Casual sports observers often wonder why the sport of Soccer has never been successful in the United States. This story is a big picture example of exactly why.

The country of Belgium is filing an appeal with FIFA World Cup organizers to stop the United States from playing the game of soccer with their best players. You just cannot make this stuff up, folks.

Only in the sport of EU soccer can a bureaucratic agency file a parliamentary objection with the intent to force the official bureaucratic agents of the soccer administration, FIFA, to block a team from fielding their best players – because the business of the bureaucracy is more important than sportsmanship.

SEATTLE (AP) — The Belgian soccer federation is demanding explanation from FIFA about a decision to let U.S forward Folarin Balogun play at the World Cup despite getting a red card in his previous game.

Belgium takes on the United States later Monday for a spot in the quarterfinals.

The Belgian federation said it has still not received either “FIFA’s decision or any explanation regarding this matter. In these circumstances, it has no choice but to challenge the player’s eligibility for the upcoming match.” {LINK}

Here comes the really funny part.  All the soccer nations continue to be befuddled why soccer has never made progress within the American sport psyche. Think about it.

Soccer is a ‘sport system’ bureaucratically designed to fail when contrast to a brutally honest American perspective on sport.

Soccer succeeding in America is the inverse to Liberty succeeding worldwide.

Soccer is the United Nations of sports.

If soccer is ever to succeed in America, the United States is lost forever!

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The EU President Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Ireland to deliver remarks as Ireland takes their turn in managing the bureaucratic affairs of the EU Commission.  As part of her speech to the audience, von der Leyen notes one of the biggest challenges facing the EU is a housing and affordability crisis.

In the last 10 years, Europe has intentionally allowed around 50 million migrants to arrive and claim asylum.  The majority of the EU citizens did not want this migrant influx.  EU leadership is now declaring a “housing crisis” created by their own migrant policies.  WATCH:

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At this point in history, the European leadership is just making fun of European citizens.

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This next storyline needs context to understand appropriately what just happened.

In February of this year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled for the first time in his business and life to China. Merz a lawyer by training, worked in business and corporate life doing mergers and acquisitions (Blackrock), but had never been to China.  Despite his upward climb in German politics, his worldview was always dominated by an internal acceptance that Germany was the industrial heart of the European Union.

Chancellor Merz believed that Germany was unrivaled within industrial manufacturing, particularly in aeronautics and mechanical engineering (auto sector).  So, when Merz went to China -while he held no trade capabilities as an outcome of the EU collective controlling everything- he also had no idea what Chinese industrial capacitary actually looked like.

To say Chancellor Merz was stunned by the advancements in robotics and industrial manufacturing within China would be an understatement.  Merz was shocked not only by the technological capability, but also by the Chinese industrial work ethic and capabilities of the workforce.

Merz returned to Germany and immediately began discussing how Chinese industrial capacity was far beyond anything he previously estimated.  Merz was shook.  His reaction was, essentially, the #1 industrial nation within the EU confronting a reality of years of industrial complacency.  Immediately he began talking about how things in Germany must change; how the German workforce must immediately start to get serious about productivity and production capacity.

That was late February and early March.

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U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has made it official.  Delivering an official statement today following a discussion between the United States, Mexico and Canada, USTR Jamieson Greer informed the group the USA will not be renewing the USMCA trilateral trade agreement. [SOURCE]

[SOURCE]

Unfortunately, yet predictably given how much false information has been pushed on this issue, the Canadian team will now believe they have a period of ten consecutive years of negotiation before the trade deal is over.  This is structurally and completely false.  The Canadian media will likely continue selling this false hope.

In reality, with the non-renewal announcement now made, President Trump and USTR Greer can now complete the bilateral trade discussions with Mexico (noted in the announcement) and then move to stage two.

Stage two will be the United States announcing a complete withdrawal from the USMCA, which triggers a six-month countdown clock.   The formal notification of withdrawal will likely happen once the U.S. and Mexico complete the bilateral free trade agreement.

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Multiple countries have proposed ‘digital service taxes’ which are taxes on the domestic use of American tech platforms like META, Twitter, Amazon etc.  EU countries are planning to tax U.S. based tech platforms for the revenues generated by operations within EU countries.

President Trump announces retaliatory action via reciprocity taxes, in essence leveraging the entirety of the U.S. consumer market, if the EU proceed with this new tax revenue scheme against U.S. companies.   Canada was on the cusp of a digital services tax last year when Trump made a similar announcement forcing Canada to abandon the plan.

[SOURCE]

WASHINGTON DC – […] Trump’s promise to raise tariffs threatens to complicate trade talks with the European Union. Trump’s threat comes one day after EU member states approved an agreement that would slash tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and some agricultural products. In return, the U.S. would cap most tariffs on the European Union at 15 percent.

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Due to migrant crime, a rape crisis and government fear, the movie ‘Citizen Vigilante‘, written and directed by Ewe Boll, has been banned in the U.K and Germany.

Other European countries are limiting the film’s distribution due to cultural concerns and recent events where national patriots are beginning to push back against migrant’s entering their country with the expressed intention to harm and destroy.

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  European government’s fear this movie.  That said, in order to make it available to audiences behind the EU censorship wall, the makers of Citizen Vigilante have released it on the X-platform, and it is being promoted by Elon Musk himself.

I am going to try to embed the video below (not sure if it will work). It is available to watch until 10:00am on June 27.

https://t.co/yvJOwOS4xE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 25, 2026

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Against the backdrop of President Trump, Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hegseth pointedly telling NATO of the U.S. intention to draw-down U.S. military operations from Europe, NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte flies to Washington DC to make the pro-NATO sales pitch directly to President Trump.

In one of the most transparent appearances in oval office history, a passionate, self-interested and professionally demure Mark Rutte pours on the praise for President Trump and puts on a massive sales pitch.  You can tell from President Trump’s demeanor, tone and general ambivalence, he too can see how over the top the praise and back-slapping is.

Secretary Rutte was intensely and diplomatically focused on not allowing any accurate criticism or statement of disappointment from President Trump be left unchallenged to frame the tone and context of the meeting by the media. This is quite a desperate spectacle to witness when you understand the stakes for Europe which were carried by Rutte. WATCH:

CTH readers can see through the professionally demure motivations of the NATO secretary, and it was obvious from President Trump’s response that Rutte was transparently playing to the U.S. audience and DC stakeholders.  That said, you’ve got to give Rutte credit for tap-dancing that fine line.

It was a great sales pitch, and President Trump was very courteous and respectful of the showmanship, but I doubt President Trump was moved much.  The G7 assembly in Turkey will be very interesting.

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I previously saw an interesting discussion with NVIDIA Jensen Huang where in the context of AI he was asked: who is the smartest person you ever met?

Jensen Huang paused for quite a few moments thinking about the question before he answered.

Huang then redefined the word “smart.”

‘Smart’ is a word we have historically used in reference to ‘intelligence’.  If a person was intelligent, we say that person is smart. However, in this era of AI at your fingertips, we must break this connection.

Intelligence, the assembly of knowledge about a particular matter of discussion, is no longer limited to educational or real-life training or study by people who focus intensely on subject material.

All of the knowing about a system, any system, process, history or discussion topic is now available almost instantly to anyone in this era of artificial intelligence.

The NVIDIA CEO then continued, therefore, once we break our historic reference connecting ‘intelligence’ and the generalized term ‘smart’, we can properly address the question you present.

Who is the smart man? Or, in the context of the originating question, “who is the smartest person?”

With this baseline established, Jensen Huang then outlined the traits of the smartest person.  The smartest person is not the person with the greatest knowledge; the smart individual is the person who can tune into the frequency of the universal moment, look at the human reality of what is factually taking place that has not yet become an input into the AI capture record, and then predict the material outcome – the destination of knowledge that has not yet arrived.

Essentially, Huang explains the smart person is alone, tuning themselves into the vibration that is the consequence of human activity, financial interests, geopolitical movement, social transformation, economic shifts and cultural modifications.  Then, positioning their interests at the place in the future where they predict all the activity will arrive.

The accuracy of prediction, or predictive positioning, then determines the scale of smart.  The more accurate a person is under this perspective, the smarter they are.

I agree with this perspective.

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At 9:30am London time, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made it official, he resigned. {Politico – Details}

“The question being asked now is not who was best placed to change the Labour Party, to take us into power and to begin the vital work of improving lives for millions of people. Those questions have been answered. The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”

Starmer says he will remain caretaker prime minister until his Labour Party chooses a new leader — with expectations growing that it will be former Greater Manchester Mayor and newest Member of Parliament, Andy Burnham.

(Via Daily Mail) […] An EU-UK summit on July 22 has been postponed after Sir Keir’s announcement of his resignation, despite the date only having been confirmed last week. A Government spokesperson said it would now be held ‘at the earliest opportunity’;

A YouGov poll has found that the public thought Sir Keir was right to resign by a margin of 62 per cent to 19 per cent, with another 19 per cent undecided;

Sir Keir’s allies have refused to rule out him quitting as an MP, raising the prospect of a tricky by-election fight in his constituency with the Greens;

Labour MPs and Nigel Farage have been calling for a general election to be held after the change in PM;

Sir Keir’s successor will be Britain’s seventh premier in a decade. (more)

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This is the third step in what I believe is a transparent operation conducted by Ukraine and the U.K (NATO group).

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now demanding the U.S. give license approval to military contractors in order to build U.S. Patriot Missile systems in Ukraine and throughout Europe.

I am almost certain this was the intent of the previous operation carried out by Ukraine upon their own religious and cultural centers in Kiev.  It fits a long-established pattern of operation which we have watched unfold in real time over the past few years.  Again, for emphasis, I cannot prove this – but deeply suspect it is accurate.

Breaking down what Zelenskyy outlines below. This is what it looked like in real time as the events described below unfolded.

(1) Following the pattern of visible and political diminishment of Christianity within Ukraine, the Nazi side of Ukraine carried out a false flag attack on their own cathedral and cultural sites as the set up to their plan. This was staged and timed to happen just before the G7 assembly in France.

(2) Using #1 as the pretense and justification, Ukraine then pulled the trigger on 600 simultaneous drones targeting Moscow in Russia – the drones were pre-staged and set to attack during the G7. This was planned prior to the events in France.

(3) Using #1 and #2 as the central backdrop, internal G7 pressure was then directed toward the U.S. delegation, while holding home turf on the ground of the ‘coalition of the willing.’ Zelenskyy, Starmer and Macron had this set up in advance.

That’s the outlook when you drop the pretenses. That’s the nature of this Ukraine. That’s also why we continue to call this operation World War Reddit! Here’s Zelenskyy’s demand:

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