Kony 2012

~~James~~ · 03-07-2012, 10:20 AM

I read that article I linked and it talks about how they have tried to capture him before and it's just resulted in slaughter. If his soldiers are kids and they're being killed then I don't think I really agree with this campaign. The guy needs to be stopped but I can't take part if it just causes more violence.

LoathsomePete · 03-07-2012, 10:30 AM

Quote:

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.

UPDATE: Facebook has blocked this blog. Complain here and post on Facebook about visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]com instead. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about KONY 2012!

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arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.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.

Found this on my tumblr feed, felt I should probably share it here as well.

I mean they at least brought attention to someone most people would be willing to just cynically dismiss as an unfortunate part of day-to-day life in that region, but after reading through some of the links associated to what I've quoted, I'm not sure if I would want to be seen supporting this group.

RVCA · 03-08-2012, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoathsomePete

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.

You know, if only 1/3 of my donation went to actual relief while the other 2/3 went to PR bull**** and travel expenses, I'd be mad too. Then again, I've never actually donated to an African relief fund so I can't complain since 32% > 0%.

hip hop bunny hop · 03-08-2012, 11:38 AM

I only support military action when it's related to defending my nation and its immediate allies, for a few reasons:

(1) There is no such thing as a humanitarian military expedition; groups that lobby for such expeditions invariably have a motive, a realpolitik motive. They simply dress their expeditions up in the language of human rights, a current example being the sabre rattling against Syria, which is largely promoted by Sunni interests (see, Saudi Arabia) and Likudniks.

(2) Those crying out for such intervention either (1) invert the relationship between a society's superstructure & base, and/or (2) believe we can radically change these nations via some sort of nation building-lite. How people can believe this in the face of empirical failures such Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, (etc.), is beyond me.

(3) I believe our values our unique to our people, and that exporting them via guns & bombs is another form of imperialism, which offers no tangible benefits to the exporter.

...for those wondering what I was referring to by superstructure, see:

Above · 03-09-2012, 03:17 PM

This is disgusting. His crimes are, but the supporters of this campaign are worse. Nobody gives a shit about the children. Everybody's needed someone to hate since Bin Laden was killed and this is ripe for the picking. You don't care. You just like the thrill of the manhunt.

03-08-2012, 11:38 AM	#4 (permalink)
hip hop bunny hop Music Addict Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1,381	I only support military action when it's related to defending my nation and its immediate allies, for a few reasons: (1) There is no such thing as a humanitarian military expedition; groups that lobby for such expeditions invariably have a motive, a realpolitik motive. They simply dress their expeditions up in the language of human rights, a current example being the sabre rattling against Syria, which is largely promoted by Sunni interests (see, Saudi Arabia) and Likudniks. (2) Those crying out for such intervention either (1) invert the relationship between a society's superstructure & base, and/or (2) believe we can radically change these nations via some sort of nation building-lite. How people can believe this in the face of empirical failures such Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, (etc.), is beyond me. (3) I believe our values our unique to our people, and that exporting them via guns & bombs is another form of imperialism, which offers no tangible benefits to the exporter. ...for those wondering what I was referring to by superstructure, see: __________________ Have mercy on the poor.

03-09-2012, 03:17 PM	#5 (permalink)
Above Oh my golly! Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: England Posts: 339	This is disgusting. His crimes are, but the supporters of this campaign are worse. Nobody gives a shit about the children. Everybody's needed someone to hate since Bin Laden was killed and this is ripe for the picking. You don't care. You just like the thrill of the manhunt. __________________ Be pure, Be vigilant, Behave

03-07-2012, 10:20 AM	#1 (permalink)
~~James~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Scotland Posts: 4,483	I read that article I linked and it talks about how they have tried to capture him before and it's just resulted in slaughter. If his soldiers are kids and they're being killed then I don't think I really agree with this campaign. The guy needs to be stopped but I can't take part if it just causes more violence.