Kony 2012

Earlier this year, the Kony 2012 band wagon was created ... Here is my view on the whole issue.

Could Uganda’s Recently Discovered Oil Be The REAL Motivation Behind Kony 2012 ?

I think its fair to say that the propaganda war for the Kony 2012 movement, by the Invisible Children group, has become a little more interesting. As soon as I saw the KONY2012 video, the desired effect of pulling my heart strings immediately got me worked up - "yeah, let's go in there and get Kony..."
... then I actually thought about what that would entail. This newly awakened blood-lust amongst the public is giving our governments public support for another Iraq style invasion/occupation.
Kony's crimes are disgusting and sickening, and he's fighting for a theocracy which is just pure insanity. All worth the effort to stop him. But this would involve either being on the side of, or fighting against, the Ugandan government, itself with an appalling human right's record. A solution is needed of course, but do we really want to start another Iraq over this? Is the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Ugandan civilians going to make anything better ?


The Kony campaign is, in its essence, a propaganda tool for the ruling corporate agenda.
The fact of its success is undeniable, and it shows just how powerful a motivator emotion is when its triggered on this scale. The fact of Kony's evil is also undeniable, but to simply, naively believe all we have to do is remove bogey men is music to the ears of the agenda-setters. The reality is far more complex and much of it has to do with Western business interests in Africa, and in African resources in particular. I hope no one is any doubt that the 'West' has used propaganda incredibly successfully to wage acquisition-based wars in the Middle East. Destabilising regimes has proved to be relatively easy - as long as you fund the opposition, calling them freedom fighters when it suits you, and then Al Qaida when it suits a different purpose. The Kony campaign reveals the deeply programmable empathic element in people, something Disney tapped into equally successfully and so on. It also reveals how utterly willing we are to 'buy' something without question if it ticks the right emotive boxes. For me, watching that video, I felt uneasy. It's always a good litmus test for me if I get this feeling that something's 'not quite right' even if I can't put my finger on precisely why. A small amount of research reveals many dubious facts about the campaign, but fairly overtly in the video is a gung-ho colonialism that views the use of force as righteous if the cause is believed to be righteous. The same argument was used for Iraq. The root of the use highlighted in the campaign is inextricably linked with Western vested interests in Africa, and the finger really should be pointing back at Washington and the City of London. If we could harness the power that the video has released effectively to overthrow the oppressive regimes run from those two centres of power, maybe we really would see dramatic change on this planet.