US, South Korea fire missiles after North’s ICBM test (Source Aljazeera.com) “http://www.aljazeera.com/topics/country/united- United States have fired a “barrage of missiles” along the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula, a day after North Korea said it  “_self” conducted its first successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test. HYPERLINK  North Korea said it carried out the ICBM tests on Tuesday under the supervision of leader Kim Jong-un, and that it was capable of hitting anywhere in the world. The Hwasong-14 missile reached an altitude of 2,802km and hit its target precisely after flying for 39 minutes, the North’s state television said. In response, “deep strike” precision missiles were fired into the South Korean territorial waters on Wednesday to show North Korea a “firm combined missile response posture”, South Korean President   Moon Jae-in’s office said. US General Vincent Brooks, the Combined Forces commander in South Korea, said: “Self-restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war. “As this alliance missile live fire shows, we are able to change our choice when so ordered by our alliance national leaders.” But the US-South Korean drills will “probably not” have an effect on North Korea, Robert Kelly, a professor of Pusan National University, told Al Jazeera. “The North Koreans have said for a long time that they want to develop a nuclear weapon and missile and marry the two. They’ve said for a long time that they want the ability to strike the continental United States,” said Kelly.

‘I WAS WRONG’: JUDGE ADMITS JAILING PEOPLE FOR POT ‘HAUNTS’ HIM AFTER CANNABIS SAVED HIS LIFE (Source thefreethoughtproject.com)
Prior to this year, the state of Florida was regarded as one of the worst possible states to be caught in possession of cannabis. According to a 2009 analysis by former NORML Director Jon Gettman, no state in this country punished people more severely for minor marijuana offenses than Florida. However, thanks in part to a former Florida judge, all this is gradually changing. By October 3, for the first time in its history, the state will issue IDs to medical marijuana patients. However, according to the former judge, the law doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Throughout the course of his career as a Florida judge, Doug Bench hated marijuana. He admits to locking up hundreds of people for this plant and did so because he thought it was the right thing to do. While it is too late for the now-retired judge to help those whose lives he likely ruined through the persecution of pot, he is taking actions to help countless others now and in the future.
When Bench was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or COPD, which can result in a slow and painful death, his life was saved after realizing the benefits of cannabis in treating his disease. Now, Bench has made it his life’s work to wake people up to the “70 years of lies” the US government has told the citizens about marijuana.
In a public workshop-medical-marijuana-implementation on Florida’s Medical Marijuana Implementation earlier this year, Bench presented a powerful speech to note how the law simply does not go far enough to help those who need access to cannabis.

Trump Plays Nuclear ‘Chicken’ with Putin Over Syria (Source globalresearch.ca) U.S. President Donald Trump is playing a game of nuclear “chicken” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, regarding Putin’s  threat on June 19th to go to war against the United States if the U.S. again shoots down, inside Syria — in the sovereign territory of the internationally-recognized-as-legal sovereign Syrian government — Syrian aircraft, or the aircraft of any of the foreign governments that have allied with Syria: Russia, Iran, and China. After the U.S. had shot down a Syrian government plane on June 19th, which was bombing jihadists whom the U.S. government backs in order to overthrow the Syrian government,russia-announces-no-fly-zone-syria-war-u-s. Russia announced: “In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying objects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River, will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets” — meaning ordered out, or else immediately shot down. That would place the U.S. and Russia in a traditional war against each other, over Syrian territory (Russia to protect Syria’s government, Russia-now-runs-the-peace-process-to-end-Syrias-Warblank” U.S. to replace it by a Saudi-allied jihadist one). The loser in that war, over the battlefields in Syria, would then have only one way to prevent defeat, which is a blitz nuclear attack against the other’s homeland, World War III between Russia and U.S., which would be ‘won’ by whichever of the two sides suffered the less damage (irrespective of whether the entire planet and ultimately all life will then have actually been destroyed by the exchange). The first side to attack would knock out many of the other side’s retaliatory silo-based ICBMs and thus probably be the ‘winner’, though that’s not certain (since most nukes aren’t silo-based). Russia’s announcement is basically saying that direct war between Russia and the U.S. will result if the U.S. persists in its effort to conquer Syria, but the Washington Post has said that it’s really only and CNBC has said that it’s only  ‘bluster’, and Trump is now splitting hairs over whether he goes with that view (the neoconservative view) to getting-busted-bombing-syria-based-lie-trump-doubles-threatens-bomb-syria-reason.continue the war against Assad, or whether Trump instead will abandon the neoconservative effort and  trump-now-committed-reversing-obamas-syria-policy withdraw American forces from Syria once ISIS there is defeated. Whereas trump-now-committed-reversing-obamas-syria-policy. Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has served as Trump’s mouthpiece to allege that the U.S. will not conquer and has no intention to conquer Syria, Trump’s press-spokesman and also his U.N. Ambassador have  getting-busted-bombing-syria-based-lie-trump-doubles-threatens-bomb-syria-reason.threatened that the U.S. will again directly attack Assad’s forces if and when it wants to do so.

The supreme-court-is-restoring-religious-liberty-in-america/” How the Supreme Court is restoring religious liberty in America (Source nypost.com) “God save the United States and this honorable court.” Even with all the cynicism in our politics, that prayer is still the traditional announcement of the opening of a session of the highest court in our land. And it’s starting to look like one good deed begets another. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is well on its way to becoming a historic champion of religious freedom.
That is the outlook after justices on Monday blocked Missouri from denying a grant for safe playgrounds to a church school. The subsidy, for paving playgrounds with recycled tires, had nothing to do with religion.
The case won’t secure the reputation of the Roberts court in a fell swoop. Not the way, say, Brown v. Board of Education secured the reputation of the court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The long legal battle for religious freedom has been taking place in small to medium-size legal skirmishes all over the country. With the Missouri case, the hugeness of the trend is starting to become clear.
The “Show Me” state, the court ruled, can’t discriminate against religious people by denying them the non-religious support everyone else gets. It would violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the court ruled.
It also would have turned Christians — and those who choose to go to other religious schools — into second-class citizens. So more than playground paving was on the line in Missouri.
The court ruled by a solid majority of seven to two. The only dissenters were Justices Sonia Sotomayor, who seems to grow angry at the idea of unfettered religious practice, and the constitutional crab apple Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Only a few months ago, Ginsburg joked that were Donald Trump elected president,  HYPERLINK “http://nypost.com/2016/07/11/even-ruth-bader-ginsburg-weighs-fleeing-us-if-trump-wins/” she’d quit America for New Zealand. She probably didn’t know that the head of state in New Zealand must swear he is a Protestant.)

It Begins: WalMart Warns Truckers It Will No Longer Work With Them If They Move Goods For Amazon (Source Zero Hedge)
Walmart (WMT) is telling trucking companies that it will no longer do business with them if they continue moving goods for Amazon (AMZN). This follows similar reports citing WMT’s “request” for its tech partners to stop using Amazon Web Services.
The news, while suggestive perhaps of Walmart’s growing desperation in its war with the retail juggernaut that is Amazon, has dramatic implications not only for the future of retail (and associated prices) but for one of the most important US industries: trucking, and the number of people it employes. According to Deutsche, these developments, “are likely to have significant implications for U.S. transportation companies, in our view, as Amazon and Walmart remain two of the largest users of truckload capacity. For reference Walmart represents about 14% of SWFT’s operating revenues and traditional retail accounts for about half of WERN’s total sales (WMT around 4%).”
WalMart warned some tech companies that if they want Wal-Mart’s business, they can’t run applications on Amazon’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, some tech companies told The Wall Street Journal. Wal-Mart uses some tech vendors’ cloud apps that run on AWS, Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Toporek told the Journal, though he declined to say which apps or how many. But Toporek did acknowledge instances where Wal-Mart is pushing for AWS alternatives, the Journal reported Wednesday.
Wal-Mart spokesman Toporek told CNBC in an email: “Our vendors have the choice of using any cloud provider that meets their needs and their customers’ needs. It shouldn’t be a big surprise that there are cases in which we’d prefer our most sensitive data isn’t sitting on a competitor’s platform.” Wal-Mart doesn’t appear to be alone in this push to leave AWS, either. Other large retailers are reportedly requesting that service providers move away from AWS, the Journal said, citing technology vendors that work with retailers. Adding to the many growing conflicts of interest, Amazon has confirmed a number of retailers it competes with use AWS, for example GameStop.
The battle between Wal-Mart and Amazon is only heating up, after Amazon announced plans last week to acquire brick-and-mortar grocery retailer Whole Foods. With Amazon stepping into Wal-Mart’s turf in grocery, Wal-Mart has been trying to beef up its e-commerce presence.

Top-ranking Vatican cardinal charged with sex offenses in Australia (Source Washington Post)
A cardinal in charge of the Vatican’s finances has been charged with multiple sexual offenses by Australian police, in one of the most significant indictments against a top-ranking leader of the Catholic Church. Cardinal George Pell faces multiple charges of “historical sexual assault offenses,” the Australian criminal justice system’s term for offenses committed in the past, Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton announced at a news conference on Thursday morning in Australia. That morning, Victoria police notified Pell’s legal representative that he has been charged and must appear in court on July 18, Patton said. Patton said that Pell was treated no differently than any other defendant because of his high rank in the Vatican — notifying a legal representative and summoning the defendant to court at a later date is the recommendation of Australian prosecutors in a case like his. Patton did not discuss the details of the case, so it was not clear whether Pell was charged with participating in abuse or covering it up. In the Vatican, Pell’s job as secretariat of the economy is so crucial that it has been described as the second-most-powerful role in Rome, after only the pope. But for years, he has faced accusations of improper behavior connected with clergy sexual abuse in Australia. In Ballarat, Pell’s hometown, dozens of children were abused by priests. After the abuse came to light, priests testified under oath that Pell knew about the abuse while it was occurring.

Is America Really Coming Apart? (Spoiler Alert, Yes!) (Source Zero Hedge) A new   trump” Rasmussen poll reports that a majority of voters think so, and it certainly feels that way.  Since Donald Trump’s election in November, the pace and intensity of deeply divisive rhetoric has accelerated. Antifa and the Alt-Right are literally fighting in the streets. Combative talking heads on cable news, vicious social media exchanges, riots at universities, a bitter special election in Georgia, and even the shooting of a congressman have both sides rethinking the entire political process and talking about abandoning the “rule of law.” It is an uneasy time, a time for hard questions. Can politics really provide a solution to our problems, or is it the cause? Should we still abide by democratic processes when a significant portion of the country is enraged by the outcome? What if voting and elections simply weren’t anymore? These are the questions we need to ask and answer honestly.Progressives, including Hillary Clinton, now openly label themselves the “resistance” and call for Trump to be removed from office. Anti-Brexit forces in the UK call for Theresa May simply to repudiate the referendum. Democratic elections, a cornerstone of neoliberalism, are not so sacrosanct when the wrong guy wins. Progressives’ sense of inevitability has been deeply shaken by Trump and the rise of nationalist movements in Europe. Has it been shaken enough to consider real alternatives to social democracy?
Conservatives too have radically changed their talking points. Bill Kristol tweets that he prefers a Deep State silent coup to living under the Trump state. David Frum calls Trump a liar and an autocrat. George Will claims the president has a “disability.”

Trump tweeted about the Russia investigation and the travel ban as the White House sent an ominous warning to Syria (Source Business Insider) While the White House  ” issued a surprise warning to Syria on Monday alleging the regime of Bashar Assad was preparing a “potential” chemical-weapons attack, President Donald Trump was tweeting about the Russia investigation and the travel ban. “From @FoxNews “Bombshell: In 2016, Obama dismissed idea that anyone could rig an American election.” Check out his statement – Witch Hunt,” tweeted, shortly after the White House released its statement on Syria. Trump appeared to be referencing a blame game-finds-obama Washington Post report that painted a timeline of Obama’s actions surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election. Minutes after his first tweet, Trump  sent another to tout the US Supreme Court’s decision to  lift several injunctions on his travel ban: “Great day for America’s future Security and Safety, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court. I will keep fighting for the American people, & WIN!” Critics said Trump’s off-topic musings, sent as the White House and defense officials coordinated an ominous public warning to an enemy state, were seen as poorly timed. “He’s very undisciplined,” said Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, in a trump-syria-warning-security-Politico report. “He does this all the time.”