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Kony 2012
edit: fuck this video
The ICC indicted Kony in 2006, but they have no policing power...and the UN is not allowed to act as their police force. They depend on the home state or neighbouring states to capture Kony and hand them over to the ICC....but look who the neighbouring states are..You have Rwanda, the Congo and South Sudan.
The Juba peace talks in started in 2006 between the LRA and the UPDF also fell to shit when the ICC indicted Kony...because before there was talks about granting amnesty in exchange for peace, but the ICC said they would not give amnesty to the top five. The Acholi people, where most of the child soldiers come from, now have a lot of resentment/distrust of international government...which makes it harder to get them to help in the capture of Kony.
Anyway, hope this campaign helps. The stories coming from there are heartbreaking.
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| KONY 2012� 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�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, [email protected] 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. |
Wanna make a bet that if they catch Kony this year, the dude will be the Time's 2012 Person of the Year? Well deserved too.
Crazy stuff mang.
wait a sec, this has been going on for over 20 years, in COUNTLESS countries across the world, and just now after the millions of innocent lives were lost people are actually trying to do something about it??
"peacekeepers" were just standing there while kids, women and men were literally butchered by hand and nobody did anything at the time. so im wondering why now?? what is so different now?
global push towards democracy usually happens when them big boys need something, none of them gives a fuck about those poor children.
36000 children dies each and every single day from hunger and at the same time some mother****** can spend 245000 pounds on a single bottle of champagne????
FUCK the free world !!!!
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| Originally posted by feelgood |
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/
http://blog.joerenken.com/2012/03/0...y-2012-exposed/
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/shou...ony-2012-or-not
all Putin's fault
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| Originally posted by Sasha all Putin's fault |
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| Originally posted by geroin Really? All you got to say? You're in the wrong thread btw |
Hmmmmmm (found on FB)...
people who are blindly posting this so called "kony 2012 movement" should look at both sides.
► KONY 2012◄ UPDATE - *MUST READ*...
There are ALWAYS two sides to every story. This viral film has caught the attention of many people - but you are all far too late. Watching the Kony video is essentially watching old news. They started filming in 2003, and northern Uganda has been free of LRA violence and war for over five years. In fact, the LRA have signed a peace accord! They are rebuilding and restoring the peace.
Yes - the leader is still out there. However, the recruitment of children has decreased 80%. This isn't due to the Invisible Children organization, it�s because Ugandan military and the ICC have intercepted. The Invisible Children group are trying to pass a bill that allows America to MILITARISE the region.
They are providing 'MISINFORMATION' to woo idealistic followers. The group have combined multiple regional conflicts to make it appear this is one rapidly increasing issue. When confronted about their dodgy tactics, the head spokesperson stated;
�I agree with you that leading people to believe that the war is still happening in Uganda is not ethically right. It's something we've been addressing internally, focusing on getting all staff and supporters on the same page (of communication)."
If you read the news, or even had an ounce of interest in the on-going unrest in Africa you would already know this and not be fooled. Yes, awful things happen to people in 3rd world countries but this has been occurring for centuries, it isn't a recent occurrence.
The following sources are cited (unlike the staff at Invisible Children):
SOURCES: Michael Kirkpatrick, a long-time Independent Global Citizen, he has resided in Uganda and other regions of Africa. He has no political, religious or financial agenda. He wrote this article and gave an in-depth insight to whats really going on. He also questioned important members of Invisible Children about their motives. http://www.blackstarnews.com/news/1...2010-06-02.html
Charity Navigator is a website that breaks down the proceeds and donations given to Invisible Children, and subsequently shows what percentile of that is REALLY going towards these impoverished children. A measly slither of what is going into the founders' pockets. http://www.charitynavigator.org/ind...ary&orgid=12429
I've read an interesting passage from a Northern Ugandan man. However, it is not 100% verified. He advised the Northern Ugandan parliament to list "Invisible Children" as their main priority on their "FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY" list. (See second comment, username Livingstone). http://www.topix.com/forum/city/stu...JSGHMES035Q6OI0
THIS article asking Invisible Children why they were lobbying for sub-standard AND illegal legislation has since been removed and deleted. http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2...om-lisa-dougan/
ADDITIONALLY - Members of Invisible Children were freely making statements as to what their "allowance" would purchase for *them*. It was on a forum on the official website, and has subsequently also been REMOVED. All these *deletions*...
http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/?p=5901
Another source: : http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/...ganization.html
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| Originally posted by geroin http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/ http://blog.joerenken.com/2012/03/0...y-2012-exposed/ http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/shou...ony-2012-or-not |
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| Originally posted by Mach X |
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| Originally posted by geroin |
For those who don't know anything:
Northern Uganda had suffered from civil unrest since the early 1980s. Hundreds of people were killed in the rebellion against the Ugandan government, and an estimated 400-thousand people were left homeless. Political violence increased in Kampala with the 1998 and 1999 bombings of several popular restaurants nightclubs, and other public places. Eight foreign tourists were murdered by an Interehamwe guerilla group in Bwindi National Forest in March 1999. Rebels were active in the northern and western sections of Uganda.
President Yoweri Museveni used Uganda's military to battle the 2 main rebel groups, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Thousands of children fell victim to the war, abducted by both the LRA and the ADF to serve as fighters or porters. As the conflict between the Government of Uganda (GOU) forces and armed insurgent groups intensified in late 1996, the GOU military began encouraging rural people in affected areas to move into protective camps. However, the military provided only a short period for the move and undertook little preparation for the influx of people to the protective camps. Uganda's economy also suffered, with billions of dollars of the government's budget going to the military. The instability from the civil war, and growing domestic and international pressure to find a way to stop the fighting, apparently prompted President Museveni to back away from the military option and look for a political solution.
People in the Uganda districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader continued to be terrorized by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. They were victims of brutal attacks and kidnappings by the rebel group. The main victims of the LRA had been the Acholi people of northern Uganda. More than a million Acholi had moved to protected camps. As a result, they had not been able to plant their crops and hunger was widespread. After suffering for so many years, Acholi leaders had been at the forefront of efforts to open up a dialogue with the rebels. Ironically, the LRA claimed to be fighting the GOU forces because of their prejudice policies against the Acholi people.
Forty-eight people were hacked to death near the town of Kitgum in the far north of Uganda on 25 July 2002. Local newspaper reports said elderly people were killed with machetes and spears, and babies were flung against trees. Ugandans were shocked by the brutality of the latest attack by the rebel LRA.
The vicious rebel attack in northern Uganda raised questions about planned peace talks between the LRA and Uganda's government. President Yoweri Museveni had agreed to peace talks brokered by Ugandan religious leaders. The Ugandan army had been trying to crush the LRA rebellion for over 18 years without success. President Museveni gave his backing to peace talks to be brokered by religious leaders. Ugandan army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said he believed the talks to be a waste of time because the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, did not have any real agenda to discuss.
In February 2003, Sudan agreed to let troops from neighboring Uganda enter its territory to attack the LRA rebels who had been trying for years to overthrow the Ugandan government. The Ugandan army called on the LRA to surrender or be defeated. Ugandan officials said the agreement gave them what they had long been waiting for, the chance to eliminate the LRA. The agreement set the stage for a decisive blow against rebels.
By early 2003, optimism was growing that 16 years of fighting in northern Uganda may soon come to an end. The ADF had effectively ceased to be a major threat to the GOU. The LRA declared a cease-fire and said they wanted to hold talks with the government of Yoweri Museveni. The pledge by the LRA to cease all ambushes, abductions and attacks was welcomed by the Uganda government. The LRA was in a tight corner after its bases in southern Sudan, just over the border from northern Uganda, had been destroyed by Ugandan troops following an agreement with the Sudanese government. The rebels' main sources of food and military supplies were now back home in northern Uganda, which made them much more vulnerable to attacks by government troops. Then in June 2003, Kony told his fighters to destroy Catholic missions, kill priests and missionaries, and beat up nuns.
There were also reasons for the government to negotiate. Analysts were saying that President Museveni might have realized that, even with access to the rebel bases in Sudan, the military solution he once preferred was not going to succeed. He was under enormous public pressure to try the path of a negotiated settlement.
In January 2004, Ugandan Defense Minister Amama Mbabazi said that the government had killed 928 LRA rebels between 1 January 2003 and 16 January 2004. Speaking at a monthly press briefing in Bombo, a suburb of Kampala, Minister Mbabazi said 791 rebels were either captured by the army or surrendered during Operation Iron Fist. He said the army rescued 7,299 people abducted by the rebels. He also said 88 army soldiers died in the combat, 141 others were injured and 4 went missing during the period.
In May 2004, a report by the aid organisation, Christian Aid, condemned what it described as a shirking of the government's responsibilities to protect the people of the north "borne out of a lack of will." It accused the government of herding civilians into camps ostensibly to protect them from the LRA without offering those living in camps the protection they needed. The Ugandan government rejected the report, saying the report was "completely unfair."
Rebels of the LRA attacked a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-ravaged northern Uganda on 16 May 2004, killing scores of people and abducting others. A group of rebels attacked Pagak displaced people's camp in 3 prongs: one attacked the camp, a second one attacked the soldiers guarding it, and the third one concentrated on the patrol units. The group that attacked the camp set ablaze dozens of grass-thatched huts to create confusion, then looted food and abducted people whom they forced to carry their loot for a distance before they killed them along with their babies.
By November 2003, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Humanitarian Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland stated that he considered the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda to be among the worst on the planet. Several UN agencies, including UNICEF and the Food and Agricultural Organization, were expected to increase their presence in northern Uganda, provided the government was able to provide adequate security.
In October 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in the Hauge, announced arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and 4 of his top LRA deputies. The charges ranged from the mutilation of civilians to the forced abduction of and sexual abuse of children. Some Ugandans voiced concern over whether the warrants would undermine the peace process by forcing the LRA leaders into a situation where they had to either face trial at the Hauge or continue fighting.
In July 2006, LRA representatives were participating in a series of peace talks with the Ugandan government in neighboring Southern Sudan. The LRA representatives present did not include Joseph Kony, who was believed to be hiding in the Democratic Republic of Congo to avoid prosecution for war crimes. While the LRA representatives present wished to portray the group as freedom fighters against President Museveni's system of patronage and discrimination against the Acholi tribe, the LRA had largely alienated themselves from the Ugandan population through their use of brutal tactics, even against the members of the Acholi tribe. The Ugandan government seemed to have little interest in the LRA's demands of reconstituting the Ugandan military under foreign control and a quota for Acholi in government jobs and instead seemed focused on determining the LRA's terms of surrender.
Some international observers thought a peace deal was going to be reached in October 2006. LRA leaders (though not Kony) met with GOU negotiators in the town of Juba in Southern Sudan. However, the talks broke down relatively quickly as both sides violated their predetermined conditions of the negotiation. LRA forces moved from their designated area along the Sudanese-Ugandan border and GOU forces assembled in unauthorized portions of Northern Uganda. The talks were also at an impasse. The main discussion was about the charges brought on Kony and 4 LRA leaders by the ICC. The LRA claimed they would sign a peace deal after the charges were dropped, while GOU negotiators demanded that a peace deal be in place before they discussed dropping the charges.
Peace talks with the LRA throughout 2007 had failed due to the refusal of Kony to appear to sign the agreements. Kony had argued that until all ICC charges were dropped, there would be no peace agreement. The LRA then continued to increase attacks in 2008 mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This prompted a reaction by the Ugandan forces and DRC forces to perform a joint military operation in December 2008 called Operation Lightning Thunder. This military strike effectively destroyed Kony's main base in the DRC and pushed the LRA into the Central African Republic (CAR).
With the movement of the LRA into CAR, the Uganda Civil War had effectively escalated into a regional conflict that involved 4 countries: the DRC, the CAR, Sudan, and Uganda. The LRA, the last remaining anti-government organization from the Uganda Civil War, continued to remain a threat to the region in 2010 by attacking remote locations and they continued to evade capture of the Ugandan military. The goals of the LRA had become increasingly unclear and they did not appear to pose a threat to the governments of any of the countries they operated in, preferring to prey on civilians, killing, raping, and mutilating the people of central Africa; stealing and brutalizing their children; and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in the process. The United States government stated in 2010, that the Lord's Resistance Army had no agenda and no purpose other than its own survival
I don't know if I agree with ICC or military intervention but there has been a decreased in funding for Ugandan peace talks (including from Canada) which makes peace-talks more dangerous and less likely to be successful. Also conditions in these protection camps are horrible. If this campaign brings awareness to that (and if you feel like writing your mp/pm) than that would be a good thing. Don't let a youtube video tell you how to fight for something...but also don't be one of those assholes who thinks just because one charity organisation might be shady, that you shouldn't be doing anything. You are aware there is an issue (although I would hope you knew about this before) so now do something.
Hey, let's make a bunch of jokes about death and destruction! The tragedies are happening in a far off land so let's poke fun!
Seriously...
Humans are disgusting. At all levels.
People have the tendency to emotionally jump onto a bandwagon before looking into where it originated from, and where it's actually headed.
Joseph Kony 2012: growing outrage in Uganda over film
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-over-film.html
The 30-minute video, Kony2012, was produced by three American videographers campaigning for greater efforts to capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord�s Resistance Army (LRA).
But Kony and his diminishing troops, many of them kidnapped child soldiers, fled northern Uganda six years ago and are now spread across the jungles of neighbouring countries.
�What that video says is totally wrong, and it can cause us more problems than help us,� said Dr Beatrice Mpora, director of Kairos, a community health organisation in Gulu, a town that was once the centre of the rebels� activities.
�There has not been a single soul from the LRA here since 2006. Now we have peace, people are back in their homes, they are planting their fields, they are starting their businesses. That is what people should help us with.�
Joseph Kony, a former church altarboy, has spread terror through eastern and central Africa for almost three decades, as he has pursued an aimless war that has killed thousands of people and at one point forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
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The video, from Invisible Children Inc, an activism organisation, was posted to YouTube and Vimeo, a film-sharing site, on Monday night and by late on Thursday it had been viewed 32,600,000 times.
It aims to make Kony �famous� by encouraging supporters to plaster US cities with posters, in order to make the fight against the Lord�s Resistance Army an issue of �national interest� to Washington.
That, the video�s makers claim, will ensure funding for 100 US military advisors sent to train African armies to find Kony will continue.
�Suggesting that the answer is more military action is just wrong,� said Javie Ssozi, an influential Ugandan blogger.
�Have they thought of the consequences? Making Kony �famous� could make him stronger. Arguing for more US troops could make him scared, and make him abduct more children, or go on the offensive.�
Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan journalist specialising in peace and conflict reporting, said: �This paints a picture of Uganda six or seven years ago, that is totally not how it is today. It�s highly irresponsible�.
There were criticisms that the film quoted only three Ugandans, two of them politicians, and that it spent more time showing the filmmaker's five-year-old son being told about Joseph Kony than explaining the root causes of the conflict.
Invisible Voices has faced criticism over its finances. Of more than �6 million it spent in 2001, less than �2.3 million was for activities helping people on the ground. The rest went on �awareness programmes and products�, management, media and others.
�It is totally misleading to suggest that the war is still in Uganda,� said Fred Opolot, spokesman for the Ugandan government.
�I suspect that if that�s the impression they are making, they are doing it only to garner increasing financial resources for their own agenda.�
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| Originally posted by Nicolas Oliver Hey, let's make a bunch of jokes about death and destruction! The tragedies are happening in a far off land so let's poke fun! Seriously... |
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