Originally Posted by Lazerus Reborn

People are idiots.

‎>make video about problems in africa
>talk solely about white american son
logic

hammer -> nail's head. the whole thing smells very much like a neo-white-man's-burden deal. there're probably a gazillion grassroots ugandan organizations more worthy of our attention and aid.

but yeah. fuck the LRA and props for raising awareness (if a little late).

I cant tell whats going on here

Are they using kids sad faces as a reason to get that Oil in Uganda or do they actually want to help? So many sources lead to them wanting what Uganda has and my Facebook news feed is all about helping the children?!?

I usually don't believe in all the internet heroism "like/share this and save the planet" kind of stuff but this video was very well put together. It's clear in it's message and imo doesn't hide the fact that it wants Cony gone even if it takes some hard measures .

Originally Posted by Lazerus Reborn

People are idiots.

‎>make video about problems in africa
>talk solely about white american son
logic

people need this to be able to relate,otherwise they just wouldn't give a fuck . which is sad but true

Supposedly its an elaborate scam and they've pocketed tons over 2 years because of it

http://stopthescam.tumblr.com/

Originally Posted by frell

Supposedly its an elaborate scam and they've pocketed tons over 2 years because of it

http://stopthescam.tumblr.com/

The Invisible Children "organization" has some very shady roots. They've been implicated or connected to weapons deals and other stuff that one doesn't normally associate with legitimate charities.

The bottom line is this: what has been proven through decades of trial and error and case histories at this point is that if you want to make Africa a better place, you go there, you pick up a goddamn rifle, and you start using it on very bad people. People like Kony and the LRA and RUF and Mugabe's henchmen and the janjaweed and Somali al Qaeda extremists and any of the endless list of genocidal, illegitimate, destabilizing mobs of violent psychotic armed thugs running around in that neck of the woods. Africa, sadly, is not running a deficit of them... because the organizations that claim to be the ones with the sole jurisdiction of actually doing something about the problem are either ineffective and impotent to the point of counterproductive, or they're corrupt beyond imagination and actively creating the problem, or both. And that includes most or all of the UN "peacekeeping" forces, as well as most of the African Union troops.

Thousands of UN peacekeepers and all kinds of international hand-wringing couldn't stop mass murders and terrorist anti-government forces running loose around Sierra Leone. Executive Outcomes stopped the problem cold, and did it FAST, with a handful of highly-trained private .mil contractors. And then they got shut down by world governments for having the gall to do publicly and effectively what the governments were incapable of and unwilling to.

Intellectual empathy is good and all, but hitting "Like" on Facebook for a memey YouTube video doesn't stop villages from getting chopped up by madmen with machetes. Shooting the bastards responsible does.

interesting. its cool that its spreading awareness, watching that one video and blindingly sharing it is stupid I agree, but if say 5-10% of the people who watch it begin to research and become more informed on the situation as a whole, not just focused on the charity, you would have to be an idiot to say thats not beneficial.

If you think that most charity's don't end up sending a fraction of the money to the actual cause its incredibly naive. hell, Bono's chartiy ended up sending a whopping 1.2% of the acutal money collected to its cause. ohhh hes such a humanitatrian.....

That article has some good points against them for sure. the funny thing is some of you guys make it out like spreading awareness on issues like this is useless. The video doesnt talk soley about his white son (he focuses on that for like 3mins), regardless of their motive there are so good ideas in there.

The whole point of the video isnt about sending money to help kids in africa, or donating to get aid there, those are side notes. the whole point is its a social experiment to see if there are ways to get people to care about things that are not constantly in their face. The whole point of this is to find a way to get things everywhere using tools like facebook and shit. Its an interesting idea seeing as how we have become so connected through social media over the last 10 years or so. It might be a cool idea to use all this social media stuff to do something other than share status updates about the pork chop you ate for dinner or how you got so wasted on the weekend.

The concept of wanting to help people or change things for the better being met with scorn and indifference is pretty appalling. Sure they are manipulating the situation to have a more biased argument, but then again who the fuck doesnt do that these days?

The bottom line of this rant is: its up to you to inform yourself and read up about things like this, not base your opinions on a single video. Meeting the attitude of wanting to help people and the desire to make the world a better place with sarcasm and idiotic parroting of "white mans guilt" is exactly why the human race is probably never going to change.

I dont care if you are black, white, hispanic, purple or fucking green toothed, being aware of whats going on in the world and feeling empathy towards my fellow human beings is worth a couple minutes of my time. garage bay is right, feeling that empathy isnt going to stop that shit, but look at this thread here. 20-30 people discussing it that wouldn't have any thought about it before reading this thread if can get that going on a global scale, its an interesting 1st baby step.

PixelMasher, I think the point I was trying to make kind of undercuts that... to a point. Being informed is ALWAYS positive, but people need to realize when they're watching this just how many things are deliberately stacked in the way of any attempts or efforts they may make to actually do something. Most of them won't. And considering the consequences that have been shown to befall those who charge in blindly, that's a depressing and potentially dangerous lack of knowledge.

Lots of people caring won't matter. Lots of people donating money won't matter. Previous results from those two factors has shown that public outcry and influxes of money accomplish nothing (or more often, with the money, end up benefiting people it was supposed to be used against... see Adid et al).

Public outcry in Western nations won't matter (it won't matter in Eastern nations either, because they're either politically impotent on this scale, or if they're China, they're currently actively profiting from African upheaval). Public outcry could only accomplish one thing - pressure on Western governments to actively intervene.

After the disasters in Rhodesia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, Western governments will no longer commit significant force to sub-Saharan Africa. They simply won't. They don't want to. There is no desire by the governing cultures and establishments in western nations to do a damn thing. And that carries over to the UN, which is actually counter-productive wherever they go, as Sierra Leone and Rwanda showed so clearly.

Here's the catch: not only do those governments - and the UN - refuse to do anything, they'll impede and stonewall and shut down any attempts by private groups to actually do something. Their view is that a private group accomplishing what they cannot will beg questions about their legitimacy, credibility, and quality... and those would indeed be valid questions. 1,000 people getting stirred up by the YouTube video who actually try to organize a Non-Governmental Organization to bring relief and justice to that region are going to find themselves buried in all kinds of international bureaucracy and red tape and flat-out bullshit that arises when upstart private citizens have the gall to attempt and succeed where the international political establishment has failed. They failed bigtime, and they have therefore resolved that no one else shall succeed and make them look bad.

So if the only outcomes of YouTube-ite public outcry and public donations are either "nothing" or "making it worse", then trying to whip those up with a YouTube video accomplishes vast quantities of a result somewhere between... "nothing" and "making it worse".

Like I said before, if you want to improve Africa, the past many decades have shown that the only proven method of doing so is having the necessary skills, traveling there, picking up a weapon, and getting your hands very dirty. Africa is burdened by a surplus of terrible monsters like Kony, Blahyi, Mugabe, Taylor, and scads of others that simply need killing. Sandline did it, Executive Outcomes did it in Sierra Leone, Task Force Gothic did it in Somalia, the Selous Scouts and the Rhodesian military did it in Rhodesia against ZANU-PF.

It is the Only. Proven. Way.

Everything else has failed spectacularly, and having been stung repeatedly by those failures, governments across the globe now have more interest vested in ensuring things stay that way to protect their own public appearances.

friend sent me this on facebook, thought it be good to break up all the text on this page lol

I though the video was very well done but I couldn't help but feel like the purpose of this is all wrong.

For a start making Kony "famous" is not right. He is meant to be infamous, the posters make it look like a new presidential candidate to vote for and when people look it up and find that the original communication doesn't meet that their brains will automatically go into defence mode. Sure there will be more awareness but if I was a fresh viewer of a KONY 2012 sign with no prior knowledge of this and googled it I would then be sitting there going, "Wait, what is this?" All confused and disoriented about their mission.

Not only that but targeting one man is so pointless. It's not Hitler, we're not in a world war with Africa. When he is taken out (and I mean killed, that's what this movement is advocating surely) then everyone will forget about this thinking it's over because we solved one problem. But it will just continue, this campaign is not "Fix Uganda" it's "Stop Kony" and the country's government and social structure is going to be in the same terrible state that it is now.

Originally Posted by Snacuum

I though the video was very well done but I couldn't help but feel like the purpose of this is all wrong.

For a start making Kony "famous" is not right. He is meant to be infamous, the posters make it look like a new presidential candidate to vote for and when people look it up and find that the original communication doesn't meet that their brains will automatically go into defence mode. Sure there will be more awareness but if I was a fresh viewer of a KONY 2012 sign with no prior knowledge of this and googled it I would then be sitting there going, "Wait, what is this?" All confused and disoriented about their mission.

Not only that but targeting one man is so pointless. It's not Hitler, we're not in a world war with Africa. When he is taken out (and I mean killed, that's what this movement is advocating surely) then everyone will forget about this thinking it's over because we solved one problem. But it will just continue, this campaign is not "Fix Uganda" it's "Stop Kony" and the country's government and social structure is going to be in the same terrible state that it is now.

Yep. I wasn't going to go there, but somebody else I was discussing this with who has actually fought in Africa pointed out that 30 seconds after Kony is dead, an even worse shithead will take his place.

Originally Posted by vik

hahaha.

man, this turned ugly real quick.

just read that visible children tumblr.

To all those that doubt the organization and its mission, watch this:

KONY 2012 Scam or Not? - YouTube

seriously though.... +1 PixelMasher and Kot_Leopold

What bugs me about this is, why is it we're suddenly interested in something that is over 10 years old now? This isn't news, and Kony isn't even in Uganda anymore. Why are we afraid of what Kony might do, when the Ugandans are not?
Coincidentally, oil has recently begun being extracted from Uganda, only the US isn't the one extracting it... yet.

This was an interesting read. I'm not saying it's the 100% truth, but the person does know what she is talking about:
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/com...ible_children/

By supporting Invisible Children, you support military intervention, causing issues where there aren't necessarily any at the moment. This will do nothing but bring back violence to Uganda. Even if he winds up dead, do you honestly think it will make a difference? Someone else will take his place in no time.

This is by far the best take I've seen on the whole thing so far:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/r...tory?fb=native

Take into account that a large number of the sources cited here are professionals living and working in Uganda for various ends.

One interesting and key consideration is the budget breakdown of 'Invisible Children' placed in real context. If it's correct, it turns out they paid ~$1.7 million in salaries to their ~100 employees last year. I'll let you do the math there. Then there's ~$400,000 on their office and obscene amounts of 'travel expenses'.

My response to KONY2012. - YouTube

What bothers me, is seeing people on the news this morning, talking about all the things they are doing to raise money for this. The money isn't going to do shit. They need to spread the awareness. Sending money to an organization, that will only use a small percentage of that money to raise awareness, is only a waste. Spreading the word, in these days, costs basically nothing.

My other issue is, so what if you get Kony (if he is still running/doing things). Kill him, whatever. It won't stop a damn thing. The next asshole will rise to power. Look at Osama, he's dead, yet Alqaeda continues.

So great, April 20th, they are going to cover everything with their shit. Who's going to clean it up? I'm guessing your taxes are going to be wasted on government employees cleaning up the mess.

I hate to sound like an asshole, because I am aware of the issue, and I do want it to change. I just really dislike this approach. The video, and the idea to make everyone know the name Kony, is cool. It gives a single name/word to the issue.

For me, the bigger issue, is why no one is changing how Uganda's government handles this issue. Like many governments in Africa, Uganda's government is corrupt, and the world leaders should be doing something about that. Once again, here we come to police the world, which everyone bitches about, yet if there's a spec on the world that we aren't policing, we get asked why we aren't doing more in that spec.

And why did this guy's kid have to be in the video? It was just stupid and gimmicky.

Edit: I guess I kind of echoed what ZacD's video said (just watched it).

Ignoring the issue of the video's message for a second, the way it was delivered is absolutely vomit inducing. It's hard to trust anything that's so obviously packed full of emotive insubstantial rhetoric

I guess that works better on some people than others

They've also made an official response to the haters: http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisibl...critiques.html

I'm not sure, but I like how this went from "booom attention" to "look into it more carefully before becoming a blind fanboy" to "we encourage you to look into it more carefully".

Originally Posted by benji

Ignoring the issue of the video's message for a second, the way it was delivered is absolutely vomit inducing. It's hard to trust anything that's so obviously packed full of emotive insubstantial rhetoric

I guess that works better on some people than others

Bread and circuses, Benjicus.

Seriously getting tired of some of the self-indulgently cynical responses to the KONY 2012 project. Keeping a war criminal in the public spotlight, rather than letting him live in anonymity is good idea anyway you slice it. Disagree? Come up with something better. Saying its a waste of time, might make you feel better about your own lack of imagination, but it doesn't do shit for anyone else.

Originally Posted by benji

Ignoring the issue of the video's message for a second, the way it was delivered is absolutely vomit inducing. It's hard to trust anything that's so obviously packed full of emotive insubstantial rhetoric

I guess that works better on some people than others

You should watch some of Linkin Park's music videos if you want to see that shit taken to a laughable extreme, so bad that it almost seems satirical.

I found The Unknown Soldier comic to be an eye opening look at the problems of Uganda. The writer, Joshua Dysart, did pretty good research on the subject. I recommend!

Originally Posted by ae.

Seriously getting tired of some of the self-indulgently cynical responses to the KONY 2012 project. Keeping a war criminal in the public spotlight, rather than letting him live in anonymity is good idea anyway you slice it.

Nobody here is postulating that. We're debating both the effectiveness and sincerity of the campaign. The campaign is clearly effective at spreading the word, whether it will be capable of what it is boasting is another matter. They're saying they're going to use social media to change the world... but if you ask me, Egypt and Libya beat them to it.

Disagree? Come up with something better. Saying its a waste of time, might make you feel better about your own lack of imagination, but it doesn't do shit for anyone else.

Seriously dude that is an empty defence. People are allowed to form an opinion on something without being competitive experts in the field.