I'm directing my irritation at the people who think that by reposting this video on facebook, that they're doing anything remotely useful to help the cause. In addition, they are not doing research on the group that they would be donating to. I'm not dismissing it because it's "popular", I'm dismissing it because these injustices have been happening for decades and nobody seemed to care before this video went viral.
Jack, please check out the following link, and this will outline primarily why I'm skeptical. Pay special attention to the other charities that are outlining this cause without using emotional manipulation:
There are people on my Facebook deleting people off THEIR Facebook that criticised or joked about kony. :rolleyes: HOW INSENSITIVE.
ziptnf
VAR
PivotTechno
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
It's possible (albeit by no means certain) that mass public outcry will pressure governments into taking action, especially with elections coming up.
According to some people who actually live in the country, there isn't any action that needs to be taken...
Joseph Kony 2012: growing outrage in Uganda over film
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.”
ziptnf
Well I've been reading a lot about how IC is not an aid organization, that their objective is to spread awareness. They actually released an official page attempting to rebut everything in the link I posted above:
No one will give a next week, just like how they didn't give a last week.
SYSTEM-J
quote:
Originally posted by EarnYourKeep
Oh man.
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by PivotTechno
“There has not been a single soul from the LRA here since 2006.”
Is there any chance they can team up with the IRA? I'd totally support it.
kamil
quote:
Originally posted by Banora
No one will give a next week, just like how they didn't give a last week.
Just like nobody gave a a week after about the 250,000 that died in the Indonesia flooding.
Nobody gives a because theyre not white. Why else would we still be making a yearly spectacle out of only 3,000 deaths in 9/11 compared to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost elsewhere?
