(March 11, 2012 at 6:31 am)LastPoet Wrote: I was having a discussion with a guy last night on FB, the guy throwed a bunch of lies about this project (the usual stuff, eg "its too simplistic", "the LRA is only 250 men strong", "They are not in uganda anymore", etc...), so I ponted out he was spreading misinformation, the guy starts playing the victim card so I had to tell him to fuck off, 'cause I don't talk to cry babies. He later posted on his FB page this link:
http://keepittrill.com/online/2012/03/ko...-children/
Its like my old man says "There are half of the people on earth that want to do something for the world, and the other half just living to difficult their job!"
Have you actually read that article? The stuff you're quoting, how is that misinformation? I'm not sure where people are getting "250 men" from though. About the only thing I don't agree with is IC being a 'shady' organisation. I do, however, agree that there's better options for charity in Uganda, those who aren't pushing for an intervention for a start.
Almost every single critic of Kony 2012 is in favour of the overall make Kony famous tactic and I myself think it's a good idea. However, good ideas aren't immune to criticism and simply ignoring the criticism or adopting a "we'll think about it later" attitude is not a good idea. There's so much to take into consideration and I don't see anyone bothering to do that other than visiting the IC website, which is unfortunate. Any criticism at all is typically met with anger. And I'm not saying there aren't just as many misinformed critics out there, but a meaning talk about the issue will only happen when people stop being so dismissive and acknowledge valid points.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that "something is better than nothing", which isn't always the case with foreign aid. Foreign aid, applied blindly, can cause harm as well as good. It can corrupt governments, make people dependant on handouts or simply be wasted on a poorly planned project. Some foreign aid projects measure the success of their project by looking at whether their goals were met, rather than if it actually helps the people (even though the goals themselves are initially geared toward helping, of course).
One question I have, for example, is how does aiding the Ugandan military (which IC clearly supports - though not financially from what I can tell) in anyway help:
- find Kony and the LRA who are no longer in that region
- help people who are displaced / help with education etc
The Ugandan military doesn't have permission to cross into it's neighbouring countries. It's already competent enough to repel the LRA and already has 100 US military advisers there. If you want to aid a military force that can do something about Kony and the LRA, try Sudan (I think I heard the LRA are a problem there - correct me if I'm wrong) or DRC. If IC and Kony 2012 is to get the above military forces to work together, why is the US being appealed to instead of African nations? IC doing good things (and they are from the reading I've done - I'm not claiming otherwise) doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to poorly thought out ideas. And it may be that my ideas are the flawed ones - I'm open to that. I appreciate some people just want to be contrarians, but that's not what I'm trying to do.
I have a lot I'd like to write on the subject, but I don't want to annoy people with excessively long posts.
