October, 21 2013, 12:32pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Greenpeace International press desk: +31 20 718 24 70 / pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org / @greenpeacepress
Greenpeace International picture desk: +31 207 18 24 71
Greenpeace International video desk: +31 207 18 24 72
Netherlands Pushes Demand to Release the Arctic 30 and Ship
The Dutch government has lodged a rare application at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), asking it to order the immediate release of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and all those who were aboard for the peaceful protest against Gazprom's Arctic oil platform, the Prirazlomnaya. If ITLOS rules in favour of the Netherlands, the 28 Greenpeace International activists, freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov and freelance videographer Kieron Bryan could go home while they await confirmation of a Russian court date.
AMSTERDAM
The Dutch government has lodged a rare application at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), asking it to order the immediate release of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and all those who were aboard for the peaceful protest against Gazprom's Arctic oil platform, the Prirazlomnaya. If ITLOS rules in favour of the Netherlands, the 28 Greenpeace International activists, freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov and freelance videographer Kieron Bryan could go home while they await confirmation of a Russian court date.
The Dutch authorities initiated an arbitration case against Russia on October 4, and are calling for ITLOS to indicate 'provisional measures' pending the outcome of that arbitration.(1) ITLOS is an independent judicial body located in Hamburg, Germany, established to resolve disputes about the interpretation and application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Requesting ITLOS to indicate 'provisional measures' is an unusual step for a government to take and one Greenpeace International welcomes.
"Greenpeace applauds the Dutch government for taking these very important steps," said Greenpeace International General Counsel, Jasper Teulings. "However, it will likely take about four weeks before the Tribunal announces the verdict. Greenpeace International calls on all governments involved to step up their work to ensure the immediate release of the detainees."
The Netherlands has never launched a case at ITLOS before and has done so now as the Arctic Sunrise is a Dutch flagged ship. The legal argument presented by the Netherlands will remain unknown until case documents become public, probably at the start of hearings. A likely argument is that the Russian Federation violated the right to freedom of navigation by boarding the vessel in Russia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and clearly outside of Russia's territorial waters, in contravention of the UNCLOS. (2)
Since the inception of ITLOS in 1996, 21 cases have been submitted to the Tribunal, and of those, four related to provisional measures.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Doing For-Profit Tax Industry's Bidding, GOP Calls On Trump to Cancel Direct File Program
"This is the most efficient way and cost-efficient way for millions of people to pay their taxes," said one advocate.
Dec 11, 2024
Responding to the "absurd" news that more than two dozen U.S. House Republicans are calling on President-elect Donald Trump to end the Internal Revenue Service's Direct File program, Rep. Gerry Connolly came to one conclusion: "Republicans want to make your lives more difficult."
The Virginia Democrat wasn't alone in denouncing a letter penned by Reps. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) and Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) and signed by at least 27 other Republicans who called on Trump to sign a "day-one executive order" to end the free tax-filing program that allowed roughly 140,000 taxpayers to save an estimated $5.6 million in filing costs this year.
Direct File, which was introduced as a pilot program in 12 states in the last tax filing season and is set to be expanded to 24 states and more than 30 million eligible taxpayers this year, is "a free, easy way for people to file their taxes directly online with IRS," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
The software allows taxpayers to keep their entire tax refund "rather than paying $150 to a sleazy tax prep company," said the senator, adding that Republicans evidently want Americans "to keep wasting money on TurboTax," the popular tax filing program run by Intuit, which reported a net income of $2 billion in 2023 and spent $3.5 million on federal lobbying the previous year. The private tax filing industry has spent decades lobbying to ensure a system like Direct File wouldn't be made available to Americans.
In the letter, the Republicans claim the Direct File system is "unauthorized and wasteful" and that "the program's creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers' freedom from government overreach."
The Republican lawmakers also sent the letter to billionaire businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump's nominees to lead the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In the letter they claim to want to protect "hardworking Americans" from the "overreach" of the IRS, but as In the Public Interest founder and executive director Donald Cohen told Common Dreams on Wednesday, the Direct File program is "incredibly popular" with those who have used it.
"This is the most efficient way and cost-efficient way for millions of people to pay their taxes," Cohen said. "So what the Republicans want to do is make it more costly, more complicated, and more profitable for the big tax software vendors."
Cohen also questioned how Smith and Edwards could argue, as they do in the letter, that Direct File is a "clear conflict of interest."
"It is in all of our interests for the federal government to... collect taxes in the most efficient and cheapest way," he told Common Dreams.
On the contrary, he said, private tax software companies like Intuit and H&R Block are incentivized to fight against Direct File, which keeps them from collecting about $1 billion in filing fees as well as users' data.
At the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, vice president of tax policy Chuck Marr said Republicans who signed Wednesday's letter are essentially pushing for "a tax on paying taxes."
Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and the former chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, argued that Direct File "does what policymakers should be in favor of: It makes a core government function more efficient and user-friendly, in a way that's accessible for everyone."
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Mere weeks after thousands of delegates descended on Baku, Azerbaijan for the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, authorities in the country arrested multiple independent journalists on charges that one prominent human rights group called "bogus."
On December 6, police arrested six employees with the independent media organization Meydan TV: Ramin Deko (Jabrailzade), Aynur Elgunesh (Ganbarova), Aysel Umudova, Aytaj Tapdig (Ahmadova), Khayala Agayeva, and Natig Javadli on suspicion of smuggling, according to a statement from Meydan TV. Another media worker, Ulvi Tahirov, was also arrested that day. All seven have been given four months pretrial detention, according to Human Rights Watch.
In a statement released December 6, Meydan TV—which is headquartered in Berlin—said that "since the day we started our activities over a decade ago, our brave journalists have been arrested, and they and their families have been subjected to persecution. Journalists who cooperate with us have been illegally banned from leaving the country, and have been surveilled by Pegasus spyware, among other forms of pressure." Meydan TV has also called the charges "unfounded" and the detention of its journalists "illegal."
Since launching in 2013, Meydan TV has become one of the most important sources of independent news in Azerbaijan, broadcasting interviews with opposition politicians and publishing investigative reporting, according to the Eurasianet, an outlet that covers South Caucasus and Central Asia.
As part of its coverage of COP29, Meydan TV addressed the scrutiny that the Azerbaijani government has engendered for its human rights record.
Members of the Azerbaijani media were also arrested last year. Reporters with Abzas Media, Toplum TV, and Kanal 13 were arrested in 2023 and remain in pretrial custody, and like those targeted in this most recent wave of arrests they face smuggling charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
"Having created a network of laws and regulations in Azerbaijan designed to make it virtually impossible for journalists and activists carrying out legitimate work in full compliance, the government then invokes such bogus charges as politically convenient to silence critics," wrote Arzu Geybulla, a research assistant with Human Rights Watch.
Geybulla added: "Azerbaijan's international partners should take note and urge the authorities to end the crackdown, including releasing all those arbitrarily detailed, and dropping all politically motivated prosecutions."
Another rights group, Reporters Without Borders, urged the Azerbaijani government to release these journalists, as well as others that have been "arbitrarily detained."
Jeanne Cavelier, head of Reporters Without Borders' Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said that "barely a month after Ilham Aliyev's regime used the glitz of COP29 to polish its international image, it has resumed its relentless repression of journalists."
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"He's making it official: If you write a big enough check, his administration will let you break the rules and drive up costs for working families," said one climate advocate.
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President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday floated a legally dubious proposal to let corporations and individuals who invest $1 billion or more in the U.S. bypass regulations, a scheme that environmental groups and government watchdogs said underscores the corrupt intentions of the incoming administration.
"Corporate polluters cannot bribe their way to endangering our communities and our clean air and water," Mahyar Sorour of Sierra Club said in a statement. "Donald Trump's plan to sell out to the highest bidder confirms what we've long known about him: He's happy to sacrifice the wellbeing of American communities for the benefit of his Big Oil campaign donors."
"We will keep fighting to defend our bedrock environmental protections and ensure they apply to everyone, not just those who can't afford Trump's bribe," Sorour added.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump wrote that "any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals."
"GET READY TO ROCK!!!" said Trump, who pledged on the campaign trail to accelerate oil drilling and asked the fossil fuel industry to bankroll his bid for a second White House term in exchange for large-scale deregulation.
As early as May of this year, fossil fuel industry lobbyists and lawyers had already begun crafting executive orders for Trump to sign upon retaking the White House. After winning last month's election, Trump moved quickly to stack his Cabinet with billionaires and other rich individuals with close corporate ties, including those in the fossil fuel industry.
The Associated Pressnoted Tuesday that Trump's push to let large investors evade regulations would itself likely run up against regulatory hurdles, "including a landmark law that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impact before deciding on major projects."
"While Trump did not specify who would be eligible for accelerated approvals, dozens of energy projects proposed nationwide, from natural gas pipelines and export terminals to solar farms and offshore wind turbines, meet the billion-dollar criteria," AP noted. "Environmental groups slammed the proposal, calling it illegal on its face and a clear violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, a 54-year-old law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental impact of proposed actions and consider alternatives."
"Presidents have no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment."
Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, said Tuesday that "Trump is treating America's energy policy like a cheap knickknack at an estate sale: brazenly offering to auction off our public lands and waters to the highest bidder."
"Trump's promise to fast-track environmental approvals for billion-dollar kickbacks is nothing but an illegal giveaway to fossil fuel special interests," said Moffitt, pointing to federal law requiring "rigorous review processes to protect the public interest, not rubber stamps for corporate polluters."
"Trump's plan would turn a system already rigged in favor of fossil fuel interests into one openly driven by corruption, where special interests dictate policy and everyday Americans pay the price," Moffitt added. "Now he's making it official: If you write a big enough check, his administration will let you break the rules and drive up costs for working families."
Axiosreported that Trump's specific focus on environmental regulations "will put the spotlight on Lee Zeldin," the president-elect's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Zeldin is considered to have little environmental policymaking experience—but is a strong supporter of Trump's broad deregulatory push," the outlet noted.
Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at Public Citizen, expressed confidence that Trump's plan "will not come to pass," given that "presidents have no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment."
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Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) warned in response to the president-elect's Truth Social post that "the Donald Trump-Elon Musk government will be of the billionaire, by the billionaire, and for the billionaire—with one set of rules for the big-money oligarchs and another set for everyone else."
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