Kony 2012

[Muqtada]

KONY 2012 on Vimeo

It's a long video, but worth it. For short attention spans, skip the first three minutes and fifty seconds.

 

[Philip Overby]

I watched this and it really is a pretty powerful video. It's interesting using word of mouth to get something like this noticed in the same way more trivial things go viral. This is a pretty worthy cause and I'd highly recommend people that have a love of justice and of protecting children to give it a look.

 

[sashamerideth]

Except that it is old news. I'm just going to link rather than paraphrase - Am I the only one who is suspicious about Invisible Children, the organisation behind Kony 2012 movement? : AskReddit

excerpt -

Theres ALWAYS two sides to every story. This viral film has caught the attention of heaps of young folk but you are all far too late. Watching that Kony video is essentially watching old news. They started filming in 2003, and northern Uganda has been free of LRA violence and war for over five years. In fact, the LRA have signed a peace accord! They are rebuilding and are restoring the peace.

Yes the leader is still out there however the recruitment of children has decreased 80%. This isn't due to the Invisible Children organisation, its because Ugandan military and the ICC have intercepted.

 

[Philip Overby]

Regardless if it's "too late" or not, I still think it's a good way to spread a message. Maybe it worked or maybe it didn't, but I think using social media and sharing such things is never a bad thing. It may inspire others to try to do something similar. Even if the guy has decreased his "recruitment" of children, he's still done horrible things. It's sort of like saying, "Well, the WTC attacks happened in 2001 so we shouldn't worry about catching the guys responsible for orchestrating it."

In any case, the idea is a pretty good one. I'm not a very political person, so I probably won't have much else to add to this topic, but it's always good to use whatever means we have to hopefully stop atrocities around the world.

 

[Muqtada]

I neither support nor challenge the overall mission of Invisible Children or the ways in which they attempt to acheive their objectives. There is much debating about whether sending advisors to help a country's military is really a good idea, and both sides of the argument have valid points. Regardless of what Kony is doing now, he deserves to be brought in for the crimes he's committed, I agree with Phil on that point, but I am not read up enough on the subject to know if they're going about it the right way.

What I do support is removing the cloak of invisibility from this issue and from Kony is general. I agree with the idea of making him 'famous' and I think using [mainly] free vectors to do so is an amazing idea. Whether you support or challenge the mission of the Invisible Children, this issue is one we should all at least know about so we can at least have an opinion.