Make Joseph Kony Famous

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I'd say Africa should be getting some aid, but perhaps better options would be peacekeeping, removal of landmines, founding hospitals or similar things that let regular people live regular lives. It sure doesn't mean Africa will become a decent place any time soon by our standards, but it might make a difference if done right.

As for donations, I'm not exactly a model donor, but I'd say the Red Cross, AI and Doctors without Borders strike me as the best causes if I have extra money.

 

Apparently the President of the Uganda Democratic Party doesn't see this whole movement as a big scam:

http://vimeo.com/38375988

 

African voices respond

Basically, there is just a lot of bad things going on with this video and campaign. Mysterious and misdirected finances, blatant exploitation, supporting Uganda's oppressive regime, and misinformation are pretty clear here.

Srsly, that video has a little white kid featured more prominently than any actual Ugandan survivor.

 

I rather feel like if the thing that people are noticing about the video is that a cute white kid is in it and somehow believe this is a reason to condemn the cause, many people are just so utterly missing the point!

What, they made a couple of videos that didn't mention Uganda, anywhere? How DARE they!

It would be much, much, much, much more compelling to give concrete facts and details that show that Invisible Children have some sort of dark and secret agenda here. But typically the naysayers just pick some trivial detail like "why does this video have a handsome white man and his cute blond son in it?" as if this is some sort of meaningful evidence of naughtiness.

I'm sure the members of Invisible Children have their skeletons in their closet, just as every other human being does. I'm sure none of them are close to being perfect human beings. Maybe some of them are even making a decent living off this cause (oh no... those with causes should all swear a vow of poverty).

But lord almighty, talk about missing the point! They want to bring down an evil, evil man (of that I have no doubt). Okay, so maybe he's out of the country (no one seems to know, and we only have rumors that he might be). Maybe taking down Kony in 2012 will fail. But come on, give these guys some credit for doing so much to raise awareness and get their cause in the forefront. The US has sent professionals to help. People are outraged, and are putting pressure on their politicians to adopt the cause. The whole world is talking about Kony because of them, for god's sake!

But uh-oh, white kids in their video? Videos that don't mention Uganda? These guys are up to something, I just know it!

 

Couple of things. One - this is evidently the British version of The Daily Show, so the commentary is coming in the form of jokes. Two - I don't agree that their premise is that Invisible Children is doing "more harm than good," that's just what they say the videos critics are saying. I think 10 O'clock Live is clearly saying IC is doing very little good at all, and from the lack of mention of Uganda in the very videos supposedly produced to raise awareness of Uganda and the frequency with which the (clearly) narcissistic Jason Russell is featured prominently in every one of their videos, that the whole enterprise is an exercise in making Jason Russell a worldwide celebrity/media mogul* and that helping actual Ugandans in any significant way is a secondary concern at best. Three - I don't think they are suggesting IC is modeling their recruitment efforts after Kony at all. They're simply noting the remarkable irony of IC's approach. It's almost as if Russell saw Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and learned all the wrong lessons from it.

* in an evangelical Christian-friendly way.

 

Hmmm... and now he's running around the streets of San Diego... naked.

 

Haha I feel an idiot for even starting this thread with the initial point I was trying to make. Message to self, don't be so gullible.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, he essentially had what appears to be a nervous breakdown last week. They were hoping their video would reach 500,000 people, but instead....

It has been interesting watching people react to this movement. I still believe that these guys started this whole thing with a simple and noble goal, but had no idea what they were unleashing. It would have been far, far better for the movement if they had never posted the video. They were already making inroads toward their goal, but once the whole damn world got in on it, things became far more… complicated. It sort of puts a damper on someone’s spirits to try and do a good thing, because the mob is just going to tear you down for it.

And a guy who had made this his life’s quest for the past many years cracked (as far as I can tell) under the pressure. I wonder though, how all the bastards who are throwing stones at this guy would have handled themselves had they been in his shoes.

Really, I see this whole thing as a testament to how jacked up we are as humans, not because I think Invisible Children is an unworthy movement (though it seems they were misguided in where their path would take them), but because we have seen a noble goal met with such ugliness. Sometimes it’s far, far better to fly under the radar.

 

All of the people I have seen liking this video on Facebook and sharing it saying we need to act now are the same people who invite me to things like "International Suit Up Day" so it makes it really hard for me to take this seriously.

Personally, I haven't watches the video, but I've heard enough people at work talking about it to get the general idea: Kony is a bad guy who needs to be stopped. Take a look around, folks, there is a lot of evil going around all over the globe. One of the things Ihate about my generation is that everyone tries to care too much about everything. I know full well that these people aren't about to change one thing in their life that will actually make any difference here.

I would love to be proven wrong here, I really would. We live in a world where people think watching a video can make a difference for some reason. I just want to smack them.

Honestly, part of the reason I haven't watched the video is because I know it's full of bad people doing bad things that will no doubt make me sad while not providing too much else. Call me cynical but I feel perfectly fine going about my life without having another thing tacked on my "Reasons to feel guilty" list

Sorry if that was repetitive, I know I tend torant sometimes. To sum it up, I seriously cannot stand the self righteous people who think they are making the world a better place by liking something on Facebook.

 

What's your beef with International Suit Day?

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More likely it was the overnight international attention, and seeing a cause that was so close to his heart come under such intense and relentless fire. From what I understand he hadn't eaten or slept in days by the time he wigged out. Not everyone can deal with this kind of fame, and as the spokesman for Invisible Children, I guess the pressure caused him to snap.

 

I don't know what the current count is, but as of last week, they broke the 100 million threshold...

 

I find this Time article to be right on point (in spite of a couple of poorly worded sentences):

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/20...akedowns-and-meltdowns-but-very-little-truth/

Spoiler

I spoke to Jason Russell for the second time last week as one of my final interviews in over two months of reporting for a TIME piece on Joseph Kony, his Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A.) and the anti-L.R.A. activist group Russell co-founded with two friends in 2003, Invisible Children. In the time since we’d first spoken in mid-February, Invisible Children had released its 10th film on Kony, Kony2012, and it had gone viral: Russell said hits were approaching 100 million. Invisible Children, as the TIME article later detailed, had already pulled off one of the greatest advocacy campaigns of all time, a true wag-the-dog story in which a small group of activists had built massive momentum on college campuses across the U.S., then translated that into such vociferous political pressure in Washington that the Congress and the Senate passed a law mandating the U.S. President to act against the L.R.A. To that Barack Obama had responded by sending 100 Special Operations troops to the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
(PHOTOS: On the Ground: Safe from #Kony?)

That result was stunning testament to the success of a new form of slick, digitized, youthful politics that was, depending on whether you liked or disliked Invisible Children and Russell, either stunningly innovative or recklessly broke all the rules. The truth is it was a bit of both. No advocacy campaign has ever come close to shining the kind of spotlight on a developing world conflict in the manner Invisible Children has. At a stroke, conventional media presentation, whether print, radio, television, blogging or social media, all looked desperately tired, as though, like apes trying to figure out the telephone, we’d all somehow missed the huge potential to engage and communicate the new technology was offering. Russell told me Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer and distributor, was just one among a number of media figures who had telephoned him to say: “This changes everything!”

There was a contrary view, however. This held that by simplifying and sensationalizing the L.R.A. conflict, by supporting armed intervention despite being a humanitarian organization, and by personalizing the narrative of Kony2012 — all in the name of maximizing the appeal and accessibility of the campaign — Invisible Children had scored an own goal. It had exposed itself to such a barrage of criticism that the campaign would quickly collapse, and whatever beneficial effects it had would disappear with it. That was the intelligent criticism, and there was, undoubtedly, a sensible and valuable debate to be had over where truthful journalism and activist advocacy part ways — and whether that explained why a small San Diego activist group could go viral with its presentation of the L.R.A. in a way that the New York Times or the BBC, or indeed TIME, never will.

(VIDEO: The Lord’s Resistance Army Hunts Children in Sudan)

What actually happened, however, was that worthwhile debate was drowned out by a wildly inaccurate, malicious online “takedown,” most of whose participants were utterly uninterested in truth but focused instead on a point-scoring, trashing and hurting, the digital pogrom of the unaccountable, anonymous Invisible Mob. Strangely, even as the participants zeroed in on Invisible Children’s fast and loose presentation of the facts, most responded not with superior research or knowledge but ever wilder and thinner conspiracies: this was about oil, this was about radical Christianity, this was about the U.S. electoral cycle. A lot of it was directed at Russell himself, and deeply personal, cruel, bullying. When I spoke to him the second time, he told me most of the world seemed to view him “as the devil.” He also told me he hadn’t slept for nine days. Three days later he suffered what appears to have been a psychological breakdown and was found by San Diego police naked and kneeling in the street, slapping the pavement with his bare hands. At which point, the baying and blood lust only increased. Russell was down, naked and humiliated. Millions took that as a cue to point and laugh.

This is the other lesson of Kony2012. Invisible Children have shown us the almost limitless, instant — and by that I mean wondrous — potential for engaging the world that our new media tools allow. But Invisible Children has also shown us the price we have to expect to pay for that: an almost limitless, instant — and by that I mean thoughtless — response. It’s been enough, apparently, to break Russell, someone whose intent, whatever you thought of his methods, was merely to shine a light on one of the world’s more forgotten, and nastiest, conflicts. Will anyone be brave enough to try to do the same again?

(Article in spoiler for the sake of convenience)

 

Well basically all the criticism I've seen hasn't been backed up by facts either. I'd say the burden of proof falls with those criticizing here, so what facts does the writer really need to show? What exactly is Invisible Children guilty of? Besides getting too much of the spotlight, too fast, I really haven't seen anything concrete. Mostly it’s a lot of conspiracy theories going around about them, but they are prevalent enough (unfounded or not) to so distract from the movement as to cause it to implode.

Here’s one of the better articles I’ve found that talks about the problems with Invisible Children and the Stop Kony movement: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/03/problem-stop-kony/49634/ Other than pointing out that they’ve made a lot of money, and many people question how they’ve chosen to allocate their funds… I find nothing damning here, nothing that supports the level of hate we’ve seen directed against them. So they make almost $90,000 a year. Big f**king deal! I make a lot more than they do, and I don’t even run a company. So most of their money doesn’t go to Uganda, but to making videos. They aren’t lying about this… it’s sort of a core focus of theirs. And hell, maybe they even aren’t saints with their money, but show me one person out there who is, and maybe I’ll start to accept your point. If you don’t like them, don’t support them. That should be simple enough.

But what I don’t get is the viral hatred. It’s really the Roman Colosseum all over again as far as I’m concerned.

It was to provide a perspective on this matter that both the visible and invisible mob fails to consider. It goes beyond the ugly spewing of misinformation and hateful speech and paints a picture of what this movement is, err, or was: 3 guys who went to Uganda, had their hearts touched by the evil they saw there, and pledged their lives (however misguided they may have been) to making a difference. This is an article that represents that humanity behind what's going on.

IC wasn’t that big until a couple of weeks ago, so any corruption here being compared to Red Cross and Unicef seems like comparing apples and oranges. It sounds like a compelling argument, but I feel it’s misapplied to what was really just a group of unknown small-timers up until recently. Now that they are on the world stage, it would certainly behoove them to start acting like it going forward....

Well the Facebook generation seems just as likely to curse IC as to support them at this point, so I’m not really sure what you’re saying here. I would say that both camps are equally misinformed in a majority of cases.

 

Let's see if I've got this straight. The fact that Kony hasn't been seen in 6 years is reason to what? Let him off the hook for countless murders? If someone who killed someone you cared about hadn't been seen for 6 years, would you let them off the hook? And just because he hasn't been seen there in 6 years doesn't mean he isn't there. It's not exactly hard to disappear in the middle of a jungle. I mean, how hard was it to find Osama Bin Laden with the US using the most sophisticated technology and resources at their disposal? And even if he isn't there, they're not going to find him by sitting on their hands. So they have a hard job, and they're doing what they can to bring the guy to justice. It may or may not be enough. They may or may not succeed. And people hate them for trying.

And okay, the Ugandan government is as corrupt as a hard drive dipped in battery acid, but don't you sometimes have to deal with the lesser of evils to accomplish something? If not the Ugandan government, who should they be partnering up with? If you have a better suggestion, I may get behind this criticism. But until then, I see them as doing what they gotta do to accomplish their goal. It’s an utterly corrupt part of the world. Virtually no one is clean. A lot of people there deserve justice as much as Kony does, but in this case Kony happens to be the target.

And what is the implication of your statements? Because the task at hand is a hard one, it's not to be pursued? Are you more in the "let Africa sink" camp?

People absolutely should be free to point out problems, of course. I've never meant to imply otherwise. As for fat paychecks, $90k a year isn't really all that fat of a paycheck when you live in a place like San Diego CA. It's one of the most expensive places in the world, and 90k is just going to be enough to make your mortgage payment, pay your bills with not a whole lot left over. I’m sure all their needs are met, but they aren’t living high on the hog with a $90k salary in San Diego, not even close. But hey, they aren't trying to hide what they make. If you take exception to it, then once again you are welcome to not support them. Call me crazy, but I don’t see what the big deal is here.

Propaganda's everywhere. Sure, IC was going for an emotional reaction with their video. So is Budweiser when they try to imply that if I drink their beer I'll have hot supermodels crawling all over me. Excuse me if I’m not completely offended at seeing a little propaganda used to further a good cause. I’m far more comfortable with this propaganda then I am with the propaganda, say, in the US presidential elections. As I said, propaganda is everywhere, and it’s almost amusing to me that people are having such a violent reaction to it in this particular case. It makes me think they must not be aware of how polluted their lives are with it each and every day.

Sure I do. I also differentiate between throwing out the baby with the bath water, which is what a lot of people are doing with IC. Again, show me an organization that is squeaky clean and I’ll start giving all my charitable donations to them. I believe that humans are a fundamentally flawed species, and the more you put any person or organization under a microscope the more you’re going to find to take exception with. The question I constantly have to ask myself is, does the good outweigh the bad. Should Kony be brought to justice, that would be a resounding yes. And even the chance of that happening is worth pursuing in my opinion. So again, I really don’t understand the witch hunt against IC.

You must hate a lot of people then. I bet any person you know or care about has lied to you at one point or another. I wouldn’t necessarily call that much hate irrational, but it doesn’t sound like the basis of a particularly pleasant existence.

That’s just it. My view isn’t particularly idealistic at all. I realize there are some serious warts here, but this doesn’t cause me to do a wholesale abandonment of the cause. I still have vision enough to see that bringing Kony to justice is a worthy goal. Call me crazy, but I’d kind of like to see it happen.

Like I’ve said a few times, I don’t believe anyone is above reproach. Some people are just a lot better at hiding their faults. There’s nothing blatant or criminal about what IC leadership has been doing that I’m aware of. Before they were basically 3 guys in a room making financial decisions. Now that room has 100 million people in it, and not surprisingly, there’s some differing opinion on how IC’s many should be allocated. Okay, so, let IC take some time to adjust themselves accordingly. This to me is reasonable.

Sure, they had brought in a bit of money, but I would still call them small time compared to where they are now.

This is a good point, and completely true. About the only one you’ve made that I completely agree with!

 

Circles indeed. I'll refrain from further full post quotes, as ultimately, they accomplish nothing, and life is too short. As I've already made clear I'd like to see Joseph Kony brought to task, not because I think it will solve Africa's problems, but because it would be a damn good thing.

I do not want to see the US go to war in order to accomplish this, but if having some military advisors out in Uganda helps the Ugandan government to handle this themselves, then awesome. If not, well, very little in life is guaranteed.

Short and sweet.