Whatever happened to Kony 2012? - Opinion. And so, 2012 came and went and Joseph Kony was never captured.
Weapons and troops were deployed, politicians and celebrities from Europe and the US made statements and offered their public support to the campaign launched by the Invisible Children organisation, which featured one of the most popular films of the year, Kony2012, and yet, Kony somehow managed to remain at large. The failure to achieve what the Kony2012 filmmakers had aimed for - capturing Joseph Kony and bringing him to justice - raises some important questions about the effectiveness of foreign meddling in African affairs. It equally warns us of the concealed dangers behind the export of "good will" from the West towards other parts of the world.
As the ancient aphorism goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Western condescending attitudes towards Africa and other parts of the world are nothing new.
No Kony Is an Island: Death and Profit in Central Africa. Nari Ward, Third World Bank 6×6, 2010 Now that the progressing phases of #Kony2012 (endorsement, backlash, Despite a vast number of takedowns, the video’s sheer arrogance tempts one to spend at least a couple grafs deconstructing it (I mean, note how IC’s Jason Russell uses his four-year old as a metonym: By speaking to a child about Kony’s evils he is literally treating us, his audience, like children!).
But I will demur. backlash-to-the-backlash, It should shock no one that Kristof was a #Kony endorser, as he portrays the same type of arguments — as I note at TNI. One could even argue that Kristof’s consistent antipolitical and sensationalist “reporting” on the region has empowered and enabled Invisible Children’s ill-advised “awareness raising” militarism.and meta commentary on these phases) have played out, they have left behind a residue: broad interest in central Africa. Dangerous ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012. Kampala, Uganda - From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss.
I'm not on Facebook or Twitter. I don't watch YouTube and the Ugandan papers didn't pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the US about the video by Invisible Children and the massive online response to it. I have not watched the video.
What’s Wrong with the Kony 2012 Campaign. Editor’s Note: We at The CIHA Blog thank you for your interest in our post critiquing the Kony 2012 campaign, which has received thousands of hits and was also picked up by several media outlets.
Adam Branch, writing from Kampala, just sent us a slightly revised update, posted below, that includes the syllabus for his class on the conflict (we also include a link to the original post). Our In The News section links to numerous additional articles on this issue, as well as to sources on the impact of US military collaboration with East African nations. We also want to second Adam’s query about whether it is best to ignore this type of campaign. KONY 2012 FROM KAMPALABy Adam Branch, Makerere Institute of Social Research. KONY 2012.
Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) Click here to see photos of the evolution of the LRA.
Thanks to an incredibly effective social media effort, #StopKony is trending on Twitter today. The campaign coincides with a new awareness-raising documentary by the group Invisible Children. Former FP intern Michael Wilkerson, now a freelance journalist and grad student at Oxford -- who has lived and reported from Uganda -- contributed this guest post on the campaign. -JK By Michael Wilkerson: "Joseph Kony is basically Adolf Hitler. Have you seen something like that fly across your Twitter or Facebook feed today? Kony2012. Two LRA commanders have been removed from the battlefield, Maj.
Gen. Ceasar Acellam and Lt. Colonel Vincent Binansio “Binani” Okumu. 44 radio operators from CAR and DR Congo were trained on using the Early Warning Radio Network to protect themselves and their communities in December 2012 LRA killings of civilians dropped 67% from 2011 to 2012 690k 690,000 defection fliers have been printed and distributed across DR Congo and CAR 5 LRA (2 men and 3 women) surrendered in CAR on November 28, 2012 with a defection flier designed and printed by Invisible Children in-hand IC constructed 3 FM radio towers to broadcast "come home" messages over 37,000 sq/km of LRA traveled territory (Mbokie, Obo, Dungu). 89% of LRA escapees credit "come home" messaging as the reason they decided to attempt escape 37 rural communities in central Africa are linked into Invisible Children's Early Warning Radio Network which uses HF long-range radios to give advance warning of security threats RFJ Bill The U.S. 100m 3.7m 3.1m.
Kony: What Jason did not tell the Invisible Children. New York, NY - Only two weeks ago, Ugandan papers carried front-page reports from the highly respected Social Science Research Council of New York, accusing the Ugandan army of atrocities against civilians in the Central African Republic while on a mission to fight Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The army denied the allegations. Many in the civilian population however, especially in the north, were sceptical of the denial. Like all victims, they have long and enduring memories. The adult population recalls the brutal government-directed counterinsurgency campaign, beginning in 1986, which evolved into Operation North, the first big operation in the country that people talk about as massively destructive for civilians, and which created the conditions that gave rise to the LRA of Joseph Kony and, before it, the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena. #Kony2012 from Advocacy to Militarisation « The Disorder Of Things. Although the attention spike and mainstream media attention on #Kony2012 has receded, not least thanks to Jason ‘Radical’ Russell’s own brush with infamy, the implications of muscular-liberalism-as-social-media-experiment continue to unfold.
My feed at least continues to be peppered with anger towards Invisible Children from informed activists and scholars (although Norbert Mao, for one, takes a much more positive view and Jason Stearns makes a few qualifications of the anti-case worth reading). On Saturday, CEO Ben Keesey and ‘Director of Ideas Development’ Jedidiah Jenkins (formerly ‘Director of Ideology’: yes, really) released a short teaser video promising a sequel to #Kony2012 and declaring that the campaign was “working”. But what does the Resolution actually ask for? Having reaffirmed previous declarations, it: Now that’s a rather curious formulation of “diplomatic efforts”. All of this sets a brutal precedent. Like this: Like Loading... Selling KONY. qHJ1P. The White Savior Industrial Complex - Teju Cole - International. On Kony2012: In Defense of the Armchair. It is quite possible that there remains nothing new to say about Kony2012.
This thirty-minute video, narrated by Jason Russell, co-founder of the non-profit organization Invisible Children, aims to rally mass awareness and support for the campaign to capture Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). But Kony2012 is, after all, the gift that keeps on giving. Its tally includes an unprecedented humanitarian social media coup with close to ninety million YouTube views, a mind-boggling number of (re)tweets, and various Facebook-related milestones. Not a Click Away: Joseph Kony in the Real World. In 2006, I flew with a group of journalists and United Nations officials to a remote village in Garamba National Park in eastern Congo, just on other side of the South Sudan border, for a meeting with Joseph Kony and the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The meeting was to be held in a designated staging ground – a neutral space, deep in the forest, created by the UN as part of yet another protracted peace agreement between Kony and the Ugandan government. When we arrived, dozens of heavily armed LRA soldiers emerged from the forest and took their places among the stacks of rotting food that had been delivered to the clearing as an enticement and sign of goodwill. The LRA soldiers, dressed in camouflage pants and European football jerseys, spoke to no one and refused any attempt to address them. African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign. (Updated with additions, March 10, 2012. Here's a Twitter list, so you can follow all of the African writers mentioned in this post who are on Twitter.) The internets are all a-flutter with reactions to Kony 2012, a high-velocity viral fundraising campaign created by the "rebel soul dream evangelists" at Invisible Children to "raise awareness" about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and child soldiers.
As noted in my previous post here on Boing Boing, the project has many critics. There is a drinking game, there are epic lolpictorials, and a chorus of idiots on Facebook. There are indications the project may be about stealth-evangelizing Christianity. But in that flood of attention, one set of voices has gone largely ignored: Africans themselves. 'Kony 2012' Is Not a Revolution - Room for Debate. Unpacking Kony 2012. Posted by Ethan on Mar 8th, 2012 in Africa | 91 comments Traduzido para o Português por Natália Mazotte e Bruno Serman. “Can I Tell You The Bad Guy’s Name?”: A Virtual Read-In and Comment On #Kony2012 and Badvocacy « The Disorder Of Things.
UPDATE (10 March): Material is coming thick and fast on #Kony2012, so I’m adding three recent interventions. The first is from Ismael Beah, he of child soldier fame, on CNN (apologies for the awful interviewer). The second is from Adam Branch (who just has a book out on Uganda, war and intervention) on the wrongness, and also the irrelevance to Northern Ugandans, of Invisible Children: The third, from Teddy Ruge, beautiful in its rage: This IC campaign is a perfect example of how fund-sucking NGO’s survive.
“Raising awareness” (as vapid an exercise as it is) on the level that IC does, costs money. Kony 2012 and The Choir of Saviors: You got a song you wanna sing for me? « The Disorder Of Things. You got a song you wanna sing for me? Sing a song, singing man. Sing another song, singing man. Sing a song for me. One for the pressing, two for the cross, Three for the blessing, four for the loss. Kid holdin’ a weapon, walk like a corpse In the face of transgression, military issue Kalash Nikova or machete or a pitchfork. 'Kony 2012': How not to change the world. Schomerus: "Kony 2012" is well-packaged call to maintain status quoViral video about Ugandan warlord has more than 60 million YouTube views this weekFilm "makes millions of people believe war is the best way to bring peace" Editor's note: Mareike Schomerus is the director of the Justice and Security Research Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
She is the author of "Chasing the Kony Story" and "A terrorist is not a person like me: An interview with Joseph Kony" and many other publications about the LRA conflict. (CNN) -- "You are making our work here very difficult". It is a side remark, uttered politely and quietly. Kony baloney. Beating the Kony Baloney. Updates: - Jason Russell was apparently arrested last evening for allegedly being blind drunk while jerking off in Pacific Beach in San Diego. You win some, you lose some. - Now there's video of the alleged baloney beating.