JOSEPH KONY 2012: Please help stop this mass murderer

[Valley Oak]

["Mad" Miles]

There has been a huge online discussion in the last three days about this video. Turns out it contains some serious misrepresentations and problematic assumptions. What's good about it is that it is getting people to pay attention to this twenty year old issue. But the reality is far more complex than the video indicates. And calling for support for the Musaveni government, is questionable, in the extreme. Some of the links I've been reading for the past two days:

https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/Natio...z/-/index.html

https://thinkprogress.org/security/2...ible-children/

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/stop...ile-repulsive/

Those are only a small part of what I've been reading. But they're some of the better, more comprehensive overviews. The leaders of InvisibleChildren have also mounted their defense. An inadequate response in my view, they don't address the gross distortions of documented reality in their video, they respond to some of the other criticisms, it's a start:

https://allafrica.com/stories/201203080906.html

[Valley Oak]

Hello Miles. Your posts to Wacco are excellent, as always. I will glean from the articles you provided what I feel is most important and try to “synthesize” an answer.

I looked up “Joseph Kony” in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony) and, while Wikipedia is not the strongest possible source for rock solid, reliable data, it does provide a reasonable introduction or overview of an issue if taken with a grain of salt.

One of the recurring themes I’m getting from the articles is that the brutality of the Ugandan government is completely overlooked in the half-hour long “Kony 2012” video. This is saying that state terrorism is often the cause of armed rebel groups such as Kony’s. Therefore, (or at least this could seem to be the case on the surface) that without addressing what may have created Kony in the first place (deadly repression of Ugandans by the Ugandan government and its dictators), then destroying Kony is a lost cause. This is because if we merely eliminate Kony and his LRA, then another Kony or two will take his place. Furthermore, we could be unwittingly doing the “dirty work” of a bloody Ugandan government that is equally guilty of extensive human rights abuses. (The Ugandan government last year was trying to pass a law to punish homosexuality with the death penalty. I’m unaware right now of the status of that law or bill.) And we need not forgot one of the greatest caricatures of African dictators, Idi Amin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin), who was also Ugandan.

The second link you provided has these two paragraphs, below, which I have quoted:

“Nonetheless, over the last few years we’ve seen a number of self-declared policy experts eager to attack advocacy efforts of any stripe whether it relates to Sudan, the LRA, or any other pressing international issue. The idea that Americans can only speak out if they have 20 years of experience on the ground is as silly as it is undemocratic. Citizens have every right to express concerns about a tragedy far from our shores while expecting that appropriate expertise will be brought to bear by their elected officials.”

AND:

“So, instead of continuing to debate the strengths and weakness of the Kony2012 video, or attack Invisible Children for their lack of financial transparency, let’s figure out how to turn this momentum into a constructive opportunity that can result in smart policies that will have a positive, real-time impact in the affected areas of central Africa. Let’s harness this energy and turn it into something productive that ensures we’re telling the right stories, inspiring well-informed advocacy, and working together across governments, academia, grassroots activists, and local populations to help bring this chapter of the LRA — and the impact in affected areas — to a close.”

I will also quote from the 3^rd link you provided:
“the “Kony 2012’ awareness campaign and viral video released by advocacy group ‘Invisible Children Inc.’ is malicious, vile and repulsive.”

Now then, if, for example, we were to follow the money trail (and this is purely hypothetical) and find that the Kony 2012 campaign was being financed in large part by the Koch brothers, then that would be the magic bullet of death to any and all credibility of the Kony 2012 organization and its efforts. This would also prompt a public apology from me here on Wacco and I would be more than happy to give it if it is warranted. Furthermore, there have been extremist American religious groups that have very actively and aggressively promoted the homophobic death penalty law in Uganda. If, also for example, these same groups are behind the Kony 2012 campaign then this would make me one of the biggest jackasses in world! This would mean that I have allowed myself to be duped and used by my own enemies, right here at home, especially considering that I have fought so long and hard for same-sex marriage and gay rights in general.

Finally, I still think that action against Kony is justified, unless I’m sufficiently convinced otherwise. But it does worry me that without a reliably democratic system of government in Uganda any effort to eliminate Kony, even if successful, will end up being a moot point. And in the worst-case scenario, successful foreign intervention against Kony might even help to perpetuate more human rights abuses in Uganda by the Ugandan government.

Ultimately, the very root cause of Uganda’s problems, as it is for any nation, is poverty, ignorance, lack of justice, lack of education, lack of comprehensive health care (which includes reproductive health care), lack of opportunity, lack of infrastructure, and other fundamental problems. Uganda is a resource rich country but internal corruption, lack of democracy (or insufficient strength and effectiveness of democratic institutions and practices), coupled with coercive foreign influences and interests, all serve to undermine Uganda, its people, and its future.

I have not read exhaustively all of the available literature but my initial enthusiasm about the Kony 2012 campaign has been tainted and put into reasonable doubt.

Edward

- - - - - - -

There has been a huge online discussion in the last three days about this video. Turns out it contains some serious misrepresentations and problematic assumptions. What's good about it is that it is getting people to pay attention to this twenty year old issue. But the reality is far more complex than the video indicates. And calling for support for the Musaveni government, is questionable, in the extreme. Some of the links I've been reading for the past two days:

https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/Natio...z/-/index.html

https://thinkprogress.org/security/2...ible-children/

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/stop...ile-repulsive/

Those are only a small part of what I've been reading. But they're some of the better, more comprehensive overviews. The leaders of InvisibleChildren have also mounted their defense. An inadequate response in my view, they don't address the gross distortions of documented reality in their video, they respond to some of the other criticisms, it's a start:

https://allafrica.com/stories/201203080906.html

["Mad" Miles]

Edward,

You start off great making cogent summaries of the relevant concerns. Then as is your "occasional" habit you go over the top and off the rails.

There's no evidence that the Koch Bros. had anything to do with InvisibleChildren.org.

Yes, Musaveni has been thuggish, but to say his violence equals Kony's LRA, is hyperbolic. The evidence in no way supports this. And comparing human suffering from one instance to another, quantitatively especially, but also qualitatively, is a fool's errand.

As for what is responsible for the troubles of parts of Africa, you list symptoms, but make no mention of causes. Colonialism/Imperialism, underdevelopment in post-colonial periods, starting in the fifties and early sixties. It's a complex mess, but you engage in some common stereotyping that is part of what is being criticized in the viral vid.

What I linked was only one portion of what I already knew, and have been reading in the previous three days. There is a defense of InvisibleChildren.org by one of their organizers, who addresses the money criticisms and a couple of other problems, but makes no mention of the untrue claims in the vid. (That Kony currently operates in Uganda. That there is a move to withdraw U.S. Special Forces and call off the manhunt. Some others I'm spacing.)

I agree he must be stopped. Unlike one school of critics who oppose all U.S. military intervention. We disagreed about Libya in the last year as well.

The indisputably good thing about the video, is that since it went viral, we're talking about this and far more people know about the LRA/Kony than ever did before. At least outside of Africa. There, they've known for twenty years.

Coupla more resources for your research. May I humbly suggest you avoid jumping to conclusions, even hypothetical ones for rhetorical effect, unless and until you've actually done a broader range of research?

I love ya, Brother. When you act the fool, I worry it undercuts your persuasive effectiveness.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLVY...&feature=share

https://www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html

The Invisible Children rebuttal has been updated since I read it two days ago. They now address several things left out of the first version. I don't see any response to their false claim that withdrawal of Green Berets has been forwarded in official circles. But I skimmed.

https://fralcon.tumblr.com/post/1892...drens-rebuttal

This is earlier response to the first defense Invisible Children mounted.

All of this stuff is easily found by googling if one has media literacy skills. Everybody, please, no matter how outrageous and compelling something is, check it out first before trumpeting it to your community, it'll save everybody a lot of wasted time.

["Mad" Miles]

This just in!

https://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy...ristian-right/

[Valley Oak]

The following article was published by, "The New York Times," March 14, 2012

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/o...d.html?_r=1&hp

Viral Video, Vicious Warlord

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

I’d like to thank the makers of the “Kony 2012” video for goading me to write about Joseph Kony. With about 100 million views, it is now one of the most viral videos of all time.
My starting point is a “bravo” for film-makers for galvanizing young Americans to look up from their iPhones and seek to make a difference for villagers in central Africa who continue to be murdered, raped and mutilated by Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. Just in the last two months, the Lord’s Resistance Army has mounted 20 raids in Congo alone.
But nobody fights more wickedly than humanitarians, so there have been a series of attacks on the video. Let me try to address some of the criticisms.
Let Africans resolve their own problems. It’s neocolonialist for Americans to think that they can solve Congolese problems, when they can’t even solve their own. This is just one more example of “white man’s burden” imperialism.
When a warlord continues to kill and torture across a swath of Congo and Central African Republic, that’s not a white man’s burden. It’s a human burden.
To me, it feels repugnant to suggest that compassion should stop at a national boundary or color line. A common humanity binds us all, whatever the color of our skin — or passport.
The issue is complicated, in ways that don’t come through in a misleading video. For example, the video doesn’t make clear that Kony is no longer a threat in Uganda.
The video doesn’t contain errors, but it does simplify things greatly to hold attention. Complexity is, er, complicated: It has been a leading excuse for inaction during atrocities — during the Armenian genocide, during the Holocaust, during Rwanda, during the Bosnian slaughter. Each episode truly was complicated, but, in retrospect, we let nuance paralyze us.
It’s true that Kony’s forces are diminished and no longer a danger in Uganda, but he remains a threat in Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan. Those are tough neighborhoods — I’ve been held at gunpoint in Central African Republic and chased through the Congo jungle by a warlord whose massacres I interrupted — that rarely get attention and are little understood. Yes, the video glosses over details, but it has left the American public more informed. Last year, Rush Limbaugh defended the Lord’s Resistance Army because it sounded godly.
American kids worrying about Kony accomplish nothing. The video promotes feel-good gestures — wear a bracelet! — that enrich a do-nothing aid organization but have no benefit in the jungles of central Africa.
It’s true that indignation among Americans won’t by itself stop Kony. Yet I’ve learned over the years that public attention can create an environment in which solutions are more likely.
Public outrage over Serbian atrocities in the Balkans eventually led the Clinton administration to protect Kosovo and hammer out the Dayton peace accord. The Sudan civil war killed millions over half-a-century on and off, until public outrage — largely among evangelical Christians — led President George W. Bush to push successfully for a peace agreement in 2005.
I asked Anthony Lake, now the executive director of Unicef who was President Clinton’s national security adviser during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, whether a viral video about Rwanda would have made a difference then. “The answer is yes,” he said. He suggested that this kind of public attention would also have helped save more lives in Darfur and in Congo’s warring east.
In 1999, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid a brief visit to war-ravaged Sierra Leone and was photographed with a 3-year-old girl whose right arm had been chopped off. The photograph, widely circulated, helped galvanize outside powers to crush the militias. Sierra Leone is now at peace, and that girl is studying in the United States.
I asked Albright, who later led a task force on preventing genocide, what she thinks of the Kony video.
“Shining a light makes a lot of difference,” she said, adding that Kony’s prospects are probably less good now than before the video came out.
The bottom line is: A young man devotes nine years of his life to fight murder, rape and mutilation, he produces a video that goes viral and galvanizes mostly young Americans to show concern for needy villagers abroad — and he’s vilified?
I don’t know if this initiative will make a difference. But if I were a Congolese villager, I would welcome these uncertain efforts over the sneering scorn of do-nothing armchair cynics.

•

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•

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This just in!

https://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy...ristian-right/

["Mad" Miles]

Kristof published after the Alternet background info on I.C. came out. I didn't see him acknowledging the background of I.C. when I read his piece yesterday. (I get his stuff promptly, I'm on his feed. I've been reading him for years.) I like Kristof's work a great deal. I've also read some critiques of the way he goes about generating support for people in impoverished countries with active war zones. Stuff's complex.

As for what the local Ugandan's think. From the area where Kony/LRA did there depredations (among other places in the region, but this is where he started out twenty years ago) check this out. I wonder if Kristoff has seen it?

Quoting Madeline Albright on N2P? After her famous line about the effect of sanctions on Iraq in the 90's. Nicholas? Please!?

https://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...012_video.html

["Mad" Miles]

The best response to the controversy that I've seen. And I've seen many:

The White Savior Industrial Complex

By Teju Cole