The Kony campaign exposed
2012-03-15 20:09 in News, Videos by Anton Channing
Kings teaching Individualist Agents
2012-03-15 20:09 in News, Videos by Anton Channing
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Further reading on the pre-existing networks that gave this campaign a kick start. It didn’t happen overnight. This is a well financed evangelical Christian pro-war campaign that has been building up support for years:
http://blog.socialflow.com/post/7120244932/data-viz-kony2012-see-how-invisible-networks-helped-a-campaign-capture-the-worlds-attention
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Wow! I did think it was a well thought through campaign but I thought I may have been paranoid… I guess this is more serious stuff then I initially anticipated. I didn’t realize how big it was.
Worth spreading the counter message those of you on Facebook! Seems this must have tricked many people!
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Here is more scary stuff on Kony2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSSVEQp2DSU
It suggests to me we really need to be careful what we watch and read online or elsewhere. I don’t want to get too wrapped up in this subject but before I would do anything about it other than discussing it online I would certainly do my own research into it. All story sounds very doggy and although I may not be convinced by every accusation made about Invisible Children I certainly do not trust the Kony2012 campaign.
Sex or Hex:
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This music is hypnotising and kicks you out of your balance.
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Just a small issue.. the video seems to allege that Invisible Children campaign wasted money on useless publicity videos… whereas the link you give in your comment suggests very strongly that these videos were part of building up a wider movement as part of a launching programme for the Arrest Video campaign… in short, the link negates the video.
The real question is asked in the final sentence of the video link – what indeed will Invisible Children do next? That is the real question – and as I have said before, only time will tell.
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@sparkychappy If the only thing Invisible Children were trying to do was raise the profile of Kony then one could argue that their money has been well spent on publicity campaigns, cheesy videos and professional lobbyists.
However where I see them as dishonest is in claiming to be a charity that helps children in Uganda when in fact only a third of their funds goes towards that cause. For me their Kony 2012 advertisment video lacked transparency and seemed to suggest that monies donated would go towards directly towards projects on the ground, not in making more promotional videos. Perhaps after this campaign their balance of spending will change. We shall see however.
My gut feeling however is that this campaign, from the point of view of Jason Russell, is intended to launch him either into politics, or some form of “internet evangelism”. I was going to say TV envangelist, but I suspect the era of those will soon be eclipsed by donations to ‘youtube evanglists’ from the fundamentalist christian set. If they aren’t already.
I suspect politics more. But only time will tell.
The fact it was promoted by the corporate set, the involvement of Facebook and Hollywood in getting this campaign started, betrays the US establishment also has an interest in promoting this campaign.
Part of this might derive from the increasing trade dominance of China, especially it monopolization of rare-earth metals. This is of concern because China seems to me a racist (Han Supremacist) military dictatorship with a terrible human rights record. Rare earth metals are very rich in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. As bad as having the US as the dominant world player could be, if we allow China to overtake and control the worlds resources things will get far worse. I’ve already suspected that this is the hidden agenda forcing democracies in more authoritarian directions.
Still, if the real issue is China, I’d rather they just come out and say so rather than using boogie men as an excuse for wars that really had other purposes…
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If the campaign was intended to launch Jason, then I suspect they’ve blown it now – what with the naked masturbation rampage revelations and all.
I agree. The real game for the US has always been about China – the whole post 9/11 exploits have been a bit of a distraction in my view, and in a hundred years or so will be seen as being relatively unimportant in the great scheme of things.
On the subject of China though, China has control of most of the world’s supply of easily available rare earths – with the exception of coltan. In northern China, they’re mining them so fast you wouldn’t believe it. China has now started to restrict exports of rare earths, which is causing great consternation in the US and Europe. The US has even tried to accuse China of restrictive trade practices over this issue – China refutes the claim, saying that nobody has the right to force them to sell rare earths which they wish to use themselves. A far bigger problem from China’s point of view is that of food security. To this end China – and they are not alone in this, plenty of other countries are doing it too – has been signing long term land lease deals with many African countries. China’s activities are being viewed very suspiciously by western nations, though they are seen by many African governments as being the good guys – China, unlike western countries who have a history of colonial policies in Africa makes no attempt to tell African countries how to manage their internal affairs. Western governments with their links to NGO’s advocating human rights are often portrayed as being imperialist in attitude, and with a certain amount of justification… in the 19th century, morality was frequently cited as the reason for imperial adventurism by Whigs and later, Liberals, while predominantly Tory and later Conservative “Little Englanders” campaigned against expansion on the grounds that we shouldn’t go sticking our Imperial noses into other countries affairs, but should rather concentrate on issues here in the UK. Funny thing is though, nowadays the term “Little Englander” is often used as a term of abuse, and Little Englanders are portrayed as being the advocates of Empire – “peace is war” as Orwell said. Needless to say, the public generally favoured an interventionist approach. The modern legacy of this view was encapsulated by Tony Blair’s “beacon to the world” speech the day after his election in 1997, and by his propounding of the philosophy of Liberal Interventionism.
African nations are also well aware how China was subjugated and exploited by European countries, the US, and by Japan in the 19th century, and in the first part of the 20th century. I’m not a particular fan of the Chinese state either – though given Britain’s history there, it’s important to remember that anything that the UK, or UK citizens say is seen in a very different light there. Remember Cameron’s visit to Beijing last year, and how he was wearing his remembrance day poppy? The Chinese perceived his wearing a poppy to be rubbing their faces in the Opium war fiasco – they saw if as a colonialist symbol – we should remember that it’ll be a long time before the opium wars are forgotten there.
Like many Europeans and Americans, I too would prefer it if international policy was laid open for all to see – though we must also recognise that has downsides too, as was discovered in ancient Athens 2,500 years ago where citizens voted on foreign policy – the Peloponnesian War probably wouldn‘t have happened if Athens hadn‘t had a democratic system. Socrates wouldn’t have been executed without the democratic use of the ostrakon, and Plato wouldn’t have been quite so ill disposed to democracy as he was – he hated it. Populations have a habit of calling wildly for interventions and wars, then forgetting that they’ve done so. We view WWI as being terrible thing – few people are now aware that in the weeks before the outbreak – when many politicians were trying to prevent a war due to the huge financial costs they knew it would incur – there were massive pro-war demonstrations taking place in cities across Europe. As the old saying goes “there’s nowt as queer as folk”. It’s fair to say, that if everyone knew the long term strategies of the great games, then would be no great games – the real question is, would we have all out war instead? On that, your guess is as good as mine.
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After further reflection I do wonder if the original video had the effect of knocking me emotionally off balance in order for it to have provoked such a strong critical reaction from me.
Its strange that the guy that made this video was found naked in the streets (masturbating?) though. Probably he was just a naive kid after all. Perhaps in the US they take that kind of strong emotionally manipulative advertising for granted. I’ve heard they don’t have such strong regulation of what kind of advertising is allowed there. Perhaps he was just imitating the kind of ads he’s been exposed to all his life.
I don’t really know anything about Cameron. I don’t follow news at all. I take the view that if anything significant were to happen I’d hear about it via word of mouth. Otherwise I’m going to assume its corrupt old business as usual.
Sex or Hex:
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I know its an old thread but I came across interesting 30 minutes documentary that talks about different techniques of how to manipulate the audience and it uses Kony2012 as one of the examples along with Zeitgeist and An Inconvenient Truth.
It’s well worth watching this and learning from it.
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