27 replies to this topic

[Forzare!]

This is basically all i've been seeing across all social media platforms today and it seems to be a pretty massive thing right now.
If you haven't heard of it, the idea is everyone watches this video:


and then you share it to raise awareness of the cause. To summarize this video: there's a guy in Uganda called Joseph Kony who is the leader of a rebel group that's feared by many for good reason. He takes children away from their families and uses/abuses them as his own army (a 30k strong army of children), getting them to kill others and their own parents, mutilate other children and other unspeakable actions. There's no doubt whatsoever that this guy is a disgusting man and action needs to be taken against him. This video is made by a group called 'Invisible children' who want to spread awareness by raising money to harrass the US government into doing something to help those soldiers in Uganda to catch Kony. They have also supposedly built schools and refuges for the kids in Uganda.
It's a very effective and emotional video, certainly. Many people on my facebook have become strong advocators of the cause overnight and take offence greatly to anyone who doesn't support Invisible Children. The video uses a number of strategic emotional ploys to gain sympathy, including the use of the Narrators very cute son, emotional conversations and pumped up figures. However something just seems a little bit off about the entire thing. If I had been less suspicious I probably would be one of the firm supporters, it sounds like a noble cause to catch an absolutely despicable man, however it leaves a lot to be desired and is in fact a ridiculously biased video. Kony himself for example, hasn't been active in Uganda since 2006.
Invisible Children as a company has VERY questionable motives and financial problems, all the opposition arguments can be found in the following links:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qln68/am_i_the_only_one_who_is_suspicious_about/
http://www.wrongingrights.com/2009/03/worst-idea-ever.html (from 2006, THAT LONG AGO)
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/

All of these point out the fact that this whole deal isn't quite what it seems, people buying towards the 'charity' and not towards actually helping the capture of this criminal.

What are your thoughts on this?



As for me, I completely support the cause of stopping Kony but I don't think this is the correct way to go about it.

[Swagmaster Tom]

Great minds think alike.
Can a mod delete my topic, this one is better explained kthnx :3

edit: first step to any proper action is to raise awareness though right?

[Two Headed Bro]

REPOSTAN OFF MA FUCKBUK

Before everyone gets too much of a false sense of self righteousness about this KODY thing because they clicked like on a video, at least look at some other information.

ilto.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/the-visible-problem-with-invisible-children/
Kony has been out of Uganda for over half a decade. there are rumors that he is dead

www.topix.com/forum/city/stuart-fl/TQJSGHMES035Q6OI0
Invisble Children barely sends any of their revenue to the people they try to "help"

c2052482.r82.cf0.rackcdn.com/images/830/original/AR11_small_final.pdf?1323127778
an annual revenue report. go to page 19. ICgave 37% to the people, and spent the rest on different forms of advertising.

If you're going to champion a cause, at least educate yourself on what the fuck you're supporting. If the video made you stand up and want to make a difference in Africa, great. Send your money through an organisation that will send it to the people who need it instead of sending it to an organisation making flashy propaganda.

FUCK THIS SHIT IS ANNOYING AS FUCK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=QeO4Fyvb7CQ
This is amazing though

[Swagmaster Tom]

First two sources are opinion, last source is the figures for a single year
If IC are a registered charity over in the US they'd be shut down or put under administration or something if their data was very clearly wrong, right?

[Gangsta Fag]

Invisible Children is a scam. They've managed to sucker people into throwing money at them, with no clue where that money is actually being sent. Not to mention that IC is advocating military intervention in a sovereign nation which also happens to lie in an extremely volatile region. As well as IC financially supports the Ugandan Army which has been guilty of multiple atrocities. I also I believe that I read that IC has their merchandise made in Africa, yet I doubt that they're paying any of their workers (Probably women, and children among them as well) wages which are livable by most peoples standards.

This is more of the disgusting Western Feel-Good pretend you're making a difference attitude that plagues West Europe, and the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfobLjsj230
http://www.stand-news.co.uk/kony-2012-the-worst-campaign/

[LionJess]

I have yet to watch the video that's been making its way around facebook, but I did already know about the charity and the controversy surrounding it. I do find it oddly sad though how these things become trends. People re-post facebook videos, tweet like crazy about these travesties and how something has to be done... but you do wonder if it's simply because they've seen the "20 other people have posted about Kony 2012", and have a misplaced sense of false guilt. It's great if people become more aware of what's going on in other countries, all these atrocities that we'd never even consider on a daily basis - but are they going to actually do anything about it?


EDIT: These kinds of charities do disgust me though, such a high proportion goes towards advertising, or wages, or promotion, or whatever else. I'm aware it's difficult to run something on a massive scale where 100% of the money donated goes to the right places, but really, the figures they have are shocking. I can never justify charities where the CEOs are often paid as much as your average high ranking business man.

That said, I'm pretty interested to watch the video, given the controversy surrounding the filming itself. Also, great thread forzare, I was gonna make it too


This is a fairly interesting read Source, or quoted below:

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about 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'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 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. 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 supports 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. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children's spending isn't on supporting 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 Chris 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 supports 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 supporting 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 supporting 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.

[Forzare!]

That's just it, to me it's just a massive misplaced sense of guilt and sadly things like this become almost a fashion trend - it's fashionable to show your support for this and buy the bracelet and tshirt because everyone else is doing it. There've been loads and loads of awful facebook arguments today about this from teenies who fully support this and have seen the video and bought the kit straight away (I have to say, it's very effective towards the target audience) and they argue at anyone who won't support it because they're apparently 'sick' and 'wrong in the head'. I don't think they realise that not supporting Invisible Children does NOT mean you're advocating or supporting the death or abuse of many innocent children and adults, it just means you don't agree with that way of doing it, something I argued about a lot on my tumblr today.
With that said of course I support raising awareness to force anyone ignorant higher up to notice but to me this seems a lot about something different.

[Gangsta Fag]

It's like the whole To Write Love on Your Arms. It isn't about what end game there is. It's about feeling like we need to be a part of something. Which I think is still in our genetic makeup from our ancestors.

[DInoDee<3]

- FUCK KONY !
Son of a bitch deserves to die !
Killing your family & being rapped..
I feel soo bad for all those families out there.
He needs to die A S A P.

[Anne-Marie]

Oh sweetie. Some day you'll learn to read the thread before posting, I promise.

[Lightning.]

- FUCK KONY !
Son of a bitch deserves to die !
Killing your family & being rapped..
I feel soo bad for all those families out there.
He needs to die A S A P.

Obviously the thread was tldr for you

[HeyThereDelilah]

There are so many smaller charities which I feel help more and 100% of the money donated goes straight towards the cause.

KONY 2012 would be great if it did what it said on the tin but it doesn't and things aren't that simple.

When will Algernon come back and save the world?

[Anne-Marie]

You know what's strange? I put up a Facebook status on this, telling people that they should be more critical and that it would be safer to support some other charity. 8 people liked the status in 5 minutes. ALL of them had earlier today posted either the Kony2012 video, liked Kony 2012 Finland or images/quotes supporting the matter. Five of them kept continued posting content like that after liking my status.

[LionJess]

I think a lot of people are too afraid of saying that they might not agree with something because then the "omg you approve of child murder" crowd rings in.

I also think a lot of it is people genuinely not giving a fuck either way and just going along with whatever new group is posted on facebook and whatever is posted at the time. I doubt most people even watched the original video in full, and those that did probably didn't question it whatsoever. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but going off my facebook that's definitely how it seems to be.

Already the focus has switched from "this video is horrific we have to do something" to liking a ton of kony-related humour groups. I'm not going to lie though, the Liam Neeson one cracked me up. Liam Neeson will look for Kony, he will find him, and he will kill him!




also: @ death by pretzel, what? Algernon has never left. Still the same cranky bitter fuck. Some things truly never change.

[Gangsta Fag]

Reply I got from somebody after I posted, and summarized the source Jess posted: "Stfu you useless fag and do not spread your lies around a good project. If that would be true you would FIND IT IN THE INTERNET but... YOU DONT! I think you are Koney!!! I FOUND HIM GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The same exact people who are screaming about being against violence, and being for world peace. It's a joke, really.

[Sylar]

Yeah, same thing happening to me. Thank goodness my friends aren't posting that on their statuses. They're smarter than that, and they're smart enough not to give into the crowd. OR maybe that just makes us assholes.

[Smashing!]

Always been the problem with charity, they never really address the root of the problem.

Sure you can feed them and build them schools and shelters, all for it to be raided and pillaged a in god knows when, again. Or just stop the people causing the chaos, makes it a bit hard then whey have child 'soldiers'. It's still better end the conflict now and have some collateral (none if possible but doubt that will happen) then let it drag on and the victims pile up.

Humanitarian organisations will probably have a media frenzy if child 'soldiers' are killed as a result, but it's stupid to put pressure on military just because of that. In the long run a lot more people die and suffer cause people with a 'soft spot' fling their moral values all over the place.


Shame Africa doesn't have large oil reserves, America would be all over that shit by now.

[RoscoBenjamin]

- FUCK KONY !
Son of a bitch deserves to die !
Killing your family & being rapped..
I feel soo bad for all those families out there.
He needs to die A S A P.

DAMN THOSE RAPPERS.
Anyway, it just seems like the people posting on Kony are doing it out of a sense of guilt because I can bet a large majority of them don't give a fuck.
Wait a few weeks and the people screaming DIE KONY DIE will have forgotten about this.

[Gangsta Fag]

It disgusts me that all these people are really campaigning for Kony 2012. There is no way he beats Obama. What has this world come to? SMH

[ ᠎]

"Oh, America, why are you in foreign countries meddling in their affairs!?"

and then

"Oh, America, why aren't you in Uganda, meddling in their affairs!?"