Kony 2012 and why donating to it is no solution

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Ann
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Kony 2012 and why donating to it is no solution

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http://earthreview.eu/2012/03/kony-2012 ... -solution/

You may have already heard about this “Kony 2012″ thing. I heard about it two days ago when someone posted “KONY2012″ as a comment to one of my videos. I had no clue wtf it was, so I went to research it. There is a video about it which explains the working, and I will put it at the bottom of this post because it is important you read this first, before your emotions sway you into donating money that will not solve anything.
When I first saw it, I was taken back by the “donate” and “buy your action kit or get it free for 2 dollars a month” thing. I was dissapointed that this was yet another charity asking for peoples money in order to adress a problem that will respawn as long as the core is not stopped = which is our monetary system.

The campaign is raised to make Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony famous, not in a good way, but in a bad way to expose the abuse he creates. What does Kony do? Raise war, recruit child soldiers. Kony has been indiceted for war crimes bij the international court.
In the video you see a Ugandan boy whose brother was killed by Kony’s army called: Lord’s resistance Army. I have heard about this army before, they routinely abduct children and turn them into child soldiers. They are just one of the many.
Then you see scene about non profit members, where pictures of “the bad guy” are shown to litte blond children. I guess this is to pump up the video and create some emotions in the viewer. Because who is going to sit and watch 30 mins to a boring text video right?

The video makers state that “humanity’s greatest desire is to belong and connect” and that “there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago”. Ok true, but don’t use emotional manipulation to get money out of peoples pockets towards a cause that will not be stopped through donations. I clicked on the “action kit” thing and saw it came with 2 bracelets… or 1 , but I saw a pic with 2 braces…

I will first show some info from other pages about why one should be skeptical about this cause. After this I will give your my facts.

Dubious Finances

From “Visible Children”:


“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, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.

Exaggerated Claims

From Foreign Affairs magazine:


In their campaigns, such organizations [as Invisible Children] have manipulated 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.

Support for Military Intervention

From “Visible Children:”


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.

Marketing Tactics

From Yale Professor Chris Blattman:


“[The video] feels much the same, laced with more macho bravado. The movie feels like it’s about the filmmakers, and not the cause. There might be something to the argument that American teenagers are more likely to relate to an issue through the eyes of a peer. That’s the argument that was made after the first film. It’s not entirely convincing, especially given the distinctly non-teenage political influence IC now has. The cavalier first film did the trick. Maybe now it’s time to start acting like grownups.



There are a few other things that are troubling. It’s questionable whether one should be showing the faces of child soldiers on film. And watching the film one gets the sense that the US and IC were instrumental in getting the peace talks to happen. These things diminish credibility more than anything.

“Invisible Children is staffed by douchebags” (A woman after my own heart.)

From Vice:


“Now when I first watched the Kony 2012 video, there was a horrible pang of self-knowledge as I finally grasped quite how shallow I am. I found it impossible to completely overlook the smug indie-ness of it all. It reminded me of a manipulative technology advert, or the Kings of Leon video where they party with black families, or the 30 Seconds to Mars video where all the kids talk about how Jared Leto’s music saved their lives. I mean, watch the first few seconds of this again. It’s pompous twaddle with no relevance to fucking anything.”



I have made previous posts about why charity is not a solution:
http://earthreview.eu/2012/02/charity-a ... -solution/
http://earthreview.eu/2012/02/you-cant- ... ng-animal/

Will donating your money stop this problem? Of course not. As long as there is inequality and poverty on this planet, “Kony’s” will keep popping up. Maybe in the form of Hitlers who use populations insecurity due to economic crisis, or bosses who don’t give a shit about anything else but profit and are gladly to use sweatshop labor to gain some. Or people who are driven into crime and violent abusive personalities due to situations of poverty. We tend to think our economic system is disconnected from all these problems. As if “it is their problem”. Hey just forget about all history! forget about our exploitation, our colonization, our abuse, our use of sweatshop labor, our competitive system, our reaping of the earths resources, us taking away land from locals in order to build our profit machines, our interconnected economy etc…. The economy does not stop at the borders people, it crosses them.
We have the ability to provide a stable economic system to benefit ALL people, but we do not do it. We have the means, the resources, to feed all and give all a decent living.. Yet we do not do it. If you do not stop the core of a problem, it will pop up in various forms. From the oil gulf disaster at the cost of Mexico (drilling in unsafe locations for profit), to resistance armies using child soldiers (because of situations of deprivation and poverty). No sane person in a wealthy country will think of raising a child soldier army to raid the city + it won’t even be possible with all the social services and stuff. Our situation, our living conditions, define us. Whether you like it or not. You might have been Kony if you grew up as him. Hell, I might have been him. Do I want any more Kony’s to be raised? No! That is why I want a reform of this system. We put all this blame on 1 programmed child that grew up to be Kony, an abuser. But it is our very system that is to blame, the very core foundations that human beings are brought up into.

So if you want to stop Kony’s to be born, and you want to stop children from becomming child soldiers – than stand for a new world system, a system of life for ALL! Not just pure survival. Stand to stop the core, and speak out about it. Blog, Vlog, it are amazing tools to reach the world. Or else we will be donating for the rest of our lives – like trying to remove the water from the sea, which the clouds will always carry back. A never ending task.
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