Tag Archives: state

The sun came up on a different world —Julian Assange

Julian Assange of Wikileaks spoke from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London today (video, text):

The next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend the rights we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark outside the Embassy of Ecuador, and how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin American nation took a stand for justice.

The British government made a stunning mistake in throwing away the worldwide goodwill just gained through the London Olympic Games, by actually beginning to storm a sovereign embassy in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that was observed throughout the Cold War. How could they be so foolish? This man, this reporter and publisher, they think is somehow more dangerous to them than the armed might of the Soviet Union was? This is as if JFK arrested MLK after John Glenn’s first orbital flight (a step which JFK fortunately did not take).

There is something you can do, even when the world is turned upside down:

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Submissions Policy

LAKE welcomes submissions!

Submission Methods

Please send submissions for On the LAKE Front
the blog of LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange,
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    LAKE may choose any comment to promote to a main post.
Feel free to comment on the LAKE facebook page, but we currently only promote blog comments to blog posts.

Submission Format

This is a blog posted in HTML on the web. Submissions should be plain text inline in the body of the email message or blog comment.

What Not to Submit

Our mail stacks are as big as your mail stacks, so help us out by sending us material close to ready to post.

No Word, please, unless it is an official government document.

No PDF unless it is an official government document or a published report.

Convert It

If you do send a non-text format, if at all possible also convert it to plain text and send us that, too. Always send a summary, plus what you think is interesting or important about the document.

You may use HTML markup to indicate emphasis, headers, images, videos, etc.

We like pictures and videos. Please put them on the web and send us links to them.

If you have pictures or videos you don’t know how to get on the web, please send us a note to information@l-a-k-e.org with a request to discuss.

There are no length limits on submissions, but we (and our readers) do get bored with wordiness and repetition.

Submission Content

Content relevant to Lowndes County, Georgia or the surrounding area is preferred.

We especially seek reports on government bodies and other meetings. There are five cities and the county government in Lowndes County, and two school systems plus at least twenty appointed boards, and of course similar organizations in the surrounding area. All of them are of interest. Go, take notes, take pictures, take videos, send us some!

Opinions are good; facts are better. This is a blog, so every post has opinions. But we try to back up opinions with evidence.

If you have documentation, please send a link to it online, or a citation for where to find it, or a description, or the name of someone or some organization that has it, or the document itself. If you send a non-text document, see Convert It. We’re all owls in this together.

Editorial Policy

LAKE reserves complete discretion to select, edit, and annotate submissions, and to delete blog or facebook comments that are spam or personal attacks, or for any other reason whatever.

Comments on the LAKE blog or facebook page are not necessarily endorsed by LAKE, even if we promote them to be main blog posts. Most blog posts by LAKE people are not necessarily endorsed by LAKE, either. Chronic readers will have noted that we don’t even agree among ourselves on a number of issues and often criticize each other. Remember, the purpose of LAKE is transparency and dialog. The only posts that are endorsed by LAKE as an organization are those few that say by someone “for LAKE”.

Remember LAKE’s motto:

Citizen dialog for transparent process
Comments and posts on this blog are part of that process.

We look forward to your comments and reports!

About On the LAKE Front

LAKE welcomes your submissions to its blog,
On the LAKE Front!

LAKE is the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange. Our motto:

Citizen dialog for transparent process

LAKE is just curious citizens; a small core group and a larger loosely connected group of associates. We are the media, and you can be, too!

See our submissions policy.

LAKE as a news medium

We are the media, and you can be, too!

According to the OPEN Government Act of 2007:

[T]he term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.
It’s pretty obvious LAKE qualifies as a news medium with its blog, On the LAKE Front, as well as its web pages and its facebook page.

Here is the bill’s full text. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy and 17 others, ranging from Sen. Barack Obama to Sen. Johnny Isakson. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush 31 December 2007.

Of course that’s really just a detail, having to do with the Wikileaks comparison.

Most of what LAKE does has more to do with Georgia law, about open records requests and this passage, O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1-c.:

“Visual, sound, and visual and sound recording during open meetings shall be permitted.”

None of that requires a news medium. Any citizen can file open records requests or record public meetings. Remember, you are the media!

-jsq for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.” –Julian Assange

Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let’s go there. Julian Assange, like Wendell Berry, links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement. He then says:
“For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state. The state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness. Surely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.”

LAKE’s motto is:

Citizen dialog for transparent process
That makes Assange’s proposition
“the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state”
sound very familiar to us.

Locally it’s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring their chartered responsibilities to the public good and the general welfare. Well, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade, but that’s another story.

Assange also adds: Continue reading