Invisible Children - KONY 2012

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Het gaat over Joseph Kony, een giga crimineel die in Uganda kinderen ontvoerde om ze te recruiten voor zn persoonlijke leger. De jongetjes werden getrained om te doden, de meisjes verkocht als seksslaven. Veel werden er ook verminkt, ook door het kinderleger.

Het filmpje vraagt aandacht voor deze zaak, en dat er een eind aan Kony's waanzin moet komen

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Op woensdag 7 maart 2012 21:51 schreef Yuri_Boyka het volgende:

[..]

Over hoeveel geld heb je het. Ik weet niet of jij weet wat een private army kost maar dat is niet zo goedkoop.

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We got trouble.

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about KONY 2012!

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee. But it goes way deeper than that.

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.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Chris Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.

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Op woensdag 7 maart 2012 22:25 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/

[..]

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Actie tegen oorlogsmisdadiger Kony hype op internet

Een wereldwijde campagne tegen de Oegandese guerrillaleider Joseph Kony is uitgegroeid tot een hype op internet. De video Kony 2012 roept op om in actie te komen tegen de van oorlogsmisdaden beschuldigde Kony en is al door ruim 7 miljoen mensen bekeken.

Terreur
De organisatie 'Invisible Children' die de video 'Kony 2012' op het net zette, is opgezet door de Amerikaanse filmmaker Jason Russell en werd in 2006 opgericht. Negen jaar geleden bezocht Russell Oeganda en zag hij hoe duizenden kinderen gebukt gingen onder de terreur van Joseph Kony, de leider van de christelijke Oegandese verzetsbeweging LRA (Lord's Resistance Army). De LRA ronselt kindsoldaten en zaait dood en verderf onder de bevolking.

Het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag beschuldigde Kony in 2005 van oorlogsmisdaden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid maar tot nu toe kon hij niet worden gearresteerd. Het doel van de campagne is om Joseph Kony's gruweldaden bekend te maken bij het grote publiek en zijn arrestatie te bespoedigen.

Actiepakket
Russell roept op de website Kony 2012 iedereen op om een actiepakket te kopen, dat onder meer twee armbanden en een affiche bevat. De filmmaker rekent erop dat zoveel mogelijk mensen een affiche op 20 april zullen ophangen en stickers zullen plakken. Het pakket bestaat verder uit armbandjes die als steunbetuiging voor de kinderen dienen.

De campagne wordt gesteund door onder meer Rihanna, Vanessa Hudgens, George Clooney en zelfs VS-president Barack Obama.

De organisatie oogst ook kritiek wegens een gebrek aan nuance. Sceptici stellen dat een blanke man uit het Westen een complexe situatie als die in Oeganda niet zomaar even kan oplossen.

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Op woensdag 7 maart 2012 22:39 schreef t-8one het volgende:

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bron: http://www.volkskrant.nl/(...)pe-op-internet.dhtml

Volkskrant artikel over het filmpje en de hype.

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I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, Im strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. Theyve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I dont think thats a good thing, and Im not alone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan governments army and various other military forces. Heres a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan Peoples 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 hasnt 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.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Childrens spending isnt on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRAs use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony a brutal man, to be sure as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil. Hes certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Chris Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of ICs programming, Theres also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. [] It hints uncomfortably of the White Mans Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.

Still, Konys a bad guy, and hes been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And theyve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many childrens deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably dont realize theyre supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel its the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I dont think most people are in that position, and thats a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, arent of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isnt helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I dont, but that doesnt mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because its something. Something isnt always better than nothing. Sometimes its worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Konys crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But lets keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.

~ Grant Oyston

Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.

Please do not email Grant except to provide alternative causes, or with media requests, as I am no longer able to read emails (which Im receiving at a rate of over 1000 an hour).

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Op woensdag 7 maart 2012 22:15 schreef DeZoektocht het volgende:
in je OP staat trouwens 30 april, dit moet 20 april zijn volgens het filmpje.

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Op woensdag 7 maart 2012 21:49 schreef Yuri_Boyka het volgende:

[..]

Dat filmpje legt alles uit. Ik ga geen samenvatting geven aangezien het een groot verhaal is.

SPOILER

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 05:16 schreef epicbeardman het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

oh trouwens

SPOILER

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 14:09 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

SPOILER

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 14:09 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/(...)gt-ook-kritiek/]Kony 2012 is hype, maar kritiek komt er nu ook[/url]
Sinds gisteren is het trending topic op Twitter: #stopkony. Een documentaire van een activist die de Oegandese rebellenleider in de boeien wil zien, grijpt razendsnel om zich heen. Maar er is ook kritiek op de werkwijze.

Over wie hebben we het?
Ondanks dat de voice-over in de film zegt dat de meeste mensen niet weten wie Joseph Kony (wiki) is, verscheen zijn naam al vaker in nieuwsberichten. Kony is een Oegandese rebellenleider die met zijn Lord’s Resistance Army (in het Nederlands: Verzetsleger van de Heer) duizenden kindsoldaten ronselde, mishandelde, aanzette tot moorden en gebruikte als seksslaven.

De half uur durende documentaire van liefdadigheidsorganisatie Invisible Children werd drie dagen geleden online gezet en is inmiddels bijna dertig miljoen keer gezien op YouTube en twaalf miljoen keer op Vimeo. Mensen sturen de oproep – Kony moet dit jaar gepakt worden, zo luidt die kortweg – massaal door en beroemdheden doen mee

Invisible Children onder vuur: belonen zichzelf wel erg rijkelijk

Maker Jason Russell ontmoette een van de kindsoldaten en beloofde hem er alles aan te doen om Joseph Kony te stoppen. De internetcampagne is daar het resultaat van: Kony moet zo beroemd worden dat het onvermijdelijk wordt dat hij gezocht en gepakt wordt. Dat is op zich een nobel streven, maar er rijzen ook twijfels nu de woorden van de activisten zo snel een enorm publiek vinden. Nu is het een gewetenloze Afrikaanse oorlogsmisdadiger, maar, vraagt de schrijver van dit stuk zich af, wie is de volgende die binnen een dag het doelwit is van een gigantisch mediaoffensief, opgezet door een kleine organisatie die toevallig weet hoe het internet ingezet moet worden?

Bovendien wordt getwijfeld aan de onbaatzuchtige insteek van Invisible Children. Betalen ze zichzelf niet te veel? Waar blijft het geld dat aan ze gedoneerd wordt? Wat voor organisatie is het eigenlijk?

Weten al die mensen die de link doorsturen wel over welk land ze het hebben?

‘En slechte oplossing voor een ingewikkeld probleem’
Website AllAfrica schrijft vandaag dat #stopkony een campagne is die een misdadiger uit het verleden aanpakt. Ja, hij beging de genoemde gruweldaden, maar deed dat vooral toen de oorlog tussen 1999 en 2004 op zijn hevigst woedde. Hij wordt vandaag de dag nog gezocht door het Internationale Strafhof in Den Haag (ICC), maar het probleem is niet van 2012 en bovendien zijn soldaten al naar hem op zoek. “Deze campagne is slechts de zoveelste slechte oplossing voor een ingewikkeld probleem.”

En dan zijn er nog de inhoudelijke bezwaren tegen de film. Bijvoorbeeld: wat hebben die met veel bombast gebrachte cijfers uit de inleiding voor relevantie? Hoe kunnen we respect opbrengen voor een oproep waarin een vijfjarig blank Amerikaans jongetje meer aan het woord is dan de kindersoldaatjes waar het om draait? En berusten de genoemde feiten wel op de waarheid?

Makers reageren: kritiek is welkom, maar wees specifiek
Invisible Children reageerde vandaag op alle kritiek en probeert alles te weerleggen, onder meer met een grafiek van de financiën van de organisatie. “We proberen zo volledig, transparant en feitelijk als mogelijk te zijn”, schrijven ze. Maar de vorm van het mediaoffensief is bewust: zien is geloven, en daar handelen ze naar.

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 15:53 schreef tripel7 het volgende:
Waarom bel je hem niet om het te vragen:
[ afbeelding ]

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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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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 05:16 schreef epicbeardman het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

oh trouwens

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op donderdag 8 maart 2012 20:21 schreef FRmax het volgende:
WAAR KUN JE KONY POSTERS IN NEDERLAND BESTELLEN?? Help me..