#StopKony 2012 Invisible Children's Movement to Stop the World's Most Evil Man

[GameWinner]

http://vimeo.com/invisible/kony2012

This video has been circulating the web like wildfire. I'm sure a bunch of you have seen it. It's about 30 minutes but well worth your time, especially if you are into humanitarian issues. Basically Joseph Kony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony) is a Ugandan warlord whose sole purpose is to keep power. He has been kidnapping children for over 20 years and putting them to war against their fellow Africans with the threat of death if they do not comply. He makes them massacre villages, their parents, and others. Girls are subject to sex slavery to his soliders. He is the NUMBER 1 MOST WANTED by the International Criminal Court.

Jason Russell and Invisible Children has started a movement against Kony. Their goal: make him infamous to get policymakers to keep pressure up on stopping him. Watch the video. It's inspiring. Typically I'm not one to get into movements and what not, but this is different. It's good to see Facebook & Twitter being used for more than just procrastinating and seeing what your friends did last night. This is the real deal. I know there are some cynical types that will think, "What's the point?" but instead of thinking that think, "Sure, why not?" One less evil man makes the world a better place.

Edit:

More info on Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army:

They are declared terrorists in the eyes of the US Gov. Obama signed the LRA Disarmament & Northern Uganda Recovery Act last year that made it US policy to kill or arrest Kony and stop his Army. It passed both houses of Congress unanimously. The US deployed 100 "advisors" to help train Ugandan forces to track and capture/kill Kony. The movement is to keep the advisors there and/or increase pressure from the US and the international community.

[thebluefood]

Edit: Turns out this whole thing is nothing more than a promotion campaign for a movie and that Invisible Children gives less than half of their money to folks in Uganda...and apparently they want the West to use military force to support the Ugandan government (which also treats people poorly).

Between Uganda and Libya, liberals have become rather hawkish lately.

[RansomthePasserby]

Stop Kony, Invisible Children FTW!

EDIT: Here's a link to Invisible Children's "Bring Kony to Justice" pledge.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/kony2012/kony_new.html

[Mad Mike]

All it takes for evil to flourish is good men to stand by and do nothing.

[Predicto]

This "christian" is the guy Rush Limbaugh was talking about when he said that Obama was "invading Uganda to Target Christians."

I'm not joking. Rush attacked Obama's efforts to control this psycho, saying that it showed Obama favored Muslims over Christians.

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God...

They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops, to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. So that’s a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/limbaugh-defends-lords-resistance-army/

[No Excuses]

Rush took a lot of heat when he said that. Jon Stewart clowned him well.

[Mad Mike]

This "christian" is the guy Rush Limbaugh was talking about when he said that Obama was "invading Uganda to Target Christians."

I'm not joking. Rush attacked Obama's efforts to control this psycho, saying that it showed Obama favored Muslims over Christians.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/limbaugh-defends-lords-resistance-army/

That makes me sick to my stomach.

[ixcuincle]

http://twitter.com/Ernst_Bloach/statuses/177466138530295811

Ugandans, you picked the wrong day to try and share your struggle on twitter. there's a new apple product being showed off today

[Dan T.]

http://twitter.com/Ernst_Bloach/statuses/177466138530295811

**** Ernst's Twitter. The video has been on YouTube for 48 hours and already has 7,377,102 views. Jason Russell has struck a nerve. Good for him. Any issue that can bring together Barack Obama and Jim Inhofe must be worthwhile.

[Monte51Coleman]

That makes me sick to my stomach.

Absolutely. Where are Rush's defenders on this one? They must be getting worn out.

[Popeman38]

I don't think Rush has any defenders.

[Monte51Coleman]

Read the Rush/Fluke thread.

[Botched]

Absolutely. Where are Rush's defenders on this one? They must be getting worn out.

To be fair, only 20 million people heard him say it, and I doubt all of them took him at his word. So maybe 15 million people think the President of the United States has declared a jihad on Christianity. Big deal, just leave him alone already.

Besides, I heard a lib say the 'n' word once.

[Dan T.]

In half defense of Limbaugh, he barrelled ahead on that one before knowing the facts. He was so quick to pounce on the Muslim-loving, Christian hating Obama that he jumped on the story. He soon learned of the true nature of Kony and the LRA, then quickly backed down. The episode shows his knee-jerk hatred of Obama rather than any support of Joseph Kony.

If I'm not mistaken, the Invisible Children video includes Rush Limbaugh as one of the powerful celebrities people are supposed to lobby to help shine a harsh light on Joseph Kony. They show 24 (I think) powerful worldwide celebrities and 24 policy types that are being beseeched to help bring Kony's name to world consciousness. I'll be curious to see if and how Rush responds to this, given his previous misstep on the issue.

[Monte51Coleman]

Rush Limbaugh, with the platform he possesses, should fully understand issues before he uses that platform to espouse beliefs that highlight his ignorance. A simple 'my bad' isn't acceptable.

[RVAbrendan]

It's a shame that Invisible Children only actually gives31% of donations to those in need.

Don't get me wrong - I applaud what they're doing in their efforts to eliminate Kony (pure evil) - but assisting the old dictatorship and providing arms to fight the LRA isn't the best solution (the government is also full of evil their - children soldiers, etc).

A sad situation all around :mad:

[Dan T.]

It's a shame that Invisible Children only actually gives31% of donations to those in need.

That's a largely irrelevant statistic given that their niche mission is focusing world attention on Kony to stop his barbaric campaign, not providing direct aid to those in need.

---------- Post added March-7th-2012 at 03:57 PM ----------

Rush Limbaugh, with the platform he possesses, should fully understand issues before he uses that platform to espouse beliefs that highlight his ignorance. A simple 'my bad' isn't acceptable.

My point is that that's a different sin than actively supporting Joseph Kony, which is what some are implying.

[Mad Mike]

Rush Limbaugh, with the platform he possesses, should fully understand issues before he uses that platform to espouse beliefs that highlight his ignorance. A simple 'my bad' isn't acceptable.

^this

The only time he backs down from his attitude is when he says something really outrageous. The rest of the time, he just plows on with his lies and stupidity. Then, once every year or two, he makes a decent point and all of his fans will come out of the woodwork to say how "right" he is.

[skinsfan07]

4/20/12....remember the date. Seize the night.

[Mad Mike]

My point is that that's a different sin than actively supporting Joseph Kony, which is what some are implying.

But intentionally or not, that's exactly what he did. The ditto heads will only remember their initial outrage and that Obama is at war with Christians.

Unless you can show me some evidence of him telling his fan base that he was wrong and what a scumbag Kony really is, your "half defense" is 100% misplaced.

[SWFLSkins]

Drone time, take this dude out if you can locate him. Sorry (not really) to those who think that action abroad should be limited, we must have the stomach to do the difficult task of defending the young and old, those unable to do so for themselves.

[Predicto]

Rush Limbaugh, with the platform he possesses, should fully understand issues before he uses that platform to espouse beliefs that highlight his ignorance. A simple 'my bad' isn't acceptable.

He didn't even say "my bad." He just said he was going to look into it more, and then never spoke of it again.

Good thing he got his shots in on Muslim-loving, Christian-hating Obama before he had to do even that much.

---------- Post added March-7th-2012 at 05:09 PM ----------

It's a shame that Invisible Children only actually gives31% of donations to those in need.

If your campaign is based on raising public awareness, that result appears inevitable.

---------- Post added March-7th-2012 at 05:10 PM ----------

My point is that that's a different sin than actively supporting Joseph Kony, which is what some are implying.

If I implied anything of the sort, it was entirely unintentional.

[DarrellsMyHero28]

http://thetalkinghead.tumblr.com/post/18910031143/thedailywhat-on-kony-2012-i-honestly-wanted-to

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

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.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

Just FYI.

EDIT: Click the link, there's hyperlinks in that text that didn't paste into my post.

[Dan T.]

Just FYI.

They won’t let their financials be independently audited.

There's a link to an independent audit at the top of this page, in RVAbrendan's post.

The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million)

Invisible Children's financial reports reveal that the organization's three filmmakers and co-founders received a combined pay of $262,287 for the fiscal year ending June 2011. This comprises 2.93% of IC's expenses.

Divided by three, that's a decent salary, but hardly "lining the pockets" of those three people. I would guess other executives in charge of charity organizations make more than that.

All their films appear to be focused on the plight of the people of Uganda, which is their stated purpose. Travel to Africa with film crews ain't cheap.

I don't know much about the charity, but the TalkingHead blog smells like a hatchet job.

[Slateman]