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

[Gator Bait]

What kills me about this cause is that if they took all the money they've raised and spent on posters/bracelets and whatever else..Hired some former Navy Seal mercenaries, this dude would have been dead a long time ago.

Unfortunately when this guy is arrested or killed, someone else will take his place. Likely one of the kids he has kidnapped and forced to "serve" in his death squad. This is nothing new; been happening for ages.

[Dan T.]

Somehow the snarky backlash falls flat when the object of this effort is a child-raping genocidal butcher.

[jpyaks3]

The problem with Invisible Children isn't the fact that a significant portion of their money isn't going to actual causes its that they support other groups that do some pretty terrible things. I believe Invisible Children are well meaning but there are a lot of problems with them as an organization and the people who they support. Its great to raise awareness but it needs to be done in a manner that conveys the extremely complex situation that is present in Central Africa and this video simply does not do that.

Foreign Affairs magazine alleges that advocacy groups such as Invisible Children, Human Rights Watch and World Vision "have manipulated 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.

"They rarely refer to the Ugandan atrocities or those of Sudan's People's Liberation Army, such as attacks against civilians or looting of civilian homes and businesses, or the complicated regional politics fueling the conflict."

Britain's Guardian newspaper reports that "critics point out the campaign calls on the public to pressurise the US to continue working with the Ugandan military, an organisation that has its own record of abuses".

"The Ugandan army continues to commit politically motivated abuses in Uganda," Maria Burnett, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, Africa Division, told the Guardian.

"We have documented numerous cases in which they've been involved in torture and arbitrary arrests, as well as a score of killings of unarmed protesters and bystanders during political demonstrations in the past three years," she is quoted as saying.

So it's not neat ... Africa never is, nor is its politics.

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/blogs/all-men-are-liars/make-kony-famous-20120307-1ujd5.html#ixzz1oUF8SB1x

[Dan T.]

Maybe I'm missing something. Joseph Kony staffed his guerrilla army by kidnapping young children, making them kill their parents and neighbors, and forcing them take up arms. The kidnapped girls were awarded to his troops to be raped. Little of that is in dispute.

A filmmaker stumbles upon this abomination and makes it his life work to stop it. What's so "complex" about that?

[TheGoodBits]

One of my friends from college did some volunteer work with invisible children. Good to see them getting some attention.

[Predicto]

No doubt the situation is complicated, but to assert that all of these human rights groups are "manipulating the facts for strategic purposes" because they focus too much on the atrocities of an scumbag like Kona seems kinda like nitpicking to me.

[Thiebear]

my daughter brought this up tonight.

[Dan T.]

my daughter brought this up tonight.

YouTube views are up to 11.6 million. That's since a Monday posting.

[jpyaks3]

Maybe I'm missing something. Joseph Kony staffed his guerrilla army by kidnapping young children, making them kill their parents and neighbors, and forcing them take up arms. The kidnapped girls were awarded to his troops to be raped. Little of that is in dispute.

A filmmaker stumbles upon this abomination and makes it his life work to stop it. What's so "complex" about that?

The complexity is that they support Ugandan and Sudanese groups that rape, loot, and pillage. There is no question Kony is a horrible horrible person and should be stopped but its a lot more difficult than groups like Invisible Children make it out to be. Its an extremely messy situation. For the record I believe that Invisible Childrens intentions are great I just have to disagree with their methods.

---------- Post added March-7th-2012 at 10:00 PM ----------

No doubt the situation is complicated, but to assert that all of these human rights groups are "manipulating the facts for strategic purposes" because they focus too much on the atrocities of an scumbag like Kona seems kinda like nitpicking to me.

It becomes a problem when groups like Invisible Children support groups that commit similar human rights abuses but are whitewashed or not mentioned for political reasons. The solution to a horrible group like the LRA isn't to support other groups that commit quite a few of their own atrocities with funding and international support. The video and Invisible Children remove the reality of the situation by painting it as nice and clean good vs. evil when there is a whole lot of evil including some of the people that IC support.

[grhqofb5]

So, do we just bomb the whole region until it resembles a parking lot, or keep watching videos? The trend seems to be hands off by the U.S. Gotta be consistent, right?

[Dan T.]

It becomes a problem when groups like Invisible Children support groups that commit similar human rights abuses but are whitewashed or not mentioned for political reasons. The solution to a horrible group like the LRA isn't to support other groups that commit quite a few of their own atrocities with funding and international support. The video and Invisible Children remove the reality of the situation by painting it as nice and clean good vs. evil when there is a whole lot of evil including some of the people that IC support.

That's mostly a mischaracterization of CI's efforts, but whatever. Jason Russell has caught lightning in a bottle with his video and his stated goal of making Joseph Kony's name known in the civilzed world has been achieved.

[visionary]

Good effort to get this guy's name out in public again. Hopefully it will have some positive results.

I did see this though:

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things

First, the facts. Following a successful campaign by the Ugandan military and failed peace talks in 2006, the LRA was pushed out of Uganda and has been operating in extremely remote areas of the DRC, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic -- where Kony himself is believed to be now. The Ugandan military has been pursuing the LRA since then but had little success (and several big screw-ups). In October last year, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 U.S. Army advisors to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date.

Additionally, the LRA (thankfully!) does not have 30,000 mindless child soldiers. This grim figure, cited by Invisible Children in the film (and by others) refers to the total number of kids abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years. Eerily, it is also the same number estimated for the total killed in the more than 20 years of conflict in Northern Uganda.

Unfortunately, it looks like meddlesome details like where Kony actually is aren't important enough for Invisible Children to make sure its audience understands.

Only once, at 15:01 in the movie, over an image of a red blob on a map leaving Northern Uganda and heading West, is the fact that the LRA is no longer in Uganda mentioned, and only in passing:

It seems IC could have done a better job with making sure that the people they get the message to are properly informed about the situation.

[jpyaks3]

That's mostly a mischaracterization of CI's efforts, but whatever. Jason Russell has caught lightning in a bottle with his video and his stated goal of making Joseph Kony's name known in the civilzed world has been achieved.

I thought they were advocating support for removing Kony by any means possible which would mean supporting groups like the Ugandan military who commits atrocities or the Sudanese militias who also commit atrocities. If I am mischaracterizing or wrong about that aspect that I apologize.

EDIT: Apparently I am not, Russel says

"We know what to do. Here it is, ready? In order for Kony to be arrested this year, the Ugandan military has to find him. In order to find him, they need the technology and training to track him in the vast jungle. That's where the American advisors come in. But in order for the American advisors to be there, the American government has to deploy them. They've done that, but if the government doesn't believe the people care about Kony, the mission will be cancelled. In order for the people to care, they have to know. And they will only know if Kony's name is everywhere.

Also the mission is in no way shape or form under any threat of being cancelled.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things

Raising awareness is good but it needs to be raised in context which is difficult to do and simplistic solutions like simply getting rid of Kony don't solve a lot of the deeper issues. I am cautioning against jumping on an issue like this based on a thirty minute documentary especially with a group like IC who does have some major question marks.

[ixcuincle]

While there has been concern for the children on the internet, there have also been images that parody the situation that are popping up all over the internet.

I am neutral.

[ixcuincle]

Lot of TALK about Invisible Children being a scam organization or a SHADY organization which only gives 31% of those donations to charity

[dockeryfan]

It becomes a problem when groups like Invisible Children support groups that commit similar human rights abuses but are whitewashed or not mentioned for political reasons. The solution to a horrible group like the LRA isn't to support other groups that commit quite a few of their own atrocities with funding and international support. The video and Invisible Children remove the reality of the situation by painting it as nice and clean good vs. evil when there is a whole lot of evil including some of the people that IC support.

So what is it? Is IC just not mentioning atrocities of other groups, or are they actively supporting them? I would like to know specifically how much support, both financially and with personnel, they are giving other military groups.

Problems like this are extremely grey.

This is the resource I use for all my charitable donations btw. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12429

[BeachSkin]

Kony kardashian 2012

[Califan007 The Constipated]

That's mostly a mischaracterization of CI's efforts, but whatever. Jason Russell has caught lightning in a bottle with his video and his stated goal of making Joseph Kony's name known in the civilzed world has been achieved.

You can't let the good of the goals determine whether or not the means to those goals are relevant or not.

We've had quite a number of ES members claim that the goal of stopping terrorist acts should not require US citizens to give up even the smallest of civil rights. I'm guessing there are those ES members who take the same stance towards stopping Kony--that looking the other way on the means to which IC wants to achieve its goals is no better.

[Dan T.]

Is the world better now informed about Joseph Kony and the atrocities he committed or not? Is the world now closer to stopping Joseph Kony from kidnapping children, forcing them to execute their parents and neighbors, arming the boys against their will to fight a guerilla war, and raping the girls, or not?

My guess is that those are the questions that Jason Russell is asking himself this week, all "complexities" in the State of Uganda and west central Africa aside. By the way, the 3 day old video is approaching 27 million views.

Lot of TALK about Invisible Children being a scam organization or a SHADY organization which only gives 31% of those donations to charity

Again, the group never claimed to be primarily a direct aid organization, so the 31% figure is irrelevant.

[AsburySkinsFan]

In half defense of Limbaugh, he barrelled ahead on that one before knowing the facts.

That's not much of a defense, sounds more like an indictment.

There are some quibbling over certain factual errors in the video, I read one article that kept saying that he wasn't in Uganda anymore and that the 30,000 kids have been over 20 years or so, one person replied to the qubbiling that it amounted to checking a Walt Whitman poems for spellig errors.

STOP KONY!!

And make every other war criminal and arms dealer famous.

[ixcuincle]

Kony kardashian 2012

#Obesity2012

#StopObesity

[Dan T.]

You can't let the good of the goals determine whether or not the means to those goals are relevant or not.

We've had quite a number of ES members claim that the goal of stopping terrorist acts should not require US citizens to give up even the smallest of civil rights. I'm guessing there are those ES members who take the same stance towards stopping Kony--that looking the other way on the means to which IC wants to achieve its goals is no better.

Looking the other way from what, exactly?

[TheGoodBits]

Again, the group never claimed to be primarily a direct aid organization, so the 31% figure is irrelevant.

Exactly- A big part of those expenses are travel. My friend took 6 months out of his life to volunteer for IC. They did not pay him, but he and a handful of other young people spent those 6 months travelling across the whole country in a van talking to people and raising awareness. I can’t imagine the gas/food/etc was terribly cheap.

[dockeryfan]

that looking the other way on the means to which IC wants to achieve its goals is no better.

So let's talk specifics. I have been told now that they support military groups that oppose Kony. Well, is it just tacit support, a hands off, you get rid of my enemy and I'll deal with you later, or is it active support? Here is money and labor, use them to eradicate my enemy I don't care how...

There is a big difference. I really am asking someone to educate me here. Show me what they are doing that you disagree with.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

Looking the other way from what, exactly?

That's actually been answered already a couple of times in this thread.

I know you read them.