By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

Russia’s oil production could drop to as low as 9 million barrels per day (bpd) in December when the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil enters into force, Russian news agency TASS reported on Wednesday, citing analysts at the Energy Development Center. “We expect that production in December will fall by 1.5-1.7 mln barrels per day compared to the June-October average, or 14%,” according to a report from the Energy Development Center cited by TASS.

The expected sharp drop in Russia’s oil production will lead to a spike in international oil prices, also considering that the OPEC+ group is reducing the target production as of November, the experts said.  

Russia’s oil production, excluding condensate, for October came in well below its production quota for the month, at just 9.9 million bpd, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said earlier this month.

Russia’s October production was 1.1 million bpd below its quota of 11 million bpd assigned under the OPEC+ agreement, but mostly in line with Novak’s estimates made last month. 

For November, Russia’s oil production quota under the OPEC+ pact will drop from 11 million bpd to 10.5 million bpd.

In October, Russian oil production, including condensate, was 1.47 million tons of oil per day, or 10.78 million bpd. The October production was slightly down from the 10.8 million bpd reported for September 

However, the production decline could accelerate from November as the EU prepares to introduce an embargo on imports of Russian crude from December 5, Russian business daily Kommersant reported at the end of October, quoting sources familiar with the situation.

Analysts have estimated that around 2 million bpd-3 million bpd of Russian oil and products may have to find new homes after the EU embargo enters into force. Russia has redirected a large part of its flows eastwards to Asia, but it may not be able to accommodate immediately and find willing buyers for the trade flows previously going to Europe, especially with the ban on services handling Russian oil cargoes unless the oil is sold at or below a certain price cap.  

After Peloton’s former CEO and co-founder, John Foley, made a series of demand miscalculations for Peloton bikes during the pandemic and eventually resigned as shares in the company cratered, he’s back in the spotlight with a new venture: direct-to-consumer rug business. 

Foley’s new company is called “Ernesta.” According to Forbes, he started the custom rug company with two other co-founders from Peloton. 

Transitioning from slapping an iPad on a bike or treadmill to selling custom rugs seems like an unlikely path for the former billionaire. But maybe after borrowing millions of dollars worth of stock collateralized with Peloton shares and receiving repeated margin calls from Goldman Sachs, the rug business is his best bet to make a rebound. 

On Monday, Ernesta announced $25 million in venture capital funding. The company is stacked with ex-Peloton managers and is hoping to take a slice of the high-end rug market. 

Foley told Forbes the company “plans to sell 50 different styles of machine-made, custom-cut rugs in five colors each.” 

“With Peloton, we didn’t know if it would be a success or not, but I knew that working with good people was a valuable way to spend my time.

“Rugs might seem like a potentially uninteresting category, but there’s probably at least one in your house. They’re ubiquitous, and people don’t spend a lot of time worrying about them,” Peloton and Ernesta co-founder Hisao Kushi told Forbes. 

Custom Market Insights released a report in July that showed more than 100 million rugs are sold in the US yearly. The rug market is expected to expand from $18 billion this year to $25 billion by 2030. Foley said for Ernesta to be successful, it needs to capture only a fraction of such volume. 

“I want to show discipline, I want to show profitability and have a real focus on unit economics,” Foley said

“Ernesta won’t attempt to vertically integrate its supply chain. Instead, the company will work with business-to-business partners in Georgia to source rolls of carpet in bulk, then cut them to order in a New Jersey warehouse to ship either directly or through logistics partners,” Forbes said. 

At least Foley can now sell Peloton customers a fancy rug for their bike. What a dramatic shift for the former billionaire … from bikes to rugs. 

The woman at the center of sexual abuse accusations against former Jeffrey Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz has ‘corrected the record,’ and now says she may have been mistaken.

In addition to dropping her defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz, accuser Virginia Giuffre, formerly Virginia Roberts, made the following statement:

“I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations,” she said. “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”

According to both parties, there were no payments involved in the settlement, which also included other related lawsuits.

Dershowitz notably represented Epstein in his earliest criminal case.

Giuffre, meanwhile, said that both Epstein and his ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell raped her. She reached a settlement with Epstein in 2009 after he pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring a prostitute under the age of 18.

Later, Giuffre said Dershowitz raped her six times in three states, as well as the US Virgin Islands at Epstein’s property.

Dershowitz has maintained his innocence the entire time.

“As I have said from the beginning, I never had sex with Ms. Giuffre,” he said, adding “I have nevertheless come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said. Ms. Giuffre is to be commended for her courage in now stating publicly that she may have been mistaken about me.”

At the Epoch Times notes, The settlement also involved Dershowitz’s countersuit against Giuffre, a defamation suit from lawyer David Boies against Dershowitz, and a countersuit from Dershowitz against Boies.

“I agree with Mr. Dershowitz and Ms. Giuffre that the time has come to end this litigation and move on,” Boies said in a statement. “I know that Alan Dershowitz has suffered greatly from the allegation of sexual abuse—an allegation that he has consistently, and vehemently, denied.”

Boies had said in a complaint that Dershowitz was trying to “distract attention from his own misconduct” when he launched “a campaign to attack and vilify each of the lawyers who have represented his victims,” including Giuffre.

Dershowitz, meanwhile, now says his claims that Boies engaged in an extortion plot and tried to induce perjury “were mistaken.”

Giuffre also accused Prince Andrew of raping her. She had produced a photograph showing her with the prince and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and sentenced more recently to 20 years in prison.

Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew was settled in February. The details were not disclosed.

Currently, US semiconductors are a measly 10% of global production. Most chips are produced in Asia, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, and the Biden administration has pushed the Chips and Science Act to boost development and production domestically. 

The CHIPS Act earmarks $52 billion to revert a decades-long trend of US production shifting abroad to low-cost labor regions. There was evidence some of this production is being reshored, according to a WSJ report, revealing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is laying the groundwork for a second US factory in Arizona. 

People familiar with the plans told WSJ that TSMC would soon announce one of the most advanced semiconductor plants just north of Phoenix, Arizona, next to another one of its chip factories. They said the investment in the new plant could be upwards of $12 billion, similar to what was committed in 2020 to build the factory beside it. 

TSMC is making a big bet on the revival of US semiconductor production after increasing US-China tensions led Washington to pass the CHIPS Act to spur domestic semiconductor manufacturing. 

“TSMC’s new facility would manufacture so-called 3-nanometer transistors, some of the tiniest and most lightning-fast currently possible,” the people said. 

In a statement to WSJ on Wednesday, TSMC confirmed it was constructing a building to “potentially” house a second chip plant at its site in Arizona. The statement said it would add more advanced chip capacity there, though a final decision has yet to be announced. 

The Biden administration’s move to rebuild semiconductor production in the US comes after a massive chip shortage in Asia that caused supply chain snarls for manufacturers of automobiles, electronics, and defense systems. The expansion signifies that reshoring supply chains from China and surrounding countries will ensure secured chip production during wartime. 

TSMC, whose production plants are based primarily in Taiwan, has begun to diversify over the past year due to invasion threats by China.

In August, TSMC Chair Mark Liu told CNN that if China were to invade Taiwan and seize the world’s most advanced chip factories, it would cause devastating supply chain disruptions worldwide. 

Apart from domestic initiatives, the Biden administration has slapped China with export restrictions on advanced chips and curbed the sale of chipmaking equipment. The restrictions attempt to slow advancements in China while buying the US time to rebuild its chip production base.  

Intel Corp. and memory maker Micron Technology Inc. are also investing in new US chipmaking factories as global supply chains are rejiggered due to national security threats.  

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: The World Economic Forum (WEF) describes its mission as the “international organization for public-private cooperation.”

What do you make of the WEF and the power it wields?

Doug Casey: “International organization for public-private cooperation” is a code phrase for economic fascism – which is to say, the hand-in-glove melding of the political power of the State with the economic power of corporations.

Things like the WEF, and other NGOs (non-governmental organizations), institutes, and think tanks, have proliferated in recent years. They’re almost all destructive parasites on productive society.

Almost all of them are leftist, statist, and collectivist in orientation. They’re typically populated by intellectuals and academics and funded by tax-exempt foundations, usually set up by elderly do-gooders interested in leaving a “legacy.”

The WEF is by far the most successful of the breed. Instead of just cadging donations so intellectuals could hang around and seem prestigious, in 1971, Klaus Schwab formed a club where the rich and powerful could discuss ideas with other members of the overlord class. Political and financial types could find a philosophical home, disguising the quest for money and power with a patina of benevolence. It’s become an amazingly large and powerful organization. They have roughly 800 full-time employees, most of them very highly paid. They have an annual budget of over $300 million. Their balance sheet indicates that the WEF is worth over $1 billion, funded by major corporations who give it millions of dollars, as do various governments. Most of the world’s political leaders and corporations are members.

Schwab was very clever to have put together an organization where the richest, most powerful, and most influential people in the world are charged huge amounts to be introduced to each other and talk about how they can become even richer, more powerful, and more influential.

It seems clear that members of the WEF have to toe the party line or be disinvited. Nobody wants to be excommunicated from the WEF or cut off from association with other rich and powerful people. It’s safe to say that WEF members share a common philosophy, one that’s in line with Schwab’s weltanschauung.

FWIW, I think it’s wrong for public corporations to make political, charitable, or indeed any kind of contributions. A corporation’s raison d’etre is to generate money for its shareholders, not allow management to play big shot. Managements often like to give away shareholders’ money; it costs them nothing, but they reap the prestige of giving. Better that the money be distributed to shareholders so they can dispose of it as they wish. If that were the case, outfits like the WEF would have a lot less money and power. And wouldn’t be in a position to promote the pernicious ideas it does.

For instance, it would appear that Klaus Schwab actually originated, or at least popularized, the term “stakeholder.” Stakeholderism believes that business is obligated to treat employees, customers, local residents, and anyone who claims to be affected by business as if they had some right to what a company produces. People who identify as stakeholders easily develop into mooches and leeches. Schwab was also an early supporter of the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) movements. And political correctness in general.

With as much money, power, and influence as the WEF has, it’s easy for them to groom up-and-comers. They created several sub-organizations for people who are under 40 years old—where they can reinforce their beliefs that the world ought to go in a certain way—under the direction of WEF-type people.

Schwab has to be complimented for having built the WEF from nothing and making himself one of the most powerful people in the world. But the WEF is a dangerous and despicable organization. It’s basically what’s known as a self-licking ice cream cone—it serves no useful purpose but to perpetuate itself and its members.

International Man: Yuval Noah Harari is a key adviser to the WEF.

He has risen to fame as reviewers and editors have anointed him as a public intellectual.

What’s your take on the rise of Harari?

Doug Casey: Harari is a perfect example of how, when an organization like the WEF gets in the back of somebody, they can make him rich, famous, and influential. These people all feed each other and scratch each other’s backs.

Harari apparently came from a perfectly average middle-class Israeli family, but I would think that he’s got to be worth at least $50 million, just based upon sales of 30 million copies of his books. He appears to be an ideal court intellectual, living quietly with his husband in a modest suburb of Tel Aviv, promoting the party line.

International Man: Harari has made several disturbing statements, including:

“Covid is critical because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.

We want to stop this pandemic. We need not just to monitor people, we need to monitor what is happening under their skin.

Governments want to know not just where we go or who we meet. Above all, they want to know what is happening under our skin.”

What do you think about this?

Doug Casey: Well, he really wants to transform the world, and it’s kind of clever the way he proposes to do it.

His book Sapiens, which I read about 10 years ago, is a competent enough summation of how humans evolved over the course of the Pleistocene during the last 2.5 million years. It doesn’t make any cosmic breakthroughs but tells a basically correct story. He explains how technology started to take on a life of its own and how we changed the world. And how technology’s now changing us at the rate of Moore’s Law. Fair enough.

The problem lies in his projections of how and where humans will evolve over the years to come. In particular, who will guide that evolution. And if things continue advancing at the rate that they are, it’s likely that machines will integrate with humans.

I see no problem with that. If you voluntarily want to replace body parts with mechanical parts—a new knee, a new heart, be a $6 Million Man—that’s wonderful. Taking it one step further, if you can put a chip in your brain and instantly access all the knowledge on the Internet without going through a computer, that could be even more wonderful, except for the fact the Social Credit System and hackers will have access to your chip.

The problem is that the WEF people think that they know what’s best for the rest of humanity. And they feel it’s for the good of all that they be closely monitored, controlled, and guided. They’ve made statements to the effect that most people are “useless eaters,” which is probably true at this point. Or it will be once everybody gets a Guaranteed Annual Income—enough to keep them sated with avocado toast and vanilla lattes while they watch cat videos at the local Starbucks. They’d really like to do without superfluous humans and just have the elite calling the shots. Humans that remain would amount to serfs. The WEF have said, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.” They’re very bold.

It’s very disturbing how they talk about guiding the advance to the next stage of human evolution. As pessimistic as I am about the current state of the world and where it’s going, I still believe in The Ascent of Man— but I believe it can only happen if individual liberty is maximized. From the point of view of personal freedom, Harari is actually talking about regressing to feudal times. Albeit a kinder and gentler version, where wise solons like Klaus and Yuval are in charge.

As far as I can tell, his values are antithetical to those of Western Civilization. But he’s an effective mouthpiece to convince the hoi polloi that their leaders have their best interests at heart. And I suppose they do. At least the way a farmer has the best interests of his dairy—or beef—cattle at heart.

International Man: Harari has often described a high-tech totalitarian future where a small elite with access to the latest technology evolves into different beings. At the same time, drugs and video games pacify the masses until their eventual extinction.

What are your thoughts about this dystopian future? Is it inevitable?

Doug Casey: Harari projects a certain inevitability to the evolution of technology, and he may actually be right.

I don’t mind change. Rapid technological progress has been accelerating for the last 10,000 years and, with a little luck, will go hyperbolic with the evolution of nanotechnology, computers, biotech, space exploration, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These are all good things.

The question is whether these things will be imposed upon humanity or will they be something that individuals can adopt or not as they choose? To me, this is the essential ethical and moral question.

Harari, and for that matter, the rest of these WEF people, never examine any ethical or moral issues.

For instance, Harari is very big on transgenderism, which he seems to want to make into a political hobby horse—where it’s not just accepted as a psychological aberration, but is almost imposed on society, whether you like it or not.

He’s a vegan. I have no problem with being a vegan. It’s just that he wants to impose his views of the correct way to deal with animals (absolutely including humans) on everybody else. He’s certain that he knows what’s best for everybody else.

I’ve long believed in the arrival of the Singularity, which Ray Kurzweil has discussed in detail. I think it’s a good thing. Technological progress has always been a good thing—whether we’re talking about the invention of gunpowder that allowed the average man to overthrow his medieval rulers, or the printing press, that allowed peasants to access the knowledge of the ruling classes.

But the problem is that the bad guys usually get control of technology first. The powers-that-be use tech to impose their will upon the little people until the cat gets out of the bag.

I’m all for the rapid evolution of technology, even though it’s very dangerous because the power-mongers, the bad guys, and the minions of the State usually get it first.

On the bright side, I suspect that under the influence of Schwab and his muchacho de mantequilla Harari, the WEF will collapse. The snakes in the snake pit will eventually turn on each other. Optimism is warranted because stupid ideas have always come and gone throughout history. Evil is usually vanquished over the long run.

The WEF is promoting destructive ideas in a dangerous time. If you value free thought, free minds, and free markets, recognize the WEF as an enemy.

*  *  *

Sociopaths are drawn to the government and international organizations like the World Economic Forum. They seek power and control over others through coercion, taxation and more. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released a guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download the PDF now.

A Pennsylvania state representative who died in October was reelected during yesterday’s midterm elections, according to the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus.

Anthony “Tony” DeLuca, 85, died Oct. 9 “after a brief battle with lymphoma, a disease he twice previously beat,” the Caucus said in a statement.

“While we’re incredibly saddened by the loss of Representative Tony DeLuca, we are proud to see the voters continue to show their confidence in him and his commitment to Democratic values by re-electing him posthumously. A special election will follow soon,” said PA House Democrats in a tweet, Fox News reports.

Some folks commenting that the voters here were oblivious. Some certainly were. But for others, they likely preferred the idea of a special election over electing the third-party candidate on the ballot

— Charlie Wolfson (@chwolfson) November 9, 2022

Challenger Queonia “Zarah” Livingston, who is living, ran a far-left campaign, with her top three priorities listed on her website as; environmental justice, ending the war on drugs and reducing gun violence.

DeLuca was a resident of Penn Hills for over 60 years. He got his start in politics serving on the Penn Hills Government Study Commission, then five years as a Penn Hills Councilman, followed by two years as Penn Hills Deputy Mayor before running for his legislative seat and defeating the Republican incumbent. -Fox News

DeLuca had four children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times,

In a press conference on Friday, the Chinese Health Commission insisted the country’s zero-COVID policy is an effective and economic measure for pandemic containment.

The officials also blamed local governments such as Zhengzhou for unscientific measures that hurt the economy and frustrated the public.

On Nov. 5, the Health Commission emphasized sticking with the policy to prevent imported cases and recurrence of the domestic cases, and claimed the policy is the “accurate” way to deal with the pandemic.

Blaming Local Governments

In answering press questions on complaints posed by the populace during the implementation of the zero-COVID policy, the officials named Zhengzhou, in central China Henan Province, as the city that received the most criticism for its arbitrary travel restrictions and lockdowns.

Consequently, Zhengzhou officials held a press conference on Nov. 6, apologizing to the public and promising to rectify its measures in containing the virus.

The manufacturing sector in China has seen the disastrous impact of the arbitrary lockdown imposed by the authorities.

A resident undergoes a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 in Anyang in central China’s Henan Province on Jan. 26, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

On Nov. 2, Zhengzhou imposed a seven-day lockdown for the industrial park where the manufacturer Foxconn is housed.

Since September, Zhengzhou has been one of the epicenters of viral infection. Positive cases were also reported in the Foxconn factory starting in October.

Recently, a large number of Foxconn employees fled the factory for fear of infection and a shortage of food and medicine on the factory premises due to the lockdown.

The Zhengzhou Foxconn location is Apple’s largest iPhone assembly factory in the world.

According to the 2020 China Top 500 Foreign Trade Research Report by the Statistical Society for Foreign Economic Relations & Trade of China, Zhengzhou Foxconn contributed to 82 percent of Zhengzhou’s total export value in 2019; Zhengzhou Foxconn’s total export volume reached $31.6 billion, the largest contributor to Chinese foreign trade export in 2019; and the import and export volume was second only to two state-owned enterprises, China Petrochemical Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation.

On Nov. 6, Apple released a statement saying that the primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility located in Zhengzhou is currently “operating at significantly reduced capacity.”

After months of speculation over a potentially very awkward showdown with Western leaders and media at the Bali G20 meeting, on Wednesday it’s being widely reported that President Vladimir Putin will skip the Group of 20 summit next week.

Bloomberg is citing “people familiar with the planning” who described that the Kremlin is seeking “to protect the president from potential high-level tensions over his invasion of Ukraine.” Essentially this will preempt the possibility of embarrassing “cold shoulder” moments and the photo ops that could arise.

As Bloomberg also emphasizes, “The Kremlin also risked Putin being shunned by European leaders at the Nov. 15-16 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali.”

There remains the question of whether Putin will give a virtual address to world leaders gathered in Indonesia, which will include President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping. But according to the latest reports, there will be no virtual address either. Instead, Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov will attend in Putin’s place. 

Even a virtual address runs the risk of Putin likely subjecting himself to a spectacle wherein some among the other heads of state gathered the G20 stage a “walk-out” – as has been done in the recent past whenever Russian officials address large international forums. 

The last example of someone being given pariah status at a G20 was Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018 in Buenos Aires. He had been sidelined and publicly shunned during the official “family photo” of world leaders – seen standing on the far edge and largely ignored. 

That had been soon after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of that year. MbS’ presence at the G20 at that time made for deeply awkward moments which were filmed and photographed. 

Likely, the Kremlin has calculated that it’s just not worth the potential for Putin to receive the same or worse treatment on such a visible international stage at this time, particularly when things aren’t going fully as planned in Ukraine either. 

On Tuesday, Indonesian president and summit host Joko Widodo told the Financial Times that he has a “strong impression” Putin will be skipping the event, which now is confirmed. Ukraine and its backers will greet this as a symbolic albeit small “victory” on the world stage.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum.

While the much-touted differences between America’s political parties get obsessive, hysterical attention, the sameness of Imperial corruption, waste and squalor regardless of who’s in power gets little notice. 

Scrape away the differences–mostly in domestic issues–and we see the dead hand of Imperial Corruption is on the tiller.

The core of Imperial Corruption is the disconnect between the nation’s ideals of representational democracy and open markets and the sordid reality: elites serve their interests by corrupting both democracy and open markets.

Unfettered democracy and markets cannot be controlled by a tiny, self-serving elite.

 Stripped of corruption, democracy and markets are free-for-alls that are constantly evolving, as highly adaptive islands of coherence coalesce that influence the quasi-chaos, competing with other islands of coherence but never gaining dominance due to the open-ended dynamism of collaboration-competition that is the beating heart of both democracy and open markets.

The only way to control democracy and markets to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many is to corrupt them completely by destroying the dynamism of collaboration-competition. 

Democracy is replaced by an auction of political power to the highest bidder that rewards cronies and devotes all its resources not to solving the nation’s problems but to whipping up conflagrations of divisiveness and partisan hysteria that wash away the middle ground where problems can actually be addressed.

This crippling of the nation’s ability to actually solve difficult problems serves the interests of self-serving elites whose sole interest is accumulating personal wealth and power. Their proclaimed interest in solving the nations’ real-world problems are fraudulent tissues designed to hide the putrid reality that all their so-called “solutions” distill down to sluicing huge sums of state money to cronies and campaign contributors under the guise of “solving problems.”

The only “problem” America’s elites know how to solve is the “problem” of how to get personally richer while tightening their control of the nation-state’s vast flood of (taxed / borrowed) money. 

Cronies and contributors get tax breaks hidden in 1,000-page legislation and overflowing rivers of money (here’s looking at you, Big Pharma, Big Defense, Higher Education, Sickcare, et al.).

America’s elites are masters at misdirection and distraction: it’s always the other side’s fault that the nation is sliding down the wrong side of the S-Curve. 

The elites don’t really care which side is in power, as they control them both to serve their own interests.

But something funny happens on the way to gaining control of complex emerging systems: that control destroys the system’s self-correcting mechanisms and adaptability. 

Rigging the system to serve one’s own interests destroys the system’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and selective pressures.

Once a system has been crippled to serve the interest of an elite, when forced to adapt or die, it can only die as its mechanisms of adaptation were destroyed by the power-grab of elites. 

An economy dominated by a handful of cartels and quasi-monopolies is an economy that is doomed to slide into the dustbin of history, as cartels and monopolies “win” by crushing competition and competing islands of coherence, as competition threatens their profits and control of markets and governance, a.k.a. “democracy.”

Any system that serves the interests of the few by choking off adaptability and the dynamisms of a free-for-all churn lacks the tools needed to avoid systemic collapse. 

By enabling elites to organize the nation to serve their personal interests, America has been stripped of the dynamics needed to adapt. Without these dynamics, collapse is the only possible outcome.

But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum. While Imperial Corruption undermines what’s left of the nation’s ability to adapt fast enough and successfully enough to survive what lies ahead, we can cheer the “winners” of the bloodsport and ignore the winds of disorder sweeping the land.

*  *  *

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Palm Beach County is under evacuation orders ahead of Tropical Storm Nicole, expected to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane Wednesday with landfall between Boca Raton and Sebastian late Wednesday night or early Thursday. 

Nicole is about 240 miles east of West Palm Beach, Florida, with sustained 70-mph winds just four mph shy of hurricane status.

Palm Beach County officials announced Mandatory Evacuations for Zones A and B. This includes mobile homes, barrier islands, and low-lying areas. 

“Nicole would be the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States in November in nearly 40 years,” a CNN meteorologist said. 

Hurricane warnings are posted from Boca Raton to Daytona Beach, including Palm Beach, Port St. Lucie, and the Space Coast. Tropical storm warnings span up to Charleston, South Carolina, and include much of Florida’s East Coast. 

Storm surge warnings for Palm Beach are also in effect. 

Florida’s east coast could experience a peak surge of up to 5 feet of water. 

The National Weather Service wrote as “Nicole moves inland across the Florida peninsula,” there could be “significant impacts” to building structures, marinas, docks, and piers, as well as roadways and bridges. 

Ahead of the storm’s landfall, Palm Beach International Airport closed Wednesday morning. Orlando International Airport will cease operations at 1600 ET.

The ominous forecast could be very problematic for NASA. The space agency’s $4 billion Space Launch System rocket sits on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, where it’s expected to ride out the storm. 

Launch Update: @NASA is continuing to monitor Tropical Storm Nicole and is re-targeting a launch for the #Artemis I mission for Wednesday, Nov. 16, pending safe conditions for Kennedy workforce to return, as well as inspections after the storm has passed.https://t.co/JgGAAs9RfJ pic.twitter.com/RGNw6Bk55z

— NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) November 8, 2022

After hitting Florida’s east coast, Nicole will traverse central and northern Florida into southern Georgia Thursday. Then into the Carolinas by Friday.