Antonio Salas
UNDERCOVER JOURNALISM
Spanish journalist and writer
martes, 31 de octubre de 2017
jueves, 8 de diciembre de 2016
A Journalist Goes Undercover
Antonio Salas has gone undercover with multiple surgeries to change his look. He has transformed into a terrorist, sex trafficker, and hacker amongst other roles throughout his journalism career.
Video: http://www.onenewspage.us/video/20161202/6172214/Journalist-Goes-Undercover.htm#
Video: http://www.onenewspage.us/video/20161202/6172214/Journalist-Goes-Undercover.htm#
Etiquetas:
Antonio Salas,
Diary of a skin,
Operation Princess,
The machines whisperers,
The Palestinian,
The year that traffics in women,
video
miércoles, 1 de junio de 2016
Dark Knights of The World
By Chaitra Somasundar, Staff Writer
The Dark Knight. James Bond. It makes me wonder about what real world heroes are like. Those who risk their own life every day to make the world a better place. Our world’s heroes – undercover agents. Being double-skinned is one of the hardest and dangerous jobs in the world. From exposing murders, trafficking and scandals to saving the world from terrorism and war, they risk their safety every day. Here is a list recognizing a few such heroes.
Antonio Joseph “Tony” Mendez is a retired American CIA technical operations officer widely known for his management of the “Canadian Caper”. During a powerful revolution in Iran, students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking up to 20 hostages for 444 days. When the American government failed to end the tensions between Iran and USA, Canada and the CIA launched a joint operation led by Tony Mendez to safely extricate the diplomats. They posed as a Canadian film crew as a part of their cover. In January of 1980, everyone involved successfully escaped Iran disguised as a movie production team.
Jaoquin Garcia, a retired FBI agent is best known for his undercover work infiltrating the Gambino Crime Family (one of the “Five Families”) in New York. He penetrated the Gambino Family for about three years as “Jack Falcone,” a self proclaimed jewel thief and drug dealer. Gregory DePalma, a high ranking Gambino family capo even offered him the position of a “made man!” Jack led to 34 mobster arrests and convictions including the acting boss of the Mafia, Arnold Squiteiri. In 2008, Jack released a book called “Making Jack Falcone” giving details about some of his undercover cases and experiences with the FBI.
Dominick Proliferone is the undercover cop who brought “The Iceman” to justice. Richard Kulinski was an American contract killer who claimed to have killed up to 250 people in his criminal career. He was given the name “The Iceman” for his method of freezing the victim to mask the time of death. An eighteen month long investigation was led by Dominick Proliferone who pretended to be a hitman to get close to Kulinski, and hired him for a fake murder. Polifrone recorded every conversation, and Kulinski was arrested not long after their exchange and charged with five counts of murder.
Carmelo Abbate is an Italian journalist and photographer. This undercover reporter posed as the boyfriend of one of the men in the inner circles of the Vatican’s priesthood! He exposed major escort servicing, child abuse, priests involved in pedophilia and sex rackets. He released videos, reports and even a book called “Sex and the Vatican: a secret journey in the reign of the chaste” which became a bestseller in France.
Antonio Salas is the pseudonym of a Spanish journalist who is forced to keep his identity secret. He went undercover posing as Carlos’s webmaster (yes, Carlos, the Jackal, based on whom the Bourne Identity series was created). He has never been a part of any government organization and has lived for “a year as a Nazi skinhead, a year and half as a dealer of women, [and] six years as an international terrorist” to expose human trafficking, a terrorist legend and many other crimes. He has published multiple books such as Diary of a Skin, Operation Princess etc.
martes, 23 de febrero de 2016
10 Journalists Who Went Undercover Into Horrifying Situations
Journalists are often painted as people willing to do anything to get to
the truth, and sometimes, that’s absolutely accurate. One of the most
famous investigative journalists is Nellie Bly, who lived an incredible
life. In addition to taking on Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80
Days” challenge, she also had herself committed
to an insane asylum for 10 days. The story of her work exposing the
conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island is one of
the most famous cases of a journalist willing to do anything to get the
story. However, she’s not the only one that’s gone to some pretty
extreme lengths to expose the truth.
10 Walter Francis White
Southern US Racism
Southern US Racism
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in
1893, Walter Francis White grew up as a witness to some horrible things. When
he was 12 years old, he saw the unfolding of a race riot that engulfed the
city, killing and injuring hundreds of people. The experience not only shaped
his childhood, but his future career as a journalist. Light-skinned and
blue-eyed, White was in a unique position. He could
pass
as a white man, although he had been born
into a black family—which was evident, when he, his parents, and his siblings
were among those threatened during the 1906 riots.
Graduating from Atlanta
University in 1916, White quickly became a member of the NAACP. By the next
year, the acting secretary was traveling across the South, attending and
investigating organized lynchings and race riots as a white man. From 1918–29,
he went undercover at eight
race riots and 41 lynchings, talking to those that were
involved in starting the violence, gaining their trust—and their
testimonies—which would then be published through the NAACP.
His reports were serialized in
newspapers across the country, and his books debunked some of the major
theories about hate crimes. One of the most often-repeated stories used to
justify racial violence was the need to protect white women against sexual
violence. White was not only able to show how untrue that was, but he was also
able to provide the other side to the story, telling of the absolute terror and
fear of physical violence that the South was living under.
White would go on to rise
through the ranks of the NAACP. Even though he had a number of close calls in
his undercover work, he went on to work alongside men serving on the front
lines during World War II, reporting on the impact that race had on their
treatment by their own country.
Before the beginning of World War II, there was a definite threat of the Nazi
ideals taking root in countries outside of Germany. In the late 1930s, a group
called the German American Bund was setting up shop in the United States. Over
the course of a few years, the Bund gathered around 25,000 members under the
leadership of Fritz Kuhn, who held the title “Bundesleiter.” In 1937, the Chicago
Daily Times sent a few of its reporters undercover into the organization to
see just what was going on there.
The Bund had all the
anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi literature you could possibly imagine. They had their
own elite guard, the Order Division, and they had a series of so-called
training camps across New York and New Jersey. They held rallies, all with the
goal of liberating America in the same way that Hitler was liberating Germany.
After spending several weeks
undercover in the organization, the
reporters ran a massive expose that was about as well-received as you can
probably imagine.
They reprinted parts of a Nazi
primer, featuring such charming poetry as, “Hunch backs and crooked noses, /
Disgusting creatures in their looks, / Their manners and their poses.” They
talked about how the heads of the army had convinced their followers that they
were ready and waiting for seize control of America for “white Americans,”
published pictures of those smiling Americans delivering salutes to the Nazi ideals,
and even ran a picture of the uncanny resemblance between Hitler and one of the
undercover reporters, showing just how
well they’d infiltrated the group.
The fallout was almost
immediate, with thousands more people showing up to Bund rallies—but not in the
spirit that the American Nazis had hoped for. Kuhn was run out of town again
and again, his brave face failing miserably when the police attempting to
protect him and keep the peace were overrun. Eventually, by 1939, Kuhn was in
jail, found guilty of embezzlement.
On November 3, 1913, Maggie Martin was sent to the New York State Prison for
Women at Auburn. Prisoner 933 wasn’t actually a prisoner, though; she was
writer and reformer Madeleine Doty. In the book she wrote after her experience,
Doty reflects on the knowledge that reformers like herself and her associates are
helping to bring about a revolution in the way prisons are run and prisoners
are treated. She needed to see firsthand, though, just what it was like being
on the inside. She reflected that she was scared
but excited, and that she wished that she
looked stronger than she did, hoping that she wouldn’t be an easy target.
Doty’s reporting helped change
the face of female prisoners. At the time, she feared for her safety from women
that she believed were strong and rather masculine, the sort of people who
still embodied a primitive type of humanity. The criminal theories of men like Cesare
Lombroso were still in full swing, and ultimately, Doty
would help turn those theories on their heads. The female offenders whom Doty
was going to be living with were seen
as irredeemable, and she would tell their
stories.
She told of the mice and rats
that they shared their cells with, the bad food, the straw pillows, and the
work. She also talked about those she met, like Mary, the “jolly child of
nature,” who was everyone’s friend and was constantly in trouble for defending
others. She talked about patient, meek Christine, with a son born in prison and
Harriet, the “Russian Jewess” with a fondness for Dante and Shakespeare. And
she had her heart broken by the story of Rose, a mother at age 17 who was
desperately in love with a married man and convicted of selling stolen goods.
In the end, Doty’s works gave imprisoned women a face, experiences,
personalities, and histories beyond what criminologists commonly reduced them
to and began an era of reform—even though her undercover experiment was cut
short by two days after she started to feel “on the verge of a breakdown.”
7 “Anna
Erelle”
IS Recruitment
IS Recruitment
Journalists going undercover to expose something truly horrible might seem like
it’s something of the past, but there are still some that will go to terrifying
lengths for the truth. She only goes by the name “Anna Erelle” at the moment,
because she’s afraid for her life.
The French journalist had been
working on European jihadi extremists in the Islamic State for months, with a
focus on what makes IS so attractive to a certain part of the young population.
She wanted to know just how they were luring so many young women to their
cause. After posing as a 20-year-old girl named “Melodie” on social networks,
she made contact with a French jihadi called Abu Bilel.
The journalist progressed from
Skyping briefly with him, to long talks, to eventually agreeing to run away
from home and join him in Syria as one of his wives. Plans were made after
months of conversations, and she was given instructions by which she (and
another young friend) were to head to first Amsterdam, then to Istanbul, and
then to a border city with Turkey. Plans changed; she was to be sent to
Urfa . . . and she broke off contact.
Erelle made it as far as
Amsterdam when the plans were changed, and she—and her editors—decided it was
no longer worth the risk. Originally intending to make the trip with
photographers instead of the young friend that she had originally said, Erelle
released what information she had gotten on the recruitment process that the
terrorist cells were using.
Her profile was immediately
bombarded with threats and terrifying messages. She no longer uses her real
name, lives in her own apartment, or keeps a phone number for very long. There
are now videos of her online, along with judgments that Bilel and his
associates have issued against her. Safety precautions haunt her everywhere
now, and most likely always
will.
6 W.T. Stead
Child Prostitution
Child Prostitution
W.T. Stead was a pretty strange
spiritualist who claimed to be able to
channel any number of spirits, but he was also a crusading journalist who did
some pretty incredible things when it came to exposing the realities of child
slavery and prostitution.
Stead partnered with the
Salvation Army in a sting operation in London in the 1880s. For five days,
London papers ran the ongoing story of his experiences posing as a well-off
gentleman hanging out on Charles Street who was looking to purchase a young
girl for his very own. Approaching a brothel owner on the guidance of a member
of Parliament, Stead requested to take delivery of a couple of girls who were
accompanied by a doctor’s certificate authenticating their virginity. The
brothel owner agreed and went in search of some suitable girls whose parents
were willing to sell.
Stead ultimately bought a
13-year-old girl named “Lily” for £5 total. The mother, who had been rather
desperate to sell her, would get £3 when her daughter was delivered to Stead
and the rest when a doctor had verified that she was still a virgin. Stead
described the young girl as industrious and intelligent, able to read and write,
and a loving child who didn’t deserve the drunken mother who was willing to
sell her for some quick cash. He also uncovered a corrupt group of midwives
and doctors who would attest to the
child’s virginity. In addition to the certificate, they would sell the buyer a
phial of chloroform as well as reassurances that they would help the child
afterward if it was needed.
London was outraged, and Stead
went to jail—not for purchasing a 13-year-old girl, but because he had only
gotten her mother’s permission to buy her and not her father’s. Stead continued
to write and edit the paper from his jail cell. In the end, he succeeded in
getting laws regarding the age
of consent changed, and he also
spearheaded reforms that made legislation against prostitution more strict.
5 Frank
Smith
Mental Hospitals
Nellie Bly wasn’t the only undercover reporter to bravely head into the notoriously bad conditions of an insane asylum. In 1935, a Chicago Daily Times reporter named Frank Smith spent a week in the Kankakee State Hospital for the Insane. Supposedly committed by his brother, Smith was actually entered into the system by another reporter from the Times posing as a family member. He described it as seven days of Hell.
Mental Hospitals
Nellie Bly wasn’t the only undercover reporter to bravely head into the notoriously bad conditions of an insane asylum. In 1935, a Chicago Daily Times reporter named Frank Smith spent a week in the Kankakee State Hospital for the Insane. Supposedly committed by his brother, Smith was actually entered into the system by another reporter from the Times posing as a family member. He described it as seven days of Hell.
When Smith published his
10-part expose, one of the first things he mentions is the dirty, contaminated
water and the communal drinking cup. A single cup was shared by all patients,
both those who are physically healthy and those who are suffering from the
common illness—syphilis. Part of the reason for his commitment was his supposed
issues with violence, and he wrote that while he was less than thrilled about
being sent into the hospital in the first place, it soon became clear just how
bad of a week he was about to have when he spent 15 hours strapped down in a bathtub
full of dirty river water as a supposed cure for his
violent tendencies. He also talked about the fire-trap halls, something that
hadn’t changed since a fire in 1885 that cost
17 patients their lives.
When he checked himself out
(he was admitted as a voluntary patient), he found his bottle of whiskey
missing out of his things when they were returned to him. He hoped he would never
see the inside of the prison again. Shockingly, though, it wasn’t until the
1960s that things began to change at the hospital, and the last of the mentally
ill patients weren’t moved out until 1974.
4 Carmelo
Abbate
Hypocrisy In The Vatican
Hypocrisy In The Vatican
The Vatican and the Catholic Church are still one of the most powerful organizations
in the world, and going up against their teachings and their doctrines can be a
pretty intimidating thing, especially if you go about it like Carmelo Abbate
did.
In 2010, the Italian
journalist went undercover among the inner circles of the Vatican’s priesthood,
posing as the boyfriend of one of the men, who was already involved in the
private parties and the escort services run throughout Rome. When Abbate
released his findings—including a book and videos that he’d taken of three of
the Roman priests—he made it clear that he wasn’t targeting them because they
were gay; he was targeting them because they were hypocrites. He’s also quick
to separate his work from the other major sex scandal within the Church—child
abuse.
While undercover, Abbate got a
firsthand look at just how heavily the escort services in Rome depend on
priests for their success and trade. The problem he has is with the difference
between the treatment of straight and gay priests. Technically, since they’re
all supposed to be celibate, it shouldn’t even matter. He found, however, that
it does.
The Catholic Church fired
back, trying to play the “offensive stereotype” card. However, the Vatican has
remained pretty silent on the whole thing, while Abbate says that the extreme
hypocrisy and double standards need to be
stopped. Some are going as far as using his findings to point out that the
Church is focused more strictly on the orientation of their clergy members
rather than the deviance they’ve unfortunately become known for.
3 George
Morrison
Blackbirding
Blackbirding
Blackbirding is the name of a shady program for recruiting people to become
indentured servants. Throughout the 1890s and up until around World War I,
groups of ships would go island-hopping throughout the Pacific. Recruits would
be picked up and signed to contracts, where they would agree to go work on
plantations for a certain amount of time. That was the theory, at least, but it
was absolutely up for debate on how well these contracts were explained, how
willing recruits were, and whether or not it was just a fancy way of collecting
more slaves.
In 1882, George Morrison was a
medical student in need of a break from school. Wanting to get an intimate look
at the so-called blackbirding process and the labor trade, he signed on as a
seaman and doctor’s assistant on a ship called the Lavinia. His original
story read more like a travel blog than an expose of any real note, but it inspired
him to turn from medical school to journalism.
His follow-up painted
blackbirding as the weakly
disguised slave trade that many had always thought
it to be. He described the intimidation techniques that were used to get people
to sign on, such as holding people at gunpoint until they agreed to their
contracts, the poor health conditions, the lack of sanitation onboard the ship,
and the treatment of women, calling some of the ships little more than
brothels. Further questioning the legality of the practice, he pointed out that
the people often in charge of things like health regulations and approvals were
the ones that owned the ships, making it less than likely that they were being
very honest.
His condemnation got the
attention of various government officials, who either supported him or
condemned him, depending largely on whether or not it was in their best
financial interests to do so. It wasn’t until Britain got involved that there
was at least the establishment of a regulatory committee in the form of deputy
commissioners, backed by an increased number of naval vessels.
2 Marvel
Cooke
The Bronx Slave Market
The Bronx Slave Market
Marvel Cooke was born in Minnesota in 1903, and by the 1950s, she was living in
New York City and working for The Daily Compass. It was there that she
wrote The Bronx Slave Market, an expose on the practices of upper-class
women who would hire day laborers for a pittance, as well as the difficulties
that the laborers would face day after day.
Cooke joined the women she saw
standing on the street corner every day. They would line the streets, hoping to
appeal to someone looking for a housekeeper. When Cooke joined them, she was
hired by an elderly woman at a rate of $0.80 an hour, while the going rate established
by the Domestic Workers Union was $1 an hour.
Her first experience was one she’d heard about: The slave market employers would claim that the work that was done was so subpar that they would refuse to pay—no matter how well they’d actually done the job. Some, she was warned, would pay them less or turn the clocks back to make them work longer. She also got a firsthand look at the men that would prey on the women looking for work. The unmistakably straightforward, lewd advances made the degrading search for work even worse.
Her first experience was one she’d heard about: The slave market employers would claim that the work that was done was so subpar that they would refuse to pay—no matter how well they’d actually done the job. Some, she was warned, would pay them less or turn the clocks back to make them work longer. She also got a firsthand look at the men that would prey on the women looking for work. The unmistakably straightforward, lewd advances made the degrading search for work even worse.
After an entire day of
dusting, laundry, being ordered around, and scrubbing floors on her hands and
knees, Cooke had her story: The slave trade was alive and well, thriving on the
streets of New York. Part of the solution wasn’t just the organization of a
Domestic Workers Union but more locations and a wider opportunity for women to
join it and be protected by it. Cooke’s undercover work exposed the life of a
group of women too afraid to join the protection of a union for fear of the
benefits they relied on being taken away. She ultimately pushed ahead legislation
to protect
domestic workers, education, and the
establishment of accessible unionization.
“Antonio Salas” (a pseudonym) has successfully taken undercover, investigative
journalism to the extreme. He’s gone undercover to expose child trafficking
rings and into the world of the skinhead supporters of the Real Madrid football
league, and he’s most recently gone undercover as a radical Islamist after the
2004 bombings in Madrid.
After learning Arabic, getting
a circumcision, and writing his own copy of the Quran by hand, he wrote a
couple of books to give himself credibility and invented an incredibly tragic
backstory about the death of his pregnant wife. Eventually, he would make
contact with—and become a trusted ally of—one of the terrorist world’s most
notorious assassins, a man named Carlos the Jackal.
He met the Jackal’s brothers
and family and eventually became his confidant, friend, and webmaster. The
website had been put together in hopes of raising support to have the Jackal
returned to Venezuela, and while Antonio was running it, he taped his frequent
conversations with the Jackal along with what turned out to be murder
confessions. He took training courses in how to be a terrorist, and the Jackal
occasionally called
him from jail, just to make sure he was
safe.
And, incredibly, he did it all
without the backing of any sort of government intelligence agency, police
security, or even official media credentials. Traveling is limited sometimes,
as he has to do it under his real name and with his real passport. He says that
his family has been under police protection since his time undercover in the
human trafficking ring, and most of his friends aren’t even aware of the double
life he’s living.
He talks about friends who sit and discuss the books, movies, and exposes of the investigative journalist Antonio Salas, having no idea that they’re talking to him.
He talks about friends who sit and discuss the books, movies, and exposes of the investigative journalist Antonio Salas, having no idea that they’re talking to him.
And as for the danger
he puts himself in all the time? He says, “My
conscience is clear, and even if they catch me, I’ll go having made sure I’ve
lived my life to the fullest. I learned all I could and tried to do something
useful.”
Etiquetas:
Antonio Salas,
Diary of a skin,
Operation Princess,
The machines whisperers,
The Palestinian,
The year that traffics in women,
video
Journalist Antonio Salas on “How is a Terrorist Made?”
Antonio Salas has immersed
himself as an under-cover investigative reporter many times. For six
years, he trained to adopt the identity of “Muhammad Abdallah,” a
Venezuelan man of Palestinian origin. During this time, Salas learned
written and spoken Arabic. He studied the Quran, and memorized fragments
of it which he wrote out in traditional calligraphy. He also underwent a
circumcision and skin-darkening treatments, and grew a long beard. He
gave up pork, smoking, and drinking. He took classes alongside
anti-terrorist specialists and policemen.
To test his new identity as “Muhammad Abdallah,” he traveled to
Morocco, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. In Ramallah, he learned the
psychology of terrorists: the trauma and frustration many face, which
is, in turn, harnessed by extremists.
Then, in 2006, he set off for Venezuela because, as he says in the
video, “the place in the world where a terrorist can be born was
Venezuela.”
His intention was to find out — how is a terrorist made? (My question
to Salas is — what is his motivation as an investigative reporter?)
In Venezuela, he found the presence
of ETA, FARC, Colombian paramilitary groups, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and
clumps of Venezuela’s Bolivarian groups whose members converted to
Islam.
The result is a book and the video, embedded below, which was filmed while under-cover using a tiny hidden camera.
sábado, 19 de diciembre de 2015
Antonio Salas in new book "The machines whisperers": “Hackers laundered EI`s money trough social networks”
Antonio Salas, pseudonym of spanish journalist researcher, has
published his new book “Los hombres que susurraban a las Máquinas”. Due
to threats received from terrorist groups and Neo-nazis he keeps his
identity secret and his voice distorted in the following interview of
the program “Las Mañanas de RNE.”
Interview with Antonio Salas:
Interviewer: They can break any code and enter any system. In the
most impenetrable and secure places in the world. They are the hackers,
spies and intruders of any computer, protagonist of many great films.
They had very bad press. They are present to us like evil, dark and
unbalance beings. An image that Antonio Salas tries to dismantle in his
last book.
Antonio Salas: Good morning.
Interview: Antonio Salas is already well-known becauses he is an
expert jornalist on false indentities who lives death threats from
terrorist, Neo-nacis groups and organized crime. Antonio, How are the
hackers? Why there are son much misinformation about them?
Antonio Salas: In a big part the fault belongs to us, the media,
cinema literatura which has created such a bad press. The RAE ,the
dictionary of the Spanish lengage, makes a mistake of including several
voices of technology as Twitter, blog or Hacker, the last one making
synonymous of “computer expert pirated” and this is the opposite, hacker
is a scientis, a scholar a passionate for technoogy who decicates his
life to analyze the performance of electronic devices and to look for
their vulnerabilities to warn providers. When hackers discover a
vulnerability or a failure in the communication system, or program
Facebook product, Apple… warn the manufatures to protect, while the
cybercriminal attemps to exploit this vulnerability on their profit.
Interviewer: To write this book you have been infiltrated in the
world of cybercrime for two years. You have meet online activists, many
of the best hackersand, cyber-police and even victims. How did ou
prepare your role?
Antonio Salas: I would not say infiltration because the object of the
research was everyone of our digital life. Initiating the investigation
with all prejudice I realized who the hakers are. They speak of white
hat hackers (security consultants, computer secrity company) black hat
(cybercriminals) and the intermediate figure grey hat (hacktivist) but
they are persons who believes in technology for social change.
Interviewer: After this investigation, are you quieter or more
restless than before starting it? After meeting everyone in this world,
are you calmer or worried about your own safety?
Antonio Salas: You’re deeply sorry, because ahead about 10 or 15 very
dark years, and our whole life is online. Not only in terms of
relationships, friendships, but we shop online, we delegate security
companies, booked our trips … Internet is very vulnerable, what makes us
so we are. We are now living in a digital migration phenomenon, called
digital natives, a generation that has grown up living with technology
in their daily lives. We, the digital immigrants, who only know how to
do a search and little else, are terribly vulnerable. With only unburden
an application, nobody reads the contract and we do not realize that
the provider of that application is asking us access to our contacts,
social networks … Until we get to understand this world, we remain
extremely vulnerable.
Interviewer: You talk of the Islamic state, what moves the Daesh Internet?
Antonio Salas: We’ve never seen anything like it. In other research I
was infiltrated international terrorism. He controlled by Carlos “The
Jackal” on the Internet, so any terrorist who contact him, contacted me.
Accessed much information, and we find episodes of ETA in Internet
management. Even Spanich hackers created anti virus ETA. The
relationship of journalism and the web is very old. Even Al Qaeda
created their web pages or forums. But what is making Daesh not we have
never seen as many hackers who are in the Daesh they are graduates of
the best IT powers of England, France or Germany, and when they came to
Syria put its expertise at the service of ISIS. Hidden messages, create
their own social networks, a move that had never seen. He even allowed
them to cyber attacks against Western intelligence objectives of the
Central Bank of Defense, accessing multitude of names, phone numbers,
identities …
Interviewer: Finally, is there a solution? How do you fight?
Antonio Salas: Learning to know is fighting to control our security
information. We have some of the best experts on Internet security. The
problem is that Google, Apple, Facebook … it’s being carried. It is
they, the large providers, which should give us the tools to protect our
browsers. Use common sense: your best antivirus is you, but also your
greatest vulnerability. You must navigate carefully with what appears in
your URL and in the direction of your browser, so you can avoid errors
in your bank account or social networks.
Article: Pablo Martínez.
Translate: Celia Calderón.
Etiquetas:
Antonio Salas,
The machines whisperers,
video
lunes, 18 de mayo de 2015
Journalist Antonio Salas on “How is a Terrorist Made?”
Antonio Salas has immersed himself as an under-cover investigative reporter many times. For six years, he trained to adopt the identity of “Muhammad Abdallah,” a Venezuelan man of Palestinian origin. During this time, Salas learned written and spoken Arabic. He studied the Quran, and memorized fragments of it which he wrote out in traditional calligraphy. He also underwent a circumcision and skin-darkening treatments, and grew a long beard. He gave up pork, smoking, and drinking. He took classes alongside anti-terrorist specialists and policemen.
To
test his new identity as “Muhammad Abdallah,” he traveled to Morocco, Jordan,
Israel, and Palestine. In Ramallah, he learned the psychology of terrorists:
the trauma and frustration many face, which is, in turn, harnessed by
extremists.
Then,
in 2006, he set off for Venezuela because, as he says in the video, “the place
in the world where a terrorist can be born was Venezuela.”
His
intention was to find out — how is a terrorist made? (My question to Salas is —
what is his motivation as an investigative reporter?)
In
Venezuela, he found the
presence of ETA,
FARC, Colombian paramilitary groups, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and clumps of Venezuela’s
Bolivarian groups whose members converted to Islam.
The
result is a book and the video, embedded below, which was filmed while
under-cover using a tiny hidden camera.
** WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES **
Etiquetas:
Antonio Salas,
The Palestinian,
video
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