Marketing Safari

The 2083 manifesto: Is the media completing the Utøya killer's mission?

I want to start by expressing my condolenses to those who lost a friend or a loved one in Oslo or Utøya, and to the whole Norwegian nation.

 

An hour before the killing started ABB (the gunman) sent out a 1500 page manifesto on the internet. Some media outlets have been linking to the document or offering it for download. I have very mixed feelings about that.

On the one hand, we want to stand and fight for the freedom of speech. Like Norway's PM Jens Stoltenberg said: "We will retaliate with more democracy, transparency & openness" Considering that, we absolutely should publish the manifesto, encourage the discussion and dialogue. But should we really?

If we look at the content of the manifesto we see that it is full of hate. It's a manuscript for terrorism. It is designed to be a guide for other extremists on how to blow up nuclear power plants, how to kill women in the field, how to run a single man sleeper cell, descriptions of how he trained and brain washed him self. He says he went to Liberia in 2002 and told his friend that he was finding ways to smuggle blood diamonds, to cover his real intentions. Which were what? Training himself to become comfortable with killing people? At one place he says: "You must therefore embrace and familiarise yourself with the concept of killing women, even very attractive women."

 

Though all normal people see this as plain madness, there are people out there who can take this as an inspiration. Just like his inspiration comes from the Unabombers manifesto which he actually copies word for word as part of his own.

In the manifesto he has a marketing plan which the media unfortunately is carrying out. He describes how to create images for the press that can be used after your "mission" is completed.  On July 17th he created a Facebook page to profile himself, with images for the media to use, he created a twitter account with only one quote and he posted his propaganda videos on YouTube. And the media has been using these exact photos to portrait him in the news, showing him in the best possible light.

The gunman was wearing a bullet proof west and made no resistance to the arrest. That was part of his plan all along as he wanted to get caught so he could better get his message across: "Alternatively they will use censorship to silence the story to death as is the common weapon of choice in France. A countermeasure would be for the resistance fighter to actually survive the operation and attest to his political agenda. That his objective was in fact part of a larger, long term strategy to cause ideological damage to the EUSSR/USASSR multiculturalist regime as part of a 100 year plan to completely seize power through military means and replace the system." That is why many Norwegians are asking for a closed trial, so that he does not get the chance to use the trial as a tool to spread his ideology.

So what do you think? Should we stick to our princips with freedom of speech with out limitations? Or should we draw the line somewhere? What do you think? Publish or not?

Hjörtur
@hjortur 

The Democratic Power of Facebook - The case of Iceland

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago about the role of social media in the revolution in Egypt, a topic that I find very interesting as a social media explorer and political scientist. After my talk we had a Q&A session where one of the questions was whether I thought we would see this development spread to Western Europe.

It has already. In 2008 the Icelandic economy collapsed with dire consequences for the people. No one took responsibility, neither the financial system nor the government. It took the people of Iceland some time to just grasp what had happened, but when they did, the anger built up and demonstrations were organized, demanding the resignation of the government.

These demonstrations were mainly organized through Facebook. With up to 112% in certain age groups being on Facebook, according to their statistics, Facebook has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool to gather people around a cause they find just.

This doesn't just go for organizing demonstrations and regime revolts, but also other political matters. A 23 year old Nepalese girl came to Iceland as an au-pair and has been studying at a college here for a year, being top of her class and aiming for a PhD. This month her VISA expired and she was denied a prolonged VISA. In Nepal she has been given away to marry a 40 year old man who she has never met to provide for her family. Her future is bleak in Nepal.

Her story was covered in one of the major newspapers in Iceland and the people objected to her treatment immediately. A Facebook page was created in her support and in just a few days she has gotten over 13.000 supporters and a petition to the immigration authorities to review their verdict. Her story moved Icelanders, like this comment on her support page on Facebook shows:

I just saw your interview on visir.is and I must say you are an inspiration. I realize now the opportunities I have taken for granted by being born into a welfare country....I think I will have a hard time being irritated about things now because these problems are so tiny compared to what you have to face. It's just hard to be pissed about the computer being slow, not being able to afford a new TV and the car being broken after watching your interview since those things are such luxury problems. Hope you'll reach your goals and if your family desperately needs support I think Icelanders would gladly support them with donations even though we need our share of financial support ;).

All the best. Tomas Palsson

This has turned out to be fruitful as the immigration authorities agreed this week to take her application up for a review:

I want to you all for the support and the help. I have found new hope in my heart and a reaseon to smile ♥ I hereby send you 13.706 hugs :) With love Priyanka Thapa

Today we are having a referendum in Iceland, again something we can in a way thank Facebook. We are voting about the ICESAVE law - a law stating whether Icelandic tax payers should repay the Dutch and British governments for what they guaranteed depositors in their country when Icesave fell, a banking scheme run by a privately owned bank registered in Iceland.

After long negotiations the parliament accepted the law to the people's dislike. A new petition was started challenging the president to veto the law and send to the nation for a final say. In just a few days 20% of all voters signed the petition and the President vetoed the law. Since then, the battle between NO-sayers and YES-sayers is primarily fought on Facebook. 

Now I'm going to close the computer and use my democratic right to vote in this referendum, which I can probably thank Facebook for :)

Hjörtur Smárason

 

How to Respond When Crisis Scare Tourists Away

 
A positive response to the situation in Egypt. Source unknown.

Egypt is in all the news these days because of protests that started in Cairo and have been spreading out the country. We see pictures of riot police, fires and hear that over 90 people have been killed. Yesterday the Internet and the mobile networks were shut down and this morning the government resigned. The protests are still going on and people are not satisfied, they want president Mubarak to step down as well. 

A friend of mine, Jane Akshar, runs holiday apartments in Luxor in Egypt and wrote on her blog Luxor News on Thursday about the average man in Luxor:

"His priority is earning a living and the only living in Luxor is servicing tourists and he knows if they are scared, they will stay away and he and his family will suffer." 

They have been there before and know how important it is not to scare away the tourists, specially where a big part of the economy is based on tourism. 

Here in Iceland we were facing crisis in the travel industry last year as Eyjafjallajokull started spewing ash all over Europe closing down airports. People got scared and travel companies started getting cancellations. We also saw the news on channels like FOX news where they warned people about going to Iceland because of violent riots following the economic crash in 2008 which I thought was absurd as the protest was limited to one square in down town Reykjavik and was non-violent with one exception, and none lethal. 

The protests in Iceland didn't cause any cancellations as far as I know but the eruption in Eyjafjallajokull did. People saw pictures in the news from farmers below the mountain where the ash was so thick you could barely see your own hands. At the same time I was living only 100 km away and had seen no signs of the eruption, air quality was just as good as normal, the international airport was open and the eruption wasn't affecting us in any way. Still, many tourists were scared away from visiting Iceland.

 Scary thing, that volcano in Iceland. Image from the Icelandic Coast Guard.

 

Information is the antidote to fear.

It was interesting to hear tour operators talk about the effect the eruption had on bookings. Those who reacted immediately by sending out updates to all their clients telling them how the situation was in reality got in general no cancellations at all. Preventing decline in new bookings was harder as the direct relationship had not been establish but the same medicine is used there - enlightment - the distribution of correct information about the situation.

Social media is crucial for this kind of reaction. I started by writing a blog post on my travel blog called "Is it safe to travel to Iceland?" which immediately became one of the top results on Google for that question. There I provided realistic information about the danger of traveling to Iceland (or the lack of thereof) and what was in fact dangerous and what not. The Icelandic tourist board also started a new online campaign called Inspired by Iceland which was quite a big success in certain circles.

The most important reaction is for ALL tour operators to inform about the situation via their blogs, email lists, travel agencies, airlines, twitter accounts, facebook, youtube, search engines and other communication channels. The search engines are a vital factor making sure that the correct information floats to the top when people search for information about the situation. In the case of Egypt it would be what pops up when people search for phrases and questions like:

security in Egypt
is it safe to travel to Egypt
tourist safety in Egypt
am I safe in Egypt
how are the protests affecting tourism in Egypt 
where are the riots in Egypt
what places to avoid in Egypt
etc.  

Monitor questions about travel in your area on LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, Quora, thorntree, tripadvisor and other chat boards and forums and provide good and accurate information in the answers and keep in mind that being unrealistically optimistic is not credible. For credibility you have to admit where there is a real problem or danger and rather provide information on how to avoid them.

A situation like we had in Iceland, and like Tunisia, Egypt and more countries are facing at the moment, needs a fast and well syndicated reaction to minimize the damage to the travel industry. Remember that some say "bad publicity is better than no publicity". This is also an opportunity to increase interest in the country or the destination. Look for those opportunities and make the most of them. I admit that it's much easier to do with a raging volcano than a raging population and not really comparable, but how to react is pretty much the same. This year, Iceland is on the top destination lists of many of the biggest publications. Hopefully the turmoil in Egypt and North Africa now will bring reform, prosperity and security in near future that can boost the travel industry, as well as other aspects of society.

Good luck!

Hjörtur

ps. if you want to know more about how Jane Akshar is dealing with it from Luxor in Egypt I recommend following her blog. Even though she still has no access to the Internet her friends in the UK are talking to her regularly via telephone and updating her social profiles.

- Here's information on how to bypass the internet blockage in Egypt

US Government Requests Twitter for Information about Icelandic MP Because of Wikileaks

Do you have any information on twitter? Or Gmail? Or Google docs maybe? You might want to consider what information you put onto these services.

Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir tweeted earlier tonight about a message she got from twitter. The US department of justice has sent twitter a legal request for information about Birgitta's twitter account, @birgittaj. The reason is most likely her relations to Wikileaks and the IMMI law reform in Iceland. 

Twitter says Birgitta has 10 days to stop this via legal process or they will hand over the information. Birgitta Jonsdottir says she does not want to tell what information exactly the Justice Department is requesting until she has consulted a lawyer. 

"I consider this very serious. They might have gone through my stuff on Facebook. I don't know. Not that I have anything to hide. On the contrary. But I am a member of the foreign affairs committee and the NATO committee and it is unacceptable if I'm not able to travel to the United States for conferences without risking being interrogated. I want to be certain that I can travel there and if they want to discuss this they can do that via Icelandic processes." says Birgitta to a local newspaper in Iceland tonight. 

One of the things worth considering here is why the Department of Justice chooses to go this way when they can obtain the information by other means. Her twitter stream is open to the public and all personal information twitter might have are accessible elsewhere. Except for her DMs. So are they what the DoF wants to get their hands on? Or is this just a message to Birgitta Jonsdottir and any other person, public or not, that they should be careful about any relations with Wikileaks or other organizations that might be considered "anti-American" in some way. Should we need to think twice about the security of our information shared via US based online services?

It will be very interesting to see how this case develops, as this has a potential of becoming a foreign affair.

Hjörtur Smárason

You can follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Why Michael Moore posted bail for Julian Assange

Here's a letter from Michael Moore I want to share with you where he explains why he put $20.000 of his own money as bail for Julian Assange, Wikileak's founder.

 

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 

Friends, 

Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail. 

Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars. 

We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again. 

So why is WikiLeaks, after performing such an important public service, under such vicious attack? Because they have outed and embarrassed those who have covered up the truth. The assault on them has been over the top: 

**Sen. Joe Lieberman says WikiLeaks "has violated the Espionage Act." 
**The New Yorker's George Packer calls Assange "super-secretive, thin-skinned, [and] megalomaniacal." 
**Sarah Palin claims he's "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" whom we should pursue "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders." 
**Democrat Bob Beckel (Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign manager) said about Assange on Fox: "A dead man can't leak stuff ... there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch." 
**Republican Mary Matalin says "he's a psychopath, a sociopath ... He's a terrorist." 
**Rep. Peter A. King calls WikiLeaks a "terrorist organization." 

And indeed they are! They exist to terrorize the liars and warmongers who have brought ruin to our nation and to others. Perhaps the next war won't be so easy because the tables have been turned -- and now it's Big Brother who's being watched ... by us! 

WikiLeaks deserves our thanks for shining a huge spotlight on all this. But some in the corporate-owned press have dismissed the importance of WikiLeaks ("they've released little that's new!") or have painted them as simple anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without any editorial control!"). WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to do their job. There's no time or money anymore for investigative journalism. Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed. They like their secrets kept ... as secrets. 

I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks. 

But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes? 

But back then only a few people had access to that document. Because the secret was kept, a flight school instructor in San Diego who noticed that two Saudi students took no interest in takeoffs or landings, did nothing. Had he read about the bin Laden threat in the paper, might he have called the FBI? (Please read this essay by former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, Time's 2002 co-Person of the Year, about her belief that had WikiLeaks been around in 2001, 9/11 might have been prevented.) 

Or what if the public in 2003 had been able to read "secret" memos from Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him the "facts" he wanted in order to build his false case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do you think that the war would have been launched -- or rather, wouldn't there have been calls for Cheney's arrest? 

Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today. 

Instead, secrets killed them. 

For those of you who think it's wrong to support Julian Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he's being held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please -- never, ever believe the "official story." And regardless of Assange's guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of the allegations here), this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself. I have joined with filmmakers Ken Loach and John Pilger and writer Jemima Khan in putting up the bail money -- and we hope the judge will accept this and grant his release today. 

Might WikiLeaks cause some unintended harm to diplomatic negotiations and U.S. interests around the world? Perhaps. But that's the price you pay when you and your government take us into a war based on a lie. Your punishment for misbehaving is that someone has to turn on all the lights in the room so that we can see what you're up to. You simply can't be trusted. So every cable, every email you write is now fair game. Sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. No one can hide from the truth now. No one can plot the next Big Lie if they know that they might be exposed. 

And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks, God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions. And any of you who join me in supporting them are committing a true act of patriotism. Period. 

I stand today in absentia with Julian Assange in London and I ask the judge to grant him his release. I am willing to guarantee his return to court with the bail money I have wired to said court. I will not allow this injustice to continue unchallenged. 

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com 

 

Hjörtur Smárason

(via loup.dargent)

You can follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

The World Voting if Julian Assange Should be Charged

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is in custody in the UK. He might be extradited to Sweden where his lawyer believes he might be extradited to the US if he'll be charged under the 1917 espionage act for publishing the US embassy cables.

So we have decided to ask the world if they think Julian Assange should be charged in the US under the 1917 espionage act for publishing the document. We've relaunched the "If The World Could Vote" website where we gave the world an opportunity to vote for the next president of the United States in 2008.

You can vote and view the results here. All help in spreading the word by blogging, tweeting or sharing elsewhere is appreciated.

Thanks
Hjörtur Smárason

Let's connect on Twitter or Facebook.  

Wikileaks Documentary from SVT, Swedish Television

 
Julian Assange, Wikileak's founder 

SVT, the Swedish Television channel has just released an interesting documentary about Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange. In this one hour documentary you'll see interviews with Julian Assange and many of the team members that have helped working on Wikileaks, the story of how it came to existence, the philosophy behind it and some of the shocking footage from Iraq that Wikileaks made public.  

 

Feel free to share this while it is available. 

Hjörtur Smárason

Thanks to Lars Hilse for sharing this program with me. 

 

Let's connect on Twitter or Facebook. 

Wikileaks: Icelandic MPs Want VISA and MasterCard's Operating Permissions Suspended

The Icelandic Parliament called the CEO's of VISA and MasterCard in Iceland to a hearing this morning. Attending were also representatives of Amnesty International, the Consumers Organization and the Icelandic Human Rights Association. Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesperson for Wikileaks attended via telephone.

In the meeting the MP's expressed their concerns saying that barring payments to Wikileaks was a grave attack on freedom of expression and VISA and MasterCard's permissions to operate in Iceland should be reviewed. 

Amnesty International's representative expressed deep concerns over the matter saying that their organization relied in part on online payments like Wikileaks and that barring payments to such organization was a serious thing to do. 

In the meeting Kristinn Hrafnsson, Wikileak's spokesperson, said that in the last 24hrs before payments were barred they received 130.000 Euros in funding and would sue the payment companies to get a compensation for their loss. 

The representatives of VISA and MasterCard could not justify the barring of payments. They said the decisions were made abroad and not under their control, nor could they explain them.

For further information on Amnesty's stand on Wikileaks and the barring of payments you can read their Q&A: Wikileaks and freedom of expression. I also recommend reading  Wikileaks-and-the-us-embassy-cables (pdf) from Article 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression.

Hjörtur Smárason

You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Viva la revealution! - Fear vs. Information in the Wikileaks Cyber War

 

FEAR has been the most powerful weapon of all politicians. Fear of god, fear of prosecution, fear of burning in hell, fear of war, fear of shame, fear of recession, fear of loosing a job, fear of the "other", fear of the unknown. Fear nurtures on one thing. Ignorance. And ignorance is fought with information.

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it."

John F Kennedy, 1961

In the cyber war we are witnessing today we have Wikileaks revealing information and the government spreading fear. But what is there to fear? Are the information leaked a threat to national security? Or are they simply a threat to the reigning power? I haven't read all the documents but so far I have not seen anything that is really threatening to lives of people. It is threatening to policies that are based on misinformation, it is threatening to the continuation of failed projects, and most of all, it is embarrasing for the US foreign policy and diplomatic force. To fight it, they try to shut it down by closing down it's sources of money though it means pressuring international payment companies like VISA, MasterCard and PayPal to start censoring peoples payments, censoring hosting at Amazon, censoring domains at EveryDNS. It's all to protect the power of the government at the cost of your freedom and your constitutional rights and is justified by spreading fear.

"If this Nation is to remain true to the ideals symobolized by its flag it must not wield the tools of tyrants."

Justice John Paul Stevens, 2004

History has proven again and again that information always wins fear! That is why secrecy is so important to governments. They need it to keep control. The thing is, times have changed. This is what I have been telling companies for the last four years. Companies have lost control over the information that is out there. Now governments have to wake up to the same reality. They do not control the information out there. We do. I do. YOU DO!

Since 9/11 fear has worked incredibly well in the US to limit the people in "the land of the free and the brave". Dear Americans, you used to be a role model to the world. Don't make a mockery of yourselves. Stand up for what you used stand for: Freedom, democracy, bravery.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Benjamin Franklin, 1755

 

Viva la revealution!

Hjörtur Smárason

You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

DataCell Threatens to Sue Visa for Stopping Wikileaks Payments

 

DataCell, the Icelandic online payment company that has kept the channels open to Wikileaks, threatened earlier today to sue VISA for stopping payments via DataCell to Wikileaks. According to Ólafur Sigurvinsson, the founder of DataCell, VISA contacted them today and is sending a team of negotiators to Iceland tomorrow to try to settle the case. VISA is stopping all payments via DataCell for 7 days while they are investigating if DataCell's operation is against the law.

According to Sigurvinsson, VISA is willing to pay DataCell high compensation rather than irritate the US government. "They are fully aware that they are violating our rights" says Sigurvinsson to the Icelandic news channel mbl.is. "I've got confirmed today that I am capable of supporting Al-Qaeda, Ku Klux Klan, buy weapons, drugs and all sorts of pornopraphy with a VISA card. But that's not being investigated. Instead I can not support a humanitarian organisation fighting for the freedom of speech."

On the DataCell website Andreas Fink, CEO of DataCell issued a statement yesterday saying:

"Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship and/or limitation. The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law. Furthermore freedom of speech is recognized in European, inter-American and African regional human rights law.

It is simply ridiculous to even think Wikileaks has done anything criminal. If Wikileaks is criminal, then CNN, and BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jaseira and many others would have to be considered criminals too as they publish the same informations. Nobody even tries to touch them though. You can still buy a New York times subscription and pay with your credit card I guess.

We have not even heard of the Wikileaks organisation being accused anywhere in the world for any crime. The conclusion is that it is only honorable to donate to Wikileaks as they fight for our human rights."

 

Following with another statement today

"Since yesterday around 22:30 CET Visa and Mastercard payments are being rejected on our donation system. We have received a suspension notice stating that Visa Europe has ordered our payment processor to suspend payments and undertake due diligence investigation in order to pretect the Visa brand ensure neither the payment processor nor Visa Europe is running legal risks by facilitating payments for the funding of the Wikileaks website. For the same reasons the payment processor has suspended the payments of Mastercard.

The suspension period will be one week with effect from 8 December 2010 Danish local time. The suspension period may be prolonged.

DataCell ehf who facilitates those payments towards Wikileaks has decided to take up immediatelegal actions to make donations possible again. We can not believe Wikileaks would even create scratch at the brand name of Visa. The suspension of payments towards Wikileaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers. Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to Wikileaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much much more to block payments towards Wikileaks than to have them occur. Visa customers are contacting us in masses to confirm that they really donate and they are not happy about Visa rejecting them. It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down. We strongly believe a world class company such as Visa should not get involved by politics and just simply do their business where they are good at. Transferring money. They have no problem transferring money for other businesses such as gambling sites, pornography services and the like so why a donation to a Website which is holding up for human rights should be morally any worse than that is outside of my understanding.

Visa is hurting Wikileaks and DataCell ehf in high figures. Putting all payments on hold for 7 days or more is one thing but rejecting all further attempts to donate is making the donations impossible. This does clearly create massive financial losses to Wikileaks which seems to be the only purpose of this suspension. This is not about the brand of Visa, this is about politics and Visa should not be involved in this.

If you want to donate, use wiretransfers. And make sure your local Visa partner knows that it is your sincere wish to donate to Wikileaks using your Visa card. We will do our best in the meantime to support Wikileaks.

Andreas Fink
CEO
DataCell ehf"

I will keep you updated on the development.

Hjörtur Smárason

You can follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

UPDATE at 19:55 GMT: According to Sigurvinsson, donations are even greater now than before, but DataCell has been helping people to donate via direct wiretransfers.