[ILoveTRW]

[Kizzy]

How strange, from incensed to just another laff in a couple of hours.

[Roy Mars III]

welcome to the internet

[InOne]

I wonder what Kony's cut in all these donations will be

[Ramsay]

[Shaun]

I don't think there's anything wrong with Kony jokes... if anything they add to how well-known and widespread he's becoming

[Jords]

You have to point laughter in the darkest of areas else life would be too depressing.

[Jords]

Originally Posted by ILoveTRW

Originally Posted by ILoveTRW

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Jords

You have to point laughter in the darkest of areas else life would be too depressing.

..yes..there would be mass suicides if we thought too deeply all the time...balance

[Novo]

[Shaun]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.invisibl...critiques.html

Thank you for reading this and doing further research about Invisible Children and Kony 2012. In response to this explosion of interest about the Kony 2012 film, there have been hundreds of thousands of comments in support of the arrest of Joseph Kony and the work of Invisible Children. However, there have also been a few pieces written that are putting out false or mis-leading information about these efforts. This statement is our official response to some of these articles and is a source for accurate information about Invisible Children’s mission, financials and approach to stopping LRA violence.

Invisible Children’s mission is to stop LRA violence and support the war affected communities in Central Africa. These are the three ways we achieve that mission. Each is essential: 1) Document and make the world aware of the LRA. This includes making documentary films and touring these films around the world so that they are seen for free by millions of people. 2) Channeling the energy and awareness from informed viewers of IC films into large scale advocacy campaigns that have mobilized the international community to stop the LRA and protect civilians. 3) Operate programs on the ground in the LRA-affected areas to provide protection, rehabilitation and development assistance.

As you will see, we spend roughly one third of our money on each of these three goals. This three-prong approach is what makes invisible children unique. Some organizations focus exclusively on documenting human rights abuses, some focus exclusively on international advocacy or awareness, and some focus exclusively on, on-the-ground development. We do all three. At the same time. This comprehensive model is intentional and has shown to be very effective.

Invisible Children’s financial statements are online for everyone to see. Financial statements from the last 5 years, including our 990, are available at www.invisiblechildren.com/financials. The organization spent 80.46% on our programs that further our three fold mission, 16.24% on administration and management costs and 3.22% on direct fundraising in FY2011. Invisible Children is independently audited every year and in full compliance with our 501 c 3 status.

Below is a screen-shot from pages 35 and 36 of the 2011 Invisible Children annual report that detail our total expenses for Fiscal Year 2011. An expense statement by class is the way nonprofits present their expenses to the public because it’s the clearest way to show the purpose of different organizational expenses vs. a line item expense statement such as the one on Page 6 of our Audited Financial Report.

Re: Charity Navigator Rating

Charity Navigator gives our Programs its highest rating of 4 stars. Our Accountability and Transparency score is currently at 2 stars due primarily to the single fact that Invisible Children does not have 5 independent voting members on our board of directors--we currently have 4. We are in the process of interviewing potential board members, and we will add an additional independent member this year in order to regain our 4-star rating by 2013. We have been independently audited by Considine and Considine, since the fiscal year end of June 30, 2006 and all of our audits have resulted in unqualified opinions on the audit reports.

-----------------------------------------------

Re: Ugandan government human rights record

We do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army (UPDF). None of the money donated through Invisible Children ever goes to the government of Uganda. Yet the only feasible and proper way to stop Kony and protect the civilians he targets is to coordinate efforts with regional governments.

-------------------

Re: Why work with the UPDF if the LRA is no longer in northern Uganda

The LRA left northern Uganda in 2006. The LRA is currently active in Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Invisible Children’s mission is to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA wherever they are and help rehabilitate LRA-affected communities. The Ugandan government’s army, the UPDF, is more organized and better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries (DRC, South Sudan, CAR) to track down Joseph Kony. Part of the US strategy to stop Kony is to encourage cooperation between the governments and armies of the 4 LRA-affected countries. The LRA was active in Uganda for nearly 20 years, displacing 1.7 million people and abducting at least 30,000 children. The people and government of Uganda have a vested interested in seeing him stopped.

There's more in the link about their action plans.

[Shaun]

And a take on their defence from a neutral source

A new campaign spreading across the Internet says it has one goal in mind: Make Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the violent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) “famous” so he can be brought to justice.

The viral film was created by Invisible Children, a charity that seeks to end the conflict in Uganda and raises awareness about the use of child soldiers and other human rights abuses by Kony and the LRA.

But some activists have voiced concerns about the methods used by Invisible Children to raise awareness.

Jedediah Jenkins, director of idea development for Invisible Children, called the criticism “myopic” and said the film represented a “tipping point” in that it got young people to care about an issue on the other side of the planet that doesn’t affect them.

#StopKony has been trending worldwide on Twitter since Tuesday, and, as of this writing, the video “Kony2012” has a combined 15 million views on YouTube and Vimeo.

Kony is undeniably brutal, and the World Bank estimates that under his leadership the LRA has abducted and forced around 66,000 children to fight with them during the past two decades. In October, President Obama committed 100 U.S. troops to help the Ugandan army remove Kony.

But in November, a Foreign Affairs article pointedly challenged the tactics used by Invisible Children and other nonprofits working in the region to raise awareness. “Such organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil,” the magazine wrote.

One of Invisible Children’s partner organizations, Resolve, responded to the accusation at the time in a blog post, calling it a “serious charge ... published with no accompanying substantiation.”

Jenkins maintained Wednesday that the numbers the charity uses are not exaggerated, as they are the same numbers used by Human Rights Watch and the U.N.

Charity Navigator, a U.S.-based charity evaluator, gives Invisible Children three out of four stars overall, four stars financially, and two stars for accountability and transparency.

Invisible Children has two stars, Jenkins said, because the charity has only four independent board members instead of five. He said it is currently interviewing for a fifth position.

A bill Invisible Children helped pass into law in 2009 has also been criticized. The bill is designed to support stabilization and peace in Uganda and areas affected by the LRA. Critics say it has strengthened the hand of the Ugandan president, whose security forces have a human rights abuse record of their own. The Enough Project, an NGO that fights genocide and human rights abuses, has said the bill’s bipartisan support showed people “come together for peace.”

“There is a huge problem with political corruption in Africa,” said Jenkins. “If we had the purity to say we will not partner with anyone corrupt, we couldn’t partner with anyone.”

Human rights activists agree, however, that the abuses of the LRA are far worse than those of Uganda’s security forces. Over the past two decades, the LRA made it common practice to enter towns and kill the adults, take the male children as soldiers, and sexually abuse the female children.

Lt. Col. Mamadou Gaye, a military spokesman for a United Nations stabilization mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said recently that the LRA “has been weakened” by military efforts. The group is believed to now have only about 250 armed members. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said recently that Kony was no longer in Uganda.

On April 20, Invisible Children is calling on its supporters to stop Kony and the LRA’s campaign once and for all — by using the social media and viral tactics that have made “Kony2012” so widespread.

“This is the day when we will meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city until the sun comes up,” Jason Russell, who directed the film for Invisible Children, says in the video. “The rest of the world will go to bed Friday night and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice.”

But “Visible Children,” a Tumblr blog that has received much attention for questioning the efforts of Invisible Children, wrote Wednesday that those social media tactics aren’t helping. “These problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow,” the blog wrote.

Jenkins doesn’t agree. “There is only so much policymakers and foundations can do,” he said. He thinks that if a high schooler and a adult were asked today who Joseph Kony is, only the high schooler would know the answer, as a result of Invisible Children’s film.

“The film has reached a place in the global consciousness where people know who Kony is, they know his crimes,” Jenkins said. “Kids know and they respond. And then they won’t allow it to happen anymore.”

From the Washington Post.

[Scarlett.]

So yeah, these are the guys who are behind "Invisible Children"

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

There's much more to this than meets the eye


Donating money or drawing attention to 'Invisble Children' means you are funding a charity who funds the Sudan People's Liberation Army, who themselves rape and pillage villages. I think this thread should be unstickied for these reasons

[Brother Leon]

[Samuel.]

Kony 2012 =/= Invisible Children

I don't get the impression many are donating anyway. Raising awareness of who Joseph Kony is and getting the US government to care seem to be the main focus of the campaign.

[Me. I Am Salman]

Dont trust this anymore.

[Z]

[Samuel.]

Best Kony joke yet

Youtube video

[Benjamin]

This is one mass brainwash. I'm actually surprised how easily so many got sucked into this.

[Iceman]

Originally Posted by ukturtle

This is one mass brainwash. I'm actually surprised how easily so many got sucked into this.

Yup and I was without Internet for 2 days logged on and hadnt a breeze who or what people were talking about.

[lostalex]

I don't know that "making Kony Famous" will actually get him dead. It took 10 years to make Osama dead, and he was one of the most famous people in the world that entire time. So i don't get this whole "make him famous" thing.

[Roy Mars III]

Originally Posted by lostalex

I don't know that "making Kony Famous" will actually get him dead. It took 10 years to make Osama dead, and he was one of the most famous people in the world that entire time. So i don't get this whole "make him famous" thing.

especially since Kony has been doing this for 20 years, and seriously on the run for 10. it's good to bring up the issues in africa though because they are overlooked a lot

[Vicky.]

http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantr...ew-generation/

Interesting (very long) article about this kony video.

I dont know what to think tbh :/

[Vladimir]

Youtube video

This **** is getting funnier and funnier. These ******* aren't even capable of stealing money without streaking naked in public or recording drunken videos.

[Kizzy]

Im glad this has popped up again, my lad told me yesterday they watched a vid about this AT SCHOOL in a lesson called 'student development'......