Kony 2012

Something all of you must watch. A movement to bring a war criminal to justice. Please watch the video and help.

I watched the video today with my family and I'm glad you've posted a thread on this (I was about to and then I saw yours). Everyone should watch the video, it's not partisan and encourages everyone from either side to join the fight in bringing the worlds worst criminal (according to the international court) to justice.

Prerequisite for anyone posting about this video in this thread:

Khayembii Communique said:

Prerequisite for anyone posting about this video in this thread:

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Hello, my fellow redditor?

The more you know:

Michael Deibert: The Problem With Invisible Children's "Kony 2012"

Uganda News - Breaking World Uganda News - The New York Times

Child Sacrifice in Uganda: Witch Doctors May Spread Belief - ABC News

The worst form of human trafficking | Washington Times Communities

Kony's been pretty much silent since 2006. Some of the LRA has been moderately active, but nobody can ascertain that Kony is involved in their actions. I think we need to focus on other issues. Capturing this man doesn't seem like it'll solve the problems in Uganda.

:shrug:

In November 2011, a Foreign Affairs article reproached Invisible Children and some of its partner organizations for "manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA's use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony -- a brutal man, to be sure -- as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.”[32]

One of Invisible Children’s partner organizations addressed this blanket accusation as a "serious charge...published with no accompanying substantiation."[33]

Some have taken issue with the branding of Invisible Children's awareness campaigns, including Chris Blattman, a policy and development expert.[34]

Charity Navigator, a non-profit organization dedicated to "intelligent giving"[35] gave Invisible Children three out of four stars and a rating of 51.52 out of a possible score of 70. [36] Charity Navigator currently ranks Invisible Children two stars for accountability and transparency (primarily for not having their financial statements audited by an independent committee), and four stars financially.[37]

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) noted in its report: "[Invisible Children] did not provide requested information. As a result, the Better Business Bureau cannot determine if it meets standards."[38] The BBB further noted that, "Despite written BBB Wise Giving Alliance requests in the past year, this organization either has not responded to Alliance requests for information or has declined to be evaluated in relation to the Alliance’s Standards for Charity Accountability."[39]

Invisible Children's financial reports reveal that the organization's three filmmakers and co-founders received a combined pay of $262,287 for the fiscal year ending June 2011. This comprises 2.93% of IC's expenses.[40] In addition, Invisible Children holds the following assets: computer equipment ($751,000), transportation equipment ($288,762), video and camera equipment ($177,769), and furniture and fixtures ($45,361). During the course of the fiscal year, Invisible Children spent roughly $8.9 million, of which $2.8 million was spent directly on projects in central Africa. Other major expenses included salaries, transportation, and production costs for films. [41]

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Invisible Children Inc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have a soft spot for kids, so anyone that promotes awareness I will not put down!

I will say I wish the video was shorter. I had seen Kony in several FB status updates and didn't have a clue what it was. I played the you tube clip on my iphone and realized it was 30min long. I didn't have time to watch it so I just googled to get the info.

I have a soft spot for kids

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Then you should know that Invisible Children promotes military intervention on the part of the Ugandan Army, which is notorious for the rape of women and murder of children.

Here are some relevant links that people should read before jumping on this bandwagon:

Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) - By Michael Wilkerson | FP Passport

Visible children | Chris Blattman

Kony 2012: Why I’m Opposed To The Campaign | Life | Sabotage Times

I wish that people would actually do some research into topics like these before mindlessly jumping on a bandwagon.

EDIT: Please, we need to stop the slacktivism

The situation is a helluva lot more complicated than IC makes it out to be. The LRA probably only has a few hundred fighters, who do still cause significant problems, but they are no longer in Uganda. They have been pushed out of the country and are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. A far greater threat to the Ugandan people is the Ugandan government. Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for 25 years, leads a government that imprisons homosexuals, has violently crushed dissent, not quashed a large child sex trade, and like Kony employs an army that routinely rapes women and children. Sure, raise awareness about the sonofabitch, but don't keep facts from getting in the way of your feel-good campaigning.

To be quite honest, while a very noble cause, I do not support Kony 2012. The group behind it is corrupt, working with Uganda, which itself is corrupt, and only using about 30% of donated money to actually help. I support the aims, but not Invisible Children. I hope you all understand, I was very quick to post this, now that I know more about Invisible Children, I will still strive for the goals of the campaign, but not through Invisible Children.

At school, everyone is talking about it. I look at it more as the "hey I gave someone money to help them out and now I feel better about myself" kind of feeling that people are having. It is amazing how this has exploded in the past few days. Video has been up for like 4 days and it has more than 30 million views.

From my perspective, I think the real story in this is how much of a following IC built up. It just goes to show how easily you can manipulate people's emotions to get them to support your "cause." I'm certainly not against the idea of capturing Joseph Kony, but as has been mentioned many times before in this thread, IC is purposefully misguiding people. That's a really big problem, and there aren't enough people to point out the problems with this moral crusade against Kony.

It honestly scares me that people can be so easily manipulated.

If I click "like" on facebook, does that mean I'm helping?

Truly awful, but hasn't Africa been plagued with this sort of thing for hundreds of years?

This is hardly a new development.

My kids have been posting this stuff on facebook.

American said:

My kids have been posting this stuff on facebook.

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I over heard my 11 year old son briefing his mum 'all about Kony' so it looks to have hit the spot with the kids, never a bad thing...

Paul

Some might think that a social awareness project would be a natural for the Guardian's support. Not necessarily this one.

" ...With its slick Hollywood production values, the film has been an almost instant viral success, dominating Twitter worldwide and having one of the fastest ever take-offs on You Tube. The hashtag #stopkony has had hundreds of thousands of tweets, and millions of people now know something about Uganda and what is happening to children there. Support for the campaign to end the conflict in the country this year is spreading.

...

But it has also attracted criticism: there are questions about the charity's funding, its targeting of US leaders instead of African leaders to instigate change, and accusations that it is failing to criticise the Ugandan government, with its poor human rights record ... "

Kony 2012: what's the real story? | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Its a nicely put together viral scam.

80% goes to the cause, 17% goes towards administration and 3% is used for fund raising. That's about normal as far as legit charities goes, hey?

Or maybe not. From the Guardian link:


" ...So far the organisation has released 11 films and run film tours across the US and other countries to raise awareness. In Uganda, it has given scholarships to 750 children, and helped to re-build schools there and in centralo Africa. The organisation's accounts show it's a cash rich operation, which more than tripled its income in 2011, with more than two thirds of its money coming from "general donations".

The accounts suggest nearly 25% of its $8.8m income last year was spent on travel and film-making with only around 30% going toward programes on the ground. The great majority of the money raised has been spent in the US. $1.7 million went on US employee salaries, $357,000 in film costs, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in "professional services" - thought to be Washington lobbyists - and $1.07 million in travel expenses . Nearly $400,000 was spent on office rent in San Diego... "

Erod said:

Truly awful, but hasn't Africa been plagued with this sort of thing for hundreds of years?

This is hardly a new development.

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No, it has not been "hundreds of years," rather it has only been in recent times that things of this nature have occurred.

In a way, maybe this could be made into a great thing. We help find some warlord with no state to go to war with or have reaponsibility for after, and do away with him, then pat ourselves on the back for stopping the worlds most vile person. I can almost hear the chants of "USA!" now.

Never mind replacing the war on drugs so that American consumers stop sponsoring extreme levels of bloodshed south of our border (and within it) with sensible policy. Never mind focusing on American consumers sponsoring radical Islam and its disgusting effects by consuming so much oil. Never mind America focusing on withdrawal from the conflicts we are currently engaged in. Never mind the fact that none of the countries the LRA operates in is one our military should advise in the business of killing. Never mind that fighting a children's army will mean, potentially, our advisers examining the most effective ways of killing children.

Never mind that this group seems to have focused on policymakers in the USA to act, whereas the AFRICAN UNION seems to be markedly absent from the lobbying campaign (or maybe the au has been trying for years to end a conflict that is much more complicated than it seems to us going in. Wouldn't that be a shocker.)

Sorry if I sound preachy, but I've been quite sickened by seeing some of my fellow liberal friends supporting greater American military intervention. Like darfur, years passed before anyone took notice to atrocities, but a snap judgement after a 30 minute video literally makes my stomach turn.

Uganda is the "lesser of two evils" in this situation. Sort of like Stalin in WWII, I suppose. Or Ngo Dinh Diem. Not that I'm not
opposed to helping the corrupt regime.

Here are a few interesting quotes from IC:

[we] do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army

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[The Ugandan Army is] more organized and better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries (DRC, South Sudan, CAR) to track down Joseph Kony

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There is a huge problem with political corruption in Africa. If we had the purity to say we will not partner with anyone corrupt, we couldn’t partner with anyone.

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A bad part of the vid, for me, was the claim of 30,000 child soldiers in the LRA, when in reality the number is only in the hundreds.

The DRC uses thousands of child soldiers in its army. Even the Ugandan government uses small amounts of children in defense forces. And, as mentioned before, homosexuality is an offense punishable by imprisonment (and formerly death) in Uganda. There have been reports of torture of suspected LRA members by the government. I think if we do go after Kony, we'll have to rethink our alliance.

Mr. Invisible said:

No, it has not been "hundreds of years," rather it has only been in recent times that things of this nature have occurred.

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Tribal warfare and groups like this have existed in Africa throughout history. The internecine warfare btween tribes and different factions has been the only persistant factor in Sub-Saharah Africa throughout history. Many of the slaves brought west were sold to the Europeans by tribes that had captured them in wars between factions just like the one in the video. Just because they now use guns instead of spears and clubs doesn't change the underlying fact that some of the people there have been doing this all along. Instead of killing most of them and enslaving some, it was more profitable to sell them. Some tribes in Sub-Saharahan Africa still openly practice and support slavery. This sort of thing was going on long before any African ever saw a European and will continue to do so unless the necessary actions are taken. Most of the governments there are just as bad as these "Rebel" groups and tribes because many of the governments are made up of a tribe that was able to sieze power from it's rivals and continue to oppress those rivals. Even the most stable areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, like South Africa still have problems with intertribal violence. The fact that in South Africa, the rival tribes there immediately took to slaughtering each other instead of their white oppressors after the fall of the apartheid government is a very telling fact about Sub-Saharan Africa.

This group is advocating US support for an exiting regime that is fundamentally no better than the people we are supposed to be helping fight. The US aided and supported similar types of governments throughout the cold war, Iran, South Vietnam, Panama, The Philippines, Pakistan, Cuba, and many many others. Is there a single one of them whose people are cooperative and supportive of the US today? Are the peoples of any of them even better off after the support that US gave during those regimes? South Korea is perhaps the only example where we at one time support a dictator and then seen it transition to more democratic, less oppressive forms of government without them either turning enemy or kicking us out and that is probably only because their survival hinges on US support.

The US is not ready to do what is really necessary and the world community certainly would not be supportive of the US doing it. We tried limited, neutral actions in Somalia, look what that got us.

While the US is certainly very good at initial military actions, we have continuously failed after taking those actions. The US public also has shown repeatedly that it is unable to sustain the political will for the time periods that would be necessary to make any real changes. We failed in Vietnam. We failed in Iraq. We failed in Afghanistan. While the US is militarily strong, it has been, in recent history, notoriously fickle politically. Unless we develope the tools and structure necessary to be sucessful after initial military action and unless we are politically willing to hold course for the longterm, we shoud stay the hell out of it.

I fully support helping the people there and ending this continuing cycle of violence and oppression, but I cannot support us helping yet another tin-pot oppressive dictatorship to do it.