Nick Sackett

Environmentalist, vegan for animals/planet, tennis enthusiast

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Very interesting piece by @KennyTorrella at @voxdotcom about how Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of factory farms yet don't see eating factory farmed meat as a moral problem: https://t.co/CQwKEZAHnx

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Do read this thread.

[The Humane League @TheHumaneLeague]

🚨 The Farm Bill is officially moving to the floor with harmful language that could overturn animal protection laws across the United States. We need to fight back before the vote tomorrow. Tell your legislators to vote ❗ NO ❗ on the Farm Bill: https://t.co/YH8TYt4arF

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

Finally, someone is willing to defend the farm bill's gestation crate provision.

Its co-sponsor Rep. Feenstra says it's necessary to 'protect family farms.' But when family farmers came to Congress to testify against this very provision, Feenstra and his colleagues refused to let them speak.

Oklahoma pig farmers Leo Staples and Nate Beaulac went to Washington to fight it — and were met with a wall of lobbyists and money. Many more family farmers, like Joel Salatin, Brent Hershey, and Russ Kremer, have spoken out against it too. Feenstra has ignored them all.

Feenstra says he doesn't want 'one state dictating how farmers raise livestock.' So instead he'll let two foreign-owned corporations — Smithfield and JBS — dictate it for every state.

He says this will 'restore common sense to agricultural policy.' Only in lobbyist-filled backrooms does wiping out basic state anti-cruelty laws count as 'common sense.'

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

For four days this site has blown up over the farm bill provision to keep pigs locked up in gestation crates. 50K+ people have posted about it.

Yet its sponsors remain silent. @RepAshleyHinson has been posting about the Congressional Art Competition. @CongressmanGT has stopped posting entirely.

Why? They know they can't defend this. They claimed it would help small family farms. But small family farmers are posting that they oppose it.

They claimed it would help American producers. But the industrial pork industrial is dominated by two foreign-owned corporations: Smithfield and JBS.

They claimed only liberals care about animal welfare. But conservatives like @Cernovich and @TomiLahren have been among the strongest voices opposing it.

They never even pretended this is what most citizens want. It's lawmaking of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, for the lobbyists.

They were really just hoping you wouldn't notice this buried deep in the farm bill. Now they're hoping you'll forget about it. Prove them wrong.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

You torture one animal in America, and it's a crime. You torture millions, and it becomes a business model and you're richly rewarded. Folks, we have to rethink the way we abuse livestock and poultry on an industrial scale.

[Nick Sackett @NickSackett]

@ScottJenstad Gonna crack a beer and watch the Novak/Sinner match tonight as a little 4.5 hour amuse bouche for the final 🎾

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

My TED talk just dropped! It's a call to our common humanity to tackle factory farming, the great hidden moral crisis of our time.

Future generations will judge our treatment of animals harshly. But we can act now to end the worst abuses.

Full video 🔽

[Nick Sackett @NickSackett]

Bumping this…

[Nick Sackett @NickSackett]

Retweeting Steve Bannon for my Super Bowl Sunday bingo card. Cuts to USAid are one big dog whistle.

[Nick Sackett @NickSackett]

@VivekGRamaswamy Funny you say that because overturning Citizens United was a core tenant of Sanders 2016 campaign.

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

5/This paper from 2018 is a good overview of where things are heading if we don't wake up. It is not comprehensive, as there is more going on beyond just this, but this is probably as concise an overview you can get in one place.
https://t.co/MiTSWOGbeQ

[Isaac G. Bryan @ib2_real]

The Dodgers got the whole City lit.

2-0

[The Wire @thewire_in]

'No Propaganda on Earth Can Hide the Wound That Is Palestine: Arundhati Roy's PEN Pinter Prize Acceptance Speech

#Rights
https://t.co/cEw4lKUbj1

[WikiLeaks @wikileaks]

Julian Assange's full testimony to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg today:

"Mr. Chairman, esteemed members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ladies and gentlemen.

The transition from years of confinement in a maximum-security prison to standing here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and surreal shift.

The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey; it strips away one's sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.

I am not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured - the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally, nor can i speak yet about the deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.

I apologise in advance if my words falter or if my presentation lacks the polish you might expect in such a distinguished forum.

Isolation has taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind, and expressing myself in this setting is a challenge.

However, the gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations and speak to you directly.

I have traveled a long way, literally and figuratively, to be before you today.

Before our discussion or answering any questions you might have, I wish to thank PACE for its 2020 resolution (2317), [https://t.co/hcjUC1FS5F], which stated that my imprisonment set a dangerous precedent for journalists and noted that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture called for my release.

I'm also grateful for PACE's 2021 statement [https://t.co/CVWdbrqFCo] expressing concern over credible reports that US officials discussed my assassination, again calling for my prompt release.

And I commend the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee for commissioning a renowned rapporteur, Sunna Ævarsdóttir, to investigate the circumstances surrounding my detention and conviction and the consequent implications for human rights.

However, like so many of the efforts made in my case - whether they were from parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, the Pope, UN officials and diplomats, unions, legal and medical professionals, academics, activists, or citizens - none of them should have been necessary.

None of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events, fundraisers, protests, and letters over the last 14 years should have been necessary.

But all of them were necessary because without them I never would have seen the light of day.

This unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame.

I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175 year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded, as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a freedom of information act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else. I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period when expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished.

I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the US government's prosecution of me - its crossing the rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism - to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now.

When I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream: to educate people about how the world works so that, through understanding, we might bring about something better.

Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go.

Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none.

We obtained and published truths about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of assassination, rendition, torture, and mass surveillance.

We revealed not just when and where these things happened but frequently the policies, the agreements, and structures behind them.

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world.

But we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the US military could deploy lethal force in Iraq and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval.

In fact, 40 years of my potential 175-year sentence was for obtaining and releasing these policies.

The practical political vision I was left with after being immersed in the world's dirty wars and secret operations is simple: Let us stop gagging, torturing, and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals right and other political, economic, and scientific processes will have space to take care of the rest.

WikiLeaks' work was deeply rooted in the principles that this Assembly stands for.

Journalism that elevated freedom of information and the public's right to know found its natural operational home in Europe.

I lived in Paris and we had formal corporate registrations in France and in Iceland. Our journalistic and technical staff were spread throughout Europe.

We published to the world from servers in based in France, Germany, and Norway.

But 14 years ago the United States military arrested one of our alleged whistleblowers, PFC Manning, a US intelligence analyst based in Iraq.

The US government concurrently launched an investigation against me and my colleagues.

The US government illicitly sent planes of agents to Iceland, paid bribes to an informer to steal our legal and journalistic work product, and without formal process pressured banks and financial services to block our subscriptions and freeze our accounts.

The UK government took part in some of this retribution. It admitted at the European Court of Human Rights that it had unlawfully spied on my UK lawyers during this time.

Ultimately this harassment was legally groundless. President Obama's Justice Department chose not to indict me, recognizing that no crime had been committed.

The United States had never before prosecuted a publisher for publishing or obtaining government information.

To do so would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the US Constitution.

In January 2017, Obama also commuted the sentence of Manning, who had been convicted of being one of my sources.

However, in February 2017, the landscape changed dramatically.

President Trump had been elected. He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats: Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive, as CIA Director, and William Barr, a former CIA officer, as US Attorney General.

By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA's infiltration of French political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, European economics ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole.

We revealed the CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.

CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution.

It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son's nappy.

This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.

The CIA's targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive extrajudicial and extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organisations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.

This Assembly is no stranger to extraterritorial abuses by the CIA.

PACE's groundbreaking report on CIA renditions in Europe exposed how the CIA operated secret detention centres and conducted unlawful renditions on European soil, violating human rights and international law.

In February this year, the alleged source of some of our CIA revelations, former CIA officer Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to forty years in prison under conditions of extreme isolation.

His windows are blacked out, and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so that he cannot even shout through it.

These conditions are more severe than those found in Guantanamo Bay.

Transnational repression is also conducted by abusing legal processes.

The lack of effective safeguards against this means that Europe is vulnerable to having its mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties hijacked by foreign powers to go after dissenting voices in Europe.

In Mike Pompeo's memoirs, which I read in my prison cell, the former CIA Director bragged about how he pressured the US Attorney General to bring an extradition case against me in response to our publications about the CIA.

Indeed, acceding to Pompeo's efforts, the US Attorney General reopened the investigation against me that Obama had closed and re-arrested Manning, this time as a witness.

Manning was held in prison for over a year and fined a thousand dollars a day in a formal attempt to coerce her into providing secret testimony against me.

She ended up attempting to take her own life.

We usually think of attempts to force journalists to testify against their sources.

But Manning was now a source being forced to testify against their journalist.

By December 2017, CIA Director Pompeo had got his way, and the US government issued a warrant to the UK for my extradition.

The UK government kept the warrant secret from the public for two more years, while it, the US government, and the new president of Ecuador moved to shape the political, legal, and diplomatic ground for my arrest.

When powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them. Without them no individual has a hope of defending themselves against the vast resources that a state aggressor can deploy.

If the situation were not already bad enough in my case, the US government asserted a dangerous new global legal position. Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights. But the US claims its Espionage Act still applies to them regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey US secrecy law with no defences at all as far as the US government is concerned. An American in Paris can talk about what the US government is up to - perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime without any defence and he may be extradited just like me.

Now that one foreign government has formally asserted that Europeans have no free speech rights, a dangerous precedent has been set.

Other powerful states will inevitably follow suit.

The war in Ukraine has already seen the criminalisation of journalists in Russia, but based on the precedent set in my extradition, there is nothing to stop Russia, or indeed any other state, from targeting European journalists, publishers, or even social media users, by claiming that their secrecy laws have been violated.

The rights of journalists and publishers within the European space are seriously threatened.

Transnational repression cannot become the norm here.

As one of the world's two great norm-setting institutions, PACE must act.

The criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.

I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.

The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.

Journalism is not a crime; it is a pillar of a free and informed society.

Mr Chairman, distinguished delegates, if Europe is to have a future where the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to all then it must act so that what has happened in my case never happens to anyone else.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to this assembly, to the conservatives, social democrats, liberals, leftists, greens, and independents - who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to the countless individuals who have advocated tirelessly for my release.

It is heartening to know that in a world often divided by ideology and interests, there remains a shared commitment to the protection of essential human liberties.

Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroad. I fear that unless norm setting institutions like PACE wake up to the gravity of the situation it will be too late.

Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom never dims, that the pursuit of truth will live on, and that the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few."

Watch the entire hearing here (includes introductions and following Q&A session) 👉 https://t.co/b5aD5Lq3y6

[Senator Liz Krueger @LizKrueger]

I couldn't agree more, @GovKathyHochul. NY can help right now by ending our contribution to the destruction of rainforests in South America and West Africa by enacting the TREES Act that just passed the Legislature today. I urge you to sign the bill - https://t.co/oQOuoa2cjZ

[Friends of the Earth (Action) @foe_us]

We agree @GovKathyHochul!

Great timing—Both chambers of your state's legislature just passed the NY TREES Bill to shift New Yorkers' tax dollars from destroying forests & driving climate change

It'll be waiting on your desk to sign when you get home 😊

https://t.co/TPZfZSDdcO

[Social Compassion in Legislation @SCIL_Tweets]

We are thrilled to see the TREES Act pass the NY legislature! The Act is a sister-bill to our cosponsored California Deforestation-free Procurement Act, which we hope to bring back soon!

@GovKathyHochul, please protect our planet's forests by signing this important bill!

[Friends of the Earth (Action) @foe_us]

Good News 👏the Tropical Rainforest Economic & Environmental Sustainability Act, AKA TREES Act, just passed in the New York State Senate.

Now it's up to @GovKathyHochul to sign it into law and deliver the climate action she's promised!

[Leadership Counsel @LCJandA]

Central Valley community residents were ready to go to #Sacramento today to show their support for #AB2870 — but Assembly Agriculture Committee Chair @AsmSoria pulled the bill from a public hearing.

Read the full statement from Central Valley residents 👇🏽
https://t.co/oHWZDDrbBm