THE RAW STORY– The opposition in Belarus on Monday criticised a parliamentary bill that would give Alexander Lukashenko’s regime the legal right to crack down on protesters engaging publicly in “non-actions”.

The bill — submitted by top ministers to the lower house of parliament last week — proposes a ban on “previously-agreed actions or non-actions.”

This is apparently aimed at the numerous “silent” protests the opposition has held in recent months, where protesters chanted no slogans and merely stood clapping their hands.

Under existing legislation, the regime can act against protesters engaged in “hooliganism”, while the new bill also covers “the mass gathering of people at a previously-agreed location — including in the open air — at an agreed time to conduct previously-agreed actions or non-actions”.

Read more about Belarus Moves To Ban ‘Silent Protests’ 

© 2011 The Raw Story

Photo by flickr user varjagg

COMMON DREAMS– As same-sex couples in New York prepare this weekend to tie the knot, their brethren in Massachusetts — the first state to legalize gay marriage — have some advice.

Enjoy the wedding because afterward, they will realize that there are 1,000 or so benefits gay couples can’t get because of the federal defense of Marriage Act: Joint federal tax returns, federal health plans for spouses, and access to spouses’ federal pensions.

“Let them enjoy their joy, but they will soon realize that their marriage is not being seen equally at the federal level,” said Dorene Bowe-Shulman, who married her longtime partner, Mary, in 2004 in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage.

New York’s law takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, with the state where the gay rights movement began more than 40 years ago joining five other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing same-sex marriage.

While many married gay couples are hoping for the repeal of the 1996 law, known as DOMA, the measure’s supporters are pushing back, arguing that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and that repeal would violate the views of most Americans.

“That definition of marriage has been the position of the nation for many, many years, with the raising of children and the benefit to those children from a male-female household,” said Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman at the advocacy group Focus on the Family.

DOMA says that traditional marriage “is something we value as a nation,” she said.

As gay couples prepare for their weddings in New York, the largest state yet to legalize same-sex marriage, their counterparts in Massachusetts are telling them that their push for equal rights doesn’t end with the ability to get married.

Dorene Bowe-Shulman and her partner were among a group of gay couples and widowers who filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of DOMA, which prevents the federal government from recognizing gay marriages.

Read more about Mass. Gay Couples to N.Y.: DOMA Still Denies You Benefits

© 2011 Associated Press

Join Al Franken to repeal DOMA! Sign your name to the petition: http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/doma_0711

Photo by Flickr user Mad Hausfrau

GLOBAL RESEARCH– British Prime Minister David Cameron may well deny he knew TNTW was tapping the phones of members of UK’s Royal household or those of American 9/11 victims. But he can’t claim he doesn’t know his country is a partner in ECHELON, which, according to Washington journalist Bill Blum, is a “network of massive, highly automated interception stations” that is eavesdropping on the entire world.

“Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky, the National Security Agency (NSA) sucks it all up: home phone, office phone, cellular phone, email, fax, telex…satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communications traffic, microwave links, voice, text images (that are) captured by satellites continuously orbiting the earth and then processed by high-powered computers,” Blum writes in his book “Rogue State” (Common Courage Press).

Calling it the greatest invasion of privacy ever, Blum says the ceaseless, illegal spy system sucks up perhaps billions of messages daily, including those of prime ministers, the Secretary-General of the UN, the pope, embassies, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, and transnational corporations and that “if God has a phone, it’s being monitored.”

Blum also said that during the countdown to its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. listened in on the conversations of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, “and all the members of the UN Security Council…when they were deliberating about what action to take in Iraq.”

Launched in the 1970s to spy on Soviet satellite communications, the NSA and its junior partners in Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand operate ECHELON, which is a network of massive, highly automated interception stations covering the globe at the expense of American taxpayers.

Today, Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour opposition, is blasting PM Cameron on grounds that, according to The New York Times of July 19, “the recent scandals in British life were caused by a lack of accountability among those in high places.” Across Britain, Miliband said, “there is a yearning for a more decent, responsible, principled country.”

What makes the British public recoil is the sort of conduct by former TNTW reporter Clive Goodman, who pleaded guilty in Jan., 2007, to hacking the voice mails of aides to the royal family.

Pardon me, but how does that crime begin to compare with ECHELON, an organ of the U.S. Government, spying on the Secretary-General of the United Nations or the Pope? Or stealing, as it has, confidential business information and passing it along to favored firms?

I’ll say this for Mr. Murdoch: he’s closed down his biggest newspaper; he’s fired top editors and reporters for their part in the scandals. He’s gone before the public and begged forgiveness. By contrast, what have high U.S. officials done about the crimes committed via ECHELON? Zip, and they have no announced plans to do so. They continue to operate ECHELON unashamedly.

Rupert Murdoch’s TNTW was only attempting to do in a small way what the governments of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are doing big time every day. ECHELON is a criminal operation in violation of international law and terminating it might make America, too, “a more decent, responsible, principled country.”

Read more about ECHELON: The Global Eavesdropping Scheme Dwarfs Murdoch’s “News of the World”

© 2011 Global Research

RELATED: Excellent in depth report about ECHELON released by The Telegraph in 1997.

History Undercover’s Documentary on ECHELON Spy Satellites Part 1/2

History Undercover’s Documentary on ECHELON Spy Satellites Part 2/2

Photo by Flickr user zackaholic