Kony 2012

Ellis

Africa as a continent on the most part cannot develop. The climate and the land itself is not right for development. Without development there is no enforcement of rules.
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Given that we are talking about sub-Saharan Africa your statement on the climate and land is for a large part nonsense. Firstly because we are talking about a vast area of land that covers many different climates, many of which are more than capable of supporting development (in both agricultural and industry terms), secondly because historically areas within sub-Saharan Africa have supported agricultural and industry development.

Sub-Saharan Africa has many problems but climate and land being incapable of supporting either agricultural and industry development is most certainly not one of them. Why do you think that European countries were so eager to colonise them in the first place?


Scaff
 
Scaff
Given that we are talking about sub-Saharan Africa your statement on the climate and land is for a large part nonsense. Firstly because we are talking about a vast area of land that covers many different climates, many of which are more than capable of supporting development (in both agricultural and industry terms), secondly because historically areas within sub-Saharan Africa have supported agricultural and industry development.

Sub-Saharan Africa has many problems but climate and land being incapable of supporting either agricultural and industry development is most certainly not one of them. Why do you think that European countries were so eager to colonise them in the first place?


Scaff
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I'd say the vast abundance of people to exploit and potential for slavery would've also been a factor, but I can see your point.
 
As usual, Im with the skeptics on this issue.

Look at the tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, even Katrina in your (American) backyards. As soon as something is forgotten by the general public, then the news makers, the policy makers, and the publicity makers stop caring, and the issue is completely forgotten about. Nothing can be solved by this method, but as another poster suggested, "grab a gun and fight the war yourself". This most likely wont help either, as what can the average citizen do against a group of militia who have been trained since childhood to be as remorseless and sinister as their leader? You for yourself have seen what these soldiers are capable, and willing, to do. And you want to send troops in to aid in the downfall of this man?

This is another problem I see with this. Look at the middle east now, and the middle east from the 80's as one poster mentions. The US (AFAIK) practically armed people like Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, Im no history expert, and feel free to correct me if I am totally off point here. What happens when the leaders of the Ugandan army who are already reportedly corrupt take over these parts of these other countries where this group operates? You have just replaced one bad group with another, only this time they are better trained, better co-ordinated and better armed.

It is as another poster said, you cut off the head, and another one grows. Look at the list of criminals from the very movie that you all cite, who is number two? Another Ugandan, most likely a warlord, similar in nature to Kony, only most likely, more ruthless and more of a threat to the Ugandan people, and the people of Africa as a whole. Look at North Korea for evidence of this. Look at Al Qaedas new leader for evidence of this.

History repeats itself, and this is what is happening here.

The way I see it, by the time 4/20 (an interesting date for a protest, I believe some of their supporters may have a clash, look at history for more examples) arrives, there will be little to know public interest about this issue, and it will just be another global pity-fest that will go by the wayside with nothing that has really been done about, save for a few thousand people that invested themselves too heavily in the cause and have gone past the point of no return.

Edit: Something interesting I also wanted to point out:
Find Uganda on a map.
I got it with 2 seconds to spare on my first try. My cousin lives there. Though he probably couldnt point it out either.
 
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Two things that I read today.

Uganda recently was found to have oil. And now America seems to have taken interest in the country. Raised eye brow much :)

And donation to this cause, approximately 32% of the money actually goes to Uganda. sounds fair. 👍
 
Ellis
Two things that I read today.

Uganda recently was found to have oil. And now America seems to have taken interest in the country. Raised eye brow much :)

And donation to this cause, approximately 32% of the money actually goes to Uganda. sounds fair. 👍
Click to expand...

The other 68% goes to Youtube/Facebook etc...
 
1331159566672.jpg
 
Hollidog
This is another problem I see with this. Look at the middle east now, and the middle east from the 80's as one poster mentions. The US (AFAIK) practically armed people like Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, Im no history expert, and feel free to correct me if I am totally off point here. What happens when the leaders of the Ugandan army who are already reportedly corrupt take over these parts of these other countries where this group operates? You have just replaced one bad group with another, only this time they are better trained, better co-ordinated and better armed.

It is as another poster said, you cut off the head, and another one grows. Look at the list of criminals from the very movie that you all cite, who is number two? Another Ugandan, most likely a warlord, similar in nature to Kony, only most likely, more ruthless and more of a threat to the Ugandan people, and the people of Africa as a whole. Look at North Korea for evidence of this. Look at Al Qaedas new leader for evidence of this.
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Except in all the instances you cite, none involve children.
 
Speedy Samurai
Except in all the instances you cite, none involve children.
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So, when it involves children it needs more attention?

I'm sorry to say, but in all instances children are involved. Look at Syria. Look at Palestina. They may not be on the fighting side, but they still are there on the dying side.
 
Speedy Samurai
Except in all the instances you cite, none involve children.
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Well in a sense maybe not directly but they could. In korea a child will be socialised into thinking that they should be a soldier for their country and the norms, values and morals that the leaders of places such as korea have will be inflicted on the child. Afghanistan aswell, children will hear things and be socialised into thinking that the troops we send out are the enemy and that it is a work of god to eliminate them.

So yes they do indirectly in my opinion.
 
Al-Assad 2012?

How about Robert Mugabe?

...How about Malaria?

Examples such as this make Kony look like a misfit nobody. Sure, there's no harm in becoming aware, but this whole operation seems so shady it hurts. I also find it amusing how some of the same people who are so anti-policing the world like to trend this Kony 2012 thing.

We can go back to the Haiti thing once again on this one. No one cared a thing about Haiti when it's government was killing children, pillaging the country, and committing mass rapes. The earthquake happened, then when the fund-raisers started up everyone was a sudden humanitarian. Now a couple years later, how much do you hear about Haiti.


Like someone said earlier, it shouldn't take a stupid fad trend to make everyone suddenly aware. Since the beginning of time, the world has been plagued with this type of thing, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The best we can do is have a want to be aware of these things, not be aware because Lady Gaga and Bono told you to.
 
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If you want to support the take down of Kony, do not do it through Invisible Children. Take your own action. IC actively supports the Ugandan government, which is corrupt itself and pockets about 68% of donations.

Contact your local representative about the issue, and leave IC to their scam.
 
Take up all your money, and move to Uganda.

Pointless thread is still pointless. Like the last Africa thread. Made by me. Go and search it. Look how many people cared about it.
 
disinfected
Like someone said earlier, it shouldn't take a stupid fad trend to make everyone suddenly aware. Since the beginning of time, the world has been plagued with this type of thing, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The best we can do is have a want to be aware of these things, not be aware because Lady Gaga and Bono told you to.
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Who would most young adults listen to today? They're not going to give a crap about what their parents say or what's on the news. They care about what the celebrities they follow on Twitter have to say. It's like a firewall that only their idols can break through. Deep down inside, they care. Someone just has to get it through to them and if it requires celebrities, then so be it.
 
disinfected
Al-Assad 2012?

How about Robert Mugabe?

...How about Malaria?

Examples such as this make Kony look like a misfit nobody. Sure, there's no harm in becoming aware, but this whole operation seems so shady it hurts. I also find it amusing how some of the same people who are so anti-policing the world like to trend this Kony 2012 thing.

We can go back to the Haiti thing once again on this one. No one cared a thing about Haiti when it's government was killing children, pillaging the country, and committing mass rapes. The earthquake happened, then when the fund-raisers started up everyone was a sudden humanitarian. Now a couple years later, how much do you hear about Haiti.


Like someone said earlier, it shouldn't take a stupid fad trend to make everyone suddenly aware. Since the beginning of time, the world has been plagued with this type of thing, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The best we can do is have a want to be aware of these things, not be aware because Lady Gaga and Bono told you to.
Click to expand...

How about AIDS? 1.2 million deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010, which further increased the number of orphans in Africa to 11.3 million, and those are children made orphans by the AIDS virus alone. (Considering that Africa makes up for 68% of AIDS cases worldwide, it is a conservative assumption that the same proportion of the worlds orphans due to AIDS are also in Africa)

Source

Compare that to the 66,000 children who have been enlisted by Kony, and I'll leave it up to you to decide which is the bigger problem. Wiki claims that 2 million Ugandans have been internally displaced by this man and his actions, again, meager in comparison to the devastation brought by AIDS. 22.8 million people in Africa live with AIDS, while not always the cause of death for people living with AIDS in the western world - because one can still be killed in car accidents, etc - a large proportion of these people will die from the virus. How many of Kony's two million will die as a result of their displacement? More would probably die of AIDS considering the rate of infection in Ugana is 4.8%.

Seems to me like the most economically viable situation is to Nuke the whole place, wait 100 years, and then claim it all back as farmland. Obviously the populous isnt going to agree with me on this one. :crazy:
 
Nuking is a bit to destructive. The easiest way is to stop sending money, food and people.
Close the borders, wait 10 years, tops.
 
Hollidog
Compare that to the 66,000 children who have been enlisted by Kony, and I'll leave it up to you to decide which is the bigger problem. Wiki claims that 2 million Ugandans have been internally displaced by this man and his actions, again, meager in comparison to the devastation brought by AIDS. 22.8 million people in Africa live with AIDS, while not always the cause of death for people living with AIDS in the western world - because one can still be killed in car accidents, etc - a large proportion of these people will die from the virus. How many of Kony's two million will die as a result of their displacement? More would probably die of AIDS considering the rate of infection in Ugana is 4.8%.
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Basically sums up part of my point in a better explanation than I felt like typing up. :sly:
 
Don't put any important on the internet...it might become a meme.
Video is a no no
 
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http://thedailywh.at/2012/03/07/on-kony-2012-2/

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports 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. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.
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I just out-argued a bunch of local Kony Facebook activists. Didn't take much to shut them up after I mentioned Kony's support of a theocratic government based on the Ten Commandments, and compared his crimes to those of the Roman and Spanish empires in particular, Christianity in general, the Crusades, etc etc. The man is just a Roman Catholic doing what Roman Catholics do - kill people who aren't Roman Catholic. Also Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic who has openly supported war against Islam in defense of Christ. He's won several primary votes in the race for President, by the way.
 
Ellis
Two things that I read today.

Uganda recently was found to have oil. And now America seems to have taken interest in the country. Raised eye brow much :)

And donation to this cause, approximately 32% of the money actually goes to Uganda. sounds fair. 👍
Click to expand...

Are you saying the U.S. is in on it with IC? (actually on your side not attacking)
 
Hollidog
How about AIDS? 1.2 million deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010, which further increased the number of orphans in Africa to 11.3 million, and those are children made orphans by the AIDS virus alone. (Considering that Africa makes up for 68% of AIDS cases worldwide, it is a conservative assumption that the same proportion of the worlds orphans due to AIDS are also in Africa)

Source

Compare that to the 66,000 children who have been enlisted by Kony, and I'll leave it up to you to decide which is the bigger problem. Wiki claims that 2 million Ugandans have been internally displaced by this man and his actions, again, meager in comparison to the devastation brought by AIDS. 22.8 million people in Africa live with AIDS, while not always the cause of death for people living with AIDS in the western world - because one can still be killed in car accidents, etc - a large proportion of these people will die from the virus. How many of Kony's two million will die as a result of their displacement? More would probably die of AIDS considering the rate of infection in Ugana is 4.8%.
Click to expand...

I'm of the opinion that something should be done to help both those groups of people. Not that one group is more deserving of help than the other.
 

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