KONY 2012

[wixard]

the thing that annoys me about it though is that kony is not in uganda, the documentary doesn't really educate about the issue
it's had huge press over the years so it's not as if it was unreported before. it's just easy to get swept up in a cause, and it's great that people want to take action but it'd be nice for it to be informed action with actual real and grounded aims and not just a cathartic statement that makes people feel as if they've 'done their bit'

how many people will actually get the packs?

[Grig]

Firstly, what I do approve of is this low down approach of voluntary charity shown in the video, that often does make a difference.

I don't quite understand this 'we need stop Kony'. The man is terrible, as are all the other guerilla leaders and troops across Africa which is plagued by divides across each and every country. The internal or even external problems of Uganda and it's neighbours are not the problem of the United States or of the western world in general. I do apologise for shooting it down but the video is very idealistic and the same has been said for decades if not hundreds of years of solving the problems of Africa, and today we are no closer to that than when we went into Africa, it's getting progressively worse. The age of imperialism is over, only Africa can solve Africas' problems. In terms of the U.S. troops going into Uganda which I recall hearing of back in the autumn, again it seems like a helpful thing to do, but it almost always backfires. The mission ought to be ended immediately.

It is very easy to sit behind a computer screen and advocate sending the military to save people on the other side of the world, especially when you're not in the military.

I have researched topics on Sudan and Uganda and did papers. The divides come from a far more complex issue of things such as Slave raiding in the 19th century. To say divides were all caused by imperialism will be wrong.

However, that said, I do agree with you. Africa needs to solve their own problems. The state of South Sudan had been created last year and it is up to them and Khartoum to solve their differences over oil. Of course many countries continue to fund such wars and IT IS external intervention that lets wars go on for such a prolonged time.

Internally, there is a preconceived notion that the ruling elite impose their laws on the whole country, even though there are massive disparities in religion and what not.

Also, this whole Kony thing is a bit pathetic. They're are SO MANY guerilla leaders out there (might as well make a documentary to get them all captures :S) and they fight because they often have no choice but to do so. Their defending their freedoms and liberty and simply want greater autonomy.

It's a conflict that cannot be resolved by one leader's capture and clearly most people on here and who are spreading the video don't know the very complex backgrounds of civil conflicts across the region.

[Nemo]

If you've got time to watch the 30 min video, I suggest reading up exactly what they're doing with your money before you donate, because it has most certainly put me off.

This is what sort of sparked it all which is not good. The video itself is a good piece of emotional porn but that's about it. It's honestly NOT worth the 30 minutes when you find out somethings about the organization that is doing this [Invisible Children]. First of all, the guy who made that film get's paid $90,000 a year. That's for him and his family. This does not include him paying costs for film equipment, video editting software, nor does it cover travel or accomodations whilst in anywhere else. Those are all covered under the ludicrous budgets that the Invisible Children organization actually deal with. Let's go to that now. Here are some expenses from CharityNavigator.:

Compensation of Leaders | % of Compensation relative to amount of money made by IC | Title

• $88,241 | 0.99% | Ben Keesey - CEO
• $89,669 | 1.00% | Jason Russell - Co-Founder/Filmmaker
• $84,377 | 0.94% | Laren Poole - Co-Founder/Filmmaker

Revenue

• Total Contributions: $10,334,060
• Program Service Revenue: $3,423,351
• Total Primary Revenue: $13,757,411
• Other Revenue $7,769
• TOTAL REVENUE: $13,765,180

Expenses

• Program Expenses: $7,163,384
• Administrative Expenses: $1,444,570
• Fundraising Expenses: $286,678
• TOTAL FUNCTIONAL EXPENSES: $8,894,632

Payments to Affiliates $0 Excess (Or deficit) for the year: $4,870,548
Net Assets $6,584,811
As if that isn't bad enough, they've refused to Co-operate with the Better Business Bureau, Their transparancy rating is fairly low on Charity Navigator, and allegations of fraud. HuffingtonPost has an article on it here.

Besides, they make a fairly large point about sending money to the Ugandan Military. This is a big no no for a couple of reasons. First of all, Kony isn't even in Uganda. Funding a military that has no real authority over another country to LOOK in other countries, is a moronic idea to begin with. Secondly, the Ugandan military is already using this as an excuse to enter other countries and exploit resources from surrouding areas. The Government of Uganda is full of criminals that are worse than Kony himself. Not to mention the bloody PRESIDENT of Uganda is responsible for millions of deaths. Then you've got allegations coming out that Kony is already dead. The LRA (Konys ragtag bunch of ********) isn't that large, or all that active.

The worst thing about Invisible Children (In my opinion) is that they lobbies for DIRECT MILITARY INTERVENTION IN AFRICA. After all of the terrorist hunts in the Middle East, and having troops stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, don't you think that the people would have learned by now that having troops in another country to hunt one ******* isn't exactly the best idea? Especially when some of the Republicans believe that invading Iran is a fairly good idea at the moment. There are SERIOUS issues with this group, issues that people are overlooking. I will admit that at first I was already on Twitter and ready to ***** at people about the injustice that's being served in other countries and then I decided to look into the organization. The information is there, and willing, but people are fearful to even look. Fearful, lazy, or just swept up by the movement. Injustice exists in the world. It is damn stupid, and it sucks ass, but that's the nature of this planet at the moment. Humanity, since rising from the primordial ooze, has killed people over far less than anything you could imagine. Then there's the fact that if Kony is alive, and the ICC, or International Criminals Court, manages to put him on trial, what's it going to achieve? Numerous war criminals have stood trial before the ICC. This isn't a game of chess. You don't topple a pawn and move on. The pawns replicate. It's like fighting a hydra. If you slice off one head, more are going to pop up in it's place. You remove one player, and 10 others will appear. Hell, there's a case to be made that awareness driven ngos perpetuate the current state of afafairs and are an intergral part of the current system of global unfairness. They ovver placebos for guilty consciences and as such, they don't change anything. If you think of large entites such as Global Corporations, conglomorates and powerful nation states that capitalize on injustice, corruption and disorganization and exploit the poor for their resources and manpower, the best thing that could happen to them are programs such as this. There's a lot of reasons why Invisible Children has a good idea of what they're doing, but FAR too much on the opposite sides of the scales to tip myself (and no doubt others) into not bothering with this group and it's practices.

[-:Undertaker:-]

This echo's something in the video: There's no reason for them to go in because its not going to financially effect them, it isn't a risk to them etc.

In my opinion the governments need to stop thinking this way - so what if the terrorist leader isn't a threat to the US that doesn't mean he's right for what he is doing and who's to say if we don't stop him now he won't try and use his terrorism in other countries.

We are trillions in the red as is the United States, even if we wanted to - we can't.

Adolf Hitler may have started on smaller countries but he spread worse and by then we'd let him get away with stuff out of fear and then it was too late.

Adolf Hitler also used the same excuse to justify preemptive strikes on other nations, he claimed, as many do today, that we need to go into these nations 'before they become a threat to us'. No threat exists here, although I will add - if we go into central Africa a threat will appear because people simply do not like other nations meddling in their affairs. As David Starkey said on Question Time last week, they always mistake liberators for conquerers (see Imperial War Graves being smashed in Libya last week).

the thing that annoys me about it though is that kony is not in uganda, the documentary doesn't really educate about the issue
it's had huge press over the years so it's not as if it was unreported before. it's just easy to get swept up in a cause, and it's great that people want to take action but it'd be nice for it to be informed action with actual real and grounded aims and not just a cathartic statement that makes people feel as if they've 'done their bit'

how many people will actually get the packs?

Indeed, and if we go into Uganda as many here advocate - will these people be signing up?

I have researched topics on Sudan and Uganda and did papers. The divides come from a far more complex issue of things such as Slave raiding in the 19th century. To say divides were all caused by imperialism will be wrong.

Oh no i'm not saying imperialism caused it at all, indeed I think that imperialism (British in particular) will be seen as the golden age of Africa - but the age of imperialism is over and we say it ourselves.

These countries wanted independence, let them have it.

[beth]

i'm kinda with tara, while i agree that this stuff is bad and needs to be stopped, i don't feel i know enough about the issues to be pasting it all over wherever. i've been aware of invisible children for a while through [@]@PaintYourTarget[/@] though i don't think he uses this anymore, ANYWAY i knew about invisible children through lee and they do do amazing work.

however, i'm gonna claim to be some massive social activist because i've seen a documentary on tumblr. i saw a documentary about car lovers on channel5 last month, didn't really get me impassioned about cars.

bottom line is, i just don't think i know enough to be comfortable preaching it as though it's a holy right or something.

[Richie]

This seems to be going viral, very interesting but sad.

Edited by Glitzen (Trialist Forum Moderator): Threads Merged. Please make sure you check if there is already a thread on the subject before posting, thank you!

[beth]

http://www.habboxforum.com/showthrea...9&goto=newpost

booom.

[Richie]

my bad lol move to spam or merge sum1 pls

[Vause]

the thing that annoys me about it though is that kony is not in uganda, the documentary doesn't really educate about the issue
it's had huge press over the years so it's not as if it was unreported before. it's just easy to get swept up in a cause, and it's great that people want to take action but it'd be nice for it to be informed action with actual real and grounded aims and not just a cathartic statement that makes people feel as if they've 'done their bit'

how many people will actually get the packs?

I was going to order one.. then i checked and they're like $30. (so like, £20?) I guess the money side to this project is off putting for many. Okay they need donations, and I am all up for being hands on and spreading the word, but they ask for so much money and it seems too much. However, it did make me open my eyes and see the type of world we live in, something needs to be done.. big time

[beth]

just posting this as it's doing the rounds around tumblr and is very interesting:

"You do not need to ask my permission to share this. Please link it widely. For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.
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’m not alone.
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."