As he jerked off, I cheered him on. “Go, go, go,” I would yell in excitement. I knew from experience how hard it could be to orgasm. I rooted for him like I imagined he would have rooted for me had he been around to see me play soccer. Peter North was everything a father should be. He was a role model. “Who’s your daddy?” he asked in one of his films. It felt like he spoke to me.

Perhaps it was the constant cum on screen, which reminded me that, had the (porn) stars aligned themselves differently, I could have been one of the sperm cells squirting out of his nine inch baby maker. I imagined myself flying out of the urinary tract, and landing in the throat of a cum hungry slave, i.e. what would become my mother (at the time, I thought you could get pregnant through the mouth). Reality was altogether different. Mom was shy, taught autistic children, and was allergic to milk. And once, just as I was about to show the world what Peter North had taught me, she entered my room with tea and biscuits.

Peter North has directed more than 70 movies and acted in more than 1500, most notably the brilliantly titled North Pole and Anal Addicts. Known for his strict semen-producing diet, he has been called The Milk Man, The One-Man Bukkake Machine, Sir Cumalot, and Old Faithful, which is really no wonder if you’ve seen one of his money shots in slow motion. They can really reach epic proportions and remind me a lot of the video artist Bill Viola’s slow motion works inspired by Renaissance paintings. Only better. The creativity in these sequences is amazing. In one film, Mr. North shoots into a chick’s nostril and the sperm comes dripping out the other. In another he cums on a windshield, and the girl in the driver seat turns on the wipers, smearing the jizz all over the glass. In my personal favorite, he blows his load into a desk fan which sprays it all over the girls in the room.

Born Alden Brown, Mr. North was discovered while modeling athletic wear in Los Angeles. I’m guessing his porn name is a reference to his upbringing in Halifax, the first clue that Peter North is full of love for his native country. The second clue is that he has his own professional hockey team, the Peter North Stars. While porn might not be the most Canadian of things, hockey is.

At first, the leap from porn to hockey might seem odd, but give it a little time to simmer, and you’ll discover it makes a lot of sense. Other celebrities branch out into food and fashion, but I’m not sure I’d eat at a Peter North restaurant (I’d always wonder where the dressing came from) or wear Peter North clothes (I’d be too aware of the irony). Hockey on the other hand is the perfect crossover solution. Just imagine the next series of videos he could produce: My Puck Bunny is a Fuck Bunny, Peter North’s Icing, or Back-end Cum Shot.

If you are interested in Peter North’s hockey team, you can follow them on Twitter (http://twitter.com/PeterNorthStars) or visit their website (http://www.peternorthstars.3rdprecinctfellowship.com/index.htm). Please notice their jerseys, a stroke of pure genius.

Maybe it’s the thin air or the vuvuzelas. Or maybe all work and no play is making all these knuckleheads dull babies.

Wow. I’ve never seen anything like it. What the English and French are pulling is just plain strange and sad at the same time.

Let’s start with the whiny Brits. They’ve come a long way since 1066, the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, Queen Victoria, and the Blitzkrieg in terms of fighting and intellectual spirit. The 2010 edition of England came in with the usual over-hype and expectations to win a World Cup. And under, Fabio Capello (one of the most successful managers in soccer history), it seemed plausible. England has the talent; it was just a question of putting it together.

No sweat. They’re English, right? Deferential and submissive. Perfect for an authoritarian like Capello.

Um, not really. All it took was one  twirp to set this team off track. John Terry, and I’m not kidding here, is complaining that Capello and his Italian fitness team didn’t permit the lads to have a beer after England stank out the joint in a scoreless draw with Algeria. A team some players were quoted as saying they didn’t need to be at 100% to defeat.

From The Independent:

“By the end of an hour he had promised personally to challenge Fabio Capello in last night’s team meeting and revealed how he had insisted to the Italian’s backroom staff that the players should be allowed to relax with a beer after the draw with Algeria. As Terry’s comments filtered back almost immediately to his team-mates just a few hundred yards away in their hotel there was disbelief.”

Yes, just the perfect attitude you want from a second-tier soccer power. Sounds like the lessons of Croatia was lost forever. Michael Owens said something similar about Croatia (which was an incredibly stupid thing to say considering Croatia finished third at the 1998 World Cup and went farther than any English side since 1966; to say nothing of their skill) and England subsquently lost and didn’t make Euro 2008.

What Terry and possibly others on the team don’t grasp is it’s THE WORLD CUP. It’s not a bloody fucking holiday. You can’t go for an effen “pint” especially after you played like wankers. Total and pure focus is needed to succeed. This notion seems to elude the lads.

***

France. Oh dear. It hasn’t be a good four years for les bleus. First, it was the shameless Zidane head butt, then it was a more than mediocre qualifying campaign, then it was the infamous Henry hand ball against Ireland and now there’s all sorts of acrimony with the team internally with the expulsion of Nicolas Anelka. A mini-temporary muitny took place; all before a huge match against South Africa.

Not very bright and becoming stuff for a team of their stature. If there’s anyone to blame, stick it on the French federation (FFF) for sticking with controversial and tactically challenged coach Raymond Domenech.

***

And then there’s this beaut from Brazil; the world’s team. Brazil has indeed given us some beautiful soccer but it has also provided its share of cynical play. Anyone remember Leonardo’s vicious elbow in 1994 or Rivaldo’s wickedly wild simulation in 2002? Now comes Luis Fabiano’s hand goal against Ivory Coast in 2010.

The reason why it’s a serious infraction was because at the time the score was 1-0 in favor of Brazil very early in the second half. The goal deflated the Africans and ended up losing 3-1. These type of things are game changers.

Fabiano admitted he did it.

Problem is, it came with a Zidane-like “but”:

“But in order to make the goal more beautiful, there had to be a doubtful element. It was a spectacular goal and I believe it was not a voluntary handball. It was a legitimate goal and it was one of the most beautiful goals that I’ve scored in my career. Where better to score such a goal than at the World Cup?”

Great. He’s a thinker too. Oof.

***

As for the officiating, it’s ridiculous the biggest sporting event in the world uses amateur referees. Some of these dudes are part-time officials or have real jobs. Seems to me, FIFA needs to get true, experienced referees to govern the laws of the game on the field. It won’t eliminate human errors for we are a flawed species, but it doesn’t mean we can’t manage it better. Some games have experienced refs from Europe, others have inexperienced ones from Mali. For those inexperienced ones, maybe it’s time to train them better and have them observe games in South America and Europe or something.

Yes, I do advocate the use of technology. I’m no Luddite on this front nor do I subscribe to the “it’s part of the tradition” crap. In fact, if anything, I’d add a second referee and have video replay.

That way, stupidities we saw in the USA-Slovenia game could be avoided. Or the simulation by a Swiss player against Chile, or the dubious sending off of Swiss player etc.

Don’t expect FIFA, though, to budge.

I swear, Bud Selig is running things behind the scenes. Bunch of dinosaurs.

Posted in brazil, england, france, soccer, sports, world cup by The Commentator

As many as 2,200 other newcomers are smuggled into the United States from Canada to toil in brothels, sweatshops, domestic jobs or construction work, estimates the intelligence assessment obtained by The Canadian Press.

And the RCMP says the numbers may represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as it is widely believed only one in 10 victims of trafficking report the crime to police.

A public furor recently prompted the federal government to halt a visa program intended to help Canadian strip clubs hire foreign women.

The RCMP report highlights an ugly phenomenon in which traffickers use deception or force to exploit the vulnerable people they bring to Canada, making them work in slave-like conditions in the sex business and other trades.

Anywhere from 700,000 to four million people are trafficked globally each year, though it is difficult to tell “how much of this activity is occurring in Canada,” the assessment says.

“The failure by law enforcement to recognize and identify this type of crime creates significant problems in terms of investigation and information gathering.”

The report, marked Canadian Eyes Only, is the result of Project Surrender, a groundbreaking effort by the RCMP’s criminal intelligence directorate to document the extent of human trafficking to Canada.

A censored version of the assessment, completed last January, was obtained under the Access to Information Act.

In compiling the report, analysts sifted through data from the RCMP immigration and passport sections, the Immigration Department and municipal police forces, as well as criminal data banks, international studies and media reports.

Most of the illicit activity occurred in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

A “conservative estimate” indicates about 600 women and girls are introduced into the Canadian sex trade annually by traffickers, says the report.

The number of persons “easily increases” to 800 when expanded to include migrants brought into the country by criminal organizations to support illicit operations such as selling drugs or tending marijuana growing operations, and others who are forced to work off debt or pay fees to crime groups.

Women have entered Canada for the sex trade under a variety of circumstances, the report says.

“They have been tricked, forced, obligated to a debt payment schedule or, as a permanent commodity, are trafficked from city to city through Canada and the U.S.A.

“There have also been cases of Canadian girls, coerced or kidnapped, fraudulently entering the U.S.A. and forced into prostitution.”

Large organizations operating in Canada, active over decades, can move 30 to 40 people into the United States each month.

Case figures indicate that between 1,500 and 2,200 people are trafficked from Canada into the U.S. annually, though the RCMP stresses the numbers may be only a fraction of the actual total.

Other case examples include:

• The smuggling of Polish nationals through Toronto and on to Chicago, many destined to work for vehicle “chop shops” for gangs dealing in stolen cars.
• Asians brought illegally to Canada’s west coast who have moved to New York, Los Angeles and other American destinations to work in sweat shops or criminal networks.
• The smuggling of Hondurans to Canada to serve as drug couriers on Vancouver streets.
• Abuse of “mail-order bride” programs by East European crime groups to bring women into the country and exploit them.

The 17,000 seasonal agricultural workers from abroad who tend Canadian farms and orchards each year may also be open to exploitation, the report notes.

“Some of these workers have entered Canada illegally, making them vulnerable to inadequate pay and conditions,” it says.

Trafficking in persons became an offence in Canada in June 2002, but there had been no cases brought before Canadian courts at the time of the report.

The RCMP moved this year to redirect resources into a new unit to fight human trafficking.

The Canadian Council for Refugees wants the government to protect victims of the crime.

Many of the abused and exploited are routinely treated as people who have simply broken the immigration law, says the council. As a result, they are detained and deported.

“And they often are going back to the same situation that put them in jeopardy in the first place,” said Amy Casipullai, the council’s vice-president.

The Mounties had no immediate comment on the intelligence report.

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Of course, we are still waiting. It seems that there is something in football that fails to stir the North American imagination, some resistance we have to it as a meaningful activity. We embrace hockey, baseball, basketball, MMA, a whole range of sports. We can even get excited about bobsledding and decathalon every four years, but we hold back suspiciously from football, as if it is about to tell us something that we don’t want to know. It may be that the meaning of football is beyond us. We are not ready for its hard lessons.

Watching three games a day for the last week, something occurs to me, and becomes clearer and clearer to me: The “beautiful game” is ugly. Surely there is no sport in the history of mankind that features incompetence, banality, failure, duplicity and anguish as much as football.

Although it is true that every sport features moments of failure (the strikeout, the allowed goal, being knocked unconscious), it is also true that every moment of failure is accompanied by a more apparent and obvious moment of triumph that will be remembered more vividly than the failure. We remember and replay the punch that scores the knockout, the split-fingered fastball that completes the no-hitter, the slapshot that eludes the goalie. We celebrate and recall the triumphs, and understand the painful failure as a necessary by-product of that triumph. Failure, for North American sports fans, is never a thing in itself.  In fact it is so rare to note spectacular moments of failure, that really historic moments of incompetence (like the hapless Bill Buckner’s World Series blunder at first base) become iconic, to be approached with eyes averted. North American sports are optimistic celebrations of skill. Hockey players glide with more-than-human speed and finesse, basketball players score points flying through the air, boxers can’t move without embodying power and strength.

But the texture of football — its essential background — is failure and banality. And, what is more, football celebrates this ugliness. I don’t deny the breathtaking skill required to play football at the world cup level, but the optics of the game render this skill all but invisible. Average sized and smallish men in baggy uniforms routinely miss a target that is, quite literally, larger than a garden shed. I have seen simple passes made under no pressure that fail to connect to a teammate ten feet away. I have seen, already in the last two weeks, goaltending blunders that would have lost a Canadian his citizenship. I have seen shots taken by the best players in the world that seemed perversely designed to miss the goal. I have seen the English team trot through a scoreless tie with Algeria like despondent llamas, and a French team whose plodding petulance will all but erase the memory of past world cup triumphs. Football players are capable of playing so badly that games — very much unlike even bad hockey, baseball, or basketball games — simply become distressing and saddening to watch. And far from turning away from all this awfulness, football broadcasts it. The camera will dwell on the anguish of a player who has just missed a shot into an open net. And the announcers, I have noticed this week, will not discuss a scoring play without adding “The defense really fell down on that one,” or, snidely,  “Well, the goalkeeper has to do much better than that!”

And as if the missed shots, bobbled passes, scoreless ties, own-goals weren’t enough, the game becomes even uglier when we add in the ever-present fakery, diving, groans of anguish and Shakespearean death scenes that make footballers seem less like athletes and more like amateur thespians at an improv workshop. Football offers us officials so gullible they surely must moonlight as referees for professional wrestling, and features an offside rule so perverse and impossible to call that it not only guarantees that all action will stop the moment the game becomes exciting, but that many goals will be rabidly disputed and dissected for decades (see New Zealand’s goal against Italy) and will rankle with the losers and taint the pride of the victory. And this is not even to mention the gambling and sex abuse scandals, the temper tantrums and locker-room feuds. Football is truly a horrible game. Has no one has picked up on the irony of calling this slow, stumbling, bumbling mess “the beautiful game”?

And this is precisely what we miss in North America. Our games are finally about triumph. They accept defeat only as the poor cousin of victory. Everything is geared to the promise that we will break the bonds of the human condition and watch heroics (and make no mistake: our constant bleat that the innocence of sports and the glory of athletic heroes have been lost is the greatest indicator of how tightly we still hold to our childhood dreams).

But football is immersed in the very ugly and limiting conditions of everydayness. Unjust decisions, unfair play by opponents, days when the emotion necessary for victory just isn’t there. Skillful players make mostly unskillful plays. The vast majority of attacks sputter out weakly and come to nothing. There is falling and clutching, tangles and flying elbows, and always balls dribbling out of bounds. Whole teams run out of ideas. Energyless games end nil-nil. One begins to suspect that the average football fan must be sustained by a healthy dose of masochism.

But then there is the moment.

In Uruguay’s game against host team South Africa, Diego Forlan, barely in sight of goal, takes an unlikely shot, and it is as if the ball has left ordinary time, as if the moment the ball was struck the goal was assured and all we could do along with the players was to watch it happen. There is always a kind of agonizing stasis as the ball flies, and strangely, the harder the ball is struck, the more laser-like it is, the more it gives this impression that one is already watching the original moment in slow motion. Brazil’s Maicon scores a goal from an impossible angle against North Korea, and his shot seems to defy the laws of physics as it swerves into the goal. New Zealand’s young goalkeeper Mark Paston performs acrobatics against powerhouse Italy, flying horizontally across goal, attacking the ball with a balletic ferocity to win an almost miraculous draw for his country. There are moments when the great teams are on the attack and amid the chaotic swirl of bodies, the dogfight of defense and attack, we can perceive a delicate pattern emerge, the series of three and four and five lightning passes that cut through the madness and finish with the ball in the back of the net. It is fragile and easily missed, but it is what all football fans thrill to.

And this is perhaps what we fail to understand about this ugly beautiful game. It is only from the wreckage of the game, from its human limitations, its coarseness and its mundanity that the beauty can emerge. Football is not offered to us as an escape from the hard conditions of living, but as proof that it is from those conditions — let them be as petty, as grotesque, as cruel as they  will — that the moments of beauty and perfection will emerge, as eternal as they are fleeting.

“My mom says not to over-feed him” Robert says of the dog in the industrial park facing his bleak Windsor Ontario home. In this industrial town, everything is a varying shade of gray. Robert tells us of how he was a stowaway on a ship from China.  He’s always lived with his now 90 year-old ailing mother, making a living driving a cab - and a good living he made of it - enough to buy his own car and rent it out to other newbie cabbies. When you first meet Robert, you are at once struck by his unconventional manner of speech as he stumbles and stammers. You’d think he was “mentally hindered” in some way. Maybe autistic. Somethin’ like that.

And all his life, people have judged and dismissed him. But as I listened to Robert Gene, on the film on him, I heard something else. I heard a man who was endlessly curious about the world around him. I watched in awe as I witnessed his gift for mathematics. I watched as he feverishly worked out the math for  the best  mega-store deal on orange juice.

I heard it said that he once offered to volunteer his gift for math and his personal time to help out with disadvantaged people’s taxes. He was refused the position. Robert never knew the official reason why,  but it’s simple deduction.

Now well Into his fifties, Robert has never had a girlfriend. “Too many headaches” he says. So he’s always lived with mom. Together they created a home that would rival any episode of “Hoarders”, but that another story. One need only to watch the film.

All this leads me to think that though we like to think otherwise, we live in a conformist society.Which brings me to the ethos of 21^st century thought:  free speech, freedom of expression democracy for all, and humanitarian values, all in the name of manifest destiny. Truth is, anyone who doesn’t fit the suburban ideals of modern North American life, is chastised, ignored, forgotten or Jacked on drugs.  Jacked so that they could fuse into the confines of this sectarian society. Robert isn’t jacked on drugs, but consequently, lives a life of isolation.

Americans lead all western countries as  medicated drones, boasting 3.5 billion prescriptions yearly. Leaving us all into the throws of collective numbness.  This numbness, so to speak, leaves very little room for innovation, intellectual evolution. Or dare I say, genius.

People with social disorders, the mentally ill or the naturally eccentric are often the ones who question the protocols of  modern existence. Perhaps we should have a closer listen. I say, bring on the crazies. And for God’s sake, let them do our taxes. We may just save a couple of bucks.

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The first sunny glimmers of spring were in the air, but March 31st 2010 was a dark day for Canada’s refugee determination system and for the people whose lives depend on it.  Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister, tabled what the government has labeled the “Balanced Refugee Reform Act” in the House of Commons.  Unfortunately for the thousands of refugee claimants who arrive in Canada each year, Minister Kenney’s proposals to completely overhaul the refugee determination system tip the balance scales far away from our country’s traditional reputation as a safe haven for individuals fleeing persecution.

As I write, the proposed bill is barreling its way through the parliamentary committee stage of approval.  Numerous refugee rights organizations, as well as many opposition MPs, have voiced their concerns to the committee.  Unfortunately, many Canadian citizens, whose voices are crucial to such an opposition process, haven’t had the opportunity to meaningfully engage in the current debate.  Many of us, busy with our daily lives, are ripe prey for damaging media sound bites and rarely hear the real, compelling and complex stories of refugees in our midst.  Minister Kenney’s press team often employs damaging terminology (for example, “bogus” vs. “real” refugees), rejoicing in the “improvements” this bill would make to the refugee system while ignoring the real potential impact of these changes on people’s lives. 

The proposed bill does include some positive changes, long fought for by the refugee advocacy community.  For example, a reduced waiting period for refugee determination hearings and the introduction of a Refugee Appeal Division.  However, the reach of these changes is extremely restrictive, with little allowance for the diversity of human experience that individuals fleeing persecution bring with them on their journey.

Imagine the following scenarios. Under the proposed bill, a gang-rape victim suffering from post-traumatic stress is forced to share the complete details of her unspeakable experience with a complete stranger within 8 days of her arrival in a strange land; is obliged, within 60 days, to gather the required proof from a war-torn country and give a complete testimony in front of the federal civil servant who would then be the sole decision-maker of her claim (the first instance decision-maker would no longer be an independent member of the Immigrant and Refugee Board).  A victim of persecution from a country on the newly proposed “safe country” list would, on the sole basis of his or her citizenship, be denied a real right to appeal a negative decision.  (Specific criteria for the determination of so-called “safe countries” has not yet been determined; how can a “safe country” be distinguished in a world constantly plagued by violence and corruption?)  If the proposed legislation is accepted, these are some of the lives that would hang in the balance.

Canada is the only nation to have received, in 1986, the prestigious Nansen Refugee Award, given annually by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for outstanding service to the cause of refugees.  I am proud of this distinction, received by the then-Governor General on behalf of “the people of Canada”.  I am extremely proud of the Canadian refugee advocacy community’s constant efforts to safeguard every individual’s basic human right to asylum. And, as a Canadian citizen, I am ashamed of the worrying direction our current government is taking with regards to our international obligation to protect this right.

Please take a moment to visit the very informative website of the Canadian Council for Refugees for an informed and “human” analysis of the proposed bill: http://ccrweb.ca.  To stay up-to-date about refugee rights issues and join the ranks of AiDDA, the Association of Individuals for the Defense of the Right to Asylum, please follow the following link: http://www.montrealcitymission.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Itemid=97.  As non-citizens, present and future refugees cannot lend their political voices to the fight.  If you share their and my concerns, please join us in bringing them to the forefront of the debate.