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	The global movement for a Robin Hood Tax has been steadily growing by Robin Hood Tax Campaign, Oxfam United Kingdom Jan 2015 Senior Democrats throw their weight behind the Robin Hood Tax. Yesterday, senior Democrat members of the US House of Representatives (America’s lower house, similar to our House of Commons) announced that they are backing a Robin Hood Tax based on the European model! After a speech criticising the “high roller” nature of Wall Street banks, Representative Chris Van Hollen (who is the most senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee) announced that the party were looking to introduce a tax on financial transactions to curb “excessive speculation”, particularly in the form of “computerized high-speed trading”. He also recognised that - due to the sheer volume of financial trading - a Robin Hood Tax could be a powerful revenue-generating tool, good for at least tens of billions of dollars a year. In the Democrats’ House Budget Committee Action Plan, Rep. Van Hollen noted how the...European Union is moving toward a trading fee of 0.1 percent that would raise as much as €37 billion (roughly $44 billion) per year and... that there is no reason why the United States should not also move forward in concert with others. This is a huge step forward for our sister campaign in America who have tirelessly told their politicians about the Robin Hood Tax moving forward in Europe - demonstrating that taxing the banks to raise much-needed money is a sensible way to proceed. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/baker-statement-on-ftt-and-democrat-proposal http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/category/international http://www.tai.org.au/content/australia%E2%80%99s-tobin-tax-arguments-and-evidence http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaign-with-us/robin-hood-tax http://www.robinhoodtax.org/ Dec 2014 Our year started with a bang: we launched Future News, our latest film. Short, funny and informative – it has now been watched more than half a million times! At the end of the film, we asked you to back the Million Strong campaign – to get a million actions backing a strong Robin Hood Tax in Europe that helps the world’s poorest people and the planet. You answered in your hundreds of thousands, with the petition now at more than 940,000! This year, the global movement for a Robin Hood Tax has been steadily growing. In the US, in September, over a thousand Robins turned out for a climate march in front of the UN building in New York. In Australia, nurses calling for a Robin Hood Tax toured the country in November, ending up at the G20 in Brisbane. We held stunts outside the Italian finance ministry and the European Commission. These efforts culminated in a European Day of Action in December when massive projections were cast on government buildings in European capital cities demanding leadership on the Robin Hood Tax. And the public pressure is working: this month, Europe’s leaders threw their weight behind the introduction of a Robin Hood Tax during 2015 with revenues to start flowing by the end of the year. But banks are fighting back. They’re hoping to worm out of paying to clean up the mess they’ve made of the economy; all this despite yet another scandal-ridden year, with billions in fines paid out for foreign exchange market rigging and other misdemeanors. They’ve found support in the guise of Chancellor George Osborne, who has spent nearly Ł200,000 of public money batting for bankers in Europe, including a failed legal challenge to block the European Robin Hood Tax. In response, we’ve taken the battle to the banks, hijacking coverage of Barclays AGM in London in June and highlighting their wrongdoings throughout the year. Today we have helped break a story in the Independent that since 2008, banks and building societies have received 19.7 million complaints - that is a rate of one every ten seconds around the clock for 6 years. Even more astounding is the level of fines: an astronomical Ł166bn since the start of the financial crisis. I"m sure you"d agree that if they can fork out so much in penalties without making a fuss about it, they can certainly afford to pay a modest Robin Hood Tax without having to whine about it! And the money is certainly needed. The age of austerity continues unabated with almost a million people visiting foodbanks in 2014. People are taking action in to their own hands with thousands calling on their local councillors to back a UK Robin Hood Tax. So far, 64 councils (representing a quarter of the UK population) have backed the campaign. They understand that an under-taxed financial sector can - and should - plug the holes in the economy. And with Ł20bn up for grabs, we’re looking to redouble our efforts in the run-up to May"s general election to make our political leaders understand that there are alternatives to relentless cuts and the Robin Hood Tax is a leading candidate. http://robinhoodpetition.org/?lang=en http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/great-year-sherwood Nov 2014 Banks pay out Ł166 billion over six years: a history of banking misdeeds and fines, report Julia Kollewe, Jill Treanor and Shane Hickey. From Libor rigging and sanction busting to forex manipulation, a look back at the global banking industry’s offences and penalties. The global banking industry racked up more than Ł166bn in fines, settlement fees and provisions between 2009 and 2013, the CCP Research Foundation has found. Offences range from Libor rigging and currency market manipulation to breaching sanctions against Iran and Sudan, money laundering for Mexican drug barons and abusive mortgage practices in the US. The latest penalties have seen five major banks being fined Ł2bn for rigging the Ł3.5tn-a-day foreign exchange markets. Research led by academic Roger McCormick at the CCP Research Foundation shows 10 large banks, including RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group, incurred Ł166.63bn in fines and provisions between 2009 and 2013. This year is shaping up to be another big year for bank penalties. Bank of America’s $16bn (Ł10bn) settlement over allegations of mis-selling mortgage-backed securities took the total for the first eight months of 2014 to more than Ł31bn, surpassing the total for the whole of 2013. Some of this is already included in the CCP figure as provisions. In 2012, five large US banks agreed to pay $25bn to settle charges over abusive methods to foreclose on homeowners. It was the largest US settlement since the tobacco industry agreed to pay more than $200bn compensation to victims of smoking-related diseases in 1998. More was to come. A smaller, collective settlement of $8.5bn came in January 2013 when 10 big financial institutions settled claims of foreclosure abuses. There have also been a number of individual settlements: Bank of America’s $16bn settlement in August was the biggest related to the sale of mortgage-backed securities. Citigroup agreed to pay $7bn to settle a federal investigation into toxic mortgage products the bank sold in the runup to the crisis. JP Morgan Chase agreed a $13bn settlement after a string of investigations into its risky mortgage deals. Deutsche Bank settled for $1.9bn over the sale of mortgage-backed securities to US taxpayer-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Morgan Stanley agreed a Ł1.25bn settlement over the sale of faulty mortgage-backed securities. UBS reached a $885m settlement over claims it mis-sold mortgage-backed bonds during the housing bubble. Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks was fined $968m for abusive mortgage practices. RBS is still awaiting a fine for these practices. British and American authorities have fined banks more than $3bn as part of their ongoing investigations into rigging of the benchmark Libor rate. Fines from the Financial Conduct Authority alone for Libor rigging total Ł532m. Barclays, which was at the heart of the scandal, was fined Ł290m by regulators in the US and UK. Lloyds was fined Ł218m. Swiss bank UBS and brokerage Icap have also paid penalties. Five banks were fined a total of Ł2bn by UK and US regulators – Ł1.1bn from the UK regulator and the rest from US authorities. The fines were a record from the FCA: UBS was given the biggest penalty, at Ł233m followed by Ł225m for Citibank, JPMorgan at Ł222m, RBS at Ł217m, and Ł216m for HSBC. Barclays has yet to settle. In the US, the regulator fined Citibank and JP Morgan $310m each, $290m each for RBS and UBS, and $275m for HSBC. France’s biggest bank, BNP Paribas, reached a $8.97bn settlement with the US authorities in July 2014 for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan. In 2012 Standard Chartered agreed to pay a $340m fine to the US regulator. It was accused of scheming with Iran to hide billions of pounds’ worth of transactions from the authorities, leaving the financial system susceptible to “terrorists” and “drug kingpins”. In 2012, HSBC paid $1.9bn to settle US money laundering allegations, including for Mexican drug barons. Barclays has been given a Ł330m penalty from US energy regulators for allegations of rigging electricity markets. It is contesting the fine. In May, Barclays was fined Ł26m for failing to stop the price of gold being manipulated. Credit Suisse in May pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it helped Americans evade taxes, leading to a fine of $2.6bn. Barclays has faced a series of fines, including a Ł50m penalty from the FCA for its actions during the bank’s fundraising from Middle Eastern investors in 2008. Barclays is contesting the fine. It was also fined Ł38m by the FCA in September for breaching rules requiring it to keep its clients’ money separate from its own. UK banks have paid out more than Ł23bn in compensation to customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance – but no fines have been imposed on them for what is now the UK’s biggest and costliest mis-selling scandal. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/12/banks-fined-200bn-six-years-history-banking-penalties-libor-forex Visit the related web page

	Shooting death becomes flashpoint for strained race relations in the US by Reuters, UN News, agencies USA 26 Nov 2014 Calls for calm on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, have gone unheeded with mass riots taking place after a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer for fatally shooting an unarmed black teen in August. Police struggled to contain protesters who took to the streets of Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis, smashing shop windows and torching cars and businesses despite the president"s calls for restraint. St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said clashes between demonstrators and police resulted in 61 arrests. Mr Belmar said the rioting was "much worse" than disturbances which erupted in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9. Protests were also staged in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Oakland and Washington DC over a case that has highlighted long-standing racial tensions not just in predominantly black Ferguson but across the US. Angry crowds gathered around the police department in Ferguson after the grand jury found there was no probable cause to charge Mr Wilson with any crime in the shooting. "That"s how the justice system works - the rich are up there and the poor are down here," said Antonio Burns, 25, who is black and lives in the Ferguson area. He said the police "think they can get away with it". Earlier, St Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, told the court the grand jury found no probable cause existed to file any charge against Mr Wilson. The officer could have faced charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to first-degree murder. Lawyers for the Brown family said the teen was trying to surrender when he was shot at least six times, while Wilson"s supporters said he feared for his life and opened fire in self-defence. Brown was alleged to have stolen cigars from a nearby convenience store shortly before the incident. He and a friend had been walking down the middle of the street when the police officer approached them. The shooting death of 18-year-old Mr Brown, a resident of the predominantly African-American city of Ferguson, sparked days of riots and protests. President Obama said the decision of the grand jury was always going to be a subject of intense disagreement across the country and called for calm. "First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law," he said. "And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury"s to make. "There are Americans who agree with it and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It"s an understandable reaction. "But I join Michael"s parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully." Mr Brown"s family were upset by the grand jury"s decision. "We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions," they said in a statement. "While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change." Before the decision Michael Brown senior said he did not want his son"s death to be in vain. "I want it to lead to incredible change, positive change, change that makes the St Louis region better for everyone. "We live here together, this is our home. We are stronger united." The shooting death has become a flashpoint for strained race relations in the US. The grand jury, with nine white and three black members, had been meeting since late August. A separate federal probe into the shooting is continuing, and US attorney-general Eric Holder emphasised the justice department investigators had not reached any conclusions. Mr Obama said the case highlighted "broader challenges" the US faced and asked police officers in Ferguson to work with the community over coming days. "I also appeal to the law enforcement officials in Ferguson and the region to show care and restraint in managing peaceful protests that may occur," he said. "As they do their jobs in the coming days, they need to work with the community, not against the community, to distinguish the handful of people who may use the grand jury"s decision as an excuse for violence ... from the vast majority who just want their voices heard around legitimate issues in terms of how communities and law enforcement interact. "The fact is, in too many parts of this country a deep mistrust exists between communities of colour. "This is tragic because nobody needs good policing more than poor communities with higher crime rates." 25 November 2014 UN rights chief concerned over ‘disproportionate’ killings of African-Americans by US police. (UN News) The decision by a Grand Jury in Missouri to absolve a police officer for the fatal shooting of an African-American teenager has spotlighted broader concerns about institutionalized discrimination across the United States, the top United Nations human rights official said today. “I am deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers, as well as the disproportionate number of African Americans in US prisons and the disproportionate number of African Americans on Death Row,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, in a statement issued by his office in Geneva this morning. “It is clear that, at least among some sectors of the population, there is a deep and festering lack of confidence in the fairness of the justice and law enforcement systems,” Mr. Zeid continued. “I urge the US authorities to conduct in-depth examinations into how race-related issues are affecting law enforcement and the administration of justice, both at the federal and state levels.” Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer in the US town of Ferguson, in Missouri on 9 August, sparking protests around the country and enflaming the debate surrounding the treatment of African-American men by US law enforcement. The High Commissioner explained that without knowing the specific details of the evidence laid before the state of Missouri Grand Jury, he remained unable to comment on whether or not the verdict itself conformed to international law. However, he said, continuing reports of deadly encounters between police officers and members of the African-American community had repeatedly prompted concerns among respected national bodies and by UN bodies monitoring the implementation of international human rights treaties. Mr. Zeid noted that just two weeks ago, Mr. Brown’s parents had addressed the UN Committee against Torture, which is currently reviewing the US application of its obligations under the relevant Convention. The Grand Jury’s decision last night to not charge the officer, Darren Wilson, comes just three days after another African-American, Tamir Rice, was shot dead by police in Cleveland, in the State of Ohio, because he was holding a non-lethal replica gun. Tamir Rice was 12 years-old. Mr. Zeid noted that Tamir Rice’s killing not only reiterated the racial disparity in deaths at the hands of US police officers but also placed the issue of gun-related deaths in the US back into focus. “In many countries, where real guns are not so easily available, police tend to view boys playing with replica guns as precisely what they are, rather than as a danger to be neutralized,” he stated. Pointing to Article 9 of the UN’s Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Mr. Zeid confirmed that law enforcement officials were called upon to “not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury.” “In any event, intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life,” the High Commissioner concluded. http://www.aclu.org/aclu-response-ferguson http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/victimizing-eric-garners-family-all-over-again http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/16/new-york-after-eric-garner/?insrc=hpbl http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4153476.htm http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15404&LangID=E http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/index.shtml Visit the related web page

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