The Kon-is On. Kony 2012

Pic by Lewis

I wonder how many people woke up this morning and had never heard of Joseph Kony? Well 12 hours is a long time in the world of the social media and a video about Joseph Kony made by the charity Invisible Children has gone viral. As usual, the public have swallowed it up.

Kony 2012 is a short documentary made by Jason Russell, featuring his son and the people of Uganda. He takes us through the plight of children at the hands of Kony and shows images of child soldiers, sex trafficking and mutilation. It is quite horrific. I have sat and watched the tweets and Facebook posts come rolling in all day as the 'sheeple' have all of a sudden realised that men, women and children are being brutalised in Africa, I wonder how many of them posted their tweets etc whilst sporting a chunky conflict diamond on their paws.

Where do they think these stones come from, the Cotswold's?

The Kony 2012 campaign video is a propaganda piece that has done its job superbly. It claims Joseph Kony is invisible and aims to expose him, using what they call 'the knowns' such as Angelina Jolie or Bono. George Clooney in an interview went as far as to request that dictators causing such atrocities should be made as famous as him. Once they have secured this they move on to the policy makers in congress.
So any and every other media whore willing to share the charities word, about securing Kony and trialing him, has been tweeting or re-posting and even as I type this my phone is still bleating... meaning the posts are still going.

Angelina hates Kony, but does she know why?

I am confused as to how or why people are surprised that these atrocities go on, not just in Africa I might add, but in many countries, including the sex trafficking and grooming of young girls in the UK. Nothing about that video was new in terms of news.

The 'sheeple' have found the latest bandwagon for them to climb aboard.

For 30 earth minutes they have managed to sit and have the fairy tale woven around them and encourage them to back and support the campaign. What people have not thought about however is how this will be achieved? Invisible Children is advocating military intervention. People are supporting a group that is advocating military intervention, are we expecting our soldiers to go in and shoot a child square between the eyes? The majority of Kony's personal bodyguards are children.

The video highlights the efforts made by the team to raise the issues with the American government, who at first decree that there is no way they would intervene in a conflict that had no baring on American security interests. Eventually Congress changed its tune. Allegedly due to the power of the people and the movement. They receive a letter from Barack Obama stating the U.S intention to send out 100 'specialists' to aid the training of the Ugandans.

Anything backed by Obama, with his record, must be questioned thoroughly.

Joseph Kony, is number one on the International Criminal Courts worst criminal list. Kony, indicted July 8th 2005, keeps good company including Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al Islam Gaddafi, who were both indicted June 27th 2011. Two questions spring to mind;

"Why has it taken the world seven earth years to care about Kony enough to do something and a few weeks to indict and hang Gaddafi out to dry?" and;

"How did we go from two people ranked 24th and 25th on the list, without stopping at a single murderer or dictator along the way, to Kony?"

If anyone can answer this for me please feel free to message me.

Invisible Children also supports the Ugandan Military which have a chequered reputation at best with claims of rape and looting.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that is particularly hard to take is the awareness I personally have tried to make to people about Liberia and the situation there.
Nobody seemed to notice, nobody seemed to care.
Children addicted to heroin barely older than my nephews, women raped by U.N soldiers, former warlords who fought naked and cut out the hearts of children and bathed in their blood, warlords who at the drop of a hat claim they could take back power with in a few hours if they wanted.

I was lucky to get maybe two people to share the video, The Vice Guide to Liberia or my blog Liberian Girl.

It pains me to say this but Obama and co do not care about black African-American babies in their own country, let alone black babies in Africa.

Uganda either has resource based benefit or a strategic benefit to America (probably both) for their policy to have changed. The American government, and Americans in general, want to start by arresting their own war criminals first, such as Henry Kissinger, George Bush Jnr, Dick Cheyney and even Barack Obama himself. Let us also not forget the UK's very own Tony Blair who should top any wanted list for acts of terrorism and genocide. People like this and the W.H.O and I.M.F have been raping Africa for decades and what have we done about this? Bought a bracelet and soothed some guilt. This is an Afri-Con.

Factually Kony is not in Uganda anymore either, not for 5 years or so.

In two days the video and the movement has gone viral but, like Live Aid, the peoples attention will only last until the advert break, where they will then be told what crap to buy and consume or until CSI starts. The video, nor the charity make any real effort to educate people on the matter at hand and instead resort to drum beating, feel good, prepackaged activism. Humans love a fashion trend or a fad and this is just another one in a long line of fads to make fair trade, coffee drinking ladies that lunch, feel better about their conflict diamond rings.

It is called manufactured consent, ask more questions.


"The first thing about manipulation and control is to first understand how it is done, then you can see it coming" Liberaté 2012




With thanks to Lewis, Dean, Justice and Anthony for keeping it together.