Saturday, March 10, 2012

KONY

There's a wildly popular video going around on Youtube about the horrible things that Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony is doing, particularly with child soldiers.  Maybe 25 million people have watched the video, which was produced by a charity group Invisible Children.

Who doesn't feel sympathy for abused children, right?  Well, it seems that Invisible Children doesn't much care about them - they spend about two thirds of the money they raise funding their activities, not funding relief.

I'm not sure if people are catching on to the whole do nothing, feel good cynicism on display here, but this is floating around imgur:


#1 Son sent that via email.  The problem with cynicism is that you lose a lot of real opportunities if you live your life that way.  The problem is, what's on display from both Invisible Children and all the tools on Twitter is pretty shallow - for Invisible Children, it looks like it's pretty cynical, too.

7 comments:

Sherm said...

Heard an interview with a general (possibly retired) in the US military yesterday where he said that Kony hasn't been a factor in Uganda in 4 years and they are no even sure that he's alive. I understand the video left out that bit too.

MonteG said...

As I understand it, hey spend a good portion of their money raising awareness, and it seems to have paid off in spades. They even appear to have managed to convince Dear Leader to send some troops over to help with the hunt (in an advisory roll, I think?). Somewhere out there on the webs, there's a response by the organization to the criticism, but I haven't bothered to read through it (or re-Tweet, post to Facebook, etc. about the whole Kony thing). I did think this was funny as hell, though.
http://i.imgur.com/K3mgn.jpg

NotClauswitz said...

What is awareness, and how does it follow the Law of Gravity thus needing to be raised? Is it a Missionary effort to help raisins? Are permits required to effect the Physics of its raising?

45er said...

The wife mentioned this to me (I follow FB begrudgingly and then only every few months). My immediate inner cynic reared its ugly head, most especially when she mentioned the "kits" for sale. Imagine my (lack of) surprise when I did a few seconds of research and found all of this. I wish more people would use the powerful resource right in front of their face when they are on FB. Click on another window and envision the use a search engine.

Ken said...

They haven't yet settled which Short Victorious War is going to play best in November.

MonteG said...

@DirtCrashr - see also: advertising, propaganda.

Goober said...

Instinct - For several reasons.

1.) Their guy is in the White House, so war is a good thing once again. Liberals aren't against wars, they are just against everything the other side does.

2.) Kony and Uganda don't have oil, so they aren't afraid that other countries might cast aspersions on our true intent - ie, we can be the good guys.

3.) They have this idea that we will be able to go in and kill Kony, and then talk sense into everyone else that is left behind and get them to just live together in harmony. In actuality, what you'll have is a bunch of bloodthirsty 9 to 13 year old kids with no morals, ruthless dispositions, and a total lack of fear of dying, who will be fighting to protect Kony with everythign they've got, meaning our troops will have to kill a shitload of kids to get to Kony.

Don't be fooled into thinking progressives are peace-loving. Most of them would feed you into the ovens at the drop of a hat. The only reason that they are against war is because the other side started them. notice the deafing silence about the Libya campaign?