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The prices of the tickets will be something to watch. 😄 FIFA officially confirms Canadian men's automatic 2026 World Cup qualification. Canada, U.S., Mexico secure automatic berths as co-hosts of marquee event. The event will also be the first that features three nations as co-hosts. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/soccer-canada-fifa-mens-world-cup-2026-qualification-1.6748502?cmp=rss Stadiums Video Report:

From Equatorial Guinea’s leverage over Washington to Qatar’s scandal in Brussels, small resource-rich states are flexing their diplomatic muscle. By Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, and Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Emma A.: Good thing you didn’t put your money where your mouth was—you’d have lost it all! But gambling isn’t the only way to get rich off the World Cup. Have you been following the European Union corruption scandal that has been rocking Brussels in recent days? Matthew K.: Indeed. It was scandalous news. There are reports that Qatar bribed several European officials in order to influence EU policies in advance of the World Cup. It raises an interesting and broader policy problem. We have known that U.S. enemies, such as China and Russia, have been using “sharp power” tools against wide-open Western democracies in order to secure their interests. China bribed an Australian politician and Czech academics, for example, to follow a pro-China agenda. The United States and its allies have woken up to this threat and are putting in place policies to curtail it. But how do we handle relatively friendly autocracies, such as Qatar, engaging in similar tactics? You can read the full article here with the rest of the discussion: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/16/qatar-obiang-biden-eu-scandal-china-autocratic-allies-damaging-us-and-eu-credibility/

Party lawmakers were blindsided by Monday's release of a letter calling for direct negotiations in Ukraine, according to several people familiar with the situation. House progressives on Tuesday retracted a letter calling on President Joe Biden to engage in direct diplomacy with Russia, less than 24 hours after it sparked intense backlash from other Democrats. The about-face comes as some Democratic lawmakers vent their fury that the letter backing talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin — originally drafted and signed in June — wasn’t recirculated before its public release on Monday. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/25/house-progressives-russia-diplomacy-00063338

I was impressed that Ted Cruz voluntarily renounced his Canadian citizenship to show his dedication to representing the United States. I would admire Andrew Scheer if he did the equivalent thing, renouncing his American citizenship to show his dedication to Canada, since he is running for Prime Minister in a few months. This is actually MANDATORY to run for office in Australia, or even to hold citizenship at all in Japan. I think it is important that our political representatives, if not all our citizens, should show their dedication to representing our nation first, and not have backup plans to reside in other nations if things go wrong. The only way I could be wrong about this is if Andrew's dad (deacon James D. Scheer, who was born in the Bronx in New York) immigrated to Canada prior to turning 19, or if he renounced his citizenship prior to Andrew's birth in 1979. Andrew hasn't supplied any evidence either of these things happened (James' older brother died in the Bronx, so the family as a whole never left) so I believe it is reasonable to assume he holds American citizenship by birthright by default.

By the way, in case it was missed, in a Major Free Speech Victory, a Federal Court Strikes Down a Law that Punishes Supporters of Israel Boycott A FEDERAL JUDGE on Tuesday ruled that a Kansas law designed to punish people who boycott Israel is an unconstitutional denial of free speech. The ruling is a significant victory for free speech rights because the global campaign to criminalize, or otherwise legally outlaw, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has been spreading rapidly in numerous political and academic centers in the U.S. This judicial decision definitively declares those efforts — when they manifest in the U.S. — to be a direct infringement of basic First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Link

I thought this was a pretty Interesting and pretty frank way to view at "race relations" between black and whites in the USA from comedian Chris Rock. From an interview a bit more than a year ago: http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/12/1/7313467/chris-rock-interview Not a typical way "race relations" are thought as. Pretty damning to white Americans in history, and mostly true IMO. Do you think his statements are accurate? Not?