Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/04-13

Barack Obama, according to Foreign Policy magazine, "has become George W Bush on steroids." Armed with a "kill list," the Nobel peace laureate now hosts "Tuesday terror" meetings at the White House to discuss targets of drone attacks in Pakistan and at least five other countries. The latest of these killed 17 people near the border with Afghanistan today .

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j04.shtml

Friday’s disastrous US jobs report, which showed the worst payrolls growth in a year, capped a week of dismal economic news from every part of the world. These developments reveal that claims of an economic recovery are not only premature but utterly fictitious. Despite all claims to the contrary, the crisis again and again proves to be intractable.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/uren-j04.shtml

A newly published book by journalist David Uren has revealed that the Australian government’s 2009 Defence White Paper contained a “secret chapter” that assessed “Australia’s ability to fight an air-sea battle alongside the United States against China.”

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/navy-j04.shtml

The United States will deploy the majority of its naval forces to the Asia-Pacific region over the next decade, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Saturday in a speech to a security conference in Singapore. The move is part of a major shift in the global strategy of American imperialism that puts China at the top of the US target list.

Link: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/fl-cpcol-obama-marijuana-reform-page-0604-20120604,0,713606.story

I would shrug and say "So what?" to the latest details from President Barack Obama's pot-smoking past, except for one thing: He stirred so much hope as a candidate for sensible marijuana policy reforms but, as president, has delivered so little change.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/04/a-monster-that-will-haunt-them

Students have been on strike for months in the Canadian province of Québec in an attempt to stop the government's proposed increase in the cost of tuition at public universities. With the education system effectively shut down and faced with almost daily demonstrations of students and their supporters, Québec's government, led by Premier Jean Charest of the Liberal Party, has attempted to repress the movement with mass arrests and escalating legal restrictions. Québec's parliament passed Bill 78 to curtail the right to assemble.

Link: http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/TopIsraeliRabbiGentilesMurderersThievesBrainless.html

A spiritual head of the Lithuanian branch of Ultra-Orthodox Jewry in Israel, Rabbi Aharon Shteinman, recently said: There are eight billion people in the world and what are they? Murderers, thieves, brainless people. But who is the essence of the world? Has God created the world for these murderers? For these evil-doers? Non-Jews have no connection to torah. The nations have nothing, no confidence (=faith) and no good principles.