Kony 2012!!!

Ender pretty much summed it up. I saw that then looked up the facts. 31% is sad considering. Not to mention the Ugandan government doing the same thing as this guy. After seeing how much much of the proceeds are actually used to "help", that's a scam. I don't mind helping as long as I know it would actually be used to help who it's intended for.

Having worked with Ugandans every day for a year and having many discussions with them...all I can do is shake my head at this...tutaonana... Originally Posted by Wakeuр

Please explain

I love the way the community supports charity world wide. I volunteer to pass out food to the homeless in Houston one day a month. Wish I could do more. You wouldn't believe the stories the homeless have to tell. Sad fact that right here in America we have starving people. Regardless of their decisions they still need someone to care about them, to listen and to love them. God Bless. Originally Posted by milflover

AMENNNNNNN!!!!!!

Please explain Originally Posted by Allen Woody

Joseph Kony is no doubt a bad man, but the average Ugandan doesn't care about him now. He's a relic from the bush war of the 80's, who's not even in Uganda anymore, in fact was concentrating more in southern Sudan (in retaliation for what he thinks is Sudan betraying him). The problem to them is the other relic from the bush war of the 80's, the man who helped to overthrow both Idi Amin and Milton Obote, Yoweri Museveni. Kony and Museveni aren't that much different, one does his fighting with guns, the other with money, money freely given by the IMF and the World Bank, and yes, by us.

You see, Uganda is deeply divided in both tribal and ethnic groups as well as economic groups. The north of Uganda, populated by Nilotic people, including the Acholi, is vastly different from the Bantu in the south, mainly the Buganda. The north has always been the warrior people of the country, supplying the soldiers and generals for every conflict that the country has had. Idi Amin Dada, and Milton Obote were both northerners. Museveni is emphatically not, he's from the southwest.

As usual, we can blame the country's problems on the British and their damn colonial rule over Africa. In 1962, they appointed Obote as prime minister, and a year later, a Buganda king was made President when the British Governor-General left, placing Obote under him. From the start, northerners had been in control of the country, but back country rurals don't go over well with international governments, so the Buganda, occupying the south, and the capital Kampala, were placed in power instead, and the road to civil war, rebellion, and everything else was started.

The north has two types of people in it, those who hate Museveni for his rule of the country and those who hate Kony and the other groups like him that have been around since before 1986. People started out hating Museveni and liking Kony back in the 80's, after all, here was a northerner fighting to overthrow the upstart southerner. Then Kony started abducting children for his troops and the northern people started liking Museveni instead of Kony, simply because of the civilian casualties of the insurgency. Since the turn of the century, Kony has been relatively quiet, even participating in talks with the government about disarming, and amnesty for him will be granted if the LRA ever signs a cease fire agreement, and as such, the northerners have gone back to seeing Museveni as just another southerner who won't give up power, which they don't like. It's very similar to any insurgency, like Iraq. The people hate the US for taking over unjustly, then they hate the insurgency for what they do to fight back, then as the insurgency dies down, they go back to hating Americans again until the next flare-up.

Talking to former members of the UPDF is very strange. Based on their age, northerners still have very strong love/hate feelings about either Kony or Museveni. Younger men dislike Museveni much more than they dislike Kony, whereas older aged men think the same. It's the tweeners, the middle aged men, who grew up during the worst of the abuses that feel the opposite. There's no need to go into more Ugandan politics than I already have, or to talk about Museveni's abuses, both politically, monitarily, or physically, you can find those for yourself. At the end of the day, as time goes on, the average person in Uganda cares less for Kony and what he's done and more about Museveni and what he's doing, and that's a plain and simple fact.

A friend of mine I met in Iraq who lives in Uganda sent me a link to this document which was produced after the most recent elections (again, not going into the politics of the elections or what my friend believes). I've read it, it's factual, but what's funny is that if you read it and see how things have developed, it gives a full overview of how and why the LRA has done what it did, and even states that in spite of Kony's abuses, the Museveni government is now still held in despite by the northerners.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33701.pdf

To sum up, the average Ugandan today doesn't care nearly as much about Kony as it does about Museveni...and for this to gain traction now, on social networks of all places, when the worst is over and the Ugandan government has negotiated amnesty for Kony in spite of ICC arrest warrants...is just comical...

One more example of the Twitter/Facebook/YouTube world not having a fucking clue...

Thanks for the info, WU. I didn't know any of that but suspected as much. I'm not lining some hippies pocket, subsidizing his film career over this. I'd rather support a charity that works. More likely than not, these are the same assholes who whine about America playing "world police" in the Middle East, demand the close of Gitmo, and motherfuck DoD personnel over Iraq and Afghanistan... But now that military expertise lines up with their agenda, they can't get enough of it.

We trained and equipped governments before in Lybia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, etc and its never turned around to bite us in the ass before, has it?

Very rarely are things as black and white as some would make them out to be.

Once again a "cause" refuses to die because there is too much money available to it to let it die.

Skepticism is a good thing. Thanks for the education WU.

"As usual, we can blame the country's problems on the British and their damn colonial rule over Africa". I agree with that statement in the sense that the british and other europeans should have never left africa to the africans.

CNN has some good videos about Kony and how Ugandans feel about him as well as interesting things about this group who made the video.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/world/...html?hpt=hp_c2

I gather Kony only has like 200 or so soldiers.

Going after and taking out these bad guys like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein does rid the world of "evil doers" and that's a good thing. But the countries left behind are still pretty fucked up with their regional and tribal differences. Often civial wars break out once they are removed because for better or worse, these guys kept all the sides in line.

On a side note, I found the video a bit long at 30 minutes when you don't find out the subject until almost the mid point. Its also very self indulgent and narcissistic of the film maker when he includes his young son. I thought I was watching someone's home movies at times. I know he was trying to get the audience to equate his innocent child with the innocent children sucked up in Kony's evil web. He could have said the same message in half the time considering some of the long (reflective) pauses in several portions of the film.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/14/opinio...tml?hpt=hp_bn6

"In a post-era era world of "Kony2012," with its harrypotterfication of reality and its transformation of Africa from a complex, infinitely nuanced society into a manichaean Madison Avenue fantasy of good and evil, are we all now becoming teenagers? But should we really be empowering children to make moral decisions about a world in which they have little experience?"

Awesome...

I bet if Trayvon Martin had a gimmicky video more people would have talked about it on Facebook.

Millions upset about Kony, while their own country becomes more of a police state. The New World Order is laughing all the way to the bank.

LS

Thanks for the quality responses, Wakeup

No worries. The Ugandans were our base security detail in Iraq. Talking with them every day was quite interesting. Picked up a little Swahili, learned all about Ugandan politics, and heard a lot of stories. Got a lot of practice with AK47s, PKMs, and RPKs too.

Occasionally one will show up in my daily life here and when I break out a "habari yako" and a "jambo" it's funny to watch their eyebrows raise.

http://actionfiguretherapy.com/archives/1996#more-1996