin America grew every year by at least 1 percent to reach 35 percent of the population by 2013. This means that during that time frame, some 10 million Latin Americans joined the middle class every year. A consequence of this dramatic expansion of the middle class is a significant shrinking of the poor. Between 2000 and 2014, the percentage of Latin Americans living in poverty (under $4 per day) shrank from 45 to 25 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Economic growth alone does not explain this extraordinary expansion of the Latin American middle class and the massive reduction in poverty: Deliberate efforts by the government to redistribute wealth were also a key factor. </b>Among these, none has garnered more praise than those implemented by the Lula administration, especially Bolsa Família, or Family Purse. The program channeled direct cash payments to poor families, as long as they agreed to keep their children in school and to attend regular health checkups. By 2013, the program had reached some 12 million households (50 million people), helping cut extreme poverty in Brazil from 9.7 to 4.3 percent of the population.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Last but not least are the political achievements of the Pink Tide. It made Latin America the epicenter of left-wing politics in the Global South; it also did much to normalize democratic politics in the region.</b> With its revolutionary movements crushed by military dictatorship, it is not surprising that the Latin American left was left for dead after the end of the Cold War. But since embracing democracy, the left in Latin America has moderated its tactics and beliefs while remaining committed to the idea that deliberate state action powered by the popular will is critical to correcting injustice and alleviating human suffering. Its achievements are a welcome antidote to the cynicism about democratic politics afflicting the American left.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>How the epoch-making legacy of the Pink Tide will fare in the hands of incoming right-wing governments is an open question. Some of the early signs are not encouraging.</b> The Temer administration in Brazil has shown a decidedly retro-macho attitude, as suggested by its abolishment of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, and Human Rights (its functions were collapsed into the Ministry of Justice) and its close ties to a politically powerful evangelical movement with a penchant for homophobia. <b>In Argentina, President Mauricio Macri has launched a “Trumpian” assault on undocumented immigrants </b>from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, blaming them for bringing crime and drugs into the country. Some political observers expect that Piñera will abridge or overturn Chile’s new abortion law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But there is reason for optimism. Temer and Macri have been slow to dismantle anti-poverty programs, realizing that doing so would be political suicide</b>. This is hardly surprising, given the success of those programs. Right-wing governments have even seen fit to create anti-poverty programs of their own, such as Mexico’s Prospera. Moreover, unlike with prior ascents by the right in Latin America, the left is not being vanished to the political wilderness. Left-wing parties remain a formidable force in the legislatures of most major Latin American countries. This year alone, voters in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia will have presidential elections, raising the prospect that a new Pink Tide might be rising. Should this new tide come in, the Latin American left would do well to reform its act and show what it has learned from its mistakes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Latin American leftists need not look far to find a model to emulate: Uruguay. It exemplifies the best of the Pink Tide without its excesses.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Frente Amplio, or Broad Front, a coalition of left-wing parties in power since 2005, has put the country at the vanguard of social change by legalizing abortion, same-sex marriage, and, most famously, recreational marijuana. For these reasons alone, in 2013 The Economist chose “liberal and fun-loving” Uruguay for its first ever “country of the year” award.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less known accomplishments include being one of only two countries in Latin America that enjoy the status of “high income” (alongside Chile), reducing poverty from around 40 percent to less than 12 percent from 2005 to 2014, and steering clear of corruption scandals. According to Transparency International, Uruguay is the least corrupt country in Latin America, and ranks among the world’s 25 least corrupt nations. The country also scored a near perfect 100 in Freedom House’s 2018 ranking of civil and political freedoms, virtually tied with Canada, and far ahead of the United States and neighboring Argentina and Brazil. The payoff for this much virtue is hard to ignore. Among Latin American nations, no other country shows more satisfaction with its democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Omar G. Encarnación</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-helping-big-tobacco-hook-a-new-generation-of-smokers-112911">https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-helping-big-tobacco-hook-a-new-generation-of-smokers-112911</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Big Tobacco is increasingly using social media to find new ways to hook young people on smoking, circumventing decades of laws restricting the marketing of traditional cigarettes to minors.</b></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In major cities around the world such as Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Jakarta and Milan, tobacco companies have been holding extravagant events with names like “K_Player” and “RedMoveNow” that were designed to connect with young people. Often featuring alcohol, live music and attractive hosts, these lavish events spare no expense as they seek find new buyers for their tobacco products.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The problem? Those party-goers are carefully targeted young influencers, who are encouraged to share photos of their glamorous tobacco-sponsored adventures with friends and followers on<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> social media using appealing hashtags like #iamonthemove, #decideyourflow and #mydaynow. And although the influencers are over 18, their social media followers can be much younger.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This exploitation of social media’s organic reach is one of the findings from a global research project I’ve been working on since 2016 with more than a dozen different scholars. The anti-smoking advocacy group Tobacco-Free Kids noticed a lot of photos of young people with cigarettes turning up in their online scans of global social media and asked me to look into it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My own research focuses on how to rigorously research online culture using natural observational techniques, something that this study definitely required.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My team’s task was to monitor, report upon and analyze the programs behind the hashtagged social media posts of young people smoking. What we learned about tobacco company’s current advertising surprised us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tobacco ads were much bigger in 1996 – literally. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Skirting marketing restrictions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tobacco companies have always had a knack for finding creative ways to skirt regulations intended to curb marketing to young people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1971, the U.S. Congress banned tobacco ads from television and radio. In response, companies invested heavily in outdoor advertising and magazines. In 1997, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement banned tobacco on outdoor and billboard ads. In response, tobacco money flowed into sponsorships of sports, music and other events. These type of event sponsorships were banned, with some exceptions, in 2010, at the same time wider restrictions on youth marketing were also introduced.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No matter the medium, the messaging was often the same: find ways to reach new and young potential smokers. As documents from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library reveal, tobacco executives have long believed that the continued survival and success of their companies depends on one thing: convincing young people to buy their products.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005, the World Health Organization banned tobacco advertising in 168 signatory countries. By 2010, the U.S. had closed a lot of Big Tobacco’s favorite advertising and tobacco loopholes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With conventional media mostly off-limits, what was Big Tobacco to do? Like the Marlboro Man, the unregulated Wild West of social media rode to the rescue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The perfect marketing medium</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Social media fits Big Tobacco’s advertising needs to a tee.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At least 88 percent of American youth say they use social media apps like Facebook and Instagram regularly, and the technologies are notoriously difficult to regulate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Tobacco-Free Kids’ financial support, I assembled a growing team of researchers to investigate. Our work is ongoing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My team collected a plethora of social media data and also conducted interviews with a range of tobacco brand ambassadors, party attendees, influencers and industry insiders from around the world. What we found was an astoundingly effective use of social media by a range of different tobacco companies to connect with the next generation of potential cigarette smokers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While tobacco companies were careful to abide by the letter of the law – the influencers involved in these posts were all of legal smoking age in their countries – social media has a public setting that makes it an effective and largely unregulated form of broadcast.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Legally, anyone age 13 or over can have an Instagram or Facebook account.</b> Our “netnography” – a type of qualitative social media inquiry that focuses on cultural contexts, social structures and deeper meanings – only looked at public posts, images that any 13-year-old with an account could see.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Training camps and pop-up parties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Our investigation uncovered a range of promotional activities and a web of public relations and advertising agencies that cleverly leveraged the strengths of social media to keep tobacco advertising under the radar of existing regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We found tobacco companies in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines recruiting “nano-influencers” of just 2,000-3,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram and encouraging them to post about their tobacco-sponsored adventures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Indonesia, we found brand ambassador training camps that lasted two full weeks and were run by the domestic tobacco company Gudang Garam. At these camps, young nano-influencers were paid generous fees, taught about cigarette brands images and then provided lessons about how to better maintain their social media feeds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Public relations agencies in Uruguay taught their influencers how to take pictures of cigarette packages</span> in ways that best accentuated their brands, offering tips on lighting, hashtags and the best time to post them for maximum impact.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Some companies used Facebook pages to recruit young people to attend their parties.</b> After answering a few questions on the Facebook page, for example, responders were enrolled in a mailing list resulting in invitations to cool pop-up “parties and edgier events.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At those parties, young people were greeted by attractive attendants who offered them cigarettes and encouraged them to pose with floor designs modeled after cigarette brand logos. After snapping pictures, they were encouraged to post them on their social media feed using the party’s decisiveness and action-oriented hashtags. The result was unquestionably a new form of cigarette promotion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These activities clearly violate the spirit of the existing agreements not to indirectly advertise to young people. You can call it stealth, undercover or guerrilla marketing if you wish. Whatever its name, this is 21st-century cigarette advertising that reaches millions of young people around the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exploiting social media</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our research has not only helped shine a light on Big Tobacco’s unchecked use of social media, it has also informed a recent petition to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requesting it to investigate and enforce these novel forms of cigarette advertising.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although it might be difficult for governments to keep on top of media in these rapidly changing times, they must do so if they hope to prevent global smoking rates and their consequent health problems from rising once again. Indeed, with leadership change in the Food and Drug Administration, new and tighter regulations on tobacco and vaping in the United States are already being cast into doubt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social media provide an incredible advance in communications that democratize communications in unprecedented ways.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, that openness is easy to exploit by marketers with dubious motives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><p>
What the hell is happening in tiny Uruguay? South America's second smallest country, with a population of just 3.4 million, has generated international headlines out of proportion to its size over the past year by becoming the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b> first nation to legalize marijuana</b> in December 2013, by welcoming Syrian refugees into the country in October 2014 and by accepting the first six US prisoners resettled to South America from the Guantánamo Bay prison on December 6, 2014.</span></p><p>
</p><p>Outgoing President Jose Mujica, a colorful former Tupamaros rebel who was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the military during the era of the disappeared in the 1970s under US-supported Operation Condor in Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and other nations of the Southern Cone, is a favorite media subject and has been at the center of these actions.</p><p>
</p><p>Yet an even larger story with deeper historical roots and global implications is unfolding simultaneously in Uruguay with minimal media attention. Uruguay has spent the last decade quietly defying the new transnational order of global banks, multinational corporations and supranational trade tribunals and is now in a fight for its survival as an independent nation. It is a rich and important story that needs to be told.</p><p>
</p><p>The 2014 Presidential Election</p><p>
</p><p>For the past 10 years, Uruguayans have been conducting a left-leaning experiment in economic and social democracy, turning themselves into a Latin American version of Switzerland in the process. Under the leadership of the left-leaning Broad Front party, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that Uruguay has enjoyed annual economic growth of 5.6 percent since 2004, compared to 1.2 percent annual growth over the last five years in Switzerland. The Swiss have decriminalized marijuana and gay marriage. Uruguay has legalized both. Prostitution is legal in both countries, and each provides universal health care. According to the Happy Planet Index, Uruguay has the same low per capita environmental footprint as Switzerland, with a similarly widespread sense of well-being among its people in spite of significantly lower per capita GDP.</p><p>
</p><p>Yet unlike Switzerland, with its highly developed financial services sector and, until recently, safe haven tax policies for global capital, Uruguay has become a prime target for the wrath of multinational corporations and the London bankers who fund them.</p><p>
</p><p>From the bankers' perspective, Uruguay is setting a bad example by taking care of their people instead of catering to global financial speculators.</p><p>In November 2014, Uruguayan voters voiced approval for their government's policies of social tolerance and public spending on early childhood education, affordable universal health care and social safety net programs by re-electing former president Tabaré Vasquez from the ruling Broad Front party. With support from allied green and radical left parties, Vasquez won a landslide victory against a neoliberal opponent who ran on a platform of slashing public sector spending and opening the nation's economy to foreign investors. Instead, Vasquez's return to the presidency in 2015 will extend the Uruguayan social democratic experiment another five years to 2020. London's neoliberal, supply-side bankers are not amused.</p><p>
</p><p>Less than a week after Uruguayan election results were certified, Capital Economics, a London-based financial think tank aligned with British Prime Minister David Cameron's brand of aggressive neoliberalism, issued an economic report sternly warning that Uruguay is going to face tough economic times after electing another leftist president unless they change their ways. The language of the Capital Economics report is telling:</p><p>
</p><p>Capital Economics concludes that given Vazquez' promises of continuity and more social spending, and the Uruguayan economy running at full capacity, any attempt to bolster domestic demand most likely will generate more inflation and more strains in the balance of payments.</p><p>"Our view is that policymakers need to tighten fiscal policy and pass supply side reforms to boost medium-term growth," says the report.</p><p>Likewise wage indexation is widespread in Uruguay and according to the IMF, as many as 90 percent of labor contracts are indexed, which contributes to high and persistent inflation. "More generally, reducing the power of trade unions will help to ease labor market rigidities."</p><p>This report reprimanding Uruguay was published against the backdrop of the most aggressive assault on the public sector in British history. The Cameron government is proposing cuts of 22.2 percent to the national budget by 2020, with cuts of 41 percent to "unprotected" programs, which translates as discretionary social welfare spending.</p><p>
</p><p>The leftist economic experiment taking place at the opposite end of the globe in tiny Uruguay is more than the bankers in London can tolerate, never mind that Uruguay, with minimal military expenses, has annual deficits nearly 600 percent lower than the UK as a percent of GDP. From the bankers' perspective, Uruguay is setting a bad example by taking care of their people instead of catering to global financial speculators.</p><p>
</p><p>If the Capital Economics report is decoded, it functions as a virtual thesaurus for the language of financial tyranny, bullying and terror used by the new regime of global capital headquartered in London and New York.</p><p>
</p><p>Decoding the Language of Neoliberal Bankers</p><p>
</p><p>Capital Economics wants to ensure that Uruguay adopts polices that ease "labor market rigidities." While the preciosity of this formulation is not without entertainment value, in plain language, it means union busting in order to lower wages.</p><p>
</p><p>Capital Economics also insists that "supply-side reforms" are essential for Uruguay's survival. Here is a typical list of such reforms.</p><p>
</p><p>Cutting government spending, taxes and policies to cut government borrowing</p><p>Passing laws to control trade union powers</p><p>Reducing red tape to cut the costs of doing business</p><p>Implementing measures to improve the flexibility of the labor market, or reforming employment laws</p><p>Enforcing policies to boost competition such as deregulation</p><p>Privatization of state assets</p><p>Opening up an economy to overseas trade and investment</p><p>Opening up an economy to inward labor migration</p><p>In sum, the London financial establishment is telling pesky leftist Uruguay that it needs to crush its unions by encouraging an influx of low-wage, immigrant workers to reduce labor costs, slash social spending and privatize as much of the public sector as possible.</p><p>
</p><p>It is important to note that 55 percent of Uruguay's government bond debt is held by foreign investors, many of them British. The anti-labor austerity program being recommended by Capital Economics would be disastrous for Uruguay's domestic programs and quality of life, but it would provide a profiteering opportunity for speculative bankers in London by temporarily increasing the value of Uruguayan bonds. This is what is really meant by "a boost in medium-term growth."</p><p>
</p><p>The TTIP and TPP</p><p>
</p><p>The neoliberal assault on export-dependent Uruguay is likely to intensify in the next few years, and not solely because of their deficit spending on popular social welfare programs that fly in the face of economic austerity recommended by London bankers and the IMF. Uruguay has also become a lightning rod for the global financial elite because they are challenging the legitimacy of international trade tribunals that lie at the heart of the proposed TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade agreements.</p><p>
</p><p>Uruguay's encounter with the emerging regime of transnational corporate governance started when the National Ministry of Public Health mandated that vivid written and pictorial warnings about health risks from smoking needed to cover 50 percent of cigarette package surface area.</p><p>Contrary to advance PR by cheerleaders such as Cameron and US President Barack Obama, the TTIP and TPP are not designed to promote trade. The cumulative effect of TTIP and TPP would be the establishment of a transnational governing structure that supersedes the current order of sovereign nation-states that are, at least in theory and sometimes in practice, democratically accountable to their own people.</p><p>
</p><p>Proposed signatories to the TTIP and TPP all fall within the sphere of US-UK-EU economic influence, which explains why Russia, Africa, the Islamic nations and the leftist regimes of Latin America are excluded. This is the fabled capitalist "new world order" dreamed of by George H.W. Bush more than 20 years ago.</p><p>
</p><p>Uruguay looms disproportionately large on the global stage at the moment because they have unwittingly vaulted into the vanguard of a global backlash against the TPP and TTIP due to a seemingly unrelated dispute with the international tobacco industry.</p><p>
</p><p>Enter Marlboro's Mad Men</p><p>
</p><p>Uruguay's encounter with the emerging regime of transnational corporate governance started in 2005, under the first administration of incoming president Tabaré Vasquez, when the National Ministry of Public Health mandated that vivid written and pictorial warnings about health risks from smoking needed to cover 50 percent of cigarette package surface area. In 2009, this was increased to 80 percent of surface area. Uruguay was tackling an epidemic of smoking-related health problems, especially among young people and pregnant women. Smoking has since dropped from 40 percent of the adult population to 23 percent in 2014, and from 33 percent to 12 percent among teenagers.</p><p>
</p><p>"The costs of defending these cases are enormous, so tobacco companies are trying to pick off lower-income countries that can't spend the money and political capital to defend themselves against industry."</p><p>In the ultimate irony, Phillip Morris, which moved its global headquarters to Switzerland in 2002 for tax and liability avoidance, sued Uruguay in 2010 over the new labeling requirements under the terms of a bilateral trade agreement between the two countries. The Phillip Morris suit, which seeks $25 million in damages and weakening of the Uruguayan labeling requirement, is being prosecuted through the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington, DC. The ICSID is chaired by the president of the World Bank and funded from the Bank's budget. It is a supranational trade tribunal that specializes in international state dispute settlements (ISDS).</p><p>
</p><p>ISDS are at the core of both the TPP and TTIP, but on a truly global scale. If Uruguay were to prevail against Phillip Morris, the ramifications for TPP and TTIP enforcement, and the new global order the treaties represent would be far reaching.</p><p>
</p><p>Phillip Morris, which makes Marlboro, the world's best-selling and most valuable cigarette brand, has annual revenues greater than Uruguay's entire GDP - $80 billion vs. $59 billion. According to Ellen R. Shaffer, co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis, "The costs of defending these cases are enormous, so tobacco companies are trying to pick off lower-income countries that can't spend the money and political capital to defend themselves against industry." Uruguay is so fiscally constrained, it has been receiving financial assistance to cover its legal fees from Bloomberg Philanthropies, headed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City and an avid anti-smoking crusader.</p><p>
</p><p>Phillip Morris argues in its suit that both its profits and its "brand" are being severely damaged by Uruguay's anti-smoking campaign, noting that the company's brand represents "a long-term significant investment." In a further punitive action, the company closed its cigarette factory in Uruguay after filing the suit, throwing 40 people out of work. The Uruguayan government responded by rehiring eight of the workers as anti-smoking health advisers, and in October 2014, they filed a 500-page defense and rebuttal to the Phillip Morris suit with the ICSID.</p><p>
</p><p>In the defense document, which has not yet been publicly released, Uruguay reportedly cites its obligations to protect the health of its citizens under the World Health Organization's 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international agreement that has been signed by nearly 200 nations and includes recommendations for health warnings on cigarette packages.</p><p>
</p><p>Silvina Echarte Acevedo is the legal adviser heading the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Health's defense. She recently told The Independent: "They [Phillip Morris] are bullying us because we are small. This is like David and Goliath. But we will fight because it is our right and duty as a government to protect our citizens' health."</p><p>
</p><p>The fact that a sovereign nation trying to protect the health of its people is being forced to defend itself in expensive litigation against the profiteering of a multinational corporation in front of a supranational World Bank tribunal is already far down the wrong path.</p><p>While Uruguay's brave and principled stand against Phillip Morris is heartening, it is also a preview of what could become the prevailing reality if the TTIP and TPP are allowed to go forward. The tobacco behemoth is also using international trade tribunals to sue the governments of Australia and Thailand over their attempts to place more prominent health warnings on cigarette packaging. The lawsuit against Thailand was successful and is being appealed by the Thai government. The litigation in various trade tribunals against the governments of Uruguay, Australia and Thailand has already intimidated both New Zealand and Britain into delaying proposed cigarette label changes similar to Australia's.</p><p>
</p><p>Organizations aligned with Uruguay against Phillip Morris include the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization, as well as a loose coalition of anti-smoking NGOs.</p><p>
</p><p>In this moment, we are all Uruguayans. Their little heralded stand against the emerging model of transnational governance by multinational corporations and global banks is everyone's battle. A Uruguayan victory at the ICSID tribunal has the potential to set a welcome precedent in favor of local governance versus the kind of transnational order envisioned in agreements such as the TTIP and TPP, yet it is a battle that is being fought on enemy territory. The fact that a sovereign nation trying to protect the health of its people is being forced to defend itself in expensive litigation against the profiteering of a multinational corporation in front of a supranational World Bank tribunal is already far down the wrong path.</p><p>
</p><p>In a touching display of bipartisanship, passage of the TPP is a top priority for President Obama, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) when the new Republican-controlled Congress convenes in January 2015. However, there is opposition in both the Democratic and Republican congressional caucuses that may be responsive to public opinion.</p><p>
</p><p>More troubling for proponents of TPP and TTIP is the resistance of several proposed member states who are balking at the erosion of their national sovereignty. These states include Japan, Thailand and most recently, the European Union, which is concerned about being forced to import US meat, poultry and produce, which they deride as "Frankenfoods," due to lax US regulation of additives, hormones and GMOs.</p><p>
</p><p>For anyone interested in voicing support for Uruguay's position, contact information for ICSID can be found online. To register support for Uruguay and opposition to the TTIP and TPP within the United States, contact information for the White House and individual senators is available online, while Public Citizen has a portal for registering opposition with House members.</p><p>
</p><p>In the interim, viva Uruguay!</p><p>
</p><p>Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.</p><p>MICHAEL MEURER</p><p>
</p><p>Michael Meurer is President of Meurer Group & Associates, a California-Colorado political consulting firm. Michael has served as a Senior Advisor to the California Democratic Party and co-founded the Courage Campaign, where he served as Deputy Chair.
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4/15</p>
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<span style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Big tobacco is suing Uruguay for their anti-smoking laws.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><b id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429110159195_2263" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If they win, it will threaten public health laws everywhere</b><span style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and prove one corporation can trump the public good, even when its product kills! But if we launch a giant call and Avaaz hires a world class legal team to carry our voices into the courtroom, the judges won’t be able to turn a blind eye.</span>
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<p>
<span style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 28.9999599456787px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shopping for cigarettes in Uruguay isn't a pleasant experience. Photos of decaying teeth, premature babies and gruesome hospital scenes wrap around every pack. In fact, the country requires manufacturers to cover at least 80 percent of the packaging with medical warnings and graphic images.</span></p>
<p>
Cigarette giant<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.pmi.com/eng/pages/homepage.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(71, 116, 204); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Philip Morris International</a>sees this requirement as a violation of a treaty law. So it's suing the country of Uruguay for $25 million.
The lawsuit is based on a 1991 trade agreement between Uruguay and Switzerland, where the company is located. The cigarette manufacturer<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.pmi.com/eng/media_center/company_statements/pages/uruguay_bit_claim.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(71, 116, 204); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">says</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Uruguay is violating its promise to respect intellectual property rights.
Studies have<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://211.144.68.84:9998/91keshi/Public/File/36/380-9853/pdf/1-s2.0-S0140673612608265-main.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(71, 116, 204); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">found</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that such gruesome packaging reduces smoking, particularly in pregnant women.
To better understand this case before it goes in front of the World Bank this month, NPR's David Greene spoke with<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/chalexhall" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(71, 116, 204); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Alexandra Hall</a>, a reporter based in Uruguay's capital city, Montevideo.
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<p>
We don’t need much help to imagine what a world under these provisions of the TPP would look like. We need look no further than some of the current investor-state dispute cases in which powerful international corporations are demanding millions – sometimes billions – of dollars in claims, against countries both poor and wealthy, for the sin of protecting their citizens.
This is the very same system that the Bechtel Corporation used to attempt to drain $50 million from the Bolivian public treasury after the corporation had been thrown out during the <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/bolivia-investigations-the-water-revolt/bechtel-vs-bolivia-details-of-the-case-and-the-campaign/" target="_blank">Cochabamba Water War</a>.
This is the same system that Canadian mining firm Pacific Rim, recently taken over by Oceana Gold, is using to try to extract over $300 million from the people of El Salvador for having rejected mining operations that threaten to contaminate their drinking water.
And it’s the same system that Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, is using against Uruguay and Australia to try to eliminate important public health regulations designed to reduce tobacco consumption.</p>