It must be stopped. We have to stop this madness. This KONY 2012 campaign is spreading like wildfire and no one is taking a step back to evaluate the situation. People jump onto the bandwagon and let that bandwagon decide for themselves. Do you have any idea who the Invisible Children charity are? Do you know anything about Joseph Kony? In this blog post I will provide for you another point of view and hopefully systematically argue my case for why KONY 2012 is not a good thing. All I ask you to do is keep an open mind and listen to a perspective that is not trodden on usually.
The aim
My job here is to present to you FACTS and FIGURES that will show you a new perspective into the whole KONY 2012 campaign. I will present to you an argument, followed by a fact and usually a citation from a reliable source. This is all arranged into an easy bite-sized chunk.
#1 - invisible Children Inc
The organization behind it all. The filmmakers and main driving force behind the event. Let’s proceed to break it down. A small amount of research can easily reveal just the surface of the corruption that occurs in the Invisible Children Inc charity organization. So here are the facts that make this organization dodgy:
1) The “charity” organization has refused all request to be examined and evaluated as a charity organization. They have declined the Better Business Bureau numerous requests to examine their facilities and functional system. What kind of legitimate charity organization refuses to get audited? The incentive of reliability and therefore potential support is enough for ANY legitimate charity to want to be audited. The only reason why you would refuse dozens of requests to be evaluated is because you are HIDING something. Do you think the Red Cross denies all their evaluators? Of course not, use some common sense.
2) If we look at the salary of the Charity CEO’s, one finds some shocking numbers!
Let’s take a Charity like WorldTeach. My folks know the charity well, and they donate frequently to the organization. A quick look at Charity Navigator shows that the only salary of note is of the CEO’s and it is $41,846. Not bad right?
Now, contrast this with Invisible Children’s salaries of notability:
$88,241 - Ben Keesey Chief Executive Officer
The salary is DOUBLED of what WorldTeach is, not only that, it’s about to get a much more terrible. The Invisible Children’s Charity not only pays the CEO $88,000, there are also two other “co-founders” that get paid just as much:
$89,669 - Jason Russell Co-Founder - Filmmaker
$84,377 - Laren Poole Co-Founder -Filmmaker
So this adds us to a total of $262,287! That’s right. The notable salaries of Invisible Children amount to a QUARTER OF A MILLION split between three greedy individuals. Compare this with WorldTeach. WorldTeach not only has only 1 notable salary on the charity list, but it is a mere 41,846 dollars. The notable salary expenditure of Invisible Children is 400% more, at a whopping, $262,287 US dollars.
Lastly, here is a direct quote from the Visible Children blog: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. Source:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12429
#2 We’re fighting in uganda?
The official statement of Invisible Children as a charity is as follows:
”
invisible children is a movement seeking to end the conflict in Uganda and stop the abduction of children for use as child soldiers.”
There’s a problem. According to Wikipedia, the LRA disbanded in Uganda in 2006. While they have done some slight expansion into Central Africa, logistically and infrastructural-wise, at least 90% of Invisible Children’s operations happen in Uganda. It is logistically impossible for someone so entrenched in Uganda to be a main flag-carrier for a terrorist campaign that is down in SOUTH SUDAN. Invisible Children is a Uganda based organization and since they have been rid of Joseph Kony in Uganda for 7 years now, what are they still doing campaigning something that is not their problem? The essence of it lies in incentives (thank you Freakonomics). And that is money.
Source:
http://ilto.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/the-visible-problem-with-invisible-children/#3 Fighting violence with violence
Invisible Children’s main organization is aimed at military engagement and intervention of Joseph Kony’s army. The thousands of people who are campaigning for Kony’s PROSECUTION have no idea what consequences might follow their actions. The key word here is PROSECUTION. Prosecution of Joseph Kony means DIRECT MILITARY ENGAGEMENT.
Above is an ACTUAL photo from Grant Oyston showing the Filmmakers of and members of the KONY 2012 movement and hence the Invisible Children movement posting with AK-47’s and RPG’s. Yes, everybody, this is your beloved organization. Close your eyes right no-, wait then you won’t be able to read this. OKAY, CLOSE ONE EYE right now and imagine the millions of lives that will be lost in a direct confrontation against Kony’s army. Imagine the bloodshed. This is what you are campaigning for. Like I said before, the only way to prosecute Kony is through military intervention. Is this what you really want?
I will end this point by appealing to common sense. Obama sent 100 specialized troops to attempt to deal with the Joseph Kony uprising. And you know what were their orders? They were NOT allowed to engage in direct combat. If you don’t wan to believe me, believe the president of the United States. The US could storm in right this moment and take Kony along with a couple of tens of millions of lives of innocent children. But they don’t. You know why? Because they know better, and you should to. Is this really what you’re supporting?
#4 What are you saving the people from?
It’s easy for you to point fingers from the perspective of a rich middle-class person, but when it comes down to it. When it comes down to the very essence of it, what are you saving the people from? Joseph Kony is a monster, but do you know WHAT the alternatives are? There’s a reason why so many people have joined Kony and named him a visionary. Do you want to know the reason?
The alternative to Kony, living under the corrupt South Sudan government is even worse.I would like to use the powers of History to help me out on this one. Hitler and the Weimar; why was Hitler so successful? Because things were even worse at the time. Things were bad, people were killing themselves and the great depression happened. Hence, the people got tired of living in that eternal state of misery and looked towards a new leader, and that was Hitler. Another example, Mao and the rural villagers; Mao came to prominence because life in China under the 國民黨 was so incredibly terrible that people were desperate for ANYTHING. The peasants were being exploited and Mao gained popularity because of how messed up the situation is. The main theme here is that crazy revolutionaries like Mao, Kony, Hitler only get popular because the state that the people were living in prior to the revolutionary’s prominence is just as unfavorable.
Do you realize how downtrodden places like South Sudan have to be in order for the people to be desperate enough to turn to Kony? You have no idea. You have no idea how weak the economy is, you have no idea how corrupt the Government is, and you have no idea how much pillaging and looting the other organizations do as well. Kony is not the only one. If Kony was prosecuted and the South Sudanese government would be held responsible for the direct management of Kony’s remaining army. Let me now, present to you, how decentralized South Sudan is and hopefully you will realize you are not saving these people from ANYTHING.
1) South Sudan has the HIGHEST maternal mortality rate at 2,053.9 per 100,000 live births.
2) Infant mortality rate is 135.3 per 1,000. So many babies die in the area that I don’t even think Kony could out-kill the infant deaths. IF Kony gets prosecuted, the THREE (yes there are only three, 500,000 per 1 doctor and a handful of surgeons) hospitals in South Sudan will find themselves even more overwhelmed and MANY, MANY MORE BABIES WILL DIE AS A RESULT.
3) Are you naive enough to believe that Kony is the only one killing? South Sudan for example, have problems that make Kony look like an insect. Tribal Killings this January in South Sudan document 120,000 deaths in one month. I don’t think even Joseph Kony could come close to a tenth of that amount.
Source:
www.southernsudanmedicaljournal.com/assets/files/misc/SHHS.pdf #5 - think
What I’m trying to say is that the people joined Kony for a reason. While I agree he is a monster, the underlying problems of nations like South Sudan show that the fickle and corrupt government is nowhere NEAR ready to handle a conflict as big as the prosecution of Joseph Kony. It pains me to say that I do not doubt that South Sudan will cease to exist if a military engagement the size that the Invisible Children are planning.
I am not saying that Kony is not an evil being, I am saying that the remedy that this “charity” claims is not only harmful, but it could potential be extremely virulent towards the stability of the African continent. For people who do not believe that this movement is more harm than good, I have one word for you. - HISTORY. I will now NUMEROUS examples of how INCREASE OPPOSITION, especially military intervention like the “charity” is planning acts as a catalyst towards the explosive popularity and success of a revolutionary (Shout out to the wonderful YONG JUN for helping me pick these historical events):
1) ENGLISH CIVIL WAR:
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Sharp, David (2000), England in crisis 1640–60, Oxford: Heinneman
GENERAL ARTICLE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War2) FRENCH REVO:
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation (1935).
GENERAL ARTICLE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution3) RUSSIAN REVO:
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Acton, Edward, Vladimir Cherniaev, and William G. Rosenberg, eds.
A Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921 (Bloomington, 1997).
GENERAL ARTICLE: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Russian_
Revolution4) INDONESIA-MALAYSIA:
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Conboy, Ken. 2003. ‘’Kompassus – Inside Indonesia’s Special Forces’’. Jakarta: Equinox Publishing.
GENERAL ARTICLE: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia–Malaysia_confrontation
5) CHINESE CIVIL WAR:
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Schoppa, R. Keith. [2000] (2000). The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231112769.
GENERAL ARTICLE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_WarTO EVERYONE WHO HAS A PROBLEM WITH ME CITING WIKIPEDIA:
Every Wikipedia article I linked is full of citations from scholarly BOOKS. For example, the article on the English Civil War has AT LEAST 300 citations to university and phd texts as evident in the citation. There is the conception that Wikipedia is unreliable, however that is only when there are no citations within the article. When the article is heavily cited as evident in ALL of my Wikipedia links, Wikipedia is one of the most reliable sources you can use as it provides a compendium of all scholarly articles into one concise article. I do understand that Wikipedia citations are somewhat unorthodox, but if you took even a second before criticizing, to look at the citations list of scholarly articles at the end of ALL the articles I’ve linked, you will find an amazing compendium of books that have been referenced.Shall I continue?
Because practically every single revolution good or bad flourishes under intense opposition.
By supporting this movement, you are supporting a incredibly questionable “charity”. A charity that totes guns around, posing with other militants while carrying rocket launchers. A charity where only 30% of the revenue go to actual relief work and where the net notable salary is 400% more than a normal charity. A charity that is so secretive and has so much to had that it has NEVER, EVER, let an official auditor examine them. A Charity that claims to fight a conflict in Uganda when it has ended 7 years ago. Thank you and please share and spread the knowledge.
6 - A final conclusion
My friend Yong Jun posted a beautiful, eloquent comment about the whole Kony situation, and with his permission, I am going to use it as my closing comment. (check him out at sevuolballare.weebly.com)
Wikipedia has, for such large pages, at least 50 reliable sources from universities and other acclaimed scholarly journals. I challenge you to find a page better cited. Wikipedia is unreliable for those tiny articles that about 5 people in the world is truly an expert about, and this again shows the bandwagon mentality of the inapt in thinking that Wikipedia cannot be trusted.
Was not the founding fathers of so many nations seen as such an evil being? Did the American founding fathers not slaughter, pillage and kill in order to create their Utopian society? Did Lenin not wage war against about 5 different armies and factions to reorganize Russia and improve its infrastructure and industry by a factor of 100 years? Did Mao not knock 50 years off China’s state as a dark vortex of doom?
Machiavelli said “Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.” In a struggle for whatever ideal, sacrifices are inevitable, be it resources, wealth, a life or even entire armies. One that lives in a world that believes lives saved are always for the better is not only delusional but grossly misunderstands the workings of humanity.
Neither am I convinced that Kony is a Messiah for his people, alike to Mao or Lenin. However, the general ignorance at this topic, and the uproar it brought about is severely disheartening for one who sincerely wishes to love all humanity.
This cesspool of ignorance cannot continue. I am for an opposition to Kony, as every thesis requires and will have an antithesis. Please, however, make it intelligent.
