Kony 2012

funny i jut logged in for the sole purpose of sharing this...seems you all beat me to it lol

ren wrote:

the young boy thought that dying would be better than living?

He should have thought if his life must be shit, he should kill or ruin everyone else's. When everyone is in the same shithole, they are willing to compromise, to find solutions. Can you imagine yourself on some kind of battlefield, and your enemy would rether kill themselves than live to fight you? How likely arethey to win?

If the rest of the world forgets about them, it is less likely that they themselves will find the will.

If the rest of the world was prohibited from interfering, they'd be much better off.

One way to process decision making was to observe, orient, decide and act (OODA). More recently I've read Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit and Analyze (F3EA). I was wondering if the later replaced the former but I think F3EA is a specific cycle of action, so its probably OODAF3EA rinse and repeat (or more correctly OODF3EA).

I'd have to bet hopeless action has less of a chance then action based on hope. Having hope at least means sufficient opportunity for success exists enough to be comprehended, wheras Will alone means the chance for success was out of reach of comprehension! So to convince people to sacrifice, and stop surviving as a victim they'll need a Will to have hope, that will allow them to begin at step 1 of the process, and in that process I'd imagine 'Will to act' would appear no earlier then step 3. Looking at I think perhaps F3EA is specific because action needs more will then hope, even though perhaps will needs hope to inact.

So I think the will to act requires hope to elevate people out of the crushed condition of being a victim because once your in survival mode you might have already committed to avoiding as much risk as possible and clinging to any security you can find - not the best conditions to begin hopeless acts of will.

When there is hope, people have expectations. they believe things will change. And whilst occasionally hope is good, it can also be terrible and have the opposite effect. People who have hope have something to lose. People who do not have hope have nothing to lose. So if they can't have the life they want, why should they let anyone else have it? all they need is will and no hope. It does work pretty well for the terrorists, they go to any lengths. That's also why they use kids. Get them high on coke and they make better monsters than adults (because they have drug-induced will and no hope).

Hmmm, so the children are to somehow find courage in the midst of all this toil, confusion, and depression. Half of them probably eat one meal a day if that. It would seem to me, they've made all the compromises they should have to make. They don't have guns, the other side does. Okay, the other side has will and no hope, they also have no morals. If the side that is supposed to be good has a will and no hope, that seems like zombies vs. zombies to me. That situation negates any possible end to the conflict. At some point, the weak need support.

hope and will....there is always hope, no matter how slim...one needs only to see it, but it must be realistic hope otherwise you set yourself up for disappointment...i frequently say: hope for the best, but expect/prepare for the worst...if you do that then you're never disappointed...

being weak willed or having no will would be the same as giving up...personally i never give up on anything and i'm not fond of anyone that gives up(or abandons hope)...

you can exist with one or the other, but it is just existing and not living....

there's a part of me that can see and understand how a lack of will or lack of hope is weakness and that part of me gets disgusted at that weakness...however i do not let that part of me have control...i don't condemn others for seeing a lack of will or hope as weakness because of that...there's also a part of me that pities those that have lost will or hope, and that part of me reaches out to offer hope,and strength...it's up to them whether they accept it or not...

Here are some facts concerning Invisible Children and the whole Kony 2012 scheme, a view pointed out by Wil Wheaton on Tumblr. There are a handful of links to sources among this, so the link below it takes you to the actual article source with the links.

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.

[kony2012.]

Source: http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/18920717928/thedailywhat-on-kony-2012-i-honestly-wanted-to




Some other source links about it:

Invisible Children Financial Report (2011) (Page 6 for expenses): http://c2052482.r82.cf0.rackcdn.com/images/737/original/FY11-Audited%20Financial%20Statements.pdf?1320205055

Charity Navigator Rating: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12429

Invisible Children Founders posing with Sudan's People's Liberation Army: http://www.scarlettlion.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GlennaGordon_InvisibleChildrenA.jpg

Rape and looting linked to Ugandan soldiers: http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17456%3Aupdf-in-kony-hunt-accused-of-rape-looting&catid=78%3Atopstories&Itemid=116

Manipulation of facts (Foreign Affairs report): http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136673/mareike-schomerus-tim-allen-and-koen-vlassenroot/obama-takes-on-the-lra?page=show

US intervention in Uganda: http://chrisblattman.com/2011/11/21/what-you-should-be-reading-if-you-want-to-understand-the-us-and-the-lords-resistance-army/

There's a Tumblr, too: http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble

Yup, as follows: Wil Wheaton! I don't care what he has to say because I'm quite sure he hasn't done much for the children of Uganda either. We criticize those who are making change happen, even though we're too chicken shit to do it ourselves. The 35% is still better than nothing.

I think the point was not "Don't donate to any cause because this one is bad," but "Good! You want to donate! Choose a more ethically run organization!"

I think the point was not "Don't donate to any cause because this one is bad," but "Good! You want to donate! Choose a more ethically run organization!"

whoops! Dang computer hijinks ><

Planet of Chaos wrote: Yup, as follows: Wil Wheaton! I don't care what he has to say because I'm quite sure he hasn't done much for the children of Uganda either. We criticize those who are making change happen, even though we're too chicken shit to do it ourselves. The 35% is still better than nothing.

It seems that Wil has revealed 1. How IC's efforts fund their pockets more than their supposed cause while 2. Instigating a war that is not exactly how it is made out to be by involving a great number of people who are not meant to be involved and who are not being given the correct information and 3. Supporting a group who is known for about as much turmoil as their opposition. When you put these facts together, it doesn't quite add up to the theatrical drama that the video portrays.

On top of that, he gives links and sources to charities that do actually put more effort toward these causes than IC actually is.

I was going to post a certain video concerning the truth around the situation but it was removed by YouTube for violating their policy on violence. But there is another I am posting below (with just a simple monolog) that raises very good points.

Video Description: "READ DESCRIPTION for information. Don't be lazy...the quest for the truth is not a 30 minute video- nor is it this one. Be a moral agent and find the truth on your own. That's all I ask for.

No fancy visual effects. No images. No videos. The truth does not need to appear attractive, the truth is beautiful.

Be informed:
http://passittotheleft.org/2012/03/07/re-thinking-the-kony-2012-video-and-inv...
http://purple-bones.tumblr.com/post/18895660571/kony-2012"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18INZci-f3g