KONY 2012

Share this video on your facebooks and twitter guys, takes 5 seconds. Its a long video and I appreciate most people dont have 30 minutes to spend on it, but just sharing it and letting other people know is going to help.

* Edited at 03.06.2012, 9:11 PM ET *

Oh my god, Invisible Children.  At my high school we have an Invisible Children club and we raise money to help put an end to the child soldiers and Kony.  Mr. Abajian is the club leader and he is currently running for teacher of the year.  He is THE BEST teacher I've ever had in my whole life, and the most passionate.
When he would talk about Invisible Children and everything that's going on, and show the videos and share their stories, I swear half the class would be tearing up.
One of the kids visited our school as well and spoke, it was a great experience.
Thanks for sharing Russello, awesome video and absolutely great cause.

****, I JUST looked that up after I saw someone on my facebook with that as his DP.

Coincidence, or fate?

Thanks for sharing, it's a worthwhile endeavor.  It's not that hard to help, either.

I don't like the terminology that they use in the description, they want to make Kony "famous"?

@Anik Yes, people need to be educated about him, he's a monster.  

only about 20 years late

thats a heavy 30 minutes, well worth the time and the share.

TL:DW

Interesting i didn't know about kony until i watched the new movie machine gun preacher about 2 weeks ago, after the film i read obama has sent in 100 military to advise on his capture it made me very happy. Check out sam childers and what he has been doing there for over 10 years incredible story, and i have a feeling those 100 military will be doing much more then advising off the books! Kony and his regime also enjoy cutting the lips off of woman who speak up, many images on google that might disturb you.

Lets hire General ButtNaked to deal with Kony.  

@Lopati Thats a good idea I just watched that Vice guide the other day for the umtinth time. Africa is a scary place bro, I thank science everyday I was born in a small ohio town where our biggest problem was not having a pizza place that delivered.

Lol General Butt Naked. Eating babies hearts, and other humans.. classy.

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 moneysupports 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 **** 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 **** 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 supportingAfrican 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 peoplesupporting 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.

~ 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.

here is a link to the site 

visiblechildren.tumblr.com

* Edited at 03.07.2012, 3:35 PM ET *

the above post was something I read on another site and felt that should be shared as well.

OMG. Dude. This is a complete failure. Look, I've known about Kony since my freshman year of high school. How these people didn't know before just shows that they're all 18-25 year old uneducated hipsters. So ******* tired of self-righteous liberal hipster *******s.


The very first part told me it's ********. An idea is really not that powerful as we have seen throughout history. Money and advanced weapons technology are the real most powerful things in the world.

And their solution? OH NOOOOOOO!!!!! POSTERS!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE **** ARE WE GONNA DO!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll tell you. The average citizen will ignore it.


Americans will ignore it. They don't give a **** about OTHER AMERICANS. You think they're gonn give a **** about some poor black children in Africa? You wanna make a difference? You wanna make a change? Fix your own ******* country first. An analogy: The warning in an airplane is always to put your own oxygen mask on first, then help those around you. Why? Because if you don't have oxygen you CAN'T help those around you. There's plenty here in the US that needs to be changed, but we have fearful and stupid people that won't try to help change what's going on here. They won't even think about the people in Africa if they can't think rationally to fix the problems at home.


Also, I don't think they understand what arresting Kony entails. They don't understand the sovereignty issue. Who's gonna do it? The UN? Try him through the ICC? Please, if the UN had any balls they would have already done this. The fact is the political ****storm of invading another country would be absurd. What would the AU say? The UN? AFCOM? Seriously, these people need to get a ticket on the clue train.

* Edited at 03.07.2012, 2:25 PM ET *

Great read, Lopz

Lol, so many people on my facebook are all like " KONY 2012, if you dont support it youre just ignorant!!!" Shut up *****.

Zarog, THANK YOU SIR.

I dont think people here understand (or maybe they do) why I posted it. I havent asked anyone to donate any money and I wont myself. Lopati's post is great in detailing with the hypocrisy, but it neglects the point that the Ugandan Army dont promote ****. In the countries future, when its better equipped one would hope they would deal with these issues. For now, it's better to take out Kony than sit there thinking 'well the Ugandan Army aint no Angels themselves'.

@Nik Lust, exactly, theres a lot more to Kony than this video, including the questionable spending of 'Invisible Childrens' money; people who are posting stuff like 'if you dont support it, you're ignorant' are dumbasses in themselves.

All Im asking for you guys to do is maybe watch it and pass it on, because where as I wont do anything real to stop it, their might be one person at there who might try and that'll be worth it. Besides, it's nice to be up-to-date on world news.

@Zarog, Nice points about the politics and what not, but I dont understand why you and Lopati are saying this stuff. Most of the stuff you've mentioned is 100% correct, but all I'm doing is trying to let everyone watch the video and form their own conclusion. I havent posted that I will donate money or I agree with everything Invisible Children do - but stopping Kony is a worthwhile cause, even the organisation trying to have flaws. Also, the need to spend money on wages etc because there would be no other way for awareness to spread. If there was a better option, id offer it. For now, letting everyone see this video is about all I can do.

* Edited at 03.07.2012, 2:39 PM ET *

Russello, I do not have an issue with raising awareness.  But blanketing cities with posters is just gonna cost taxpayers money.  if you want to end the problem hire a hit squad or put out a bounty on his head.  With all the money they spend on videos and salaries they could have already eliminated this fool.  I am all for taking him out, but not for arresting him.  If you want to bring these children peace and comfort than you must KILL KONY, not arrest him or anything.

Also, the Ugandan Liberation Army has historically been known for participating in warcrimes and the mistreatment of women and children.  So saying they haven't done that is wrong.  the amount of corruption from somalia to uganda to rwanda to liberia is appalling.