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Fireside Chat

 
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Maurice Ali



Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 7655
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 10:11 pm    Post subject: Fireside Chat Reply with quote

Fireside Chat


By Maurice Ali, Journalist




Hello and welcome. I would just like to take a moment and clear up any misconceptions many of you may have about this venue and why we are here. Fortressoffreedom.com is a free speech venue and advocacy organization. We provide a voice to anyone who wishes to be heard but does not have the means to do so. We endeavor to stay objective and impartial and fair to any side of an issue - We are just a tool for others to use.

The first customer of ours was a U.S. soldier fresh out of Iraq who had trouble hosting his photos. I answered his request and the photos ended up here at this site. As stated in our report entitled "Cyber Wars", an unseen series of events lead to his photos being viewed in the U.S. House Of Representatives. I will never forget the moment when I found out who took an interest in those photos and the direct navigation in our site to get them (they already knew where they were). At that moment, our organization did what we proclaimed to do; we gave that soldier a voice and quite possibly brought that voice to his supreme commander who just happened to be answering a lot of tough questions that day. That day we hit a home run that cleared the fence and landed in the second story deck!

We had massive amounts of traffic, good, bad, etc.. With all that attention; someone decided to mess with my computers and one person apparently hacked into our server and left a little message for me (cute message and thanks for the heads up - it was not from a malevolent hacker). I spent the last two weeks getting things back to normal (our systems are even more secure and robust) and only now can I turn my attention to the things we used to do before all the commotion.

At the present time things are fairly quiet around here. The prison scandal that we got involved in has now become old news and the search engine hits have finally died down. One of the casualties of all this activity has been the reluctance of many regulars to visit our venue through fear of being "tagged" or other such concerns. Let me alleviate these concerns by saying that this site is safe and free of any spyware, malware, etc.. Even the agencies that took an interest in us have been gone for the last week and a half. I strongly suspect this "surveillance" was more to do with that soldier and concerns about whether any more of his hundreds of photos and videos, would show up; and not about us and the goings on of this organization. We are very much out from under the microscope and we are getting things back to where they used to be a few weeks ago.

I will spend next week almost exclusively on getting this web site and organization back on track. First up will be the audio commercial I hope to have on the air next week, should be an exciting moment! I also intend to have talks with all our directors and members about improving how we do things and the directions we have taken. At the end of that week we should have started another chapter in the life of our organization.

Some would tell me that I should not have been so open about what was going on at our little venue, that it was destructive to the growth of the site. Yes, it was destructive to be completely transparent, but it could not be any other way. People who deal with us have to know that we will not play games with the truth. This is not a popularity contest; we do not need ratings to survive. We have a constitution and a purpose, and this site and organization are expendable to the pursuit of that goal. The "Iraq photos incident" was a test of our resolve and we stood our ground and reaped the rewards. We use and value the rights founding fathers in all democracies gave their citizens. We demonstrate to our youth that they have the freedom to speak their mind and think their own thoughts. We may come across as brash, rude and obstinate, but in the end our ends justify those means. Only right is right. Take care.
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