And at the peak of FIFA 2026, there’s an undeniable sense of unity and community ritual as bars draw crowds that spill out onto the street. Everyone seems to be in a flurry of doom and uncertainty. For a few months, they believe that their team—and by extension themselves, the underdog—can win in a world that feels like a magnet for loss.

Ahead of the FIFA world cup, Toronto officials have unveiled a new $12.5-million police command centre—the ‘centrepiece’ of the city’s security plans for the FIFA World Cup (CBC). Other ornamentations of this new city arrangement ahead of the World Cup include a counter-terrorism unit, stationed with semi-automatic rifles at ‘key locations,’ though they don’t point to any specific ‘threat’ spurring this new wave of enforcement.

It’s no secret that America and much of the world’s energy relies on the oil reserves of West Asia (the “Middle East”), and this war seems to increasingly reveal itself as being principally about controlling those assets. This, combined with increasing colonial violence both in and outside of Western countries, indicates an empire aware of its decline and determined to hold onto its power for as long as it can. Iran is using this knowledge to reshape the global power structure.