KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
And forward the link!
Re: Watch this: KONY 2012
Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:07 pm
by Zech
I haven't watched the video, but I did read this very interesting blog post on the subject, written by someone much better informed than I am.
Sadly the regime in power which the makers of the video are asking to bring Kony to 'justice' has a worse horrific record of doing exactly the same thing with children. Removing Kony is like removing a grain of sand from the Sahara and saying 'that's all the sand gone then'. He is just one tiny gog in a huge machine of butchery and savagery which is causing untold misery in certain African states. For their own reasons, the video makers chose to focus on one man. There has been a lot of criticism in theStates about self publicity seeking and incitement to fund raise regarding the author of this. The world needs to wake up to the fuller picture of cruelty in Africa rather than focus on one individual to further the publicity of another.
Obviously, airbrushing out shades of grey is a principal way creating powerful propaganda. Shades of grey such as the fact that we are being asked to provide support for a brutal dictator Yoweri Museveni, whose election EU observers believe was rigged and who has violently suppressed all opposition to him. Or that the Ugandan Army is widely seen as being corrupt and brutal, would leave us questioning whether providing military support for a brutal dictatorship and military is something we support. How many people will die as result of escalating violence? What are the consequences of supporting US intervention in an oil rich developing country? How do you disarm 200 child soldiers without killing them and is this why many north Ugandans want peace through an amnesty rather than escalation the fighting? Is an escalation of fighting with an organisation which the UN describes as a dying out even necessary? Could the millions of pounds that it would cost be better spent on humanitarian causes?
For a fuller understand of the complexities of these sorts of issues, I would highly recommend Craig Murray's book The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and other Conflicts I Have Known. Such matters rarely have simple, neat solutions - especially when those solutions involve military action.
Re: Watch this: KONY 2012
Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 8:22 am
by John Headstrong
for balance, from the 10 O'Clock show
and now the director is not that well
"Officers responded to a radio call to check the welfare of an individual who was said to be running in the street, interfering with traffic, screaming - one person said that he was naked and masturbating."
