Do your HOMEWORK, what is really going on with this? This concern was expressed well with the following comment when this was first going around in viral fashion:
“OK, I’m going to go against the flow on this one.
I’m not making a stand to protect this guy; he may well be as bad as he is portrayed.
What I’m saying is WE need to do our homework.
We should not all jump on any particular cause or band wagon because of a 30 minute viral video.
That is what this is. We may well be participating in a trap, a trap to manipulate our feelings that drive us to be concerned and compassionate about caring for others. In this case the powerful and time tested use of the “children” to further a political agenda is very likely in play, and in a massive way.
So, after viewing this video? How many did some checking to see who Joseph Kony is, what he claims to be, and WHO is on the other side?
The reason I ask, is it is entirely possible that he is a very evil man, and it is entirely possible that he is himself being persecuted and falsely labeled, and maybe even some combination of both.
Ask this question, if Kony were arrested and his rebels were disbanded, WHO benefits? Who comes to power?
This is a VITAL question. We can and should hate the atrocities, but it is also important to make sure we are not in fact being set up to create an even bigger atrocity when we pick sides.
I was reminded this morning of a concealed carry instructor who pointed out the need to assess the situation before getting in to a gun fight. The situation was a shooter who was firing at a car trying to escape. At first one may see the threat as the shooter, and want to stop that person, assuming the shooter was in the wrong, but if you shoot him, but later find out it was his car that was stolen, and the car had that person’s small child inside, you would have found out you picked the wrong side!
The point is you need to KNOW the situation in more depth than a 30 minute viral video which is obviously geared to appeal to EMOTION.
I noted in the video that the only refer to LRA as the rebel group, but they do not say what that means. It stands for Lord’s Resistance Army. They CLAIM to be Christian. Are they? Well the available data suggests that the answer is NO, but do we really know?
Are we jumping into a gun battle and shooting the wrong guy? We should at LEAST ask the question and seek an honest answer.
I find the section of the video with the little child being INDOCTRINATED with pictures of Kony disturbing. Again, Kony may well be an evil man, but that EXACT method could be used on a small child to influence them against ANYONE. You could use that method to make small child believe Jesus was evil. We know this does happen with radical Islam, and they use children as suicide bombers!
The International Criminal Court is the same group that President Bush wisely sought to prevent having jurisdiction over our troops, and they WANT it, because they’d love to try our guys for war crimes, and they would. ICC is a UN creation, and the UN is anti-American, and anti-Semitic, consistently, so be careful who you trust.
This is part of the one world government crowds “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine that would have the UN, using US troops into places like Libya, where we choose sides, when neither side was a good one, and how is it now? Not better, and same in Egypt. In Egypt we facilitated the rise of radical Islam, and I BET that same outcome will result from this effort.
Why do I assume this? Well WHO is on the other side?
Who is against LRA? Uganda and Sudan are against LRA.
Uganda has a dictator; well what do you call a guy in power since 1986? He has supposedly given up his Marxist beliefs…
Here is what Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoweri_Museveni
He occupied Congo in an act of war and that action killed an estimated 5.4 Million people!
He has also used child soldiers.
He has no problem shutting down free speech in Uganda when he does not like what is being said.
There is an agreement between Sudan and Uganda to attack LRA, and who is in control of Sudan?
Well they are a member of the organization of Islamic Cooperation!
So… Sudan is part of the Caliphate that is growing, and we are HELPING this. Radical Islam calls us the great Satan, and we are helping them build forces against us!
There are NO good sides in Uganda, one side is a dictator figure that himself has used child soldiers and who is working with a Islamic Sudan, the other is a guy who is we are told is also using child soldiers and committing atrocities.
…and NO!, we are NOT in a different world; the internet does not change the world because it does not change human nature, which is sinful. It SPEEDS the flow of information, both when used for good, and for evil. And it speeds the flow of propaganda, and we should not jump the gun on any cause. I strongly advise we determine who is on BOTH sides before we jump into a conflict.
I’m also concerned this is also connected to the Obama re-election efforts. He has to distract us from his shredding of the US Constitution and destruction of our economy, and this fits; that and the specific reference and cheering of Obama in this video. Remember when Clinton bombed the aspirin factories, oh, and that was in Sudan! Taxpayers paid out big on that effort, but it did distract from his impeachment proceedings!”
Apparently that was even more profound than was even realized at the time. I did some more home work, and so did others, now even the Blaze.com and Fox News have picked up on some of this, but not the ENTIRE picture.
Here are those stories:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/09/inside-books-charity-behind-viral-kony-2012-video/
Other critical analysis:
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/03/09/kony/
http://mashable.com/2012/03/08/kony-2012-scam/
But it gets worse! Not only is Sudan not run by nice guys, they are ruled by a dictator that is himself wanted by the International Criminal Court, for… Genocide! Yep, and the Invisible Children guys posed with Armed Forces from Sudan…. So what does that mean? You have 2 bad sides, both apparently involved in Genocide, and IC picks one side over the other, asking for international armed forces to come down on the other, which won’t change a thing! The other side commits Genocide. Ever hear of Darfur and the issues there? Most have, but what do they know about it? It is the Islamic militias in Sudan murdering those that are not like them!
The Wikipedia information alone should give you pause:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan
To understand this, you’d need to look at the history of the region. Sudan was a colony of Britain; some parts were once under control of Egypt. But none of that has direct significance until you note that when it was a colony, the area we call Sudan was set up as 2 semi-autonomous governments, both were essentially colonies of Britain, but the British did this because the North was Islamic, and the South was Christian. This might start to better inform that the pattern of spreading Islam is STILL part of this conflict.
I could also add that this fits the pattern in Egypt and Libya. We are siding with what we call a Democracy movement, then later it is unavoidably clear that we helped to depose one dictator for another who comes in to establish Sharia Law and Islamic authoritarian rule. It is NOT about freedom and Democracy, it is about the growth of an Islamic Caliphate, and that pattern fits the Kony 2012 effort.
Most reports say Kony is not even in control now, and his forces have already been decimated, so then WHY does this all of a sudden come up?
Well I could note the timing, and specific mention of 2012. What does this line up with? What else is happening in 2012? Well think about it….
What was the one event that Obama seems to mention often that he claims shows his courageous leadership? He claims he got Bin Laden! (it was the SEALS and ongoing efforts which included harsh interrogation that went back to the previous President that made this possible, he opposed this, and it was a choice he’d be a fool NOT to make, the courage was all on the operators, not him, but I digress).
So, we sent 100 “advisors” to Uganda, and we now have an established military command in Africa…. Most people have NO clue about this, it did not get much media attention.
A specific goal of the 100 “advisors” is the capture or kill this Kony guy, and if they succeed and it comes out in the news, people will not have any clue about what this means, they largely don’t even know we have troops on the ground there!
So, all of a sudden in an election year, this video comes out and goes viral to make this new target famous, so when we get him, we can have a celebration, and I’m sure Obama will be talking about his brave decision to make sure this evil man was stopped.
So, it is a giant propaganda piece.
Yes, this Kony guy might be as bad as they say, but he is largely irrelevant already, his “army” is maybe 200 strong, and it is not even clear he is still in charge!
Then I would have to ask, how can he get by for over 2 decades and be so elusive? How can this be? Someone MUST be supporting him, and WHY?
Well I can’t know, but I can guess. He is fighting other bad guys, evil like this is unfortunately not uncommon. In Uganda you have a dictator who led an effort that killed millions, on the other side of the border you have a dictator, Islamic radical that is charged with Genocide in Darfur! So, picking sides is something we need to be very cautious about.
We can be compassionate all we want, but it won’t change a thing. It seems they problem lies with the foundation of all power structures in the region, which seem to have in common the squashing by brutal force any opposition. They do not have the true founding principles that respect INDIVIDUAL human rights that come from a creator. That is the root of the problem, and to really fix anything, that issue must first be considered, but we can’t even do that, because the world would cry about us being an empire and forcing our views on others! I can hear it now, blood for oil, etc.
The most concise description of the viral video effort of Kony 2012 would call Slacktivism. A combination of slacker and activist, basically giving people a feel good that they made a difference by liking and spreading this propaganda on social media as if it will somehow change the world. Well, sadly it changes nothing.
The problem is you can’t even offer effective humanitarian aid when there is no security. The warlords steal it and you end up feeding the oppressor. To really fix the problem, you have to destroy all the corrupt power structures and start over, but in so doing you likely become corrupt also!
There is only one true inspiration that is not corrupt, that is looking toward divine providence and establishing a government based upon unalienable rights from a creator, and a government of limited powers which is held to respecting those rights. But we can’t even seem to get that right here, because our own leaders can’t seem to stay within those boundaries!
So, ONLY God can help. I don’t say this to be cold, I say it to be honest. We need his help also, and before we try to get specks out of the eyes of others, we need to first remove the plank in our own eye.
We are permitting the killing of the most innocent right here at home, we are on the verge of forcing people to pay for things that violate their beliefs, and we have a leader that is OK with killing a baby after it is born alive! That is right, your president as a state senator specifically argued for this exact thing!
So, I’ll close with this thought. We live in a country that has accepted the killing of millions of babies over the last 4 decades or so. We have problems staying within our Constitutional boundaries on limited power of government. We have a crushing national debt, that gets worse every minute.
If you want to do something to help the oppressed of the world, you must first fix your own house and nation, because we are on a collision course for national disaster. Our moral core has been hollowed out, and we have spent into oblivion. We are financially worse than Greece, and if you don’t know what is happening there, you better start looking into it, because we are next.
There will be no way to help others when we are placed in an economic catastrophe, we’ll be too busy trying to survive, and your current President and his minions are doing this on purpose. He wants fundamental transformation by first destroying our foundation and then rebuilding. This is what they do with recruits in boot camp, break you down under stress and rebuild. The problem for our nation is that we have a good and solid foundation now, if we build a new one, it won’t be better, it will be one like they have in Uganda, or Sudan that does not respect your individual rights, but gives power to the elite all in the name of a common good and the collective. It is a clear and present danger right now.
So, instead of spreading this bogus slacktivist message to help invisible children by shifting power from one madman to another, this sadly changes NOTHING. Start getting involved in the political process here at home and shore up your own family.
If we don’t get involved to fix our pressing issues, we will soon see we are no longer able to help fix the problems elsewhere, and we won’t even exist as the “shining city on the hill” to inspire good government in the rest of the world, which is the real solution in places like Uganda and Sudan.
Minority Rights Advocate 