Thursday, March 8, 2012

DON'T send me the Kony video!

Memo to all Agents, followers, readers and (especially) guilt-ridden white liberals. Please do NOT send me the video about Joseph Kony's atrocities in Uganda. I'll give you three good reasons.

1. It's old news. This is not the first time we've been told that Kony is responsible for killing 1000s of children and kidnapping more 1000s to be used as sex slaves and/or soldiers in his misnamed and misbegotten "Lord’s Resistance Army". The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (amongst others) has been covering this story for ten (10) years.

And hey... Walt told you about it last October! In "Another dumb war America can't win", I called attention to Al Obama's plans to send American soldiers to join in the hunt for Kony. Did it happen? Don't know. Was Kony caught? Definitely not.

Besides, in the context of African politics in the post-colonial era, this is nothing new. The Mau Mau terrorists did it in Kenya even before the British left. (Most of the victims of that nasty little war were blacks, not whites.) The black terrorists in Rhodesia did the same to overthrow the Ian Smith government, and will do it again, if necessary, to keep Comrade Bob Mugabe in power. It's hard to think of a sub-Saharan African country in which children have not been victimized.

2. It's not going to make any difference. This is just another of those Worthy Causes that come to the attention of celebs like Piers Moron, who jump on the bandwagon for the publicity value. Remember Haiti? Has all the international attention and well-meaning donations done any good? No!

Dear readers, please learn and remember the old African acronym: MAWA. Mother Africa Wins Again. Even "Invisible Children", the producers of the video, say that the only way Kony will be brought to justice (African style -- i.e. killed) is if the Ugandan army does it. That would be the same Afghan army that put Idi Amin in power, and only slightly less ogrish Milton Obote both before and after Amin. Don't expect an end to tyranny and slaughter from those guys. In the end, MAWA.

3. The motives of Invisible Children are more than a little suspect. Call me cynical, but I question what will happen to any money you might donate. (And soliciting donations is the whole point of the video.)

Human Rights Watch points out that Kony’s army is down to a few hundred and hasn’t been in Uganda for years, a fact which the documentary leaves out, due to time constraints no doubt. They ask why, this late in the game, the film is being promoted and the begging bowl passed through the social media,

Visible Children has some answers. They say Invisible Children is a controversial activist group operating on a not-for-profit basis. They raise money by selling merchandise like those stupid bracelets.

Last year, the blog claims, Invisible Children spent $8,676,614, of which only 32% went to direct services. Much of the rest went to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. Another case of folks -- white folks -- doing well out of doing good.

Film maker Jason Russell responds to the criticism by saying "That is the old way of thinking. We stand by our use of a third of our money going to our film budget so we can build a real-time website of sightings of Kony’s army."

The key word there is "we", which means Jason Russell and his non-Ugandan friends and Ugandan hangers-on. Is that who you really want to help? If so, send your guilt money to Walt. I'll see that it gets into the right hands. Yeah... sure...

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