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Here's one of the most twisted metaphors I've seen in a while...
"...a Mental Institution would be more appropriate, one that still performs full frontal phlebotomy's!"
Some fool bought 1100 shares of ORNR...
...Cortellazzi's 'next' scam, and moved the price from a nickel to .15 today. CSJJ is superdiluted and done, dudes.
There are no 'investors' here...only gamblers with little sense of integrity who are aiding and abetting fraud. Just say no!
Pick a scam, any scam!
By the way, olg...
...contacting Don Britton--the other party in the purported oil deal--would be proper and appropriate DUE DILIGENCE. It's quite important to verify the claims of penny trash companies, especially those like CSJJ with a lengthy history of false and/or misleading press releases.
No, olg...
...I've never bought or sold CSJJ or any of Cortellazzi's fraudulent stocks; and indeed I've never had any contact with the Montreal scammer at all. But those who have no sense of integrity are always applying their own greedy rationale for the postings of honest folk who would expose scams like this.
I've submitted detailed reports to the SEC and the RCMP regarding Cortellazzi's stocks since he first acquired PAVP, but I have no way of knowing the status of any investigation. The commission is sluggish and understaffed, so many scams slide by.
I've been helping to expose Cortellazzi's fraud for a long time now; but you may call it 'bashing' if you like. Call Don Britton yourself and ask if he thinks he'll ever see any money from CSJJ. LOL!
He's been scammed, dude, just like you.
The oil well deal is verifiably bogus! Here's a response to a shareholder inquiry from Don Britton of BDT...
My name is Don Britton, I represent Britton Oil Properties which has been in the oil business for the past 43 years. About three months ago, Coastal Holdings contacted us about funding a well drilling program we have going. They, Mr. Andrea Cortellazzi, signed a memorandum of understanding with us that they wished to have 90 days in order to raise the necessary funds.
They requested a signed contract with us, which we provided and that has been the last contact we have had with them, which has been over 30 days.
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=CSJJ&read=7666
Cortellazzi's press release about 'receiving a signed contract' was misleading enough to sucker some new action in this fraud; but just like the St.Hubert Airport deal of CSJJ's parent company CDVJ, it's all just tantalizingly almost credible fluff designed to separate the naive and greedy from their money.
CSJJ is a scam, hellothere. Wakey wakey!
I also tell people about csjj in other boards unless asked not to
It's the archetypical RED FLAG, Derf. Sixteenth-century pirates flew a red flag to give a targeted vessel fair warning that if they don't immediately surrender there will be no quarter given; ie: all aboard will be killed. This was called the 'jolie rouge' (French for 'bright red') and later Anglicized to 'Jolly Roger'. The skull and crossbones flag we associate with pirates is mostly a Hollywood invention--an idea taken from the personal flags of some later pirates and of course overused into a contemporary icon.
I use the 'Jolie Rouge' meme to warn touts and louts that I will relentlessly expose their scams. It's set as my signature and too much bother to change before I post here.
The image I use is the flag of 'Long Ben' Bridgeman, for no reason other than it's one of the few red Jolly Roger images I could find. His story is interesting however, because while he was successful as a pirate, he was scammed on land and died penniless.
http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/lennon/897/avery.html
(Yeh, I know that's a longer explanation than you wanted, LOL!)
How very Teutonic!
Bernd Meinecke would also like to restate that the Company is aware of the circulation of faxes regarding Coattec and is working diligently to identify, stop and persecute all responsible parties. Mr. Meinecke, nor anyone in Coattec's management, has any knowledge or has approved any circulation of these faxes and urge all investors to rely solely on official Company sources for dissemination of information regarding Coattec.
http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/051208/90911.html
ROTFL!!!
What do you mean by 'your board', olg?
I don't have my own board here. I do have a number of active topics at QuickTopic.com, which is a great environment to set up an ad-hoc invitation-only or public message board.
By the way, Matt frowns upon personal attack; and the definition of such includes childish mockery of another's alias.
I see your board has alot of posts......not
Perhaps your mindless board-clogging one-liners have discouraged discussion about this scam. LOL!
why did every one quit posting here?
Former Montessori school teacher Andrea Cortellazzi has chosen to be tried by a judge and jury.
Cortellazzi, 43, appeard in court in Laval on Friday and entered no plea, so a not-guilty plea was recorded. His trial is set to begin on May 7
He faces one charge of fraud of more than $5,000 after Laval parents paid thousands of dollars to enroll their children in a school that never opened.
More than 120 parents in Laval and Montreal filed complaints with police after they paid between $300 and $2,000 each for their children to attend Montessori schools on Beaubien St. in Montreal and on Concorde Blvd. in Laval.
When the parents turned up to drop off their children at the schools last September the doors were locked and a ''For Rent'' sign was hanging in the window of the Laval school.
No charges have been laid in relation to the Beaubien St. school but Montreal Urban Community police said their investigation is continuing.
A former Montessori school owner is facing criminal charges after Laval parents paid thousands of dollars to enroll their children in a school that never opened.
Andrea Cortellazzi, 43, was charged at the Laval courthouse last week with fraud over $ 5,000 and could face a maximum 10-year prison term if found guilty. He will appear in court Feb. 26 to enter a plea.
Crown prosecutor Pierre Teasdale said it was complaints from parents and a subsequent police investigation that led to the charges against Cortellazzi.
"It is definitely a special case," Teasdale said. "When I reviewed the file, I certainly thought there was enough to go forward with this."
The Laval parents first filed complaints against Cortellazzi in September, after they showed up to drop their children off at his school on de la Concorde Blvd. and found the doors locked and a "For Rent" sign in the window.
More than 80 parents in Montreal have also filed complaints with Montreal Urban Community police after Cortellazzi's school on Beaubien St. in the city's north end also closed this September. It had been operating since 1996.
The parents had paid between $ 300 and $ 2,000 each to register their children in the schools.
Mauro Stoico, who had paid $ 560 to enroll his 3-year-old son, Michael Anthony, in the Laval school, said parents will be pleased to know someone could be held responsible for their financial losses and the damage to their children's education.
"There's not much we can do to get our money back, but something had to be done about this," Stoico said. "Some parents lost $ 6,000 to $ 8,000 because of what happened."
Stoico and many other parents are also furious with the Quebec government for giving Cortellazzi a permit to run the schools in the first place.
"I still can't believe they gave this guy the green light. There was definitely some negligence on the part of the government," he said.
As for the parents in Montreal, they are still waiting for police to conclude their investigation of Cortellazzi.
MUC police fraud-squad officers reached yesterday said the investigation is progressing, but they are not prepared to lay charges.
"The police say the investigation is coming to an end and they're very close," said Cosimo Panetta, who lost $ 760 after enrolling his 2-year-old daughter in the Montreal school. "We just want to be sure that nobody has to go through what we did."
Some of the parents are also hoping a criminal conviction could bolster their efforts to reclaim their money.
They have formed a committee to organize a lawsuit against Cortellazzi and have been meeting every Monday to plan strategy.
"Hopefully he has the money hidden away somewhere we can get at it in the courts. We've got to do it before he spends all our money," Panetta said.
The parents' committee has hired a lawyer with the $ 10,000 it was given by the Quebec Education Department, which Cortellazzi had handed over as a deposit for his permit to run the school.
Still, parents from the Montessori schools will have to get in line if they want to take Cortellazzi to court.
It seems Cortellazzi spent most of the past 15 years involved in small-claims court cases against him. Since the beginning of the 1980s, he has been the subject of more than 35 lawsuits in Montreal alone.
Many of these lawsuits involved accusations of failure on Cortellazzi's part to live up to contracts or to make payments on money owing.
In a recent ruling, he was ordered to pay more than $ 45,000 to a leasing company for unpaid bills. Court orders forcing him to pay were even delivered to the Montessori school on Beaubien last May.
Cortellazzi, who is listed in court documents as living in St. Leonard, could not be reached for comment.
As new complaints were filed with police against a private-school administrator with a fraud record, the ministry responsible for issuing permits for such schools said it has no plans to change its policy on background checks.
Two more parents have filed formal complaints with the Laval police against Andrea Cortellazzi, a Montessori-school administrator who collected fees from them but now appears to have disappeared with their money.
Cortellazzi has been missing since parents and students in Laval and Montreal North showed up at his two schools on the first day of classes to find the doors locked.
He was issued a permit to run the Montreal North school by the Quebec Education Ministry, despite the fact that he had a criminal record for committing fraud in Ottawa and was wanted for violating his probation there. He had no permit for the Laval school, which was set to open this September.
There are now 34 complaints against the school administrator, involving more than $ 17,000 in fees. More are expected in the next few days, Sgt. John Green of the Laval police said yesterday.
However, a spokesman for the ministry said there are no plans to change the policy on background checks for those applying for permits.
"It's much too early to answer that question," Rolande Hamel said. "For the moment, we are trying to rectify the problem. It's one problem, not a general one. So if the regulations or the law will eventually be changed, I can't say."
Provincial law on private schools says permits will not be granted to people who have committed crimes while at a school in the three years preceding a request. Cortellazzi pleaded guilty to fraud in 1993 in connection with fees for arranging mortgages.
Hamel said the department visits schools when permits are issued, renewed or revised, but would only check an administrator's criminal record if a red flag were raised.
"If we have reason to doubt someone, or even if there are people who inform us of something, there may be an investigation that's a bit more in-depth, but people's criminal records are not checked in a systematic manner."
The ministry's stance makes Nancy Charbonneau angry. Her daughter was registered at the Montreal North school run by Cortellazzi.
"Anyone can open a school, even if they have a criminal record," she said in an interview from her home last night. She and several other parents were getting ready for a meeting with Montreal Urban Community police tonight to file formal complaints against Cortellazzi. The meeting will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the YMCA at 4567 Hochelaga St.
Charbonneau said she is amazed by how little information private-school administrators have to give the Education Ministry.
Parents in Montreal and Laval are furious the Quebec government granted Andrea Cortellazzi a permit to run Montessori schools even though he had a criminal record for fraud and there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Ottawa.
Cortellazzi operated two Montessori schools: one on de la Concorde Blvd. in Laval was to open this year, and another on Beaubien St. in north-end Montreal had been running since 1996. About 120 parents in Montreal and Laval paid Cortellazzi between $ 300 and $ 2,000 each to enroll their children in his schools.
But now he seems to have gone missing after parents showed up to drop off their children at school and found the doors locked and a "For Rent" sign on the Laval building.
Thirty-two complaints against Cortellazzi have been filed with Laval police, and police in Montreal are meeting parents tomorrow to hear their complaints.
But parents say they shouldn't have to be dealing with police because the Quebec Education Department should not have granted Cortellazzi the permit to run the school in the first place.
Cortellazzi pleaded guilty in September 1993 to two counts of fraud of more than $ 1,000 in an Ottawa court in connection with complaints that he collected fees to arrange mortgages, but didn't refund the money when mortgages were never arranged. He was ordered to repay $ 7,685 to two victims whose complaints led to the fraud charges and was placed on 24 months probation.
In 1989, he pleaded guilty to construction without a permit and demolition without a permit in Ottawa and was fined $ 5,000, after he demolished a part of a heritage building he part-owned.
He is now wanted by the Ottawa-Carleton police for violating terms of his probation in connection with the 1993 case.
"It's completely ridiculous that he was granted this license," said William Aguilar, a lawyer who is representing the parents and who himself paid Cortellazzi almost $ 1,000 to enroll his 5- and 6-year-old children in the Beaubien St. school. "Can just anybody open a school in this province? Parents expect that (the Education Department) is giving permits to people who can be trusted."
A spokesman for the Education Department yesterday said it was not aware of Cortellazzi's criminal record when he was granted the license in 1996, or when it was renewed in 1997.
"Certainly there are some verifications made, to see if they have the proper financial resources, for example," department spokesman Rolande Hamel said. "But there is not a check of the criminal records of every person who applies for a private-teaching permit."
Hamel said the department last heard from Cortellazzi on Sept. 10, when they received notice from him that he was ceasing operations and returning his permit. She said he was never granted a permit for the Laval school. Attempts to contact him since then have been unsuccessful, she said.
Fraud investigators with Laval police have received 31 formal complaints about a Montessori school on de la Concorde Blvd, a spokesman said yesterday.
The complaints allege that almost $ 16,000 was paid in deposits for the private school that was found locked when classes were to have begun last week, Sgt. John Green said.
Meanwhile, fraud investigators with the Montreal Urban Community police are looking into another school run by Andrea Cortellazzi.
One formal complaint has been received against Cortellazzi but meetings later this week with other parents are expected to yield more complaints, fraud investigator Det.-Sgt. Andre Quenneville said yesterday. Some parents have organized a meeting with police for Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the YMCA at 4567 Hochelaga St.
At least a dozen Montreal-area schools use the Montessori teaching method. Only those run by Cortellazzi have been referred to fraud investigators.
Some of the 80 parents who had enroled their children in the north-end-Montreal school, on Beaubien St., said last week that they plan to meet with lawyers to see what can be done to get their money back.
Parents said that school had been operating near the intersection of Beaubien and Langelier Blvd. for several years. When parents arrived last week, they found a note saying that leasing problems had been encountered and directing them to a building on Amos St.
Education-department officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.
A Montessori school principal who accepted thousands of dollars from Montreal parents and then left their children out in the cold this week seems to have done the same thing in Laval.
Police are looking into complaints of fraud after about 40 parents who had enrolled their children in the school on de la Concorde Blvd. found its doors locked when classes were to have begun this week.
According to police and parents, the principal of the Montreal school, Andre Cortellazzi, was also in charge of the school in Laval.
Sgt. John Green of Laval police said last night that parents paid between $ 300 and $ 1,000 each for their children to attend the school.
"But when the parents arrived the school was closed and a 'For Rent' sign was up on the building."
Police have not yet decided whether any fraud has been committed, Green said, and are planning to meet with more parents before beginning a formal investigation.
Parents are being asked to attend a meeting with Det. Sgt. Pierre Dion on Monday at Station 2 in Laval, 3225 St. Martin Blvd. E., at 7 p.m.
Montreal Urban Community police are also still waiting before beginning an investigation into the Montreal school closing.
Lt. Jacques Taschereau of the fraud squad said his department has yet to receive the complaints filed by parents. He said he expects them on his desk soon and an investigation could begin then.
Some of the 80 parents who had enrolled their children in the north-end Montreal school, on Beaubien St., are planning to meet with lawyers this week to see whether they can recoup some of the tuition money.
Jenny Mariani, who registered her 2-year-old daughter in the Montreal school in March, said last night she wasn't surprised to hear that Cortellazzi had closed the school in Laval as well.
"One of the parents went to his house to find him and he said that everything was gone - the place was empty," she said. "He's nowhere to be found."
Mariani said other parents she has talked with are coping with the school closing, but not easily.
"Some of the parents are trying to get their children into other schools. But many of them are booked so they're having to stay home from work and look after their children during the day."
There are about a dozen other schools in Montreal that use the Montessori method of teaching but the two run by Cortellazzi were not affiliated with any of them.
Several parents whose children were enrolled in a north-end Montessori school showed up this week to find the building's doors locked and its principal gone with thousands of dollars in fees and deposits.
The Quebec government has received several calls from angry parents and has asked the Montreal Urban Community police to investigate.
Jenny Mariani said she registered her 2-year-old daughter in March at the school on Beaubien St. near Langelier Blvd. and paid $ 670 in registration fees for September. Later, she forked over $ 100 for a deposit on a uniform.
"(The principal) said he would be sending me forms, but I didn't hear anything," she said in an interview. "I finally made an appointment to see him the week before school started but when I got there, the place was in a shambles."
Her husband, Cosimo Panetta, is furious with the man he says conned dozens of parents into giving him huge amounts of money.
"He told people if they paid for the whole year at once, he'd give them a discount, so some people are out by $ 4,000," Panetta said. "And where are they supposed to take their children now? There are no spots left in daycares.
"This guy is a wanted man."
Favourable Reports
Parents, including Louise Boisvert, who paid $ 1,400 up front last spring for her 3-year-old son to attend the private school, have tried in vain to get in touch with the principal, Andre Cortellazzi. There was no answer yesterday at his business number.
"It's incredible what he's done," she said, adding she estimates at least 100 parents have been left high and dry.
Boisvert said she decided to enroll her son in the school, which has been operating for about three years, after hearing favourable reports from other parents.
Police have taken several complaints from frustrated parents who showed up at the locked building to find a note on the door saying the principal was having leasing problems and was moving to Amos St. There is no answer at the number the note provides for further information.
"I drove by that (Amos St.) building last night, and it was covered in graffiti," Panetta said. "I looked in the windows and there's nothing there - no chairs, no blinds and nothing to indicate that something is going to happen. It's an abandoned building."
A spokesman for Quebec's Education Department said it had given Cortellazzi a permit to operate his Beaubien St. school but hadn't granted one for his new location on Amos St.
"It's been very difficult to get in touch with him
Andrea Michael Cortellazzi, has been fined and placed on probation after pleading guilty to fraudulently collecting fees to arrange mortgages and for operating as an unregistered mortgage broker.
Cortellazzi, who operated James Andrews Development Corporation on Bank Street, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud over $ 1,000 in connection with complaints that he collected fees to arrange mortgages, but didn't refund the money when mortgages were never arranged.
He was ordered to repay $ 7,685 to two victims whose complaints led to the fraud charges and was placed on 24 months probation, after pleading guilty in Provincial Court in Ottawa.
Cortellazzi also faces a fine of $ 5,000 or five months in prison, for operating as a mortgage broker without registering under the Ontario Mortgage Act.
Cortellazzi's wife, Giovanna Raso, who operated JRC Realty Consulting at the same Bank Street location, was convicted in February of carrying on a business as a mortgage broker. She was fined $ 2,000. Cortellazzi's employee, Denis Clairmont, was also fined $ 500 after conviction for the same offence.
There are no paid bashers, Z...
...that's a toutish myth. I post in counterpoint to hype and lies because I can, and because it's the right thing to do.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aren't these one-liners annoying?
There's no doubt about it.
This is a scam.
You must enjoy reading lies and misleading statements.
Post #1000! Woo hoo!
Are the Brittons stupid or just as crooked as Cortellazzi? I'll bet Cortellazzi's trying to con 'em into accepting CSJJ shares in lieu of the $475k payment for the bogus drilling operation. I suspect that's what is being foreshadowed in the latest 'restructuring' release. If that's the case, it will go the way of CDVJ/BTXI, and the first act of the new board of directors will of course be a reverse split.
FreshStockPicks.com Ltd. was paid one hundred thousand dollars by a third party, kts Investment Advisors Ltd., to cover costs of producing and decimating this report. We do not guarantee your individual results.
http://www.ironinvesting.com/site/disclaimer.html
Attack of the Blogs
By Daniel Lyons
Source: Forbes
Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.
Gregory Halpern knows how to hype. Shares of his publicly held company, Circle Group Holdings, quadrupled in price early last year amid reports that its new fat substitute, Z-Trim, was being tested by Nestlé. As the stock spurted from $2 to $8.50, Halpern's 35% stake in the company he founded rose to $90 million. He put out 56 press releases last year.
Then the bloggers attacked. A supposed crusading journalist launched an online campaign long on invective and wobbly on facts, posting articles on his Web log (blog) calling Halpern "deceitful,""unethical,""incredibly stupid" and "a pathological liar" who had misled investors. The author claimed to be Nick Tracy, a London writer who started his one-man "watchdog" Web site, our-street.com, to expose corporate fraud.He put out press releases saying he had filed complaints against Circle with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Halpern was an easy target. He is a cocky former judo champion who posts photos of himself online with the famous (including Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of this magazine). His company is a weird amalgam of fat substitute, anthrax detectors and online mattress sales. Soon he was fielding calls from alarmed investors and assuring them he hadn't been questioned by the SEC. Eerily similar allegations began popping up in anonymous posts on Yahoo, but Yahoo refused Halpern's demand to identify the attackers. "The lawyer for Yahoo basically told me, ‘Ha-ha-ha, you're screwed,'" Halpern says. Meanwhile, his tormentor sent letters about Halpern to Nestlé, the American Stock Exchange, the Food & Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (involved in Circle's anthrax deal).
But it turns out that scribe Nick Tracy of London was, in fact, a former stockbroker in Oregon named Timothy Miles--and Miles himself faces SEC charges that he took part in a pump-and-dumpstock scheme in 2000. He was tried in June and awaits a verdict. No matter:Circle Group stock fell below a dollar in a year of combat with Miles and the anonymous bashers on Yahoo (and after Nestlé dropped Z-Trim). Halpern's stake is down $75 million, and he blames Miles and his acolytes; he has sued for defamation. "Some of these bloggers have just one goal, and that is to do damage. It's evil," he says.
Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat.
"Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality," says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. "The potential for brand damage is really high,"says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft's main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. "There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it's juicy."
Some companies now use blogs as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals. "I'd say 50% to 60% of attacks are sponsored by competitors," says Bruce Fischman, a lawyer in Miami for targets of online abuse. He says he represents a high-tech firm thrashed by blogs that were secretly funded by a rival; the parties are in talks to settle out of court. One blog, Groklaw, exists primarily to bash software maker SCOGroup in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBMcoverage; its origins are a mystery (see box, p. 136).
The online haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, plus a raft of other blog hosts. Google is the largest player; its Blogger.com site attracts 15 million visitors a month, more than each of the Web sites of the New York Times, USAToday and the Washington Post. An upstart, Six Apart in SanFrancisco, owns three blogging services--TypePad, LiveJournal and Movable Type--that together run a strong second to Google.
Google and other services operate with government-sanctioned impunity, protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host. Thus they serve up vitriolic "content" without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate; at times they even sell ads alongside the diatribes. "We don't get involved in adjudicating whether something is libel or slander," says Jason Goldman, a manager at Google's blogging division. In squabbles between anonymous bloggers and victims Google sides with the attackers, refusing to turn over any information unless a judge orders it to open up. "We'll do it if we believe we are required to by law," he says.
Attack blogs are but a sliver of the rapidly expanding blogosphere. A hundred thousand new blogs are created every day, more than one new blog per second, says Technorati, a firm in San Francisco that tracks the content of 20 million active blogs. Some big blogs attract millions of readers. Weblogs Inc., a Santa Monica, Calif. outfit that just got bought by America Online for a reported $25 million, publishes 90 blogs and could bring in $2 million in ad sales this year, says cofounder Jason McCabe Calacanis.
Bash-the-company Web sites emerged in the 1990s; Untied, founded in 1997 to carp at United Airlines, was one of the first. But blogs are more virulent; they spread farther and build on one another's allegations. The first blog is said to have gone up on Dec. 17, 1997 from a techie who wanted to log cool sites on the Web. By 1998 there were 23 known blogs. In 1999 the first tools to automate a site's design came out, making blogging easy for anyone. In 2003 the word "blog" made it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
The combination of massive reach and legal invulnerability makes corporate character assassination easy to carry out. Dry treatises on patent law and trade policy don't drive traffic (or ad sales) for bloggers and hosts; blood sport does. Last year consultant Sara Radicati published a negative report about IBM's Notes e-mail product. That led to organized outrage from bloggers who, it turns out, are consultants who make money installing Notes. She says her firm, the Radicati Group in Palo Alto, Calif., was deluged with obscene phone calls and e-mails, a common element when blogs go negative. "They were trying to disable my business," she says. "It was obscene, vile, abusive, offensive stuff. These are a bunch of sickos."
The anti-Radicati bloggers got an endorsement of sorts from an executive at IBM. Ed Brill, an IBMer who works on Notes marketing and publishes his own blog (edbrill.com), responded on July 23 last year to Radicati's bearish Notes report. He questioned whether she had ties to Microsoft and referred readers to two other blogs with far blunter assertions.
Within days bloggers had posted "investigative" articles "exposing" her as corrupt and unethical, claiming she was a "shill"who took bribes from Microsoft.One blogger said she was doing something shady by operating a group that helps small companies find venture funding. Bloggers linked to one another's sites and posted on Brill's blog and elsewhere, creating an echo chamber in which, through repetition, the scandal began to seem genuine. Six days after the attacks began, a Notes consultant in the U.K. gloated on Brill's blog:"The Radicati Group?Their analysis is now meaningless …. Their name has been blackened, their reputation in tatters."
Radicati fought back by responding on her own Web site, but the smear job hovers online, appearing when you Google her name or start with Brill's mostly diplomatic site and then work your way through its links. One step away is IBM itself, which has a Notes site that once linked into Brill's. That link has since been taken down. Radicati says IBMignored her pleas to stop Brill from linking to the hate sites. IBM says it has nothing to do with Brill's blog.
A week after that flap IBMer Brill fired up the swarm again, issuing a call to arms against research firm Meta Group for similar sins. "Y'all did such a good job on the last report … " his blog entry began. Sure enough, soon Meta was being "investigated" by bloggers and "exposed" as Radicati was. Gartner, which now owns Meta, declined to comment.
No wonder companies now live in fear of blogs. "A blogger can go out and make any statement about anybody, and you can't control it. That's a difficult thing,"says Steven Down, general manager of bike lock maker Kryptonite, owned by Ingersoll-Rand and based in Canton,Mass.
Last year bloggers posted videos showing how to break open a Kryptonite lock using a ballpoint pen.That much was true. But they also spread bogus information--that all Kryptonite models could be cracked with a pen; that it is the only brand with this vulnerability; and that Kryptonite knew about the problem and covered it up.None of these claims is true, but a year later Kryptonite still struggles to set the record straight, while spending millions to replace locks.
Even mighty Microsoft, for all its billions, dares not defy the blogosphere. In April gay bloggers attacked Microsoft over its failure to support a gay-rights bill in Washington State (the company is based near Seattle). "Dear Microsoft, You messed with the wrong faggots,"wrote John Aravosis, publisher of AmericaBlog, which threatened to oppose Microsoft's plans for a big campus expansion unless the company caved in. Microsoft reversed itself two weeks later, saying it supports gay-rights legislation after all. It says pressure from its own employees, not from bloggers, caused the change of heart.
Microsoft's p.r. people have added blog-monitoring to their list of duties. The company also fields its own blog posse. Some 2,000 Microsofties publish individual blogs, adding a Microsoft voice to the town square. The company also treats some bloggers like bona fide journalists, giving Gizmodo.com and Engadget.com interviews with BillGates.
But if blogging is journalism, then some of its practitioners seem to have learned the trade from Jayson Blair. Many repeat things without bothering to check on whether they are true, a penchant political operatives have been quick to exploit. "Campaigns understand that there are some stories that regular reporters won't print. So they'll give those stories to the blogs," says Christian Grantham, a Democratic consultant in Washington who also blogs. He cites the phony John Kerry/secret girlfriend story spread by bloggers in the 2004 primaries. The story was bogus, but no blogger got fired for printing the lie. "It's not like journalism, where your reputation is ruined if you get something wrong. In the blogosphere people just move on. It's scurrilous," Grantham says.
And though they have First Amendment protection and posture as patriotic muckrakers in the solemn pursuit of truth, the blog mob isn't democratic at all. They are inclined to crush dissent with the "delete" key. When consultant Nick Wreden criticized credit card banking giant MBNA on his blog, a reader responded in support of MBNA. Wreden zapped the comment. "I just thought: ‘This has to be a plant,'" he says.
"It almost takes on the feeling of a crusade," says Jeffrey Schneider, a vice president at Walt Disney Co.'s ABCnetwork. "They put out a call to arms:‘We're going to take these guys down, and we won't stop blogging until someone loses their head.'" ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass came under attack from rampaging bloggers last March in covering the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case. She had cited a controversial memo written by a Republican staffer. Right-wing bloggers using such pen names as Right Pundit and Mr. Right (the latter hosted by Google) claimed she had fallen for a fake; the memo was real.
In that case the bloggers slinked away. In the case of a CNN executive they didn't stop until they had claimed a casualty. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, noted at an off-the-record conference in January that journalists had been killed by U.S. troops. He used a touchy word:"targeted." A blogger present, Rony Abovitz, ignored the off-the-record ground rule and posted an account. Other bloggers soon piled on. One created a site solely devoted to the topic, easongate.com.
Jordan instantly and repeatedly denied the assertions, but the blog hordes kept wailing away. Jordan resigned in February, engulfed by a concocted controversy. Blogger Michelle Malkin crowed online, praising nine other bloggers and "legions of smaller" ones in the hunt. She wrote that the mainstream media "calls it a lynch mob. I call it a truth squad" and included a warning:"Cue the Carpenters music: ‘We've OnlyJust Begun.'"
Even some bloggers see the harm they can pose. "Some people in the blogosphere are too smug about free speech. They'll say it's okay if people get slandered or if people make up fake stuff because in the end the truth wins out," says John Hinderaker, a lawyer in Minneapolis, Minn. who helps run a right-wing blog, Power Line, which hounded CNN's Jordan and CBS anchor Dan Rather. "But I don't think that excuses it."
When Hinderaker published an item saying left-wing bloggers should stop assaulting a White House reporter alleged to have worked as a gay prostitute, his blog brethren went on the assault, publishing his phone number at work and prompting a deluge of harassing phone calls and e-mails. "My secretary was crying" because callers kept swearing at her, he says. "Then we started getting calls at the house. My wife wanted to hire a bodyguard."
Google and other carriers shut down purveyors of child porn, spam and viruses, and they help police track down offenders.So why don't they delete material that defames individuals? Why don't they help victims identify their attackers? Because they are protected by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which frees a neutral carrier of Internet content from any liability for anything said online.
"Blogging is still in its infancy. Imposing regulations would create a chilling effect," says Annalee Newitz, until recently a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends anonymous attackers. The anonymous assault has a long tradition in American political discourse, recognized by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995 and in a recent decision by the Delaware Supreme Court refusing to force an Internet service provider to disclose who called a small-town politician inept.
But even the Constitution doesn't give a citizen the right to unjustly call his neighbor a child molester. Google and the like argue they bear no more responsibility for content than a phone company does for slander over its wires. But Google's blog business looks less like a phone company and more like a mix of reality TV and an online magazine. Bloggers provide the fare, and Google maintains it for them free of charge, sometimes selling ads.
Google says ad revenue isn't the point. The real aim is "to let users embrace the Web as a medium of self-expression," a spokesman says. Google lets them run wild. Yet Google edits and censors blog content all the time--to protect its own interests. The company, whose portentous corporate ethos includes the mantra "Don't be evil," snuffs out blogs that engage in "phishing" (tricking people into revealing confidential information) and "spam blogs" that skew Google's search results. Bloggers who sign up for its ad program (Google passes along 79% of sales, on average) must follow firm Google guidelines that limit references to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and even "excessive profanity."
Once blogger attacks begin, victims can resort to libel and defamation lawsuits, but "filing a libel lawsuit, the way you would against a newspaper, is like using 18th-century battlefield tactics to counter guerrilla warfare," says David Potts, a Toronto lawyer who is writing a book on cyberlibel. "You'll accomplish nothing and just get more ridicule." He tells clients to find a third party to bash the bloggers.
Gregory Halpern at Circle Group, in Mundelein, Ill., used this approach against his nemesis, Nick Tracy, a.k.a. Timothy Miles. After the first attack Halpern contacted the blogger's lawyer but got nowhere. He demanded a correction, only to get mocked:Miles posted on his blog an audio file of a perturbed message Halpern had left on his voice mail.
Halpern had better luck, however, when he allied with Gayle Essary, who runs the FinancialWire online news service and had tangled with Miles, too. Halpern dug up details on Miles (his photo and Oregon driver's license; his links to a litany of questionable companies; his claim to be an ordained minister; his Web site that describes a mysterious crystal that contains a message from God) and fed them to Essary. Essary did 15 articles on Miles without citing Halpern as a source, and when Halpern heard from people asking about Miles' allegations against Circle Group, he referred them to FinancialWire, saying it had "exposed this guy a long time ago."
Halpern also used a new law, the Digital MillenniumCopyright Act, which requires hosts to take down copyrighted material used without permission. He confronted Miles' service provider and threatened to sue for copyright infringement and libel; the ISP pulled the plug. But our-street.com emerged days later at a second service. In three months Halpern pursued Miles through nine ISPs, finally giving up and filing a libel suit in state circuit court in Cook County, Ill. in June 2004. He accuses the blogger of orchestrating a short-seller scheme to send Circle stock plunging. Miles insists he never sold short or acted on behalf of short-sellers.
Miles, who says he misrepresented himself as Nick Tracy because "I wanted to be discreet," has abandoned our-street.com and moved from Oregon to Slovenia. He claims he is outside the Illinois court's jurisdiction. The judge disagrees. Miles says he plans to appeal. He has set up a new site, scamspotting.com, and insists he is a bona fide investigative journalist: "I tell the truth, and it's never pretty." This drives Halpern nuts:"It's amazing that an anonymous guy can put out a report full of lies and then be so self-righteous."
After anonymous attacks spread to Yahoo, Halpern moved in court to force Yahoo to reveal who was behind the sniping. In September a state judge in Illinois ordered Yahoo to reveal the names. A lawyer for the secret posters is trying to settle without turning over their names, Halpern says. Yahoo declines to comment on the case, but Halpern argues that Yahoo and other carriers should step up: "They make money selling ads on these message boards, and the controversial material generates the most traffic. So they're benefiting from this garbage. I think they should take responsibility for it."
Halpern has had less luck getting anyone inCongress to listen to his plaint. He says that may change if a few politicians get a taste of what he has gone through. "Wait until the next election rolls around and these bloggers start smearing people who are up for reelection,"Halpern says. "Maybe then things will start to happen."
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1629
Bottom line. Halpern simply isn't credible.
Acs is right here on IHUB. He's somewhat more subdued lately, and he's paying off the SEC disgorgement/fine at something like $100/mo.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8206567
More Cortellazzian BS.
LOL! Exactly. The plan here is to extract cash from greedy fools.
Did you not understand that this fecalith was .75 for a few minutes back when the OS was something like 20MM? It's a meaningless statistic now with close to 4BB shares outstanding.
Has the deal with the Brittons been consummated? The PR only said the company received a signed agreement. It didn't say that any money or rights were exchanged. Cortellazzi has jumped from one hot deal (that never consummates) to another in rapid succession, doing nothing but issuing shares. His releases have no credibility.
Careful, X...
...there are some of Cortellazzi's victims who are ignorant and gullible enough to buy into something like that. LOL!
No, there's oil in many places; but there is ZERO crude oil production in the Garden State. Sorry to impose reality on your fantasy, but here are the facts:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/state/nj.html
A new scam? How exciting.
Oil wells in New Jersey?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!