From November 2010 we have been working on a daily basis in different fields of Internet activism and journalism anonymously. We have decided, however, to become public. The reasons are many, our personal security being the main one.
We are Pedro Noel and Santiago Carrion Arcos, two Philosophy graduates from different origins, who met while studying in Spain. We were always concerned with politics and human rights, so when Wikileaks broke into the scene we decided to contribute by writing cable analysis. We started a short lived blog called Wikileaks World, which soon got us writing for the more established Wikileaks Central project. Since then, we have reported and denounced human-rights violations, abuses and corruption by different governments and corporations in many countries. The social uprisings in the Arab World and Europe were the main aim of our attention and work.
Beside still proudly playing an active role in Wikileaks Central, we also started the project EuropeanRevolution.net, where we hoped to include material that was not suitable for WLC journalistic standards. It was concieved as a informative platform for activists, and our first goal was to translate into English what was happening with the 15 May movement. We hoped to expand its impact in Europe by informing in English as an international language. Beside this, When other uprisings started, we followed the same procedure.
This led us to collaborate with TakeTheSquare.net project, originally formed as an extension of the International Committee of the camp that started in Sol. The idea was to create a task-force seeking structured change of the worldwide political reality- designed to bring the May 15th ideals to a global context. The broader context - relevant after movements started in the U.S. or Israel, for example - and the better infrastructure led us to participate full time with the project.
.We then contacted Jerome Roos, founder of the excellent on-line magazine RoarMag.org, and decided to establish FuturePress, which we describe as a “collective of writers, artists and activists” fighting for the people’s right “to know what their leaders are doing, for their right to communicate freely on the Internet, and for their right to participate democratically in our global community”. In a way, we believe that the aphorism that states that journalism should be absolutely impartial cannot be absolutely followed. In a world so full of intentionally hidden corruption and decadence, the press should be biased towards moral values such as equality, truth and justice. To tip the very unbalanced scale in favour of these virtues, the press has to adopt an active role in denouncing and prosecuting. An impersonal stance is simply not acceptable anymore.
Recently, we have also collaborated in running the @wlfind Twitter account, hoping to provide a complete record for findings in the latest crowd-source initiative #wlfind, started by Wikileaks.
After all this, we have reasons to believe that our personal integrity might be at risk. For example, in May, our web www.europeanrevolution.net was blocked via DNS in France, Belgium and Germany. Afterwards, our server in Iceland was penetrated and all our content deleted. At the same time, Pedro Noel, who was in Belgium, was personally interrogated by two anonymous sub-contractors in Brussels. Both of them boarded him knowingly on the street, showing that they knew exactly who he was. One of them claimed to be part of the local police department and the other an international sub-contractor agent.They suggested to be there in the name of IMF interests. During the ‘conversation’, one of them assured that our projects “would not move forward”. Thus we have reasons to believe that they were in charge of the cyber attacks on our web. We can assure that we have been - at lest for a number of times - followed and monitored while performing daily and quotidian actions in Europe.
We have never taken part in any illegal behavior and all our work is destined to provide a free flow of information for all fields of society through the Internet. All our activities are protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the Spanish Constitution, which grants us the right to express ourselves freely, as well as practicing independent journalism. With our work, we hope to our best in contributing to the social forces of change that are awakening worldwide.
If you would like to give us your opinion, support or just talk to us, use futurepress@hush.ai .
Pedro Noel: @infosquatter
Santiago Carrion: @perricida
Jerome Roos: @jeromeroos
Note
And don't forget to take a look at Alexa's T-shirts! They are great!
Websites: http://www.takethesquare.net http://roarmag.org
Twitter: @PressFuture @TakeTheSquare
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