Bob "Vienna Sausage" Peters - Economic Development - Cornwall Ontario

CFN –  Cornwall Ontario fascinates me.  It’s part Twin Peaks; part Peyton Place, and full bore Cornwall.   Since founding the Cornwall Free News nearly three years ago the person I have dealt with the most has been Mr. Bob “Vienna Sausage” Peters with the Economic destruction Development department.

Mr. Peters was the author of the report to council; voted in 6-3, that essentially has started the City on a slippery slope; on how it’s perceived by the public online.

At first it was Online Anonymity that was the issue; but deep down it’s more about being highly thin skinned; like say a possum…

Mr. Peters wrote the following in his report which was signed off by his boss; Cornwall Ontario’s Million Dollar Man, CAO Paul Fitzpatrick.

A review of local news websites show that only two allow anonymous posts: the Standard-Freeholderand the Cornwall Free News. Both sites have some moderation of comments, but a review of activity over the past several months have led staff to concur with the generalized assessment of the practice by the American Journalism Review: “Comment sections are often packed with profanity, and vicious personal attacks.”

We contacted the mayor; council, and of course Mr. Fitzpatrick and told them straight out.  You can’t repeat lies about a local business; especially if you aren’t going to allow us to speak before council to repudiate them.

See Syd Cuss & Swear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CTb9UCI5KE

This was not only refused, but of course resulted in being commented on at council; picked up by the CBC and other media.    As you can imagine as we have always been moderated, and extremely RARELY as opposed to OFTEN have any profanity or vicious personal attacks on CFN this was shocking.

But the City’s new online position posed another very interesting question.  What about their Facebook page?    It had zero pre-moderation and as any facebook user can tell you there is quite a bit of profanity and attacks.

It also resulted in Mr. Peters and his sidekick Kevin Lajoie spending countless city hours at the taxpayer’s expense moderating the facebook page; which at the end is a city tool and therefore falls under usage similar to how City Hall would be.

See “some” of the elected officials and city management aren’t perfect either like the rest of us.  Some of them have funny notions as Councilor Grant had in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6FIdNl7vB4

Cronyism and Bullying are not rarities to how business is done down at City Hall in Cornwall; nor unique in the world.  Here is Councilor Carr responding to a polite media question from yours truly on the mural covering the empty pit on the Corner of Pitt & Second that Heart of the City spent a minimum of $12,000 on and that the owners of the land didn’t have to pay a penny for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm9QhKWv55k

Today Kevin Lajoie posted that the city has decided to not allow users to post subjects any further.  He and Mr. Peters had been deleting comments, posts, and even quotes in the name of their terms of service which of course had nothing to do with Facebook’s terms of service.

One local lawyer last week stated that it was a gross charter of Canada violation for Messer’s Peters and Lajoie  to behave in this manner in such a heavy handed manner.  Some people’s posts would be removed and some not for the same alleged infraction.

One long thread attacking this scribbler was allowed for days.   It was all frankly; embarrassing for the City of Cornwall and we residents and business people.

What the City now has is a Facebook page where they only can post something and they pick and choose which comments to allow.

Those actions of gross censorship and manipulation of information to the public so outraged a portion of their Facebook users that a new page was created, and has had over 700 people join in less than 10 hours as of this printing.

It is now the fourth spin off page as the public reacts strongly condemning Mr. Peters actions.

You can find that group by following this LINK to Facebook. .

Here are some quotes remaining on the City’s Facebook page (many have been deleted as the city has now added two more admins)

JpVee Desaulniers I agree whether comments were rude or not the original post wasnt and as fire attacking moon she simply started she was disgusted and wouldn’t be back as a resident of Cornwall these are the types of things as well as events that I personally would like to know I urge someone to create a new group too in which the truth can be spoken about Cornwall good bad and ugly without having to ask someone if its ok to post the truth

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Chris Mellon thanks Corey Roachi requested to join this group was BS to begin with! this group is nothing but fake they wanna post all the positive but what about the negative that they fail to tell us about this town????? The admins are trying to portray this city as though nothing ever goes wrong, nothing is bad here when in fact there is alot of stuff needing to be fixed here! Like our medical care that ive seen NUMEROUS people post about but all post get deleted! It almost seems as though they are trying to hide something!

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Cory N Ashly I think the city is AWESOME, I think the ppl trying to “run” it are in over their heads! HAVE FUN withh this! I know the media will!!

Steph Beaudette ok i understand what your saying Paul, but what about the people who are wanting to move their families here and want to know everything they can about Cornwall? Are we gunna give them false views that Cornwall is the perfect place in the world where nothing ever goes wrong? I love Cornwall personally but there is a lot of issues here that need to be resolved! Just like every other city!

David Jans Not able to post anymore? Depending on your own view of the purpose of this group, it’s value can vary quite a bit but for me and probably hundreds, if not thousands of members, this group just lost pretty much all of it’s value.

Kevin Coleman Its Censorship and everyone should be entitled to oppinions. Cornwall is famous fo an elite group controlling everything. for example

Ryan Lalonde When u put a lock on the group like this it looses way to much, when people cant post and find help for employment and many other topics i know when i posted for employment it was a big help , oh well just another thing that Cornwall should really review there policy’s on.

The internet really frightens a lot of people.   I guess in some ways it should as the flow of information can be lightning fast and ripe for opportunities for inaccuracies to be spread like wildfire.  With the median age of the mayor, Council, and the CAO hovering near where Mr. Harper wants to move retirement age for Canadians it’s understandable; especially when some of them don’t know how to turn on their computer, never mind understand the intricacies of Social networking.

It should be interesting to see whether people on City Council and management have the integrity to right their wrongs or simply make things worse?

The founders of the new Cornwall Ontario Facebook page posted that they hope to eclipse the city’s page shortly.  It should say something about social networking and the internet itself if they are successful.

What do you think amazingly valued viewers of The Cornwall Free News?  You can post your comments below.

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CFN  -  Friday our office started getting emails about Joey Bellmore.  By this morning we’d had nearly 60 emails from people all over the world seeking our assistance in finding out what happened to the 30 year old St. Lawrence College Business grad.

It seems Mr. Bellmore has been building a You Tube Channel that has drawn over 1,000,000 million page views.

According to Mr. Bellmore the trouble started when his computer went on the fritz and he being burnt out took a mini sabbatical.

This resulted in queries and suggestions from he being “kidnapped” or arrested to simply running off with funds that his subscribers donated.

After a bit of searching we hooked up with Mr. Bellmore this afternoon at the Island Ink Jet Internet Cafe where we shot an interview and caught up with Cornwall’s other Million Man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-zoot-6YwY

Joey is like a friendlier Canadian version of Alex Jones.   His messages focus more on health and food issues according to what we talked about as well as politics and some of the standard “truther” message.

I found it interesting how he and so many other young people have become so distrustful of the system; especially the political system that they’ve evolved into these myriad beliefs?

To me, my hope is that more people become involved in politics instead of American Idol and that they ask questions and make changes to the world.

Joey says he’ll be getting a new computer soon and has high hopes for his channel.  He wants to host his own radio and video show like Alex Jones and if energy alone can make it happen he’ll probably be back broadcasting before can say Stephen Harper is a big American sell out.

What do you think Truthers?  You can post your comments below.

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Pete Marier : Facebook Photo

CFN – There’s a trend in BIG CORPORATE media that is seeing a lot of talented people being replaced by young and less experienced voices.    Cost reduction or just reactions to divergence in media?  Some would see a decentralization and less focus on local is the culprit.  Create one radio show or one set of news stories and brand them locally and you save on an awful lot of staff.

Recently Astral in Montreal brought back old voice Terry Dimonte to replace “Bad Pete” Marier.   Marier, a long time voice in Montreal radio was to be bumped to the afternoon slot, but Astral decided to tender him a contract for a lower amount than he was earning as the morning voice on CHOM.

Mr. Marier understandably wasn’t happy and the end result was his removal from the air waves.

English radio in Montreal has a very rich history.  Growing up in CHOMedy, Laval as I did I grew up listening to the Ralph Lockwoods; the Ted Tevan’s, George Balcon’s; even Dean Hagopian, and so many other wonderous voices.  These people became our friends and part of the fabric of our lives in the mornings or drives home.   Now so much of that is gone.

Of course the world keeps spinning; even if we don’t use turntables or CD’s anymore to spin music; but these trends in media are most disturbing.

Newspaper chains have been loosening off a lot of names too.   What does that leave us with?  In my town; Cornwall Ontario,  after the retirement of Claude McIntosh I’m now the senior columnist and I’ve only been doing this for three years!

Smart Phones, tablets, Netflix, iTunes; how we get our music, news, TV, and entertainment and information is changing rapidly.    Is it all just dollars and cents are is our information delivery and distribution being re engineered?

Hopefully Bad Pete will be back on the airwaves soon.   He’s far too good at what he does to be silent for long.

You can post your comments below:

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CFN -  A small victory for Canadians over the big Internet providers in Canada.   The  CRTC did not allow them to charge for carriage.  IE, UBB Usage Based Billing is dead….for now.  We still pay far too much for our internet.

I just got my Cogeco bill.  Here in Cornwall we’re basically held hostage as Cogeco has a monopoly on Cable internet.  The only other option with any sort of speed is Bell and they are not much better an option.

You can go with either Tek Savvy or Primus which have unlimited plans, but the speeds available are not very practical especially if you work from home.

My bill for internet is $41.95 before taxes ( for the first year).   This month as I went over my bandwidth allowance I was zapped with a charge of $50.   Cogeco caps their extra charges at that point.

This is the second month I’ve had to do this.    So I went to the Cogeco website and sure enough they have a plan for $59 that would serve my purposes.  More than the $41 I’m paying, but certainly less than $91 with overage.

So I phoned them to only be told that it isn’t available in my area.  Of course they have no incentive to have it in my area when they can zap me and others for this outrageous amount of money.

Again, as a consumer I have no choice.  Either use a drastically reduced product or pay my hostage fees to a big company that our elected governments have given territorial monopolies to.

Is that productive? Democratic?  Nope.   So why is our government allowing this?   These companies actually whined to the CRTC, but we subsidize them with these outrageous rates and not having competition.

So today I’m giving out a great big LEMON to Cogeco.   I’m giving out a even bigger lemon to the CRTC for allowing this to happen.  We need options.  We need accountability and we need to stop allowing big corporations to rape consumers in this manner.

Hopefully this CRTC ruling isn’t one step forward two steps back.  Hopefully now we can petition our MP’s to pressure the CRTC to either break these monopolies or force these companies to cut this predatory practices.

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CFN - Sadly Steve Jobs passed away after a long fight with Cancer.   The co-founder of Apple and visionary who brought the company back from brink to become the innovation leader and monster it’s become was 56.

Apple’s website said it best.

To me I’ll forever remember their commercial from 1984 which has so much imagery and was so thought provoking.  Whatever the world becomes Steve’s vision has touched almost all of us forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9S8JS1qyRM

Steve Jobs WIKI

Mr. Jobs managed to hang around for the release of the latest iPhone, the 4S and 5 versions.

We lost a giant today.  To lead is never easy. To lead and stay in the lead legendary.

Steven Paul Jobs February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

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Cornwall ON -  Some amazing stuff is sprouting in the Cornwall Ontario area and Kristine Pickens from the Cornwall Game Makers sent in the following.

“Video games have an interesting history. From the time of their invention in the 1940’s there was a lot of controversy over the assumed role they played – pun

Kristine Pickens - Photo by Tricia Lee Robinson

intended – in society. We now have a community here in Cornwall rich in game players, from Facebook applications that have a large demographic of women to the widely popular health encouraging Nintendo Wii games. With any art, engineered product, piece of furniture, etc,.. there are those who designed the functional elements. 

There is a large growth in the people who want a piece of the development pie. Independant game development group Cornwall’s Game Makers is shaping, baking and slicing a piece of that pie.

Lindsey Lachance

Cornwall’s Game Makers are looking to add visual interest, excellent programming and game play, engaging storyline and memorable music and sound effects.

The group is only at the beginning stages right now, but are hoping to start small, possibly in the Facebook Application market but the sky is the limit, and the talk between the group is that with the collective achievements and action, perhaps it could blossom into something big.

Here in Cornwall. 

The inspiration and electrifying gaming industry has taken people in and looking to get into the gaming industry by storm. From the likes of Final Fantasy, Diablo 2, Lord of the Rings and even the Mario series. Little bits and pieces making up the desire and drive to continue the lineage and evolution of what was once a past time.

Both Lindsey and Bryan are recent graduates from the Game Development Technician program here at St. Lawrence College. They worked in programming languages, methodologies and the various applications of game development. Liz Leduc is a musician specializing in guitar, piano and has dabbled in sound effects. Kristine is a Graphic Design (St. Lawrence College, Kingston), 3D Animation and 3D Game Artist (Centre for Distance Education), graduate that has a long history of visual character development in many mediums.

Lindsey is now a Game Tester at a company in Montreal; one of the most coveted ways to get a foot in the door into the gaming industry. Liz Leduc promotes her music writing and playing through her Facebook page “Liz Leduc’s classical accoustic music” and has played at various local events including Rock for Charity. Kristine Picken is a Graphic Designer at a local company in Cornwall, and her portfolio can be viewed here: http://artist-portfolio.net/kristinepicken.

All of the team members are gamers with a love not only for the play, but the integration of their skills and talents in the development of that love. 

Cornwall’s Game Makers is still on the lookout for those that are interested in participating in the project. Any person that may have skills or talent in the arts, programming, project development and management, writing, etc,… can contact Kristine Picken by telephone 613-935-6818, or messaging on the Facebook page, “Cornwall’s Game Makers”.”

Please contact either Kristine, Shaun Bryan (bryanshaun_69@msn.com), Lindsey Lachance (pantz08@hotmail.com) or Liz Leduc (chickensaregreen@live.com), for more information.

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Cornwall ON - One of the scary things about having Mr. Harper finally get his majority is the impacts and precedents I and many others fear it’s going to set.

Before the election UBB was and still is a very large issue.   There was a break, a delay if you will, a proroguing of the decision to allow the big media companies that ability to over charge for bandwidth.    In this case companies like Bell and Shaw can’t at the moment charge as much as $4.00 for a GB of bandwidth that can cost a little as less than one penny to deliver.

Now Sun TV or as it’s been called, Fox News North has been dropped by Bell Satellite services.   Apparently it’s over money, but I have a hunch the picture is a bit larger than that.

In the 50′s the Hollywood studio system was broken up by the US government as they essentially had a monopoly.  The studios made the movies, owned the distributors, AND the big theatre chains.

Block booking was the way things were done and the studios made money on the entire chain of  product.  This system also gave a small group of corporations and businesses virtual control over what the American public went to see in the days prior to the boom in television.

The break up of the old Hollywood system was also connected to the “Red Scare” of the Fifties where Americans were seeing Communists under ever bush and rock and were afraid of too much media control in the hands of too few.

Fast forward to 2011.    Bell owns its internet delivery system, ISP.  It owns CTV, IE a network, which in turn buys and creates programming, and it owns Bell’s Satellite service.   That’s a powerful grouping.   There are other groupings like Shaw and of course smaller players.    It’s not a fair playing table and the influence that ISP’s and companies like Bell and Shaw for example have is clearly evident in the UBB wranglings with the CRTC.

LINK

Lavoie said the issue may be taken to the CRTC on the basis of Bell (TSX:BCE) giving itself an unfair advantage, noting the telecom giant already owns three all-news channels — CTV news channel, Business News Network and CP24.

Another example is that I am a Netflix.ca client.  Love the service so far, but my Cogeco internet service is going to get dinged as my bandwidth will be higher.    While I’m contemplating moving over to a service like TeK Savvy if the CRTC allows UBB to go through essentially the big ISP’s will have won the day and really hurt Canadians ability to communicate.  WiFi in schools and hospitals would be prohibitively expensive and even medial service costs would grow as distance treatment by doctors is internet based.

These are issues facing us that need to be resolved.  Countries like Finland pass laws stating that High Speed Internet access is a right while we in Canada are trying new and unique ways to limit access for Canadians?

What do you think Canada?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - Have you ever wondered if that anonymous voice whose words you’re reading is real or not?  Or no matter how badly you’ve proven them wrong they keep spinning back the same BS?   Maybe this could be why?

I’m not sure how much it pays, but this is the first Canadian Federal Election that truly is embracing the net.   You can see it across Facebook, Twitter, and of course online media across the country.

But when groups hire people to posture for them there’s something very Orwellian about it all dontcha think?   It’s not new or unique.

Several companies have been caught having staff going online to posture for their products and spin on message boards, but when it comes to partisan politics and elections it looks like if a party has the money all bets are on?

You can post your comments; I guess paid or otherwise below.

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Cornwall ON - UBB.   The CRTC is being lobbied by the Internet Carriers to have caps on your bandwidth and charge exorbinant amounts of money over and above.

Where it might cost less than 1 cent to deliver a gigabyte of data some carriers like Bell or Cogeco want to charge as much as $4.00!

Libraries, Internet Cafes, Hospitals, our whole society would be forced to pay huge amounts of money to use a system our dollars finance via the monopolies granted to these companies.

It’s all pretty dispicable.   Where countries like Finland declare High Speed Internet a right and others embrace the reality that more high speed is good for society, Canada and the US are behind ways of essentially creating a class system where the poor will have their access limited by their wallets while the rich can while away reading Egotastic or Perez Hilton.

Many across this country are fighting it and having sent in  an email myself this arrived from our Minister responsible, Tony Clement.

Dear Sir or Madam:

Thank you for expressing your concerns regarding usage-based billing (UBB)
for Internet services.  It is essential that I hear the views of Canadians
on the issues that matter.  Prime Minister Harper and I have been clear
that we cannot support imposing a UBB business model on wholesale Internet
service providers.

Our government recognizes that the Internet and digital technologies are
an increasingly important part of everyday life—including driving
innovation, commerce and social interaction. As the government develops
Canada’s first comprehensive Digital Economy Strategy, we need to look
carefully at how issues like UBB affect the big picture.  We will be
guided by our long-standing policies of encouraging competition and
investment, increasing consumer choice, minimizing regulation and allowing
market forces to prevail.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has
chosen to examine these concerns that the government shares with a large
number of Canadians.  Details of the CRTC consultation are available at
www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com100/2011/r110208.htm.

When the CRTC reaches a final decision following its consultations, the
government will carefully assess the CRTC position to ensure that it is in
line with the best interests of Canadian consumers and encourages
competition among internet service providers.  I will be recommending that
any decision counter to these foundational principles be reversed.
You can find the latest news on the government’s Digital Economy Strategy
and related issues at www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/h_00008.html.

Once again, thank you for writing.  I trust that this information is
helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Clement

Call your MP.   Writer your MP.  Visit your MP’s office.   This Federal election is a perfect time to ask those asking for your vote to take a position and make sure than instead of capping internet usage, the government invest in making sure Canadians have more access to the internet to practice Democracy in ways that they currently are spending millions if not billions of dollars trying to bring to other countries like Libya by dropping bombs on them.

You may post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON- Have you read your Daily Dish yet today?

Home Cooked Headlines Served Fresh Daily!

Dailydishnews.com

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