I can’t be sure, but I think the point he is making is that it is a waste of potential resources because Kony isn’t a problem, he is a symptom. What I think he is trying to convey is that warlords like Kony are a result of problems going on in Africa, and that we should fix the financial/political/social issues within certain areas of Africa, rather than focus on the results of the problem.
Well, if it draws attention and money away from the core problems. IF that then yes, it is counter productive.
This kind of criticism falls into the false dichotomy problem I stated above.
Nothing wrong with ‘spreading the word’ about issues that people should care about. However, the behaviours of the group are a bit suspect. Uninformed opinions do spread fast, and if a bunch of our resources go to the wrong place then we aren’t helping. We are just wasting our resources. We have a responsibility to put our resources as effectively as possible. This particular cause, MAY not be it. If that is his position, it has legitimate grounds for debate.
There won’t be any changes if we support silly causes like ‘the human fund’ and such like that.
Ok, now that’s a good point. Kony is, in fact, a symptom of a bigger problem - the underdevelopment of Africa. To fight that problem, Africa needs education, food, health, etc. That’s where the voluntary work is needed. Now, how much time will it take until, e.g., Uganda becomes at least as developed as, say, South Africa or Argentina? If there is heavy voluntary work, maybe 50 years, maybe more. Meanwhile, what will Kony (and others like him) be doing?
I would say Kony is a symptom but also part of the problem because, putting it simply, he delays the work of voluntary work. In fact, voluntary work is actually needed to undo the damage made by him.
The solution proposed to find and arrest Kony is to train and equip Ugandan police appropriately. After they arrest Kony, they won’t get “untrained” nor “unequipped”, so they can also arrest other criminals like Kony more efficiently.
Be careful about the language that you use. I’m sure that the money that US is spending on Kony was not and would not be spent on Africa at all. Think about it: if people forget about Kony, what would the US actually do with the money that it would use to send the experts to train Ugandan troops in order to arrest Kony? Will they use that in charity? Will they give it to the Red Cross? I don’t think so. Sometimes you simply have to accept the chance you get.
My bet is: if people forget about Kony, they will forget about Africa, but if Kony gets arrested, then the idea of helping Africa (and underdeveloped countries of other continents as well) might become more popular. That is just speculation, of course.
Are they? Sorry, I didn’t do my homework on that. I know that people are talking a lot that the actions of the group are financially suspect, but I tend to doubt that affirmation because people buy too much into conspiracy theories in general and, as you said yourself, “uninformed opinions do spread fast”.
Yes, I know that the guy jerked off publicly. Sometimes people do crazy and stupid things to make a point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong.
Gugamilare, organisations like that have to make their income and expenses public every year. The public financial information of Invisible Children clearly states that more than 70% of the money they get, goes to staff and the production of pointless videos (like a bunch of twats dancing on vans). No conspiracy theories, no farfetched reading-between-lines, just hard facts of the public financial report.
Supporting charity in general is quite a dim and self-centered way to make yourself feel good, but supporting Invisible Children is just flat out retarded. Supporting Invisible Children is supporting the wallet of a delusional Christian that gives public lectures on how to brainwash people into supporting your cause (be it Kony 2012 or Christianity). It’s supporting someone who abuses his own son in order to win favour with the general public. It’s supporting an insane egomaniac.
Also, people do crazy things to make a point. But what point was Russel trying to make when he got so drunk he went out in public, yelled profanity at people and masturbated?
By all means, spend/waste every last penny on Africa in a pointless attempt to save the continent, but don’t do it through Kony 2012, because that last penny won’t even get close to Africa.
All right, I’m glad I hadn’t given any money to that organization yet
What I meant is, even if he is crazy, he might be right that Kony needs to be arrested. If you, for instance, learn about Gandhi, you will find out that he was nuts.
if there has been ANY it is because other people (nonafricans mostly) DONATE a lot of money to improve africa and africans themselves do SOOOOOO little. anyway as I said if they at least did minimum of their possibilities nowdays they could much better and there would be no KONY’s. and believe me there is no need of USA to stop kony ugandian people can themselves stop him if they want. ow ow poor people dey are zo zkared…
Just as a note. Most money transferred for aid to Africa isn’t donated. It’s loaned. Africa as a continent pays out 20 billion dollars every year paying back debt. That is significant if you aren’t a wealthy area of the globe. Also lots of the money that goes to African countries is stolen, or embezzled because of corruption. So yeah…outside aid is often totally ineffective. Just putting that out there.
oh they steal only money from outside? I think “corruption” steals everything so same part of leftovers are from both inner and outer incomes. but there is not only money that matters africa can freely develop as agricultural continent and by the way SA was developing in that way until the leadership went to natives and began reversed racism. anyway I still don’t feel sorry for them.
You may doubt what you like. But my phrase was conditional, and sure $20B isn’t much in western countries like the US and the UK, but we aren’t talking about countries that have loads of cash.
I’m sorry, but none of that made any sense. Even if it did, I don’t see how it is at all related or countering what I said.
you are talking about a CONTINENT not a country. 20 bilion for a continent? and you say that is a lot? you are not pro at economics I see. there is a lot of oil, gold, diamonds and other minerals that is just more then enough for whole africa.
i said that they steal money not only from donations but from everywhere so what is not stolen is given to… whomever it was supposed to be given. and btw you even don’t know what is stolen and what is not, unless you know exact situation of every economical financial aspect in africa.
also I showed you how natives ruined developed country (SOUTH AFRICA) that shows that they can not have normal county even if you give them to live in normal one.
Ugh! You are so dumb! Apparently you can’t read. I didn’t mention anything about African COUNTRIES. I mentioned WESTERN COUNTRIES who happened to be wealthy. I used them as comparatives to the situation in Africa, specifically poorer areas. Like I said $20B IS NOT a lot of money in developed COUNTRIES. But many COUNTRIES in Africa aren’t wealthy. Many exist on an entirely different scale of economics than developed nations. There are of course exceptions that actually have surplus, doesn’t help the poorer countries.
Also, much of what is mined in poorer African countries doesn’t benefit the people in the countries they are mined from.
Actually I did a bunch of research into the problem of embezzled funds to African countries, and it’s well documented if you’d care to actually LOOK IT UP! There is a great deal of political parties, and leaders who have been caught siphoning money that was supposed to aid the country to personal funds.
I’ve pretty much had it with your stupidity, racism, ill informed opinions, and poor grammar. This will be the last post of yours I respond to.
Of course there is. But then the rich people use that to become richer and explore the poor people in the process, making the people to stay poor. That’s how capitalism works, welcome to the real world.
Yes, this is typical of underdeveloped countries. Or, better to say, of all countries, the entire world suffers from corruption. However, there is also legitimate work, and there are people that try to make them to look bad. I say that based on various events that have been happening here in Brazil lately. There is a great disparity between these events as portrayed by mass media (those from open TV channels and the most popular newspapers and magazines) and independent media.
The government of São Paulo State and lots of other influential people connected with it are doing horrible mass oppressions against poor people, university students and also against all kinds of protests that are against them. During the Military Dictatorship, several people were tortured and killed under the excuse that they were communists. They said (and some even say it today!) that they were only protecting the country when they brutally oppressed popular protesters, the mass media covered all the facts, portraying the protesters always as communists, vagabonds that don’t have to work and have nothing better to do then to criticize the government.
That is happening all over again! Today, in Brazil, believe me or not, the entire country “knows” that the student activism is composed by vagabonds, wealthy, spoiled drug addicted students who have never worked in their lives, that don’t study and have nothing better to do than to protest against the truculence of the military police on the university campus because they want to smoke pot. Yes, every single one of the three thousand students in a deliberate assembly that unanimously voted against the permanence of the police at the campus were pot smokers.
The six thousand poor people that were expelled from there homes by the military police with “non-lethal weapons”, they were also all drug addicts that don’t work, they were all criminals because they invaded and made their homes in a piece of land the belonged to one single business man that works with imobiliary speculation. And, of course, the federal policemen with who the military policemen had a gunfight, well, the public simply didn’t hear about that. And the missing people, well, they just “got lost” and “went somewhere” as a result of the mess. There have been several “urban area clean-ups” lately and, yes, they all involve pot smokers, criminals and vagabonds. The military police is authorized to beat and shoot those spoiled pot smokers in the name of public safety and well-fare.
So, excuse me too skeptical about those accusations against people who are (at least allegedly) trying to help other people. Specially if it is something which looks like to have the intention of stopping people from donating to charity or from giving attention to activists. Excuse me if I don’t buy into those “obvious facts”.
Dear me, it’s the Military Dictatorship all over again!
Sorry for the gigantic post, I just had to get it off my chest.
My only point is that money might not be the solution. Aid in the form of man power / services / resources for establishing strong foundations for developing a healthy infrastructure.
That’s IF we should be getting involved at all that is.
Africa doesn’t need aid, foreign aid is one of the reasons why they can’t get their shit together. We subsidize our farmers, dump the excesses on the market at artificially low prices putting everyone in Africa out of business. African governments are also a major problem in the ass. Unstable currencies (hyperinflation), corruption, war, no privately owned land (no investment). When the government owns all the land, why bother starting a business, expanding, investing (not that they would allow you to anyway).
From my point of view, these are the symptoms of underdevelopment, not it’s cause. You can’t blame the people when they go desperate because of their condition, or when they act irrationally and violently for growing up in a hopeless land without proper education and mostly seeing people that simply don’t care about them.
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