The Kony 2012 Campaign

... and if you'd watched the video, you might have found out that it was due to the campaign. I had starkly wondered at the time why Obama would undertake such a seemingly irrational move - here is the answer. Secondly the message is precisely to retain (if not send) troops in Uganda.

I don't uncritically endorse the campaign. But if you critcise it, at least make an informed criticism.

Well looks like someone beat me to it, I literally just logged in to post the exact same thing, It is shocking and this movement is fantastic mucho respect to the guy and the rest of his followers, it is more than certain going to be a life changing event, and I would be more than Happy to be involved with a UK base for this!

I want to start now aswell!

Problem is that the action kit costs $30 (which is alrightish) but they slap another $20 on top for international shipping. There has to be some way of accessing it in the UK to make this make any sense, because reposting on Facebokk doesnt do a damn, and is not the point of the campaign.

But that will never happen, because mobilsing people in the UK or elsewhere is entirely irrelevant to the campaign organisers. Its a nice bonus, but it is ultimately entirely irrelevant. This is an attempt to exert public pressure on the US administration, so mobilising people in the UK makes no difference for the simple but massively important reason that they cannot vote in the US. The way this works is the US system of lobbyable Congressmen/women who can be targetted by their constituencies, so it actually makes an impact there. But starting it here really IS a 'feel-good-about-ourselves' exercise, hard as it sounds.

Obviously I reposted it massively, and as you can see I also tried to buy the kit - but there isn't really a point, unless people would intend to turn this against Cameron too. And that wouldn't work, because in the US Invisible Children is a massive, organised, financed advocacy-group. As much as it looks htat way on the surface, this can in no way be drawn up by a few student as a part-time activity.

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.

Eurgh this BS is all over my Facebook. It's ****ing pointless. Do you really think it will achieve anything? It's the same as the "Make Poverty History" campaign. A lame concert and suddenly the world's problems disappear?
This is the same. Stuff like this goes on in Africa all the time and the sad thing is that nobody gives a ****! Once this person is found do we all just pat ourselves on the back and carry on as normal? HAHAHAHA

What Uganda really needs is more of a 'Western Presence'

What is this? A lot of people have posted it on Facebook.

Watch the video, you'll understand then

Watch the video, you'll understand then