Inside Toronto’s ‘sweetheart deal’ with MLSE to host 2026 World Cup

via Gfycat

Taxpayers will pay for improvements to BMO Field and other hosting costs, while reimbursing MLSE for any lost revenue or expenditures.

Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment won’t be on the hook for any costs associated with helping Toronto host the World Cup, as part of a “sweetheart deal” under which the company will be entitled to millions of dollars in revenue generated by the soccer tournament.

A Feb. 10 letter of intent outlining the city and MLSE’s hosting partnership for the FIFA Men’s World Cup 2026 stipulates the company will be kept financially “whole” for its role in staging the competition, which will include overseeing upgrades to municipally owned BMO Field, licensing the tournament’s commercial rights, and marketing.

Fuck you Tory.

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Mark Zuckerberg is turning into Howard Hughes, isolated and out of touch with reality

Meta, the company once known as Facebook, has already started slimming down its virtual operations. Disney is cutting its division. Microsoft is shutting its unit.

The metaverse, the imaginary universe we were all meant to migrate to just a couple of years ago, is turning into a great corporate collapse, at least in the immediate term, with billions of dollars of investment at risk, and reputations taking a hammering.

Over the last three years, the internet giants have built a vast new world, only to discover that many people don’t want to go there.

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Across the Globe, Government Health Care Systems Are Failing Us

By restricting private health care choices, the NHS and other beloved single-payer systems were doomed from the start.

In summer 2012, about 27 million Britons tuned in to the London Olympics’ opening ceremony, dreamed up by the Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle. Central to the show was an homage to the National Health Service (NHS), the United Kingdom’s single-payer health care system, that featured hundreds of volunteer nurses dancing around bedridden children. Transcending political affiliation, support for the NHS may be the strongest uniting force in the United Kingdom. As the Conservative Party politician Nigel Lawson put it in a thinly veiled shot at the Church of England, the NHS is “the closest thing the British have to a religion.”

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Rainbow Flags for Thee, Rioters for Me

The World Cup is latently reactionary, as is any international sporting event in which national teams face off against one another.

It presents us with a spectacle of difference. Not the difference of individual autonomy—self-determining into oblivion through a myriad of consumer choices, even unto the invention of new ‘genders’—but rather of national difference.

Of course, spectator sport can function as an opiate, sublimating and siphoning off certain energies. Perhaps the patriotic verve it mobilizes would otherwise manifest politically as a reaction against globalist monoculture.

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Que les émeutes commencent

Fdesouche has a whack of videos up

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Paris braced for ‘civil war’ on the Champs-Elysees as France prepares to take on Morocco in World Cup semi-final tonight

Paris is bracing itself for ‘civil war’ on the Champs-Elysees tonight as France take on Morocco in the World Cup semi-final.

Officials say the famous avenue in the French city centre could turn into a ‘battlefield’ for the highly-anticipated clash to see who will face Argentina in the final.

France has the world’s biggest Moroccan population outside of the North African country with an estimated 1.5million people, and the countries have a testy history with Morocco a former protectorate of the European nation.

The Banlieue will erupt either way I suspect.

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Angry winter’: Germany’s Monday night protests unite far-right and left

Shed your sense of powerlessness, take to the street!” a man calls from a megaphone, his cry echoed by hundreds of demonstrators walking alongside him who repeat the chant. “Germany’s going to the dogs, wake up from your sleep!”

Carrying banners and posters, some with strings of Christmas lights draped around their necks, banging drums, others holding blank pieces of paper out of sympathy with Chinese protesters banned from objecting to coronavirus lockdowns, the participants make their fears and anger known during a one-hour procession through the snow-sprinkled streets of the eastern German city of Halle.

Their main concerns are soaring energy costs – they urge the government to repair and reopen the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia – inflation, which is at its highest level for 70 years, and the war in Ukraine, to which they believe Germany should not be contributing weapons.

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USA beats Iran

If only the Iranians fired as many shots as their journalists.

In the build-up to this one the Americans had to put up the barricades in the press conference. Player and coach were asked all sorts of confrontational questions, from school shootings and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf to their country’s issues with racism and women’s rights. Indeed Gregg Berhalter was told, at one point, that his country cared more about inflation rises than his team.

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Qatar and the hypocrisy of the knee-takers

The World Cup has shown us that virtue-signalling and virtue are not the same thing.

Two televisual events from my childhood stand out clearly in my mind: the Moon landing in 1969 and the incident at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, when – after winning the gold and bronze 200-metre medals respectively – black American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave Black Power salutes from the winner’s podium while the American national anthem played. My dad – a Communist and thus anti-American, but on the other hand a stickler for manners – made a singular sound somewhere between a tut and a cheer.

h/t DM

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England fans in Qatar BANNED from dressing up as St George for World Cup because the Crusader outfit is ‘offensive to Muslims’

England fans dressed as Crusaders have been turned away from World Cup matches in Qatar as their costumes are ‘offensive to Muslims’.

Two fancy-dress knights were allegedly seen on social media trying to get through security before England’s match with Iran on Monday. They were wearing chainmail and helmets bearing St George’s Cross.

It is claimed that the pair, who were also carrying novelty swords, were escorted away by four officers at the security gate before kick-off.

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The World Cup has always been a political football

But woke soccerism has made Qatar 2022 even worse.

In the run-up to the World Cup, the nations of an entire continent voted to boycott football’s biggest tournament, to take a stand against racism and inequality.

But this was not a protest against homophobia and oppression in Qatar, controversial host of the 2022 World Cup. Despite all of their pious posturing about Qatar, there is no chance of football nations sacrificing cash and kudos by boycotting the tournament this time. (Although some might wish they had taken the ethical high ground if they’re knocked out early.)

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World Cup 2022: Qatar’s beer debacle should be the final nail in FIFA’s coffin

Two days before the start of the 2022 soccer World Cup, host nation Qatar is kicking fans.

Sure, Qatar is happy to provide political cover for China in its genocide of Uyghur Muslims. A clear betrayal of Qatar’s responsibility to the Ummah, or global Islamic community. Sure, Qatar was happy to seize the passports of migrant workers and force them to work in soaring heat without sufficient water. Thousands died to build the stadiums for this tournament. Sure, Qatar demands that gay fans hide their nature just as Qatar holds back the freedom of its women.

The limited and temporary availability of beer, however, is where Qatar crosses the line.

The World Cup, like the Olympics is just another scam the elites use to line their pockets at public expense.

‘I feel gay, disabled … like a woman too!’: Infantino makes bizarre attack on critics

Fifa president accuses western critics of hypocrisy and racism

The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, has accused critics of Qatar’s human rights record of staggering hypocrisy and racism in a bizarre and incendiary attack on the eve of the 2022 World Cup finals.

In an 57-minute diatribe which frequently drew gasps of astonishment, Infantino claimed that western nations were in no position to give morality lessons to Qatar given their past and current behaviour.

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Bank of Canada raises rate by 50 basis points, predicts potential recession in the first half of 2023

OTTAWA – The Bank of Canada has raised its overnight rate to 3.75 per cent from 3.25 per cent. Since March, the central bank has increased its policy rate six times, aimed at tackling inflation and bringing it back to its 2 per cent target.

The bank predicts Canada could see a potential recession in the first half of 2023, according to its latest Monetary Policy Report.

“GDP growth is then projected to slow to between 0 per cent and 0.5 per cent through the end of 2022 and the first half of 2023,” reads the report. “This suggests that a couple of quarters with growth slightly below zero is just as likely as a couple of quarters with small positive growth.”


From the Star… Bank of Canada hits Canadians with growth-crushing hammer in latest interest rate hike

So let’s get this straight.

The economy has ground to a halt, and Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem is raising rates anyway —and quite aggressively.

The central bank released its new projections for the Canadian economy on Wednesday morning, and while it didn’t quite call “recession,” the new numbers for economic activity have been revised down to show basically no growth right now and in the near future.

You will pay and pay and pay for Justin’s policy choices not Justin’s cronies.

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Revealed: the deep-rooted culture of corruption and bribery at the Olympics

A leading sports official has spoken of an endemic culture of bribery and corruption in the Olympic movement, claiming he was involved in paying bribes to committee members to secure taekwondo’s place at the Games as well as handing out $500,000 in cash to rig an election.

In an interview with The Times, the official has detailed a culture in which payments were made in exchange for gold medals in World Championship and Olympic boxing. He says bribes of as much as $1 million were demanded to guarantee Olympic boxing gold at Athens 2004, and that Azerbaijan paid $10 million in the form of a loan after being offered a gold medal at London 2012. He also has photographic evidence of cash he was offered to fix World Championship bouts.

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