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musicproblems:

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riotiousangelicparticulars:

aw, man… 

neil-gaiman:

When I posted the #Kony2012 link on Twitter, a LOT of people sent me this. I’d already felt uncomfortable RTing something that called for direct military action, and this solidified my discomfort.

visiblechildren:

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts.

UPDATE: Facebook has blocked this blog. Complain here and post on Facebook about visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]com instead. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about KONY 2012!

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.

~ Grant Oyston, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com

Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]comanywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.

dftbaexpressions:

If I’d ask you, who is Joseph Kony, you wouldn’t know. You should. And that’s why I’m going to tell you about him.

Joseph Kony considers himself as a good Christian. 
He abducts kids, makes little girls go in prostitution, makes little boys become kid soldiers and force them to do horrible things, things a kid isn’t supposed to do. Neither is an adult, no one is. He started the LRA, Lord’s Resistance Army. 20.000 kids have been kidnapped, this needs to stop. And that’s why we need to Make Kony Famous. Let the world know about the horrible things he does, and the thousands of children and parents suffering. 

So come together, at the April the 20th. That is the day, we will cover the night. People in all kind of cities, all over the world meet at sundown & cover the city with posters and stickers of Joseph Kony. To Make Kony Famous. If you want to help these kids and parents, cover the night at 4/20/2012.

Not clear enough? Please watch: http://vimeo.com/37119711

invisible:

Cover the Night: KONY 2012

KONY 2012, take 30 minutes to watch and share. Visit www.kony2012.com . Make Kony famous

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scishow:

shortformblog:

Fun guy chillin’ in South American rainforest finds plastic-eating fungi

Seriously, though this is kind of a big deal. Know that big problem we have? You know, the one involving a crapload of used plastic hanging around in landfills with nowhere to biodegrade for a couple million years? Well, Jonathan Russell might’ve solved that problem. See, Russell and his fellow Yale students went to Ecuador, where they found a new kind of fungus they’re calling Pestalotiopsis microspora. Big deal, you’re thinking. Anyone can find fungus anywhere! Well, something his fellow students found out after the fact is that this fungus can live on a diet of polyurethane alone — and even crazier, it doesn’t even need air to do so! In other words, we could potentially put it at the bottom of a landfill and cover it with plastic, and it would do the rest of the work. This might be game-changing if it works as advertised. (photo via Flickr user dbutt; EDIT: Updated with link to research abstract) source

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If this pans out, it will be HUGE. How crazy is it that there might be something like this in the world, just waiting for us to discover it so we can use it to help save us from ourselves?

creativemachine:

one-millionpieces:

wait but his website background and that picture aren’t that same though

yes it is. The version he used was a crop.

creativemachine:

fuck-up-slut:

This isn’t some tan girl covered in makeup with perfectly straight hair and a perfect smile. This is a girl with Pfeiffer Syndrome, who has had bangs her whole life to hide her forehead and struggles everyday to be okay with looking this way. She’s had several surgeries and will have a couple more. she can’t wear makeup much, her eyes are sensitive. Her jaw is misaligned. Her forehead is too thick and has to be shaven down. Her cheekdowns have to be moved forward by surgery. when she was four she had something called a ‘halo’ which was a metal circle screwed into her skull and jaw.

though she fought through it medically, she struggles everyday with the emotional sideeffects. she doesn’t look like her family or her friends. she may never look normal. she has depression and eating issues because of what she has had to accept about herself. she has done awful things to be pretty.

nobody ever sees her without makeup or without bangs.

until now.

She, is me.

and if I make your blog ugly, than don’t reblog this. but if you can be one of the few people in my life who I know are fully comfortable with it, than reblog this so people know.

you are beautiful. even if you don’t realize it, you are. everyone is,

oh crap, tearing up. Beautiful.