I guess we have to have a Kony 2012 thread...

[TLAM Strike]

If you don't know what I'm talking about:

[Platapus]

No way am I going to watch a 29 minute you tube video. Can you give us a clue about what it is about?

Kony is a baddie, but the world is full of baddies.

So international law and the international criminal court.
Slight problem there, some of the countries havn't signed and other countries havn't ratified, so on this link you can make your donation to an organisation in a country that hasn't ratified the paperwork so they can go looking for someone in a country that hasn't signed the papers.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Platapus

No way am I going to watch a 29 minute you tube video. Can you give us a clue about what it is about?

Here is a news report on it:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/ko...183106657.html

[Oberon]

Dammit, thought we'd get away with it...ah well, I have an image ready for the occasion:

[CaptainMattJ.]

Joseph Kony is nothing. He is but one among the over saturated list of tyrannical psychopaths that rule poverty-stricken Africa, the middle east, and Asia.

And its sad to realize that this does not surprise me. The fact is that this goes on all over Africa, with many "Konys" and that this man is nothing special. Yes, it sad. But honestly, this whole viral phase is just that: a phase. People will forget about it sooon enough, it will slip from people's thoughts and life will go on just as it always has. This does not directly( or indirectly) affect most anyone here in our more established countries. And therefore they have little concern for it. This is just a miniature slice of what goes on in Africa. People know and have known for decades exactly what goes on. This is just one of those ridiculous internet phases where some people can say they give a dam, when in reality they dont. Which itself is kind of ridiculous to see.

What do they hope to accomplish? Sure, people are more informed of this particular dictator. But the majority of people in uganda dont have weapons, while this man does. Therefore the only way to remove him is to send in troops in another extremely expensive war that wont do ANYTHING. If he gets taken down, another Kony will rise up just as fast. The poverty is so unimaginably high that thousands of Joseph Konys will step up in absolutely no time at all, replacing him like batteries in a remote control, making the whole effort futile. THe reality is that unless Africa begans to actually build infrastructure and reduce poverty, nothing will change.

Its all just depressing. Killing this man will not even dent the power structure in Africa. Yet he needs to die for his crimes. A never ending loop. The only way to make change is to invest in building it up, which no major country is willing (or able) to do.

[Oberon]

What I want to know is, are his followers called 'Kronies'?


I'll get my coat...

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Dammit, thought we'd get away with it...ah well

Sorry we talked about it in class today so I had to bring it up.

I bought that up sort of in our discussion. I pointed out that basically the whole video is encouraging anti-war leftist hippies to ask their members of congress to sent US troops in to a war. I wondered how many would support it if instead of donating a couple dollars and putting up a poster it asked them to put on a uniform and go in to the jungle and kill this SOB.

One girl objected saying they are not "troops" but "advisers". I corrected her that "advisers" means the Army Green Berets and the professor educated her about the experiences of US advisers in another jungle not so long ago.

I mentioned these anti-war leftist hippies don't have any idea what it means to actually go out and "bring justice" to someone like this. They are not going to slap some cuffs on him and read Miranda. Folks like the "Dark Forces" of the CIA are going to have to go out and do some nasty things to track him down then the Ugandan army backed up by our guys are going to fight their way through those 30,000 child soldiers and "terminate with extreme prejudice".

I also wondered how the Afghan war would be "sold" if portrayed like this. Considering just some of the nastiness that Taliban have done, and the focus on the unjust nature of our side portrayed by some who support this 2012 movement.

[Torplexed]

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don't realize they're likely supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. Kony himself hasn't been active in Uganda proper for years.

Plus, the whole thing smacks of the "White Man's Burden" to save Africa from itself. Which means it'll come off as patronizing behavior from the former colonial overlords there.

Sorry we talked about it in class today so I had to bring it up.

Must be a big thing, we talked about it at dinner yesterday as one of the daughters had talked about it in class during the day.

I also wondered how the Afghan war would be "sold" if portrayed like this.

It was sold in pretty much the same manner via a different medium, the problems came when some skimping was done on the operation, some dodgy allies became public knowledge and some very stupid and/or illegal actions occured.
One small feature of note, they do specify that they in no way are supporting the local government or endorsing its abysmal human rights record or its military practices....though how that works in practice is another matter.

[Tchocky]

Tchocky, is that set in tora bora?

[Geno_Mariner]

There's been some critics about this whole 'Invisible Children' charity thing about where they actually use their fundraiser money and such. Dunno what to believe. But I'm wondering why this whole Kony thing's come up now? If he's been around for years, why are they making this a big deal -now-?

[Oberon]

Well, it's all down to energy. Both the US and China need oil reserves. The Middle East has been mapped to death and will probably run out of oil before the end of the century, and descend into chaos. So the big two are looking towards the relatively untapped reserves in Africa whilst Russia looks to the Arctic.
China got the head start on the US because it doesn't need to worry about the moral concerns of supplying dubious nations with guns, Zimbabwe for example, and Sudan.

Bremner, Bird and Fortune described it best as 'Commie Relief':


So, with China making major in-roads into the exploitable regions of Africa, the US has to start doing the same. However it can't just give away guns to any newcomer, not since the whole upset of Afghanistan, so it has to do it politically. In this case, it's Uganda and the Lords Resistance Army.
Uganda has had a lot of problems with the LRA for some time now and Obama has walked across the Atlantic to help train the Ugandan army to deal with it. A lovely humanitarian gesture? Perhaps, but when one factors in the 2007 discovery of a rather large sector of oil around Lake Albert, of which exploitation is hard to do because of clashes with the DRC and other forces in the area...so, why not make the Ugandan army more capable, and claim a good favour in the area...one which it will be easy for the Ugandan government to repay with good rates on the oil that has been discovered.

This sort of thing will continue into the future IMHO, a sort of second 'Scramble for Africa' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa) as the world looks around for new reserves as the traditional suppliers begin to dry up. It's probably the primary reason behind the current Falklands/Malvinas tensions, the good old Black Gold.

Global politics revolves around resources and the acquisition of enough of them to keep the power-bases content, be it through negotiation or the good old big stick.

[steve_the_slim]

http://purple-bones.tumblr.com/post/...0571/kony-2012

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.
KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’mnotalone.
Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 31% went to their charity program (page 6)*. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.
Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates 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.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”
Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children funds this military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re helping fund the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on funding ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.
If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.
~ Grant Oyston, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com
Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.
*For context, 31% is bad. By contrast, Direct Relief reports 98.8% of its funding goes to programming. American Red Cross reports 92.1% to programming. UNICEF USA is at 90.3%. Invisible Children reports that 80.5% of their funding goes to programming, while I report 31% based on their FY11 fiscal reports, because other NGOs would count film-making as fundraising expenses, not programming expenses.