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This is a thread about Joseph KonyThis is a thread about Jason Russell |
On March 09 2012 04:15 bonifaceviii wrote:Been linked many, many times before. Look, I appreciate that Invisible Children think leveraging the power of the Ugandan army to hunt down the LRA across borders of other sovereign nations is a solution, but it's not one without its own problems. I don't care whether they're actually handing the money over to the Ugandan army already or lobbying Washington to hand money over to the Ugandan army, the result is the same.
This is a complicated subject and Invisible Children is, in my opinion, a dubious non-profit (http://jezebel.com/5891269/think-twice-before-donating-to-kony-2012-the-meme-du-jour ). While I agree that they have their heart in the right place, there are questions about their finances and, even more importantly in my mind, questions about their assumptions.
I'll only scratch the surface here in noting that they are righteous about an issue that is complicated by the cross-cultural/national context in which they operate. Questions regarding what constitutes childhood, what constitutes being a soldier, what constitutes individual choice, and, questions regarding the extent to which Western organizations are legitimized in advancing a moral agenda for non-Western nations are at the heart of the issue. Invisible Children ignores all of these issues in favor of a pulled heartstrings approach.
I also have a bad taste in my mouth because I saw them present their case at a forum at University of New Mexico. They came off like a naive-cheerleading squad that didn't respect the intelligence of its audience.
My fiancee recently authored an essay on the problems with Invisible Children and the nuances of the child-soldiering debate. I'm sure she'd share it if anyone is interested.
tl'dr Invisibile Children is, imo, a sketchy organization that, like so many activist organizations, fails to deliver a nuanced or culturally-sensitive portrait of the problem they are tackling. One cannot simply be for or against child soldiering as the world, in all its complexity, doesn't reduce to such simple reasoning.
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Jibba I dont understand what your argument is. All I see is you trying to is just listing things Kony did. Nobody is denying he's a bad man. It's the fact that this organization has lied and misconstrued information in order to get what it wants. Also the issue of how much of an issue Kony is anymore (hasnt even been in Uganda for years).
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On March 09 2012 05:06 skatbone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 04:15 bonifaceviii wrote:Been linked many, many times before. Look, I appreciate that Invisible Children think leveraging the power of the Ugandan army to hunt down the LRA across borders of other sovereign nations is a solution, but it's not one without its own problems. I don't care whether they're actually handing the money over to the Ugandan army already or lobbying Washington to hand money over to the Ugandan army, the result is the same. This is a complicated subject and Invisible Children is, in my opinion, a dubious non-profit (http://jezebel.com/5891269/think-twice-before-donating-to-kony-2012-the-meme-du-jour ). While I agree that they have their heart in the right place, there are questions about their finances and, even more importantly in my mind, questions about their assumptions. I'll only scratch the surface here in noting that they are righteous about an issue that is complicated by the cross-cultural/national context in which they operate. Questions regarding what constitutes childhood, what constitutes being a soldier, what constitutes individual choice, and, questions regarding the extent to which Western organizations are legitimized in advancing a moral agenda for non-Western nations are at the heart of the issue. Invisible Children ignores all of these issues in favor of a pulled heartstrings approach. I also have a bad taste in my mouth because I saw them present their case at a forum at University of New Mexico. They came off like a naive-cheerleading squad that didn't respect the intelligence of its audience. My fiancee recently authored an essay on the problems with Invisible Children and the nuances of the child-soldiering debate. I'm sure she'd share it if anyone is interested. tl'dr Invisibile Children is, imo, a sketchy organization that, like so many activist organizations, fails to deliver a nuanced or culturally-sensitive portrait of the problem they are tackling. One cannot simply be for or against child soldiering as the world, in all its complexity, doesn't reduce to such simple reasoning. I think this is an incredibly fair critique. Im glad they're drawing attention to it but there are other more focused, transparent and effectful groups that deal with the same issue and deserve support.
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One cannot simply be for or against child soldiering as the world, in all its complexity, doesn't reduce to such simple reasoning.
Really?
I would love to hear the interesting nuance that will make me view child soldiers in a completely new light.
Not everything can be reduced to simple black and white, good and evil, but I think child soldiering is one of the rare few where you can.
But again, my mind is wide open. Can't wait to be illuminated and see how naive I was for all these years being against the concept of child soldiers.
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On March 09 2012 05:10 Apollo_Shards wrote: Jibba I dont understand what your argument is. All I see is you trying to is just listing things Kony did. Nobody is denying he's a bad man. It's the fact that this organization has lied and misconstrued information in order to get what it wants. Also the issue of how much of an issue Kony is anymore (hasnt even been in Uganda for years). The issue is you're completely ignorant of the situation and are down playing what has gone on when it is in fact one of the largest and sickest human rights violations ever. Then you make ridiculous comments about how it might be made up or exaggerated. There's numerous reports of what's gone on, dating from before IC's inception. The issue with Invisible Children has nothing to do with the things the LRA has done.
"worse things happen elsewhere" is not only insulting and dismissive, it's factually wrong.
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On March 09 2012 05:11 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +One cannot simply be for or against child soldiering as the world, in all its complexity, doesn't reduce to such simple reasoning. Really? I would love to hear the interesting nuance that will make me view child soldiers in a completely new light. Not everything can be reduced to simple black and white, good and evil, but I think child soldiering is one of the rare few where you can. But again, my mind is wide open. Can't wait to be illuminated and see how naive I was for all these years being against the concept of child soldiers.
Well his wording of that is wrong from the beginning. People CAN be simply for or against child soldiering. What he means to say is that such reasoning is too simple for the complexity of the situation/world. If he says that people CANNOT be simply for or against something, all one would have to do is find somebody who is for or against it to disprove his statement. If one person says "I am simply against child soldiering." then his statement can be proven false by counterexample. So while he tried to sound enlightened or something, he really just said something that made no sense, as it can easily be proven false by a simple counterexample. BOoOoOoOoOoOM!!!
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On March 09 2012 03:31 Dandel Ion wrote: Worse shit happens at numerous places, right now.
I'm not sure why people act like they didn't know about stuff like this. Your perspective is absurd. If everything need to be that bad for it to merit our attention, how could anyone ever get upset by anything? If people can't care about this, how do they justify caring about things like 9/11?
And why complain when people are jumping on a bandwagon for a good cause?
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On March 09 2012 05:15 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 05:10 Apollo_Shards wrote: Jibba I dont understand what your argument is. All I see is you trying to is just listing things Kony did. Nobody is denying he's a bad man. It's the fact that this organization has lied and misconstrued information in order to get what it wants. Also the issue of how much of an issue Kony is anymore (hasnt even been in Uganda for years). The issue is you're completely ignorant of the situation and are down playing what has gone on when it is in fact one of the largest and sickest human rights violations ever. Then you make ridiculous comments about how it might be made up or exaggerated. There's numerous reports of what's gone on, dating from before IC's inception. The issue with Invisible Children has nothing to do with the things the LRA has done. "worse things happen elsewhere" is not only insulting and dismissive, it's factually wrong.
I would just like to jump in and say that you can't support the claim that the statement "worse things happen elsewhere." is factually wrong. First, it contains an undefined term, "worse." Nothing can be said about the factual truth of this statement unless this word is defined. Second, I doubt you have amassed enough knowledge about world events to conclusively prove that no events are happening elsewhere which could be considered worse, assuming we have defined "worse" in the first place.
I don't disagree with you if you say that "worse things happen elsewhere, so who cares?" is a bad argument. I just had to point out that your statement was a little hairy at the end there.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g
Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-- are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.
- Oscar Wilde Soul of Man
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It takes a youtube video to make people aware.... I'm pretty sure none of you are aware that the Ugandan government is trying to pass a bill to exterminate homosexuals.
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I've studied numerous genocides actually. Northern Uganda was basically the S class of fucked up shit less than 5 years ago. You can look up UNCHR reports if you'd like. There have been similar tactics used in Sierra Leone, Burundi,DRC, Rwanda, Somalia and Zimbabwe but none have been as active as in Uganda since the mid 2000s. There's also spillage into and from southern Sudan which makes it exceptionally complicated.
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Take up the White Man's burden...
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On March 09 2012 05:42 diggurd wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g Show nested quote +Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-- are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.
- Oscar Wilde Soul of Man Holy crap, that's the most nonsensical text I've ever read.
The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. How the hell would you do that without compassion? That wouldn't even be a problem if the people with power and money had some compassion.
Not to mention the fact that Renan, Keats and Flaubert were very compassionate people, you would notice that if you read them...
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On March 09 2012 06:00 Elroi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 05:42 diggurd wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism-- are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.
- Oscar Wilde Soul of Man Holy crap, that's the most nonsensical text I've ever read. Show nested quote +The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. How the hell would you do that without compassion? That wouldn't even be a problem if the people with power and money had some compassion. Not to mention the fact that Renan, Keats and Flaubert were very compassionate people, you would notice that if you read them...
cough.. who said compassion was a bad thing? Wilde never claimed these guys didnt have compassion?
no wonder you found this text nonsensical... try again
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Dear Jibba,
Kony hasn't been in Uganda for years. The US gov. uses this charity as a propaganda tool to increase military presence and take control of the petroleum in Uganda, which has been eyed by China for quite a while now. Sadly, some people can't see the forest, but simply the trees.
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On March 09 2012 06:14 acgFork wrote: Dear Jibba,
Kony hasn't been in Uganda for years. The US gov. uses this charity as a propaganda tool to increase military presence and take control of the petroleum in Uganda, which has been eyed by China for quite a while now. Sadly, some people can't see the forest, but simply the trees.
"conspiracy much?" :D
+ Show Spoiler +
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On March 09 2012 05:43 Timurid wrote: It takes a youtube video to make people aware.... I'm pretty sure none of you are aware that the Ugandan government is trying to pass a bill to exterminate homosexuals.
Israël is protected by the USA to kill palestinians because it is the chosen people and their promised land. Oh wait...
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For all those talking about Kony not being in Uganda, we know and IC knows.
They want to work with the Ugandan military because they're more effective than that of the Congo and Sudan (where the LRA is active) and Ugandans have a reason to want to rid the world of Kony and the LRA. Pretty sure they even mentioned in the video that the LRA left Uganda, albeit unclearly (when they talked about Kony "changing tactics").
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On March 09 2012 06:14 acgFork wrote: Dear Jibba,
Kony hasn't been in Uganda for years. The US gov. uses this charity as a propaganda tool to increase military presence and take control of the petroleum in Uganda, which has been eyed by China for quite a while now. Sadly, some people can't see the forest, but simply the trees.
YES!
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have come full circle. This whole thing is in fact an attempt by the USA to invade Uganda.
I love how literally every good or evil in the world can be traced back to America.
Surely, we do not revolve around the sun, it is but a zionist conspiracy to distract us from the truth: Everyone and everything revolves around America.
I think that post should win some long-ball award for best "connect-America-to-it" post.
Maybe we should give bonus points if he can somehow manage to loop it back to Israel.
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On March 09 2012 06:44 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2012 06:14 acgFork wrote: Dear Jibba,
Kony hasn't been in Uganda for years. The US gov. uses this charity as a propaganda tool to increase military presence and take control of the petroleum in Uganda, which has been eyed by China for quite a while now. Sadly, some people can't see the forest, but simply the trees.
YES! Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have come full circle. This whole thing is in fact an attempt by the USA to invade Uganda. I love how literally every good or evil in the world can be traced back to America. Surely, we do not revolve around the sun, it is but a zionist conspiracy to distract us from the truth: Everyone and everything revolves around America. I think that post should win some long-ball award for best "connect-America-to-it" post. Maybe we should give bonus points if he can somehow manage to loop it back to Israel.
America hasn't given a shit about any of this for years and years. We all know the shit that goes down in Africa and the Middle-east. America doesn't give a shit unless there's actually profit to be had for them, it's always like this for America ( see post WW2 fundings for Europe). Also I'm not saying that America is evil for doing this or the only government that does this, I'm not commenting on that at all. If the American government suddenly 'cares' about violation of human rights in Uganda and sends troops over there. You can say with 99% certainty there's alterior motives involved.
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