The march is part of the Robin Hood Tax global week of action taking place from May 18 to May 22 in the wake of the G8 Summit at Camp David, which began this Friday. Activists around the world are lobbying for this global financial transactions tax, supported by a range of United Nations (U.N.) human rights experts, including Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, . 

In the United States, unions, think tanks and groups that focus on the environment, international health, consumer protection and financial reform lobby for "Wall Street to give back to Main Street", as a website in support of the Robin Hood Tax says. The idea of a financial transaction tax has existed since the 1930s, when leading economist John Maynard Keynes was a popular driver of the tax. 

"After the bank bailout, the government now needs a lot of money to deal with a huge budget deficit and to help meet the USA’s commitments on aid and climate finance," the website adds. 

A financial transactions tax (FTT) would affect the purchase and sale of stocks, bonds, commodities, unit trusts, mutual funds and derivatives such as futures and options. The tax would generate revenues needed to pay for and protect global public goods like education, health and the environment, with a number of variations having been proposed of how high the tax should be. 

One of the most prominent ideas is a tax rate of .1 percent on equities and bonds and .01 percent on derivatives. 

Estimates suggest that at its lowest rate, the FTT would yield about 48 billion U.S. dollars across the group of countries known as the G20, with higher rates offering up to 250 billion U.S. dollars per year to offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food ...

Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders.

Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: “When people think about the economy they don’t see it through the dry numbers of the deficit figures, trade balances or inflation forecasts — but instead the things that make the difference between a life that’s worth living and a daily grind that drags them down.”

Cameron, whose own economic policies have worsened the daily grind dragging down most Brits, may be sobered by what happened over the weekend in France and Greece – as well as his own poll numbers. Britain’s conservatives have been taking a beating.

In truth, the choice isn’t simply between budget-cutting austerity, on the one hand, and growth and jobs on the other.

It’s really a question of timing. And it’s the same issue on this side of the pond. If government slices spending too early, when unemployment is high and growth is slowing, it makes the debt situation far worse.

That’s because public spending is a critical component of total demand. If demand is already lagging, spending cuts further slow the economy – and thereby increase the size of the public debt relative to the size of the overall economy.

You end up with the worst of both worlds – a growing ratio of debt to the gross domestic product, coupled with high unemployment and a public that’s furious about losing safety nets when they’re most needed.

The proper sequence is for government to keep spending until jobs and growth are restored, and only then to take out the budget axe.

If Hollande’s new government pushes Angela Merkel in this direction, he’ll end up saving the euro and, ironically, the jobs of many conservative leaders throughout Europe ...

In Grenoble, France, there is a 40-metre-long scale model of the Jirau dam that is being built in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. The exact replica of the project makes is possible to foresee and analyze possible risks, such as the heavy flow of sediment in the Madeira River.

But "the model does not take people into account," which is why it did not help anticipate the workers’ uprisings and strikes against poor working conditions that have twice held up construction for lengthy periods of time since 2011, said Ari Ott, a professor of anthropology at the Federal University of Rondônia in Porto Velho, who describes the dam as "an engineering marvel."

Jirau is one of the two big hydroelectric complexes under construction on the Madeira River in the northwestern Brazilian state of Rondônia. Jirau is 130 km from Porto Velho, the state capital, while the Santo Antônio dam is just seven km outside of the city.

In the revolt that broke out in March 2011, apparently after a worker was denied transportation to visit a sick family member in the city, nearly all of the lodgings built to house the 16,000 workers were burnt down, along with other buildings and 60 buses and other vehicles.

The uprising gave rise to a lengthy strike demanding wage hikes, better transportation, and more frequent permits allowing workers from distant areas to visit home.

Work on the dam only gradually got under way again three months later.

On Apr. 3, protesters once again set fire to one-third of the housing at Jirau, leaving some 3,200 workers without lodging.

But this time, a small group of workers, described as vandals by the company and the government, were identified and arrest warrants were issued for 24 suspects.

The new attack on the installations occurred after an assembly in which the Jirau workers decided to ...

A crisis of capitalism is supposed to create an opening for the political left. But in Europe, the place where the concept of left and right was born, political conservatives have won the bulk of the elections held since economic catastrophe struck in 2008.

Is this about to change?

The conservative victory most noted in the United States was the rise to power of David Cameron, the British prime minister feted at the White House last week. The Conservatives won only a plurality of the parliamentary seats against the Labor Party in the 2010 elections. But they drove Labor to its worst showing since 1983 and were able to put together a coalition government with the center-left Liberal Democrats. Cameron has gotten good press in the United States, even from liberals who wish the American right would follow Cameron’s moderate and modernizing ways.

Cameron’s was not a singular victory. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats were reelected in 2009, and the center-right also prevailed in recent voting in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands — and Sweden, the very heartland of social democracy.

The question is whether 2012 will mark a comeback by a left invigorated by a growing unhappiness with rising economic inequalities and a backlash against austerity policies aimed at saving Europe’s common currency.

The biggest test will come in two rounds of voting on April 22 and May 6 in France, where center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy has been trailing Francois Hollande, a moderate Socialist.

The French election has already presaged a new trans-European ...

Occupy Wall Street is similar to many movements in contending that its opponent—for Occupy, the 1 percent—is maintaining a system whose structural, systematic violence far exceeds any violence exhibited by the movement itself. For example, movements will say that class oppression or sexism or racism hurt people in the daily course of life, pointing to statistics like each percentage point of unemployment resulting in increased suicide, homicide and domestic abuse. However, especially when the movement is still young and only beginning to get its message out, the powers that be in politics and the media will often succeed in dismissing such charges and in blaming every appearance of violence on the campaigners. Reversing this narrative in the public perception is one of a growing movement’s most important challenges.

For nearly a year, for example, the Syrian government has been sending its tanks to kill demonstrators while claiming that the violence mainly comes from the pro-democracy forces. The Russian government publicly agrees. The reason why defenders of oppression the world over charge activists with violence—even if they have to make it up—is because it’s a potent accusation. The oppressor doesn’t want the “violence” label to stick to its own side. Those who presently are undecided or passive might move to support the campaigners because they don’t want to support “violence.”

In some circumstances, although not all, who wins the struggle depends on who most believably asserts that the other side is violent. Occupy Wall Street ...

After weeks of rapidly escalating tensions, particularly between Israel and Iran, signs emerged this week both here and in Tehran that serious negotiations over Tehran's controversial nuclear program may soon get underway.

The most concrete step was a long-awaited positive RSVP from Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalali, to an invitation extended last October by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to meet with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany) for a new round of talks.

"We voice our readiness for dialogue on a spectrum of various issues, which can provide grounds for constructive and forward-looking co- operation," Jalali wrote in his letter.

In response, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ashton herself emerged from a meeting here Friday expressing cautious optimism about prospects for a resumption of negotiations, which have been effectively suspended for more than a year.

"…(W)e think this is an important step and we welcome the letter," Clinton told reporters, adding that Jalili's letter "appeared to acknowledge and accept" a Western condition that Iran has previously resisted: that any talks "begin with a discussion of (Iran's) nuclear program".

A formal response by the P5+1, whose members are still consulting with each other, may not, however, be forthcoming until after the scheduled visit next week by a high-level delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the second in the past month. If Tehran accedes to certain requests that it denied the delegation in its last visit, confidence will be enhanced, U.S. officials said.

The latest developments come after several months of escalating tensions, the most recent spiral of which began in late December with the adoption of "crippling" sanctions by Washington and the EU and threats by some Iranian officials to close the ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-wattage diplomatic push Tuesday to persuade the U.N. Security Council to endorse an Arab plan for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, but she couldn't break the steadfast objections of Russia and China.

As fighting between government and opposition forces continued on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, Clinton said that a failure by the Security Council to respond would mean being "complicit in the continuing violence," which was approaching a civil war.

Clinton, the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and Arab allies appeared at the United Nations to back a draft resolution that calls for Assad to resign within two months, a halt to the violence and beginning a process of political transition. The draft also calls for the release of detainees and for Syria to allow outside observers into the country, including journalists.

"The alternative — spurning the Arab League, abandoning the Syrian people, emboldening the dictator — would compound this tragedy and would mark a failure of our shared responsibility and shake the credibility of the United Nations Security Council," Clinton said.

The Obama administration and its allies are pushing for the Security Council to approve the resolution swiftly, and ...

It is now increasingly clear that what started in late 2008 is no ordinary economic slump. Almost four years after the beginning of the crisis, developed economies have not managed a sustainable recovery, and even the better-off countries reveal signs of weakness. Faced with the certainty of a double-dip recession, Europe’s difficulties are daunting.

Not only is Europe running the risk of lasting economic damage; high long-term unemployment and popular discontent threaten to weaken permanently the cohesiveness of its social fabric. And, politically, there is a real danger that citizens will stop trusting institutions, both national and European, and be tempted by populist appeals, as in the past.

Europe must avoid this scenario at all costs. Economic growth must be the priority, for only growth will put people back to work and repay Europe’s debts.

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The killings of four French troops Friday by an Afghan soldier they were training has renewed concerns — a decade into the training mission — that Afghans are growing increasingly disdainful of the U.S.-led coalition forces ostensibly there to help them and are striking back.

The American military has conceded that troop deaths at the hands of Afghans have climbed in the last six months but has refused to release statistics. The Pentagon hasn't suggested any renewed security measures for American troops training their Afghan counterparts, a cornerstone of the U.S. strategy to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014.

"We believe that they do appear to be increasing in frequency in recent months. What we can't discern is a cause for that," Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday.

"We're certainly concerned about these incidents, and officials are taking a look at it," he said. "But we also don't believe that this is an endemic or systemic problem. The great majority of partnered operations, and frankly most of our operations are partnered, are done successfully, smoothly, efficiently."

Coalition partners appear more concerned. The French suspended their mission in Afghanistan on Friday after the deaths of their soldiers and ...

A French judge is seeking U.S. permission to visit the prison camps here to investigate claims by former French inmates that they were tortured, the Associated Press reported from Paris on Tuesday.

The AP reported that it saw a formal international request from investigating judge Sophie Clement to U.S. authorities to see the prison here that Tuesday held 171 captives, none of them French citizens. Clement also seeks copies of all documents relating to the arrest and transfer of three Frenchmen who were held there.

The three men are Nizar Sassi, now 31, Mourad Benchellali, now 30, and Khaled Ben Mustapha, now 40. They were arrested on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in late 2001 and transferred to Guantánamo. They were sent back to France in 2004 and 2005, held for a time for trial there, but then released.

The men told the judge during questioning in France that they were subject to violence including torture and rape during their detention.

At Guantánamo, a Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said it was not immediately known whether U.S. officials had received the request.

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