Thread: KONY 2012

All good points aside, but don't your own countries have some very needy organizations which need/require your support? I personally am willing to accept any and all donations by anyone towards my betterment. Send now I need help!

Liberals, don't you just love them. Want to save the world and can't save themselves.

Former child soldier in tears over Kony film
Ali Best
Fri Mar 9 2012


Julius Achon and Eloise Wellings.

For Olympic runner Julius Achon, Joseph Kony is not a social media phenomenon or an overnight revelation.

Julius was one of Kony's child soldiers.

He was abducted at the age of 12 by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and was held captive for three months before he managed to escape when a Ugandan government plane bombed their camp.

Although Julius was lucky to get out, he witnessed the murder of nine of his friends as they ran for their lives.

Now the hugely successful viral Kony 2012 campaign, which is trying to bring down the African terrorist group and their leader Joseph Kony, has brought unprecedented attention on the plight of his country and his people.

Julius, who now lives in the US state of Oregon, says he is eternally grateful.

When he saw the 30-minute video by humanitarian group Invisible Children, he couldn't help but cry.

"It touched me so hard, I started to cry. It was bad memories, I though how much he has tortured my family, my people," he told ninemsn.

"I'm grateful to the people who made the video … because most people now know where Uganda is and secondly, they are asking 'What do they need?' They are ready to help."

Julius runs Uganda-based charity Love Mercy with two Australian women — 29-year-old Eloise Wellings, who has been selected to run in the 2012 Olympics, and 23-year-old Caitlin Barrett.

They have been working in northern Uganda for the past three years and have been desperately trying to raise awareness about the dire situation in Julius's home country.

Both Eloise and Caitlin were astonished by the huge reaction to the Kony 2012 campaign, which has generated media coverage worldwide.

"I'm blown away by the reaction that people have had. It's great as far as awareness goes," Ms Wellings said.

Ms Wellings and Ms Barrett said they never dreamed of this much publicity towards their cause.

"We've been trying to raise awareness about the issue for four years and then it happened literally overnight," Ms Barrett said.

"I'm incredibly grateful."

Based in northern Uganda, Love Mercy Foundation works at a grass roots level to try and restore communities after the decade-long war.

They are building a medical clinic in remembrance of Julius's mother who was shot and killed by rebels, as well as working with village women to provide them with micro-agricultural loans.

The Kony campaign has had its fair share of critics, who have questioned the threat of Kony to today's Uganda.

The warlord has not been active in Uganda since 2006 and is believed to be operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

But most Ugandans still live in fear of Kony resurfacing.

"Ninety-nine percent of people we talk to say: 'Yes, we fear him returning'," Caitlin said.

"[The issue] is real, it's just not necessarily as real in Uganda as it has been"

Julius believes the fear will not abide until Kony is captured.

"He is still going to recruit children, he is going to have a bigger base with the kids and he is still abducting in central Africa."

The Love Mercy team is determined Uganda will not be a flash in the pan issue that is forgotten as quickly as it started and Julius had one, clear message he wanted to share.

"I want to say to the western children: 'Do not give up on this. Don't run away."

news.ninemsn.com.au

Originally Posted by terry57

Nice work Mid,, its all over Aussie TV and these Ugandan scum need to bee off'ed quick smart.

It's not of the Western interest or business, Ter.
Even if there seems to be the fantasy that it should be [their business]

Never you mind, the Yanks have covert intel and ground troops there already.
And it's not in any way, born of human altruism.

Another warm and fuzzy hook for the reasoning.

Intellectual lightweights, here is the USA again taking sides for the better good, how did that go against Iran in the 1980's ? Oh, yeah, it created Saddam Hussein.

<red> KONY 2012 09-03-2012 06:53 PM Mid idiot , and no reading skills to speak off , fool

Typical Mid reposnse, mate, you shouldnt be so harsh on yourself. Though i must admit I thought you had more critical thinking skills than the average Thai teenager on facebook....

Watched it last week; enjoyed it.

Originally Posted by Sir Wilson

Typical Mid reposnse, mate, you shouldnt be so harsh on yourself. Though i must admit I thought you had more critical thinking skills than the average Thai teenager on facebook....

Christ but you are a dopey fokin troll , go sit in the corner with socal .

Originally Posted by Sir Wilson

Intellectual lightweights, here is the USA again taking sides for the better good, how did that go against Iran in the 1980's ? Oh, yeah, it created Saddam Hussein.

:facepalm:

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

All the big charities are a fucking rip off. If you want your money spent on a project, go there and spend it yourself, you can have a nice holiday while you're doing it

Seems an extreme way of coughing up my 100 baht

More weird shit, I'm glad I was born a few years before this kind of indocrtination became the norm. The fact that it so easy to dupe the white suckers now days to opening their check books for strangers on the other side of the world involved in conflicts they don't know a thing about is amazing. The Jews running these campaign ads are laughing all the way to the bank. Now days people in Uganda have a better chance of dying from dodgy bush meat then they do the LRA. Kony is probably dying of Aids or hepatitis in some village in a bordering country for all we know.

Ugandans react with anger to Kony video
Malcolm Webb
Wed, 2012-03-14



Uganda has, in the last week, been propelled to the top of the international news agenda, for a brutal rebellion that has not operated in the country for the last five years.

On March 5, American charity Invisible Children posted a video on Youtube, entitled Kony 2012. The 30 minute film, narrated by one of the organisations founders, Jason Russell, campaigns for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the ICC-indicted Ugandan leader of the rebel Lords Resistance Army.

It went viral, and in nine days has attracted over 76 million views, along with a lot of support and also substantial criticism.

Critics argue that the film relies on footage nearly ten-years-old of children fleeing the LRA in northern Uganda, implying the situation remains the same to this day, and so failing to represent the real issues now facing post-conflict Northern Uganda.

The LRA now operates in the Central African Rrepublic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and is now thought to number no more than 300 fighters.

Invisible Children argue that they have the main facts correct, and that raising awareness is their primary goal, and a necessary step towards any further change.

Public screening

While Youtube, Twitter and Facebook have gripped Uganda's middle class in recent years - and social networking sites have been key forums for the many Ugandan critics of the Kony 2012 video - most people in rural areas, including post-conflict northern Uganda, are still excluded from the internet revolution.

That means many of Joseph Kony's thousands of victims, most of whom live in rural villages, have never even heard of Kony 2012, Invisible Children or even Youtube.

Invisible Children's publicity machine is immense. Aside from the millions of internet users it has reached, and Kony 2012 already being described by some as the most effective viral campaign in history, it must also be the first ever Youtube video to be publicly screened in the northern Ugandan town of Lira.

A local charity, the African Youth Initiative Network, thought that the communities worst affected by the LRA, when it operated in Uganda, also deserved an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about, and so organized the event.

It was heavily publicized on local radio stations, and a crowd of thousands turned up at the Mayor’s Gardens in the centre of Lira for the sunset screening.

Having heard so many great things about the film, the crowd’s expectations were high.

Angry and offended

People I spoke to anticipated seeing a video that showed the world the terrible atrocities that they had suffered during the conflict, and the ongoing struggles they still face trying to rebuild their lives after two lost decades.

The audience was at first puzzled to see the narrative lead by an American man – Jason Russell – and his young son.

Towards the end of the film, the mood turned more to anger at what many people saw as a foreign, inaccurate account that belittled and commercialised their suffering, as the film promotes Kony bracelets and other fundraising merchandise, with the aim of making Kony infamous.

One woman I spoke to made the comparison of selling Osama Bin Laden paraphernalia post 9/11 – likely to be highly offensive to many Americans, however well intentioned the campaign behind it.

The event ended with the angrier members of the audience throwing rocks and shouting abusive criticism, as the rest fled for safety, leaving an abandoned projector, with organisers and the press running for cover until the dust settled.

It seems that the while the film has a viral power never seen before in the online community, it did not go down nearly so well with the very people it claims it is meant to help.

For more on the Kony debate, click here visit our spotlight page.

aljazeera.com

Kony 2012: campaigner's meltdown brought on by stress says wife
Paul Harris
Saturday 17 March 2012

Jason Russell's wife says he was hospitalised because he couldn't handle global attention caused by viral video


A video released by Hollywood gossip site TMZ appears to show Jason Russell naked on a street in San Diego, moments before he was held by police.

The wife of Jason Russell, co-founder of the Invisible Children charity, has blamed her husband's sudden hospitalisation on stress brought about by the extraordinary global attention garnered by the organisation's work exposing Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.

Russell, a devout evangelical Christian, was detained by police in San Diego at about 11.30am on Thursday after being spotted apparently nude in the street, screaming and interfering with traffic. Police said they had received several reports of him making sexual gestures or masturbating.

The development came at the end of a remarkable few weeks for Invisible Children and its trio of telegenic young American founders. After one of the charity's videos about Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army went viral across the internet, the organisation found itself at the centre of massive global attention. While millions of supporters flocked to its cause, especially over social media websites, the group also faced a torrent of criticism from aid groups, academics and media figures.

Russell's wife, Danica, issued a statement to American TV network NBC in which she said the pressure had simply become too much for her husband. "We thought a few thousand people would see the film, but in less than a week millions of people around the world saw it. While that attention was great for raising awareness about Joseph Kony, it also brought a lot of attention to Jason. And, because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal, and Jason took them very hard," Danica Russell said.

NBC reported that she also said that Russell's behaviour was not down to drug or alcohol abuse.

After spending more than six years largely under the media radar in its work highlighting the problem of Kony, a single 30-minute video, Kony 2012 – narrated by Russell who features in the film with his son – has now been viewed more than 80 million times.

Cash flowed into the charity as new supporters bought Invisible Children's "action kits". Scores of groups popped up across America, especially on college campuses, highlighting Kony's use of child soldiers, rape and mutilation of civilians.

They are preparing for a day of action next month when organisers hope to put up more than a million posters across the US under the "Kony 2012" slogan. The group was even able to get a resolution in the US Congress calling for more to be done to bring Kony to justice. The group's work was hailed as a triumph of online activism in the modern media age.

But critics jumped in too. Analysis of the group's accounts raised questions over financial transparency and just how the group was spending money, forcing Invisible Children to release a new video defending its operations. Some critics, including elements of the Ugandan government, slammed it for over-simplifying a complex problem, not least because Kony is no longer active in Uganda itself. Attention was paid to hefty donations to the group from rightwing American fundamentalist groups, including those who fund anti-gay rights campaigns. A photograph also emerged of the children's founders posing with guns with soldiers in southern Sudan, which sparked widespread criticism.

But no one can have expected the next twist in the story to take the shape it did, with Russell's apparent and very public naked meltdown.
Now, in a grim mirror image of the group's initial burst of viral internet success, Invisible Children's cause again trended on Twitter. Hollywood gossip website TMZ swiftly obtained an alleged video of the incident in which a naked, blond man can be seen shouting and angrily pounding the pavement with his fists. That video too has gone viral.

In San Diego, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the group's offices were besieged by journalists while young activists inside wept. Invisible Children chief executive Ben Keesey appealed for privacy for his colleague. "We are devastated to see him dealing with this personal health issue. We will always love and support Jason, and we ask that you give his entire family privacy during this difficult time," Keesey said.

That statement was also put up on Invisible Children's Facebook page and within a few hours had attracted more than 4,000 comments. Some were full of support for Russell and the group's work. "I understand this Jason fellow was under an immense amount of pressure. Anyone would lose it if they were in the position he was. C'mon folks give this guy some slack," posted Lisa Shears, who lives in Quebec.

But that was an appeal that fell on deaf ears for many. "If someone in your community did the same thing, would you respect them? What if a teacher at your child's school did this? Would you be okay with them returning to the classroom?" asked Jamie Bronczyk in a comment on the Keesey statement.

guardian.co.uk

Ugandan forces capture Kony's top LRA commander
Monday 14 May 2012

Caesar Acellam is a known military strategist for Joseph Kony, whose forces are being increasingly degraded, say Ugandans


Lord's Resistance Army commander Caesar Acellam with his wife and daughter after they were captured by Ugandan soldiers.
Photograph: James Akena/Reuters

Ugandan forces have captured a senior commander in Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army after a brief fight with rebels near the Congo-Central African Republic border, according to an army official, in what an analyst described as an "intelligence coup" for forces hunting Kony.

Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Rugumayo, intelligence chief for Uganda's military operation against the LRA, said on Sunday that Caesar Acellam was captured on Saturday with two other rebel fighters as they tried to cross the Mbomu river.

Although Acellam is not one of the LRA commanders indicted along with Kony in 2005 by the International criminal court (ICC), Ugandan officials say he was one of Kony's top military strategists and a reliable fighter.

"He is in good condition," Rugumayo said of Acellam. "He was captured with two other rebels. They were in a group of 30 rebels."

He said the others escaped.

Details of precisely how Acellam was captured were not available, but some analysts said it was possible he had just walked into the hands of Ugandan army officials.

"He's been on the defection shelf for a long time," said Angelo Izama, a political analyst with the Kampala-based security thinktank Fanaka Kwawote. "This is a big intelligence coup for the Ugandan army."

A Ugandan army official said losing Acellam was a big blow to Kony, whose forces have become increasingly degraded by a lack of food and having to constantly move to elude capture.

"He is big fish, very big fish," the official said of Acellam, who has been with the LRA for over 20 years. "He is one of the top division commanders."

The official said Kony, whom Ugandan officials suspect to be hiding in Sudan, has traditionally lived in bush camps far from where his top commanders hide, apparently as a security precaution.

"Kony does not want his commanders near him," he said. "He wants to be alone."

Kony recently became the focus of international attention after the US advocacy group Invisible Children made an online video seeking to make him infamous.

In 2005 the ICC indicted Kony, along with four other LRA commanders, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two of them have since died.

Last year Barack Obama sent 100 troops to help regional governments eliminate the LRA.

But the manhunt for its leaders has proved tough, with the rebels moving in very small groups and avoiding technology. Encounters between Ugandan troops and the rebels are very rare.

Only about 200 LRA members remain the jungle, according to Ugandan officials.

guardian.co.uk

Joseph Kony: The hunt continues (VIDEO)
Andrew Meldrum
May 28, 2012

The search for Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army needs more troops and helicopters, say field researchers.


Ugandan soldiers patrol through the central African jungle during the hunt for notorious Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. The unit is one of several dozen Ugandan army squads — backed up since late last year by 100 American special forces advisors — searching for any traces of the brutal rebel group in an inhospitable 250 mile stretch in the far eastern corner of the Central African Republic. The plan is to use the squads to constantly chase the rebels, who have splintered into small groups. (Stringer//AFP/Getty Images)


BOSTON — What will it take to catch Joseph Kony and bring an end to the scourge of his Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa?

Kony is now a household word in the US and much of the world thanks to the “Kony 2012” video released in early March that has been viewed by more 100 million people. The video campaign has raised awareness and helped to boost the military campaign to track down Kony.

But more effort is needed.

The 100 American military advisers are working closely with army troops from Uganda and the Central African Republic to catch Kony. But that has not stopped the LRA’s violence, so far this year there have been 50 attacks, nine deaths and 90 abductions, according to a new field report “Mission in the Balance: Challenges for US Advisers in Helping to end the LRA,” issued by the Enough Project.

Kony’s LRA is reduced to about 200 to 300 fighters that have broken up into small groups, according to Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve, an anti-Kony pressure group in Washington.

“The relatively small number of LRA fighters have had a disproportionate impact across central Africa where their attacks, killings and abductions have caused more thatn 400,000 people to be displaced,” Poffenberger told GlobalPost. “More needs to be done to reduce the violence and to allow people to return to productive lives.”

The small bands of LRA are spread out among the thick jungle of the Central African Republic, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kony himself is suspected to be in Sudan, and there is speculation that he is getting support from Sudan President Omar al-Bashir.

“It’s no accident that Kony and other LRA fighters are operating in these areas. They are some of the most remote areas on the planet,” said Poffenberger. “The government administrations are weak to non-existent, they heavy forest makes it difficult to track them. These areas do not have paved roads, bridges and FM radio networks. Uganda has that kind of infrastructure which helped the Ugandan army to pursue and push the LRA out of their territory.”

In addition to Kony himself there are about five to 10 senior LRA commanders who run marauding bands, said Poffenberger.

One of Kony’s top commanders, Caesar Acellam, was captured on May 12 in the Central African Republic. He was Kony's intelligence chief and the most senior LRA commander to be taken captive. It is hoped Acellam will provide strategic information that will boost the campaign against Kony.

Small units of the Ugandan army had been tracking the movements of ‘Major General’ Acellam for at least a month. Laying siege throughout the day and night, Acellam was finally apprehended when he walked into a dragnet along the Mbomou River that marks the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the aCentral African Republic, reported the Ugandan Observer.

In order to avoid detection, Acellam was reportedly dressed like the ordinary cattle keepers that roam the jungles of the Central African Republic with their herds. Despite his modest education, having completed high school in northern Ugdanda, Acellam was one of the most meticulous and dangerous LRA commanders.

Acellam’s capture was welcomed by the Commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) Gen. Carter F. Ham.

"I am confident Joseph Kony will be brought to justice. I am not confident when it will happen,' said Ham in an interview with Uganda’s New Vision newspaper. 'It is looking for a small group in a vast rugged area. The capture of Acellam is a good step. The questions that will be asked Acellam will help the forces learn about the status of LRA,' he pointed out.”

Ugandan authorities are debating whether Acellam will be eligible for amnesty, if he informs against Kony, or if he must be charged for the LRA violence, according to AP.

The success in catching Acellam highlights the need for more such measures to capture Kony.

“The mission of the US troops will fail in its objective of capturing Kony and ending the LRA unless some serious enhancements are added to the overall effort,” said John Prendergast, Enough Project co-founder. “What a waste of taxpayers’ money it will have been t send US forces to the region and then not have ensured that sufficient elements are in place for the mission to succeed.”

So what can be done to close the net on Kony and restore peace in central Africa?

1) More troops and better coordination. Currently the backbone of the anti-Kony drive is a contingent of 800 Ugandan army soldiers. More troops are needed to cover the huge area. And they need better regional agreements that will permit them to pursue the LRA across the borders Central African Republic and Congo and Sudan.

2) More airpower. Airplanes and especially helicopters can best survey the vast tracts of land where the LRA roam. Helicopters can best transport army troops to areas where they can go after the LRA.

3) Better communications and community relations. Not all the effort against Kony is military. Community radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by air can help reach out to Kony’s men and encourage them to surrender. They can be assured that they can return to their home communities and a peaceful way of life. This could be an important way to reduce Kony’s support.

“The disturbing fact is that the LRA continues to operate freely in the border areas of the Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic,” said Kasper Agger, Enough’s field researcher who is based in Kampala. “Only a multi-faceted approach, including increased troops and air power on the military side and increased communications encouraging LRA members to surrender, will succeed in bringing and end to the more than 20 years of violence and atrocities that Kony and LRA have spread across central Africa.”

globalpost.com


youtube.com