"They came in the morning" was born from some of the footage shot over 5 critical years in the life of Bethlehem during the making of upcoming feature film "Operation Bethlehem".

A military judge has again refused to throw out two of the 22 charges against an Army private charged in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history. - Attorneys for Pfc. Bradley Manning argued earlier this week during a hearing at Maryland’s Fort Meade that two charges should be dropped. The judge overseeing the case, Col. Denise Lind, denied the request Wednesday. She agreed with military prosecutors it would be improper to drop the charges at this point. Prosecutors say the now 24-year-old Manning gave hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and war logs to the secret-sharing website WikiLeaks. Lawyers for Manning and the government on Monday began a five-day hearing to discuss a number of issues in advance of his planned September trial.

After 18 months of having its funding nearly completely cut off by a payment industry blockade, WikiLeaks says it’s finally found a new workaround that allows it to receive credit card donations. And after a legal victory against Visa in Iceland, the group is literally daring the card companies to shut down payments to his site again. In a statement to press Wednesday morning, WikiLeaks writes that the Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality (FDNN) has agreed to accept donations on behalf of WikiLeaks, and that the group can receive payments through the French payment card system Carte Bleue. WikiLeaks claims that Visa and MasterCard are contractually obligated to allow payments through Carte Bleue and thus prevented from blocking the new channel to the site as they’ve done with others in the past.

WikiLeaks: We are forced to put all our efforts into raising funds to ensure our economic survival. For almost a year we have been fighting an unlawful financial blockade. We cannot allow giant US finance companies to decide how the whole world votes with its pocket. Our battles are costly. We need your support to fight back. Please donate now.

WL CEntral: WikiLeaks opens path through banking siege. Donations open

In a statement at 11am BST today, Wednesday 18th July, WikiLeaks announced the opening of a new payment gateway that allows the public to donate to WikiLeaks with their Visa and MasterCards, depsite the banking blockade. The banking blockade by US financial institutions that has been running for almost two years has meant that WikiLeaks has lost 95% of its donations and have been forced to run off reserve funds. These reserve funds will run out in a few months. However, today, WikiLeaks has found a way around this blockade with a new payment system of FDNN using Carte Bleue. The French credit card system, Carte Bleue, is coupled with the VISA/MasterCard system globally. VISA and MasterCard are contractually barred from directly cutting off merchants through the Carte Bleue system. The French non-profit FDNN (Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality- Fonds de Défense de la Net Neutralité) has set up a Carte Bleue fund for WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder said:

them in Iceland and, by God, we’ll beat them in France as well. Let them shut it down. Let them demonstrate to the world once again their corrupt pandering to Washington. We’re waiting. Our lawyers are waiting. The whole world is waiting. Do it."

Three men have been charged with "preparing for acts of terrorism" while a man and a woman have been charged with possessing "terrorist documents" [sic]. - Those charged are Richard Dart, 29, from Ealing; Imran Mahmood, 21, from Northolt; Jahangir Alom, 26, from Stratford; and Ruksana Begum, 22, from Hoxton. Also charged was Khalid Baqa, 47, from Barking. All five will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday. Four of those charged were arrested earlier in the month during a Metropolitan Police operation, while Mr Baqa was detained on Wednesday. Mr Dart, Mr Mahmood and Mr Alom are charged that between 25 July 2010 and 6 July 2012, "with the intention of" committing acts of terrorism or assisting another to commit such acts, engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to his intention. They are alleged to have travelled to Pakistan "and elsewhere" for training in terrorism and to have provided information to others about how to obtain terrorism training in Pakistan and terrorism training.

AWIP: Emmanuel Goldstein ordered attacks on Obama's aircraft - 'resistance' - The resistance was the revolutionary group which was supposedly led by the arch-traitor, Emmanuel Goldstein. There is some question as to whether or not this group actually existed. The novel ["1984"] seems to imply that the resistance was simply fabricated by the government, or at the very least, that the police had agents posing as real resistance members in order to catch possible recruits. - The only thing that is for sure, is that the party blamed every possible woe of society on this group. The resistance was blamed for spreading herpes, contaminating the water supply, forging government documents (which was the reason for so many "misprints" in the papers), abducting party members, helping to aim rocket bombs to targets on Airstrip One, and destroying industrial machinery. Every single thing that ever goes wrong is blamed on this group. For instance: Whenever the trains don't run on time, it is said that the resistance has altered the train schedule ... When a department does meet their production goal, it is said that the resistance has altered the original data, resulting in a over-estimation of production for that year. [From Newspeak Dictionary]

A concise list of recent bank fraud - The executives of the big banks invariably pretend that the hanky-panky was only committed by a couple of low-level rogue employees. But studies show that most of the fraud is committed by management. Indeed, one of the world’s top fraud experts – professor of law and economics, and former senior S&L regulator Bill Black – says that most financial fraud is “control fraud”, where the people who own the banks are the ones who implement systemic fraud.

Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen.

Binney was at HOPE and while his entire keynote is not yet posted, journalist Geoff Shively and Livestreamer Tim Pool had an opportunity to speak with Binney about NSA spying. As you may recall, after covering the NATO protests, Pool and Shively were two of the journalists harassed by Chicago cops. In the short video interview, Binney explained a bit more about the NSA spying on Americans:

“Domestically, they’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you’re doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that one telecom alone was sending the government an “average of 320 million logs every day since 2001.”

Relatives of three US citizens killed in non-UN sanctioned US assassination drone strikes in Yemen have sued senior officials at the US Defense Department and the CIA. - According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the killings of US-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and naturalized US citizen Samir Khan were unconstitutional, Reuters reported. A CIA drone strike killed al-Awlaki and Khan in Yemen in September 2011. In October 2011, another drone attack in Yemen left al-Awlaki's son and six other people dead.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama’s killings challenged again
Wired: Pentagon, CIA Sued for Lethal Drone Attacks on U.S. Citizens

The Israeli Prime Minister claims Iran is behind the Bulgarian airport bus bombing which, according to Haaretz daily, killed at least eight people and injured dozens more. - The newspaper says eight people were killed in the bombing; six of them Israeli tourists, one of them the Bulgarian bus driver. Authorities estimate that the eighth person who died on board may have been the terrorist who perpetrated the attack. An additional 32 Israelis were wounded in the blast. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that "Iran is responsible for the terror attack in Bulgaria, we will have a strong response against Iranian terror." Defense Minister Ehud Barak also said Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas could be behind the attack. Hezbollah, however, has denied any involvement in the deadly blast. A representative of the organization told Lebanese daily An-Nashra that Israeli accusations are "laughable".