KONY 2012

[Spherical Ice]

​

Joseph Kony is a Ugandan guerrilla group leader, head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group engaged in a violent campaign to establish theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments throughout Uganda. The LRA is a militant group with a syncretic Christian extreme religious ideology. They are known for the extreme atrocities they commit against civilians, including murder, mutilations, rape, and in some accounts even cannibalism.

I'm sure you've heard of the KONY 2012 buzz on the net recently since the video Invisible Children Inc. released describing the rapes, murders, abductions and many more horrors of the LRA lead by Joseph Kony, and the charity's hopes to stop this man. Despite this, there has been some controversy regarding the legitimacy of the video, which has spent most of it's donations on actual film-making then charity.

What's your view on the situation? While it's evident Joseph Kony is an evil man, is the Invisible Children's video fair? They say they support the Ugandan government, but omit the fact that said government have also partaken in the raping and looting of villages. Will you donate to KONY 2012 regardless of the somewhat deceptive devices used in the video?

 

[Keiran]

It's very sad that it takes someone famous to post something online to make people care about an issue in the world.

I give it a few days until most people forget who the LRA are.

Like, what about North Korea? Syria? U.S.A?

 

[Netto Azure]

Well I remember my HS World History teacher showing us the main documentary "Invisible Children" years ago and am quite surprised at this major push this year that quickly gained steam in social media.

I was wondering what happened to it.

Still it's good that people are supporting it.

 

[twocows]

http://ismaelmelendez.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/the-reality-behind-the-stopkony-campaign/
So yeah, it's pretty much a scam full of things designed to provoke you into an emotional response. The org behind it has multiple fraud accusations against them. There are even allegations that Kony is already dead. Whoops.

Also, perhaps you should include a summary in your post so I don't have to sit through 15 minutes of con-artist material to figure out what you're talking about?

I'm going to echo what the author of that blog post said (as well as my former signature) and urge you to donate to a real charity, like my personal favorite, Doctors Without Borders.

 

[Rogue planet]

Just as a GENERAL COMMENT on human trafficking; the Kony thing seemed to take a lot of people by shock. I'd just like to highlight this is not a problem exclusive to Africa, or any third world countries. Human trafficking is a global issue, even in the USA where people don't think this sort of thing goes on, it's there, in particular sex trafficking (which includes children). Look it up. It's a billion dollar "industry" that is just as significant in the developed world. Don't be fooled into thinking Africa is some sort of hive for villains, they're everywhere.

 

[Netto Azure]

http://ismaelmelendez.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/the-reality-behind-the-stopkony-campaign/
So yeah, it's pretty much a scam full of things designed to provoke you into an emotional response. The org behind it has multiple fraud accusations against them. There are even allegations that Kony is already dead. Whoops.

Well the best I could say is invest your donations to yourself instead such as getting an education [I'm not attacking anyone here btw, just saying alternatives] or volunteer to get more experience since that would better help you, help others later on.

Also, perhaps you should include a summary in your post so I don't have to sit through 15 minutes of con-artist material to figure out what you're talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Children

"In the spring of 2003, three filmmakers (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, Laren Poole) traveled to Africa to document the genocide that was occurring in Darfur. Instead, they stumbled upon a little-known war that originated in northern Uganda in 1987, making it Africa's second longest-running war after the Eritrean Revolutionary War. They produced a documentary about the children being abducted and turned into child soldiers by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Out of fear of being abducted, the children of Uganda would walk miles every night to places of refuge in order to avoid the LRA. This film follows a group of these children and tells their stories."

I'm going to echo what the author of that blog post said (as well as my former signature) and urge you to donate to a real charity, like my personal favorite, Doctors Without Borders.

I prefer Doctors for Global Health myself since they go further than just simply providing care, but tackle serious social issues to the places they go in. Still Doctors Without Borders is more well known but they try to keep out of the tricky politics of the underlying social problems.

 

[twocows]

Well the best I could say is invest your donations to yourself instead such as getting an education [I'm not attacking anyone here btw, just saying alternatives] or volunteer to get more experience since that would better help you, help others later on.

If you plan to spend your whole life helping others, sure. Most people don't choose that route and would still like to help others in their own way, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Children

"In the spring of 2003, three filmmakers (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey, Laren Poole) traveled to Africa to document the genocide that was occurring in Darfur. Instead, they stumbled upon a little-known war that originated in northern Uganda in 1987, making it Africa's second longest-running war after the Eritrean Revolutionary War. They produced a documentary about the children being abducted and turned into child soldiers by Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Out of fear of being abducted, the children of Uganda would walk miles every night to places of refuge in order to avoid the LRA. This film follows a group of these children and tells their stories."

I meant in hindsight. I already looked things up.

I prefer Doctors for Global Health myself since they go further than just simply providing care, but tackle serious social issues to the places they go in. Still Doctors Without Borders is more well known but they try to keep out of the tricky politics of the underlying social problems.

I don't like supporting political organizations unless I've researched them fully and agree with pretty much everything they do. I'll have to look into this group first.

 

[Oryx]

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.

This is how I feel about Invisible Children and KONY 2012 in a nutshell. All the money they're spending on making pretty movies, when the government here has been working on years for getting Kony as it is, could be spent actually helping the victims. Yes, only 32% of their finances go towards active aid. But they've said themselves that they tend towards advocacy, not direct aid so they're not being cloak-and-dagger about this. If you're happy knowing that instead of helping the children in Africa, your money is going towards a fancy wide-angle shot of a skyline in their latest video, more power to you. But that's not what I want from my charities. I want the money I give them to go towards the children needing help, not the filmmakers.

 

[TRIFORCE89]

Not particularly sure why the Internet just jumped on this single issue all of the sudden. There's a whole lot of **** going on in the world. Would be great if the Internet would lead to such widespread awareness of many atrocities and not just the flavour of the month.

Regardless, yay for this campaign for raising awareness, I guess. But otherwise... just be aware of where you donate your money.

 

[Caelus]

It's been going on for years and it just now comes up? I'm sure there are similar stories like this that get overlooked all the time.

I didn't know about it until I saw the video last night. I know some of my friends take this pretty serious, but I'd like to see where it goes in month or so. I hope things do turn around.

 

[Spherical Ice]

Yeah since I posted this I have read the Visible Children stuff and have been swayed quite a lot. Never thought I was that naive lol.

 

[Keiran]

Yeah since I posted this I have read the Visible Children stuff and have been swayed quite a lot. Never thought I was that naive lol.

Hah, it's not your fault. The video was very deceptive and emotional.

 

[Nash Bandicoot]

I fear something much bigger than this. I fear this is sort of like a "test" for new world order. I mean think about it.. This has hit the world on a global scale in 2 days! People from all over the world are uniting to stop this. If people can be influenced so quickly by this, then why not to bring all countries under 1 banner and form a new world order? IMO this is a massive government experiment. And also, too much is happening at once; first we have the discovery that the Mayans didn't have leap years, then we find out that the world is possibly 3 months away from a nuclear war, after that we find out a huge comet is heading towards earth that will be here in 28 years, and now this. The war, the Mayans having no leap years and Kony 2012 has all been discovered OVER THE PAST 3 DAYS! The comet was only discovered less than 3 weeks ago.

 

[TRIFORCE89]

I fear something much bigger than this. I fear this is sort of like a "test" for new world order. I mean think about it.. This has hit the world on a global scale in 2 days! People from all over the world are uniting to stop this. If people can be influenced so quickly by this, then why not to bring all countries under 1 banner and form a new world order? IMO this is a massive government experiment. And also, too much is happening at once; first we have the discovery that the Mayans didn't have leap years, then we find out that the world is possibly 3 months away from a nuclear war, after that we find out a huge comet is heading towards earth that will be here in 28 years, and now this. The war, the Mayans having no leap years and Kony 2012 has all been discovered OVER THE PAST 3 DAYS! The comet was only discovered less than 3 weeks ago.

Wait, the Mayans not having leap years was a new thing? I thought we've known that for ages. There are many many different calendar systems. They don't all feature leap days. And even if the Mayans didn't have leap days... who the hell cares? That's ancient history that doesn't influence us at all. It's like the equivalent of discovering the exact diet of a dinosaur species. Interesting, good for a museum, does nothing for our everyday lives.

Anyway, this Kony stuff has spread so fast because that's the Internet. That's how it works. It is fast. It was an emotionally manipulative video and people got hooked. So, send it to a friend and they send it to a friend and so on. News travels fast. When Michael Jackson died, the news traveled so fast that Twitter and Google went down briefly. ...and that means there's some new world order? Videos of cats on YouTube hit a global scale in two days too.

The Kony stuff us screams scam to me. It's like those sad puppy commercials that prey on your emotions, only larger. Designed to have money sent to a fishy charity. Basically like get spam email about a Nigerian prince needed your money, but in a nicer presentation.

 

[Oryx]

Wait, the Mayans not having leap years was a new thing? I thought we've known that for ages. There are many many different calendar systems. They don't all feature leap days. And even if the Mayans didn't have leap days... who the hell cares? That's ancient history that doesn't influence us at all. It's like the equivalent of discovering the exact diet of a dinosaur species. Interesting, good for a museum, does nothing for our everyday lives.

The Kony stuff us screams scam to me. It's like those sad puppy commercials that prey on your emotions, only larger. Designed to have money sent to a fishy charity. Basically like get spam email about a Nigerian prince needed your money, but in a nicer presentation.

@Mayans: I'll reply to that the same as I replied to Abnegation in his blog:

Mayan calendar is based on days, not years, therefore leap days would have been taken into account automatically. 13 bak'tuns after 0.0.0.0.0 is when the Mayan calendar said the world would end, and a bak'tun is 20 k'atun/400 tun/7200 winal/144,000 k'in. Each k'in is a day so 13 bak'tuns is 1,872,000 days after their beginning point. Scientists determined that 0.0.0.0.0 to Mayans was August 11th, 3114 BCE, and therefore 13.0.0.0.0 is the December date we all know about.

Invisible Children has released a long reply to all the criticisms of their organization here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html

While I don't think the charity itself is a scam, it is based around something that most charities aren't - awareness. This means that most of their money, instead of going to direct aid, goes to making sure people know about the issues. Which is fine, as long as people know that before they donate. Which is what I feel is the problem here. People see the video, want to donate to help capture Kony, and donate to Invisible Children, who will mostly use that money for more awareness, not for helping with the problem. If people are aware that the majority of their money is going towards awareness instead of action and still choose to donate that's fine, but I don't think that people know that and instead donate to help and end up not helping nearly as much as they could with their money.

I have personal issues with the use of the money as well. I mean, a video can be just as easily shared as any text that would cost very little money to make, and many people have gone viral without spending tons of money on a flashy video. I wonder how much of this was "let's raise awareness" and how much was "let's make a pretty video".

 

[TRIFORCE89]

@Mayans: I'll reply to that the same as I replied to Abnegation in his blog:

I know. But... again, that's not new information. Which was my point.

 

[Livewire]

Let's try to stay on topic guys.

 

[Keiran]

. Okay, last point, why is their main colour red? Red is the colour of War and blood, not peace! It doesn't all add up.

Because their main goal is to rile young people up. The video is carefully crafted and detailed in a way to do this in the best way possible. The problem is that is succeeded.

It's really frustrating for people who actually care about current events because this is the opposite of what should be happening. It would be AMAZING if a video pointing out the genocide in Syria happening CURRENTLY was made and went as viral as this. It just really shows how ignorant most people are.

Spoiler:

 

[Nash Bandicoot]

People should do research before jumping on board and helping out. There is so much that is wrong about this video. Even if most of my points are just coincidences there is still too much symbolism for the illuminati not to be involved at all. I have also learned the Uganda has recently discovered lots of oil within their country, The American government just needs a reason to get there.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Saw the video last night. To me, it sounded more like a "call to action" than carefully examining the whole story and what's the background on what's going on over there. Yeah, it's obvious he's an evil man, but it's not like his opponents are any better... from what I read, they're doing the exact same thing with children.

Yeah, it's hard for me to support any cause without a deep knowledge of the actual issues involved. And the video is a lot of propaganda, but little explaining the what and the why.