I’ve just received atweet from Alex Seif with a link to KONY 2012, a film and anti-war campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
Who is Kony?
Joseph Kony is the leader of a Ugandan guerrila group called Lord’s Resistance Army and have been, for 26 years, kidnapping children to become part of his guerrilla group forcing the boys to kill their own parents and the girls to become sex slaves. Watch the documentary below.
If you’re one of my regular readers, or even if you’re not, consider passing this message along to your own network, this certainly looks like a very much worthy cause.
Update on March 15th 2012
After I wrote this article many people got in touch sending me links of YouTube videos about the campaign, some claiming some really outrageous things and others with support from celebrities. Alex Jones, a famous internet underground news reporter, accuse KONY 2012 to be part of some conspiracy theory looking to start a war with Africa while this one with Angelina Jolie supporting the cause against Joseph Kony.
While I don’t entirely discredit Alex Jones, there’s a lot of true in some of the things he says once you cut out the noise, the campaign seemed to be pretty convincing to me, specially considering the support of high profile individuals such as Angelina Jolie.
However, today I got a tip from @elliotjaystocks with a link to the video below, where Charlie Brooker portraits a much more reasonable argument to distrust Invisible Children and KONY2012 campaign. If you watched the campaign video, you must watch this one too.
The way I see it, the fact that only 1/3 of the donations are actually being used to help Ugandan children and 2/3 are spent with their own production costs, which include a series of extremely bad taste self-promoting videos, I wonder if those more outrageous accusations I first stumble on were true. I must admit, I’m not sure where I stand on this anymore. What about you?