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 KONY 2012 
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Post KONY 2012


http://www.kony2012.com/

Seems innocent, no? Tricked me.

Image
Here are the founders of invisible children, posing with guns they've bought for the ugandan military.
You know, bought to kill the abducted children.


Last edited by Lizardheim on Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.



Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:55 pm
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Seems like this is making quite an impact on the web. I hope it will at least generate more interest beyond the internet, to get authorities to make a serious effort against him. I remember hearing in the news sometime last year that a group of US soldiers were sent to Uganda already to advise national forces and gather information.


Wed Mar 07, 2012 1:26 pm
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For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.

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’m not alone.

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 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. 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 supports 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 supporting 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 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.

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, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com

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[dot]com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.


Further Reading

Don't take this to mean that this is a bad cause to support or that you should do nothing, but if you want to show your support don't do it through Invisible Children.


Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:32 pm
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Why is it always such a good cause but such terrible methods.


Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:01 pm
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Americans love to throw money at a problem in order to fix it. They don't often check for whether that money actually does anything to help a problem.

I believe this sort of attitude is common on the internet as well.


Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:40 pm
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~30% of the money made goes to Uganda, and no figures beyond that show what actually goes to helping people rather than going straight to the government.
The military that Invisible Children have links to have a reputation for rape and pillage.

A couple more links.


Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:12 pm
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Peace through superior firepower don't work against child soldiers god damnit.

Why can't there be good charities that actually have the know how and expertise to come up with an actual solution?


Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:46 am
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Mere days before the campaign went viral: http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17456%3Aupdf-in-kony-hunt-accused-of-rape-looting&catid=78%3Atopstories&Itemid=116

The Ugandan Military, the people they are pictured with, having bought weapons for them.


Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:54 am
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At least only a few days after the video being posted there now seems to be a complete lack of 'KONY 2012' comments on Youtube
I'm sure it's a good cause, but it took me one scroll through the comments to be sick of the advertisers


Thu Mar 08, 2012 8:40 pm
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Because I'm lazy and don't care, I didn't read everything.
But in short: IC is trying to stop Kony but is actually doing bad things behind the scenes?


Sat Mar 10, 2012 6:45 am
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The way I see it, IC is trying to stop Kony, and quite a few intelligent people are saying they're doing it the wrong way.


Sat Mar 10, 2012 6:56 am
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No they're not even trying to stop him they're working with the ugandan goverment and using kony as a source of income.


Sat Mar 10, 2012 11:15 am
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the Funny thing is about this is Kony been around since 2006 right?

Why is this only popping up and being viewed as something recent?

EDIT: not to imply it being view as recent on this topic, But on the internet in general since i seen like over 200 different stop Kony or KONY2012 bull♥♥♥♥ on tumblr, Facebook, youtube etc.


Sat Mar 10, 2012 11:23 am
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No he's been around since about 25 years ago, but he's not really an issue anymore.


Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:39 pm
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Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:27 am
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