It takes a complex issue and reduces it to a product that people can purchase. It's the same thing that we saw with Save Darfur, 1Million t-shirts etc. Africa's problems become the "white man's burden" and he's told that if he will just buy something then that proves that he cares.
Unfortunately it not always better to something than to do nothing. I really hope there will be some scrutiny of how Invisible Children spend this money. The US already has troops supporting the Ugandan military. Buying more guns for the Ugandan military won't solve the issue.
Another problem is that the constant portrayal of Africa as the dark continent helps keep Africa poor. Who wants to invest in Uganda when videos like this portray it as a violent basket case? How many tourists are going to want to come to Uganda?
One of my big concerns about the US military getting involved in "removing" some crazed warlord from power is that our track record of doing that around the world indicates we do a piss-poor job of finding better replacements.
That actually leads to an interesting question. What happens if you just keep killing the bad guys? If you kill a dictator, then his evil successor, then his evil successor, does the next potential evil successor realize it's a bad idea and leave a decent guy in charge? Or do you just end up with chaos? Obviously assisination isn't this easy - but if it were?
I think history has proven that there will always be a underling ready to take his chance at the top. We need to look no further than at something like the drug war in Mexico or even to the US to a smaller extent. A young, brutal cartel member rises to the top with his crew and lasts as leader for a few months or years until he is murdered by the next young, smart, hungry up and comer. It is a never ending cycle, even in Mexico where people are getting murdered everyday someone always thinks they can make it big and stay there.
But I imagine it has a lot to do with it being only alternative for these people. Just imagine you are born in an extremely poor area with no hopes of accomplishing anything. Better to take you chances as a rebel leader/cartel member because as short lived as it is, it's better than living and dying hungry in your small rural village.
This leads always to the question - "bad guy" by what standards?
Something that most Western countries might judge as "bad" can be totally fine with the local natives. For example most Western European countries would probably agree on that death sentences are wrong, still death penalties have the support of over 60% of the US population. So deciding who is good and bad in tribal conflicts is becoming incredibly difficult, especially taking into consideration all the distortions of media and politics.
While I don't have access to the financials of Invisible Children, I take issue with the seemingly implied idea that all charitable organizations should be run by paupers whose only reward is a warm fuzzy feeling. If we limit charitable actors to people who don't desire a certain level of compensation, we very severely limit the number of qualified charitable actors.
If giving to a charity was viewed as purchasing a product, in this case effort toward stopping a vicious warlord, then is ~30% 'materials' cost, 70% staffing/travel/advertising/office space an absurd ratio?
Burning 70% of your money when you are a charity thats trying to do stuff is simply unacceptable, both by comparison to what the rest of the "market" is doing, and arguably by moral standards.
If your charity is doing advocacy or some similarly abstract activity, then it's very different.
It seems every generation must fail to realize that real life does not consist of 'bad guys you can kill and then the problems go away' all over again.
A few years ago I was reading a story about the war in the Congo. I felt really guilty for not knowing much about what was going on. What I knew about it I picked up through reading The Economist or the NYT, but I didn't really have a good overall understanding of the war and the history of that part of the continent (despite having spent time living in Africa, too)
So I went through Amazon and picked up some books about the history of Africa, the history of the Congo, history of Aid in Africa, and read up about it.
My impression has completely changed. Almost all of the wars and trouble in the region are a result of the current national borders having been imposed on the continent by colonialists who divided up the spoils, rather than being based on local tribal affiliations.
Uganda does not have a single ethnic group that comprises more than 10% of the overall population. This leads to instability, turmoil and multiple coupe's (Kony belongs to a tribal group that a former president belonged to. His army was founded initially in reaction to persecution following the coupe). During the 90s there were over 40 conflicts at any one time in Africa - some of them the deadliest seen since WW2 (5.4M in Congo 2 - which the Ugandan military started with its invasion).
Most governments resort to corruption and violence to retain positions of power. That includes exploiting minerals and mining on the black market, nationalizing assets, etc. All to get and retain power. There are very few functioning peaceful free market democracies.
There is also a lot to be said about western aid methods (see Dead Aid[1]). Our food programs have been known to destroy local economies. What the WTO would consider dumping (and a trade violation) in the west we call 'aid' in Africa.
Before having an opinion on the Kony campaign, you should know these things:
1. Kony was indicted by the International Criminal Court 7 years ago.
2. He left Uganda around that time. Most of the internal refugees in Uganda have settled back home. Uganda has been relatively peaceful since.
3. The images of children hiding from militias in camps was big news in the west when it happen - back in 2003. There was even a celebrity campaign and congressional lobbying at the time to do something about it. This isn't a 2012 issue.
4. The last US trained mission in 2006 to capture Kony resulted in a months long terror campaign by the LRA that killed hundreds[2]
5. Most local groups, including clergy, oppose a military solution since the remote villages in the region are not adequately protected from retribution [3]
6. the LRA has largely been an ineffective fighting force in the past 7 years, and have only attacked villages while retreating from military campaigns
7. Almost all the local aid groups including doctors without borders oppose a military solution
Knowing this and then watching the Kony campaign video you find that there is a lot that isn't being mentioned, some if it misleading. It has intentionally simplified the situation and problem down to a good guys vs bad guys paradigm - where there is only a single bad guy responsible for all ills (even his soldiers have been kidnapped, it is Kony alone who is evil). Kony is a symptom of a deeper seeded problem and not the solution. This campaign video spends a lot more time talking about Facebook and social media and showing people in the west a lot more than it talks and discusses the problems in the region. Not a single mention of the Congo war (worst in death toll since WW2), nor of the situation in Uganda, and with facts that were true 8 years ago but not today.
The danger here is misleading people into believing that the problems of the region are the responsibility of a single person, and the solution is to capture that one person. The proposed solution is perhaps the worst part - to re-arm and train a military that was partly responsible for the worst war since WW2 and to send more troops into Congo and other nations.
I think the desired solution is the exact opposite - don't make Kony famous, don't give him a means to arm more followers, keep him in the middle of the jungle where he isn't a threat to anybody and ignore him to the point where his message and means are completely ineffective. This is what has been happening since the last US raid and today.
I think this is a good opportunity to get a real message out about Africa. Be it through a film that covers the modern history of the region or a social campaign to back more pragmatic NGO's that don't take sides in conflicts.
> It has intentionally simplified the situation and problem down to a good guys vs bad guys paradigm
Pretty much every international situation that gets turned into a moral cause by some Western group - and even plenty of domestic problems - ends up being simplified, abstracted, and turned into something similar to what you're describing.
There are plenty of real problems in the world, and genuinely-motivated people probably can help mitigate them somewhat if they're willing to get involved feet-on-ground, but I'll bet that mass-media campaigns and 'raising awareness' often do more harm than good.
I would not recommend Heart of Darkness to a beginner on the Congo. Yes it deals with the brutality of Belgian colonialism... but it's dated and has it's own racist portrayal of Africa as the dark continent with primitive peoples.
I would tho second King Leopold's Ghost as a brilliant overview of colonialism in the Congo.
"Almost all of the wars and trouble in the region are a result of the current national borders having been imposed on the continent by colonialists who divided up the spoils, rather than being based on local tribal affiliations."
Yeah, that's what you're supposed to think. No shame in that. Most people barely have time to learn the official excuses, let alone dig around for the actual story.
Actually, Occam has a simpler explanation: all the wars and trouble in the region are the result of decolonialization, which is what we call the process by which the British, French and Belgian empires were confiscated by the US and transferred from colonial administration to post-colonial aidocracy.
This is sometimes called "independence," but by any objective indicator post-colonial Africa is more, not less, dependent on the outside world. "Third World" forms of government also owe much less to indigenous structures than the colonial regimes - for instance, the Indian Raj was much more similar to Moghul India than the postcolonial democratic welfare state. It also worked a lot better - surprise.
The writers you've been reading are institutional defenders of decolonialization. But try Occam's Razor on for size. Before decolonialization, not a peep is heard from the would-be aidocrats about how these countries are going to be completely screwed up once the Europeans leave. No, the "party line" is that the Europeans are at fault for not industrializing West Africa, etc, and instead retaining an agricultural and artisanal economy. And, of course, not employing enough Harvard-educated natives in government.
As soon as the transition in power is accomplished - not at all a spontaneous event, but driven by US diplomatic pressure - the Third World falls to crap. The steel mills in the jungle are all white elephants. The Harvard-educated natives are all "wa-Benzis." And the aidocrats responsible turn to... blaming the Europeans they confiscated Africa from.
Congo is a good example. You'll notice that your official Congo sources skate really lightly over the period of Belgian rule between the Congo Free State and "independence." There's a reason for that. Rescued from the memory hole, here's the first paragraph of a Time Magazine article about the Congo in 1955:
"In the Belgian Congo last week massed tom-tom drummers practiced a welcome tattoo. Prosperous Negro shopkeepers climbed up wooden ladders and draped the Congolese flag (a golden star on a blue field) from lampposts and triumphal arches set up along Boulevard Albert I, the spanking concrete highway that bisects the capital city of Leopoldville. In far-off mission churches, encircled by the rain forest that stretches through Belgian territory from the Atlantic to the Mountains of the Moon, choirs of Bantu children rehearsed the Te Deum. African regiments drilled, jazz bands blared in..."
This is like tactics and propaganda to get you in the army and which tells you you MUST FIGHT some other bad guy you only know from this movie. But essentially there are army A fighting army B over power to govern what goes on in that part of the world. Picking either one is legit choice. (or none if you don't want align yourself ).
I wonder what would propaganda movie be like if LRA pays same amount of resources to made it.
What if some rich guys pay this kind of propaganda movie against you one day. what would you do?
You're going too far to the opposite extreme. The LRA isn't a "legitimate choice". Kony 2012 doesn't exist in isolation, there is a large amount of independent evidence about the LRA's crimes.
Im sure there is large amount of evidence of crime for other army too. War is like that there are crimes in it. each side is committing crime according to law of other side. (because guess what: they made the law it is what people with power do.)
Even criminals have an interesting backstory, and if you look deeper into it, you might feel some empathy and understanding for why certain people act a certain way. There rarely are people who just kill because they are sinister and purely evil.
Yes, raising awareness is easy compared to finding a solution. But African politics has failed to solve a pretty awful issue for 25 years. Placing this issue in the global spotlight might force something to happen before another generation of villages is raped or abducted into slavery.
> Here’s the thing. The LRA is an incredibly complex issue. By simplifying down to a case of “Goodies versus Baddies” the Invisible Children campaign risks undermining the very real progress that is being made against the LRA. Also released on Tuesday, in a report completely ignored by social media, a spokesman for the UN High Commission for Refugees said that a recent spate of LRA attacks were “the last gasp of a dying organisation that's still trying to make a statement,” adding that there were only about 200 LRA fighters left. Progress is being made. There’s even a chance that Kony will be caught or killed by the end of 2012 – but this will have nothing to do with a YouTube video, however slick it is.
I don't think that the statement "African politics has failed to solve a pretty awful issue for 25 years" is really accurate or fair. And that's one of the problems with this video -- it propagates this idea that Africans need Western powers to solve their problems for them.
And I guess I'd ask this: How does the attention of people in North America and Europe "force something to happen"? Force what to happen? Force Western military intervention? Give Ugandans more motivation to take out the LRA?
And, of course "Africa" isn't really the right word, anyways. It's an entire continent, after all, and the people in Uganda or South Sudan aren't the same as the people in, say, South Africa, or Botswana, or Somalia, etc., nor are the political/economic/social contexts necessarily the same.
The question the article poses is, what good could come out of (more) foreign intervention? The US already has 100 soldiers in Uganda, and is apparently trying to actively capture Kony already.
Anyway, it's nice to get an African perspective on this issue. Interesting read!
The movement is legit, Kony is a crazy mofo, but Invisible Children is a huge money scam. They only donate a fraction of their profits to the charities they claim to support.
I think (and hope) this is the first step in creating real connections between people in disparate regions.
In building a movement, the first thing that is necessary is a good story. And KONY2012 will provide the story if he is caught anytime this year or the next.
I'm not saying that KONY2012 needs to be the reason he is caught - there just needs to be a perception that it was the reason.
There are a lot of lonely people in the US with a smartphone who badly need a human connection and in the developing nations there are tons of people who would be happy to share their lives. I think technology can bridge that gap leading to some real social progress on both sides.
This has always been my "dream app" but of course it requires better infrastructure in the developing nations coupled with really cheap computing and video equipment. But I think it should be possible soon.
Do you really mean we need Americans to put pressure on politicians to support bad and likely deadly policies so that said American people can feel an (illusory) connection with people in the Third World?
"[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really." -James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA
So you're a believer of eugenics. Do you even know what you believe in?? Ask yourself, it's not late to change your mind, you've been victim of a mind-washing campaign. The only way to make you re-think is putting you into the "I've been a victim, I didn't know" position again.
Don't take this personal, this is a rhetorical question:
"According to your weird belief in a form of eugenics, do you agree to be eliminated by someone who claims to be genetically better situated?"
Of course not! Let's face it, you want to live and you can become better, right? There is no such thing as race based intelligence, that's propaganda you've willingly accepted, without proving it, because you want to be a believer. You want to be part of something. You want to make the world better..really? If you really want to be part of something, stop spreading someone else's words, use your own "intelligence". James Watson simply manipulated facts.
Unfortunately it not always better to something than to do nothing. I really hope there will be some scrutiny of how Invisible Children spend this money. The US already has troops supporting the Ugandan military. Buying more guns for the Ugandan military won't solve the issue.
Another problem is that the constant portrayal of Africa as the dark continent helps keep Africa poor. Who wants to invest in Uganda when videos like this portray it as a violent basket case? How many tourists are going to want to come to Uganda?
Here's some interesting thoughts from Ugandan's themselves: http://allafrica.com/stories/201203090364.html