KONY 2012 - Arrest kidnapper and warlord Joseph Kony

[Demosthenes11]

looks like reddit knows whats up

http://www.reddit.com/r/DAE/comments...picious_about/

http://www.reddit.com/r/DAE/comments..._about/c3ykbdv

[Elvis]

It's not the way the charity is run that is the problem. The fact that he makes a short film/documentary/infomercial talking about one single person causing 30 years worth of strife, talks about the problem as if it's a new problem, makes it look like he is the only one doing anything about it, excludes vital information about the corruption of the Ugandan government, then says "give me your money". All this so he can wage his personal war against a guy that is a very small part of the much bigger problem that is called tribal warfare.

This campaign won't stop the violence against children in that part of the world. It will not suddenly make Uganda a utopia where everyone dances and sings on streets paved with gold. This campaign will bring attention to a huge problem in Uganda. It will also exclude the surrounding countries like The DR of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, and Northern Tanzania. The tribal leaders don't care about arbitrary border lines drawn on a map. There is no real centralized government that is capable of keeping the peace in these remote lands. Basically, 30 kilometers outside of major cities, there is no law. This is the reason Kony can hide so easily.

@First / Second Bold
There are people who advocate for animal rights. There are people who only care about domestic issues and don't have an opinion on foreign policy affairs. There are people (like me) who focus on American foreign policy and not so much on domestic affairs.

I see no problem in this project (under the assumption that there is no shenanigans going on w/ the funds).

You cannot expect every individual to be Amnesty International. People will care about issues that interest them (intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, etc.).

If this is truly a personal war - then it's a personal war against a monster.

Do you think people (the abstraction, 'the American people') are, in any meaningful sense, going to tackle issues like this by looking at the forest before the trees?

Kony is a symbol to rally around. Putting him away isn't even supposed to end the greater conflict, forever.

(See: stupid 'Hollywood movies' like Blood Diamond, where at the end, you get the feeling 'and no one ever had to worry about them darn bloods diamonds ever again!')

@Third / Fourth Bold

Yea, it will bring attention to the problem there. That is the point.

And even if people find this organization disagreeable for the LEGITIMATE concerns mentioned already - it will create awareness.

There is no excuse for the target audience for this video (looks like college-age/young adults who don't live under a rock) to have these issues fed to them.

We can go to Amnesty International's website or Human Rights Watch, or the UN, or blah blah blah and find out about these things. There are tons of NGOs that cover all kinds of conflicts around the world that monitor human rights abuses daily.

All you have to do is look into it yourself.

This 'movement' will not exclude other tribal conflicts. It will bring awareness to that very concept as it pertains to the region.

[miokomioko]

My friend was watching the video in the same room as me the other night and I heard something along the lines of how their actions directly lead to the deployment of US troops in Africa to track Kony down... and a woman from IC commented that it was done "without the intent to endanger the lives of American troops..." and I just shook my head and laughed.

Their idea of solving a very specific problem in Africa is to fund an African military group? How does that not have bad idea written all over it? I'm also curious about how many people protesting our troops being deployed in the middle-east are supporting this, to have troops deployed in Africa instead.

[archibaldcrane]

Getting mad that donations were used to make a slick video that has become famous worldwide about the plight of these children in 48 hours is completely ridiculous.

HOW DARE THIS CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION RAISE AWARENESS FOR THE EXACT ISSUE THEY PURPORT TO AFFECT CHANGE IN!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S 4G using Tapatalk

[Milkster]

My friend was watching the video in the same room as me the other night and I heard something along the lines of how their actions directly lead to the deployment of US troops in Africa to track Kony down... and a woman from IC commented that it was done "without the intent to endanger the lives of American troops..." and I just shook my head and laughed.

Their idea of solving a very specific problem in Africa is to fund an African military group? How does that not have bad idea written all over it? I'm also curious about how many people protesting our troops being deployed in the middle-east are supporting this, to have troops deployed in Africa instead.

The troops weren't deployed to fight themselves but train the military forces down there. And there are less than 1000 soldiers there.

President Obama will send about 100 U.S. troops to Uganda and nearby countries to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army and kill or capture its leader, Joseph Kony, who has been charged with war crimes for a decades-long campaign against civilians in Central Africa.
In a letter to Congress on Friday, Obama outlined a strictly advisory role for U.S. forces, whom he said would engage in combat only in self-defense. The initial military contingent numbering about a dozen troops arrived in Uganda on Wednesday, and will grow to full strength in the coming weeks.



The decision follows more than a year of study within the White House on how to support the intent of a bill passed by Congress to help several Central African nations defeat a destabilizing guerrilla movement.
Human rights officials have urged Obama to deploy troops against the Lord’s Resistance Army, arguing that it would be a justified use of force to resolve a humanitarian crisis. The International Criminal Court indicted Kony and four other commanders in 2005 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But the deployment comes as the Obama administration is withdrawing from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, where long wars have tested the patience of the American public and consumed resources the president has argued are needed at home. White House officials said that this troop deployment — the most substantial to an African conflict zone since Marines landed in Liberia in 2003 — is modest in number and in the scope.
“This is an advise and assist mission,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council. “It’s an indication of our support for the ongoing regional effort to confront this threat.”
The Lord’s Resistance Army has been operating in the border regions of northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other Central African nations for more than two decades. Led by Kony, a former altar boy with a messiah complex, the army has been fighting to install what it says would be a Christian government in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments.
Although numbering only about 250 armed members, the movement is notorious for its civilian killings and kidnappings, particularly of children. The White House estimates that roughly 385,000 people have been displaced from villages in the region as a result of those tactics.
A smaller group of U.S. military advisers assisted a previous Ugandan-led offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army in late 2008 and early 2009. That operation backfired, however, as Kony’s group escaped and his fighters responded by committing a string of massacres against civilians.
Fewer than two dozen U.S. personnel were involved in that operation, in which they provided intelligence and guidance to a force of Ugandan and Congolese troops that were hunting Kony’s group in a remote area in northeastern Congo. Kony’s fighters slipped away and rampaged through nearby Congolese villages, killing several hundred people, according to human rights groups.

[miokomioko]

The troops weren't deployed to fight themselves but train the military forces down there. And there are less than 1000 soldiers there.

I know they were deployed to train military groups but that doesn't mean their presence in Uganda is somehow danger-free. Let's see how much better this works than the whole Bay of Pigs thing.

[Sera]

Getting mad that donations were used to make a slick video that has become famous worldwide about the plight of these children in 48 hours is completely ridiculous.

HOW DARE THIS CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION RAISE AWARENESS FOR THE EXACT ISSUE THEY PURPORT TO AFFECT CHANGE IN!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S 4G using Tapatalk

haters gonna hate, man

[Elvis]

Let me add that I totally 'get' the insinuation that it's hypocritical of people to support a kind of interventionism here while opposing US interventionism.

It's redundant though.

The ICC only came into existence in 2002. At first I confused the ICC w/ the ICJ (International Court of Justice). My first thought was a Noam Chomsky lecture I heard 6 years ago where he spoke about the landmark case of Nicaragua vs. The United States, wherein we were found 'guilty' of State-Sponsored terrorism:

Excerpt:

[...]Decides that the United States of America, by certain attacks on Nicaraguan territory in 1983-1984, namely attacks on Puerto Sandino on 13 September and 14 October 1983, an attack on Corinto on 10 October 1983; an attack on Potosi Naval Base on 4/5 January 1984, an attack on San Juan del Sur on 7 March 1984; attacks on patrol boats at Puerto Sandino on 28 and 30 March 1984; and an attack on San Juan del Norte on 9 April 1984; and further by those acts of intervention referred to in subparagraph (3) hereof which involve the use of force, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another State;

[zoobernut]

Getting mad that donations were used to make a slick video that has become famous worldwide about the plight of these children in 48 hours is completely ridiculous.

HOW DARE THIS CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION RAISE AWARENESS FOR THE EXACT ISSUE THEY PURPORT TO AFFECT CHANGE IN!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S 4G using Tapatalk

Thank you Archi very well put.

[Lucavi]

I heard tig'oll bitties were in this thread.

Also, armchair or not, at least someone is doing something. 4chan has been all over this stuff as of late.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Getting mad that donations were used to make a slick video that has become famous worldwide about the plight of these children in 48 hours is completely ridiculous.

HOW DARE THIS CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION RAISE AWARENESS FOR THE EXACT ISSUE THEY PURPORT TO AFFECT CHANGE IN!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S 4G using Tapatalk

Pointing out that the head of the organization who is also a filmmaker paid himself and his friends to make a slick video with donations to pander for donations is not ridiculous at all. If you want to donate to an effective and well run charity, choose Amnesty International, not these controversial dickbags. Pretty simple to understand, really. The contrary to be contrarian act is better left to kuya, he's had years of practice.

[archibaldcrane]

I don't expect people who run charitable organizations to do it for free - none of them do. 90k isn't an outrageous salary from my point of view - clearly it's too much for you to be comfortable with.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

You keep trying to nitpick one tiny aspect of a statistic presented in an argument like it makes your case. It's not working.

[Yugl]

@Indeed:

We agree on the appropriate response. However, I find that the approach you espouse is contrary to your argument. It is as if you said to pick the tallest building and then went ahead and flipped a coin to determine which building to select.

Skepticism of any "news" based on prima facie evidence is always reason for skepticism. Intervention based solely on the video is faulty reasoning.

Here is where I begin to disagree with you. You make universal claims about how intervention affects enmity solely based on Iraq. It is one instance of intervention and is certainly not the sole instance where we had a decision to intervene or abstain. It is silly to exclude cases such as Japan, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Former Yugoslavia, North and South Korea, Vietnam, and China in favor of Iraq. Such exclusion lends itself to the belief that you only know of Iraq or are picking a convenient sample for the sake of a universal argument. The result of these instances (Some occurring within the same country) are not consistent with our decision to intervene or abstain. Your claims regarding the general outcome of intervention fail to explain various instances.

You say that emotion should not drive decision, but it is only through emotion that decision comes out. No number of facts forces you to intervene or abstain. Facts are only capable of stating what is. They are incapable of producing normative claims. That one should retaliate is no more true if someone is about to murder you than if that person is sharing cookies with you. You cannot connect facts to claims of "should." It takes emotion based normative claims to foster action.

The type of concessions I speak of are ones where we have to accept that we cannot mold the outcome to our preference. It is not necessarily a loss if child conscription continues even if that is one motivation for proceeding with intervention. It is not necessarily a loss if there is remaining instability at the moment with return from intervention. You take these to be absolute necessities for intervention to proceed which is why you have difficulty understanding a comparative approach. A comparative approach asks whether what results is preferable to the alternative. Is dumping millions of dollars to end this particular army, even if we do not end child conscription, worth the cost? That is a personal decision dependent on emotions. It seems that this is the fundamental problem with your argument. You claim that a non-emotional approach deters us from intervention when emotion is required to avoid intervention as much as it is necessary to advocate intervention.

The ICC only came into existence in 2002. At first I confused the ICC w/ the ICJ (International Court of Justice). My first thought was a Noam Chomsky lecture I heard 6 years ago where he spoke about the landmark case of Nicaragua vs. The United States, wherein we were found 'guilty' of State-Sponsored terrorism:

To clarify this point: The US never showed up for trial and would have won most of the claims had we done so. However, our prior arguments to dismiss the case were dismissed on legally-shady grounds.

[Mazmaz]

Can I get a TL;DR of this and what the problem is? I really feel like I don't give a shit, but then I do.

[Yugl]

LRA: Group responsible for atrocities in Africa across multiple states. An NGO makes a video calling for action against the group's leader and asks for money. Intervene or do not intervene? Is the video too emotionally charged? Should people send their money to this group or support Amnesty International?

There ya go.

[Sera]

Pretty sure we already agreed that 80k is NOT high for a non-profit CEO's salary in the Pacific West. It is actually LOW based on statistical averages presented on the charity information website. As far as the movie, it is manipulative but honestly it has to be -- people are so jaded and cynical and even more so, they're lazy and complacent. They wanted a reaction, they got one. Not all of that money went into making the movie.

[Mazmaz]

Oh and the money they ask for doesn't really go towards that cause?

Ok thanks.

[Sera]

Oh and the money they ask for doesn't really go towards that cause?

Ok thanks.

there's no proof either way. the deal is that from what we've seen they don't get an independent party to verify their bookkeeping etc. according to THEIR books, they seem pretty legit, but there's no way to be sure. IF their books lined up to what they present, they'd be pretty legit... but you get the idea. Lots of allegations, no proof, and no 3rd party has been allowed to confirm.

[Blarg]

KONY 2012? I have never heard of this Republican candidate before but based on what I have read he may be too moderate for the primary voters