Kony 2012

[JamieMilne 489]

Spreading the word. Wouldn't normally do it and I was sceptical at first before viewing the video. But it really is quite a powerful documentary. Take the time to view it. Share the word on Facebook etc.

Joseph Kony is known as the World's Worst War Criminal. But no one knows that. Yet.

If you haven't already, please take 20 minutes and watch the video: http://vimeo.com/37119711 and read about it at http://www.kony2012.com

For 26 years, Kony has been abducting children and turning them into child soldiers and/or sex slaves. He is listed as #1 on the ICC's 'World's Worst War Criminals', and late last year the US government deployed 100 military advisors on a 'time-limited' mission to help the Ugandan army track him down. IF KONY ISN'T CAPTURED THIS YEAR, THEY WON'T GET ANOTHER CHANCE.

We need to make Kony so famous he becomes a household name, like Gaddafi or Beyoncé. We need to let the US government know that this MATTERS to us, and that it's a worthwhile cause. Stop at nothing.

On April 20th 2012, the USA and other countries around the world are joining Invisible Children (http://www.invisiblechildren.com/) to make Kony famous by putting up red KONY 2012 posters, wearing red KONY 2012 tshirts and stickers. Our goal is to cover the night on 20th April with KONY's name on a sea of red, document this action, and send it to Invisible Children so the world will see that we are demanding justice.

Don't forget to pledge online at http://www.kony2012.com. If you want, you can order an Action Kit (http://store.invisiblechildren.com/kony-kit.html).

WE'RE NOT ASKING FOR MONEY. We're asking for only 20 minutes of your day to watch the documentary, and if it stirs you, to join our night sweep on April 20th. If you're not convinced by this cause, then you're free to move on, but PLEASE PASS IT ON to your friends. They might want to help.

Where you live shouldn't determine whether you live.

Thanks for your support.

Arrest Kony.

If the world knows who Joseph Kony is, it will unite to stop him. It starts here!

[Massacre 7646]

We need to make Kony so famous he becomes a household name, like Gaddafi or Beyoncé.

'Single Ladies' is annoying as shit, but I don't know if it counts as a war crime.

[ConQueSteD 552]

@Massacre he's referring to having his name as big as a celebrities name, although you could almost count single ladies as a crime against humanity.

OT: I think Hitler is the worlds worst war criminal, just saying. It also helps if you post the original video instead of the duplicate, they still both make an impact but the youtube video is easier to share and pass along.

[JamieMilne 489]

Yeah I was just about to say that I would count 'Single Ladies' as a crime against humanity lol.

[Massacre 7646]

@Massacre he's referring to having his name as big as a celebrities name.

I'm surprised that you, of all people, wouldn't have gotten that I was joking.

Also, I'm not on any sort of social networking sites, but if there are images of horrible third-world violence, I'll take 20 minutes out of my day to watch that video.

Edit: Wait, 30 minutes? Fuck.

[ConQueSteD 552]

@Massacre he's referring to having his name as big as a celebrities name.

I'm surprised that you, of all people, wouldn't have gotten that I was joking.

I knew you weren't serious because you never are, I figured I would be the one to point it before somebody else did. Either way Single ladies is a shit song that shouldn't ever been made.

[Guest Marney1]

I could think of worse war criminals. And they're American.

[Psy 350]

I don't see the problem with creating child soldiers. From my experience, once you kill them a few times they have a hissy fit and start screaming down their microphone...

Also: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/qlc3u/invisible_children_stop_kony/c3yil0i

[DuffMan 266]

If the US Government is the only one that needs to hear about it, putting a poster up in my back garden isn't going to do much.

[Handsome B Wonderful 331]

After 26 years, I think it's a bit late for people to pretend to care now. And considering Idi Amin was never brought to justice, I can't see anything being done about Kony. There are so many cunt bags running around Africa doing shit, and they will never be caught. They are kind of like reverse Pokemon.

This is only an issue because some douche decided to "think of the children". Yeah, stickers and shirts will fix this.

[Guest Marney1]

Anyone who gives to charity is stupid anyway.

1. It's usually just a tax dodge for the rich.
   
2. Charity begins at home.
   

[ViceMan 1380]

Joseph Kony is known as the World's Worst War Criminal. But no one knows that. Yet.

Sounds like a great film, when's it released?

[Icecoldbagey 35]

I love how everyone has started to care about this now.... : /

[Guest Marney1]

I love how everyone has started to care about this now.... : /

I haven't even read it.

[Handsome B Wonderful 331]

http://theeducatedfi.../we-got-trouble

You do not need to ask my permission to share this. Please link it widely.

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, [email protected]

Grant Oyston

is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

*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.

That dude brings up some valid points. Giving money to an army with a track record of raping and looting is SMART and the right thing to do.

Also, who cares if Kony has child bodyguards? Just shoot the fuckers. It's no different to shooting a 12 year old in COD.

[Guest Marney1]

Sorry Jamie, looks as though no one gives a fuck about it. Maybe when we're all rich and without worries of our own we might consider donating a penny or two.

Well others might, I won't.

[danz0r 10]

In my opinion hitler was and is the worst war criminal. he killed millions of innocent people. While kony killed maybe 100,000 at a push. I'm not saying he's good person but the worst war criminal is taking it a bit far. There were many worse war criminals then him.

[DuffMan 266]

In my opinion hitler was and is the worst war criminal. he killed millions of innocent people. While kony killed maybe 100,000 at a push. I'm not saying he's good person but the worst war criminal is taking it a bit far. There were many worse war criminals then him.

... the ICC isn't going to put a dead man on top of its most wanted list. Trying to quantify how bad these people are is silly. If you're going by kill count, what about Stalin? Exactly, it's not the point. When you get beyond a dozen deaths, it's just a statistic.

[Massacre 7646]

I love how everyone has started to care about this now.... : /

I'm proud to say I never cared, I just let the video play in the background for a few minutes out of courtesy, because I vaguely remember Jamie doing something cool a while back.

Personally, I'm disgusted this is getting so much attention around the net. People have been doing this kind of shit for thousands of years, this guy's nothing special.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

I don't see the problem with creating child soldiers. From my experience, once you kill them a few times they have a hissy fit and start screaming down their microphone...

Also: http://www.reddit.co...op_kony/c3yil0i

Also, the marginal cost of child soldiers is fall lower than adult soldiers. Also, you can fit more into small areas and they don't have that whole "fear of death" thing figured out quite yet.

anyway, back to fighting terrorists and the axis of evil.

[OptimumPx 329]

Don't donate to these people.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Damnit OPX, why'd you have to bring fax into this discussion.

[Guest Marney1]

And you think old people who leave money to cats homes are mad.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Hmm, this shitty video must be twending on twitter.

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/07/10603135-charity-goes-after-african-rebel-leader-with-kony-2012-video

Interesting, no information about how shitty the charity actually is.

[Ku Zi Mu 1194]

PLEASE RESEARCH KONY BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING.

Invisible Children is a very dodgy charity, only 30% of donations actually go to helping Uganda, they keep the rest for themselves.

Kony has been inactive for 6 years.

The Ugandan Army has been known to commit rape as well.

Invisible Children supports military intervention WHICH IS NOT A GOOD THING.

There are other charities out there who put your money to better use.

THINK BEFORE YOU BANDWAGON.

352razberry 28 minutes ago 88

I guess not every one on YouTube is as gullible as the majority makes them seem...