$21,714 For Every Man, Woman And Child In The World – This Global Debt Bomb Is Ready To Explode (Source investmentwatchdog.com)
According to the International Monetary Fund, global debt has grown to a staggering grand total of”http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/06/global-debt-balloons-to-all-time-high-of-152-trillion-imf-warns.html” \o “152 trillion dollars” \t “_blank” 152 trillion dollars.  Other estimates put that figure closer to   “https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-22/the-world-s-debt-is-alarmingly-high-but-is-it-contagious” \o “200 trillion dollars” \t “_blank” 200 trillion dollars, but for the purposes of this article let’s use the more conservative number.  If you take 152 trillion dollars and divide it by the seven billion people living on the planet, you get $21,714, which would be the share of that debt for every man, woman and child in the world if it was divided up equally.
So if you have a family of four, your family’s share of the global debt load would be $86,856. Very few families could write a check for that amount today, and we also must remember that we live in some of the wealthiest areas on the globe.  Considering the fact that  HYPERLINK “https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl” \l “q=how+much+of+the+world+lives+on+two+dollars+a+day&*” \o “more than 3 billion people” \t “_blank” more than 3 billion people around the world live on two dollars a day or less, the truth is that about half the planet would not be capable of contributing toward the repayment of our 152 trillion dollar debt at all.  So they should probably be excluded from these calculations entirely, and that would mean that your family’s share of the debt would ultimately be far, far higher. Of course global debt repayment will never actually be apportioned by family.  The reason why I am sharing this example is to show you that it is literally impossible for all of this debt to ever be repaid. We are living during the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and our financial engineers have got to keep figuring out ways to keep it growing much faster than global GDP because if it ever stops growing it will burst and destroy the entire global financial system. Bill Gross, one of the most highly respected financial minds on the entire planet,  HYPERLINK “https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook/” \o “recently observed” \t “_blank” recently observed that “our highly levered financial system is like a truckload of nitro glycerin on a bumpy road”.
And he is precisely correct.  Everything might seem fine for a while, but one day we are going to hit the wrong bump at the wrong time and the whole thing is going to go KA-BOOM.

US intervention in Syria is ‘violation of international law, act of war (Source RT) Damascus has not given the US troops permission to be in Syria, President Bashar Assad said. “Any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish, or any other one,” he said in an interview with Chinese PHOENIX TV, as cited by the Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA. The Pentagon confirmed earlier that it has sent a small number of US troops to the Aleppo governorate’s city of Manbij, saying they are there to deter conflict between US-backed Kurdish forces and rebels backed by Turkey. According to Middle-East expert Catherine Shakdam, the deployment is “a violation of international law.” “Whenever a country infringes on another’s national and territorial sovereignty, then you have a problem. I would argue that having foreign military presence in Syria without consultation with Damascus and an expressed approval of President Bashar Assad, who remains the legitimate source of power in Syria, [is] an act of war,” she told RT. “You can’t have those situations where the likes of Washington continue to intervene against the wishes of nations just because they feel that they can,” she added. The US had repeatedly insisted it would put no boots on the ground in Syria, but has now reneged on that promise, Shakdam said, noting that “this is what they do.”

‘Caste legal system: In US you only get as much justice as you can afford’ (Source rt.com) Racism and class prejudice permeate every step of the US criminal justice system, says Paul Wright, executive director of Human Rights Defense Center, adding that there’s no real intention among the ruling power to overcome the disparity. African Americans are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn’t commit than their white counterparts, according to a “Race and Wrongful Convictions” study that was released earlier this week. “African Americans are only 13 percent of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated. They constitute 47 percent of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in ‘group exonerations,’” the  HYPERLINK “https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf” \t “_blank” report reads. RT America’s Manila Chan discussed the findings of the report with Paul Wright, executive director of Human Rights Defense Center, and editor of monthly American magazine Prison Legal News. He said the only thing that he thought was surprising is that the numbers weren’t higher.“It’s one of those things where it’s fair to say that racism and classism permeate every step of the criminal justice system in the US. That starts off with who is policing in the first place and to who gets arrested, who gets tried, convicted and sentenced,” Wright said.

Loonie, Peso Jump After Peter Navarro Says He Wants US, Canadian, Mexican Trade “Powerhouse (Source Zero Hedge)
Peter Navarro is again making headlines, and moving markets, when moments ago Trump’s top trade advisor was  “https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles sees-mexico-as-part-of-regional-powerhouse-navarro-says” quoted by Bloomberg as saying he wants the US, Canada and Mexico to form a trade “powerhouse”, supposedly one which is quite different from the existing “NAFTA” trade arrangement. Navarro is said to be “quietly working to forge an alliance with Mexico, even as U.S. plans to build a border wall and threats to withdraw from Nafta continue to inflame tensions with its third-largest trading partner.” Navarro, who as head of the White house National Trade Council will play a leading role in the effort to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, said in an interview the U.S. wants Mexico and Canada to unite in a regional manufacturing “powerhouse” that will keep out parts from other countries. The Trump administration is re-examining a critical component of the free trade pact: the rules of origin, which dictate what percentage of a product must be manufactured in the U.S. for it to carry a Made in America label, Navarro said. “We have a tremendous opportunity, with Mexico in particular, to use higher rules of origin to develop a mutually beneficial regional powerhouse where workers and manufacturers on both sides of the border will benefit enormously,” said Navarro. “It’s just as much in their interests as it is in our interests to increase the rules of origin.” For example, under the current agreement, 62.5 percent of the total value of cars sold in North America must originate in the U.S., Canada or Mexico to avoid import tariffs. The U.S. wants to raise that threshold, making it harder for parts from other countries to enter the supply chain. As Bloomberg also adds, Navarro’s comments hint at the strategy the U.S. may use to negotiate a successor to the 23-year-old NAFTA agreemenet. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said serious talks with Mexico and Canada should begin in the “latter part” of this year.

Russian Spy Ship Returns Off US East Coast, Just 20 Miles Away From Georgia Sub Base (Source Zero Hedge)
The last time the Russian Cold War-era spy ship Viktor Leonov (SSV-175), was spotted off the US East Coast on what was its first Atlantic mission since President Trump was elected, was  russian-spy-ship-now-just-30-miles-primary-east-coast-submarine-base” exactly one month ago, when it was located just 30 miles from Groton, Connecticut. Grotton is also known as the “home of the submarine force” and is the primary east coast submarine base for the US. In the days that followed, the Leonov quietly disappeared, however it now appears that the Leonov is now back and once again appears to be expressing an interest in yet another US sub base.  “http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-spy-ship-viktor-leonov-us-east-coast-georgia-navy-submarine-base/” According to CBS, the Leonov is now sailing just 20 miles south of the U.S. Navy submarine base at King’s Bay, Georgia, and heading north.  CBS’ correspondent David Martin reports the Viktor Leonov, known as an AGI (Auxiliary, General Intelligence) trawler, has a port call scheduled in Jamaica for mid-April, and the assumption among U.S. officials is that it will make one more run up and down the east coast before heading to Jamaica. To be sure, Russian ships routinely conduct spy missions near U.S. waters and the inverse is certainly true as well. The Viktor Leonov has traveled up the Atlantic Coast before, in 2014 and 2015. It was also docked in Havana in 2015 when the first high-level U.S. delegation made its historic trip to Cuba. “We know they’re doing it,” Petersen said. “They know that we know that they’re doing it.”

Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says (Source The New York Times) The Justice Department charged two Russian intelligence officers on Wednesday with directing a sweeping criminal conspiracy that stole data on 500 million  “http://www.nytimes.com/topic/company “More information about Yahoo! Inc.” Yahoo accounts in 2014, deepening the rift between American and Russian authorities on cybersecurity.
The Russian government used the information obtained by the intelligence officers and two other men to spy on a range of targets, from White House and military officials to executives at banks, two American cloud computing companies, an airline and even a gambling regulator in Nevada, according to”https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-russian-fsb-officers-and-their-criminal-conspirators-hacking-yahoo-and-millions” an //www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-russian-fsb-officers-and-their-criminal-conspirators-hacking-yahoo-and-millions”  indictment. The stolen data was also used to spy on Russian government officials and business executives, federal prosecutors said. Russians have been accused of other cyberattacks on the United States — most notably the theft of emails last year from the Democratic National Committee. But the Yahoo case is the first time that federal prosecutors have brought cybercrime charges against Russian intelligence officials, according to the Justice Department. Particularly galling to American investigators was that the two Russian intelligence agents they say directed the scheme, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, worked for an arm of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., that is supposed to help foreign intelligence agencies catch cybercriminals. Instead, the officials helped the hackers avoid detection. “The involvement and direction of F.S.B. officers with law enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious,” said Mary B. McCord, the acting assistant attorney general, at a news conference in Washington to announce the charges. The two other men named in the indictment include a Russian hacker already indicted in connection with three other computer network intrusions and a Kazakh national living in Canada. One of the hackers also conducted an extensive spamming operation, stole credit and gift card information.

Putin readies new 350,000-strong National Guard to ‘combat subversive activity’ (Source independent.co.uk)
Vladimir Putin’s “National Guard” is undergoing its first readiness tests, as the newly-formed internal security corps gears up to quell potential unrest ahead of this year’s elections. The exercises will allow the estimated 350,000 russian-national-guard-reaches-strength-of-340000″ troops to “practice their readiness to combat subversive activity and reconnaissance groups, terrorist and extremist formations,” the force’s  “http://tass.com/defense_blank” press office said.  But critics of Mr Putin’s government have claimed they will be used to repress dissent.
The bulk of the soldiers were previously part of other internal security forces and the creation of the Guard in 2016. The new force is directly subordinate to Mr Putin in his capacity as Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces. It is commonly known as the Russian Guards, or Rosgvardiya. In certain circumstances, they have the authority to fire into crowds of civilians while the press has been forbidden from reporting on the location of their soldiers, allegedly in order to “protect the safety of the troops and their families”. The force is headed by Viktor Zolotov, a former bodyguard and judo sparring partner of the strongman President.

Russia and China both now have the capacity to carry out critical cyberattacks on other nations that is significantly ahead of American capacity to defend against such attacks, a new government report says. The report from the United States government’s ” Defense Science Board Task Force on Cyber Deterrence was based on a two-year analysis. It says: The United States gains tremendous economic, social and military advantages from cyberspace. However, our pursuit of these advantages has created extensive dependencies on highly vulnerable information technologies and industrial control systems. As a result, U.S. national security is at unacceptable and growing risk. Over the past several years, the United States has been subjected to cyberattacks and costly cyber intrusions by various actors ….
Some examples of such attacks have been China’s ongoing cybertheft of the intellectual property of American companies, and Russia’s hacking and publishing data from various American organizations in an effort to erode confidence in the U.S. political system.
The report says such incidents as these stand out from the  HYPERLINK “http://map.norsecorp.com/” \l “/” \t “_blank” constant onslaught of cyber intrusions assailing the U.S. on a daily basis because “their impact goes beyond data collection, to impose some form of harm on the United States.”
The report continues: Major powers (e.g., Russia and China) have a significant and growing ability to hold U.S. critical infrastructure at risk via cyberattack, and an increasing potential to also use cyber to thwart U.S. military responses to any such attacks. This emerging situation threatens to place the United States in an untenable strategic position. Although progress is being made to reduce the pervasive cyber vulnerabilities of U.S. critical infrastructure, the unfortunate reality is that, for at least the next decade, the offensive cyber capabilities of our most capable adversaries are likely to far exceed the United States’ ability to defend key critical infrastructures.

US nukes just got a lot deadlier — and experts say it could cause Russia to attack (Source Yahoo) A recent report from the nuclear-force-modernization-undermining-strategic-stability-burst-height-compensating-super” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists details how the US massively upgraded the lethality of its submarine-based nuclear missiles — and US adversaries like Russia may be spooked to the point of considering countermeasures. Essentially, the US’s latest update to its Trident missiles aboard US Navy submarines ensures that each and every single missile will explode at precisely the right moment to devastate any target. Because of this new “super fuze,” or timing element, the US’s submarine-launched ballistic missile fleet has tripled in destructive potential, according to the report. This is important because US military planners previously only relied on submarine-launched missiles to strike soft targets like military bases. Now these missiles could be used to wipe out Russia’s nukes buried deep underground. “Because of improvements in the killing power of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles, those submarines now patrol with more than three times the number of warheads needed to destroy the entire fleet of Russian land-based missiles in their silos,” wrote Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Theodore A. Postol, the authors of the report. But the US has even bigger nukes which sit in missile silos underground as ICBMs. Historically, these missiles would have been used for destroying Russia’s ICBMs, but since submarines can handle that now, the US can focus its big nukes on obliterating underground hardened nuclear shelters — the kind Kremlin officials would hide out in during an attack. From a US perspective, submarine-launched nuclear missile capability has surged, but don’t expect Russia to share the enthusiasm. Unlike the US, which can spot missile launches from space, Russia would have virtually no warning of an incoming missile besides its ground-based radars, which have limited range. “Russian military and political leaders would have no ‘situational awareness’ to help them assess whether an early-warning radar indication of a surprise attack is real or the result of a technical error,” the scientists write. So Russian defense officials would have less than 15 minutes to decide if an incoming object was legitimate, where it was coming from, and how they should respond. This places a whole lot of responsibility on the shoulders of Russian military officials. “The combination of this lack of Russian situational awareness, dangerously short warning times, high-readiness alert postures, and the increasing US strike capacity has created a deeply destabilizing and dangerous strategic nuclear situation,” argues the piece.

‘No getting out of this’: Major earthquake ‘certain’ to hit Southern California, study says (Source rt.com)
It is simply a matter of time before a major earthquake hits Southern California, according to a new study by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which examined patterns of historic quakes. The only question is how long it will be before the ‘Big One’ strikes.
The study – the most extensive of its kind – examined a section of the San Andreas fault that runs along Interstate 5, near Frazier Mountain in northeast Kern County. “One of the reasons why this location is of importance is because in Southern California, the Big Bend, Carrizo, and Mojave sections of the San Andreas Fault accommodate 50-70% of plate motion. This means that the seismic hazard is high,” according to  HYPERLINK “http://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/usgs-study-finds-new-evidence-of-san-andreas-fault-earthquakes-2689/” \t “_blank” Temblor. The most common magnitude found at the site was 7.5. A 7.9 earthquake in 1857 – the last major temblor to strike – was so powerful that it caused the soil to liquefy and trees to sink and uproot. The shaking lasted between one and three minutes.
Since then, land on either side of the fault has been pushing against the other at a rate of more than 1in per year, accumulating energy which will be suddenly released in a major earthquake that would move land along the fault line by many feet.
A repeat of the 1857 quake could move the land as much as 20ft, damage aqueducts that ferry water into Southern California from the north, disrupt transmission lines, and damage Interstate 5.
Although the researchers noted that a big earthquake is certain, they couldn’t predict when it will happen because they “don’t happen like clockwork.”