KONY 2012

There has been a lot of hype around Invisible Children and Joseph Kony after the release of the KONY 2012 video.  Say what you want about Invisible Children, but they are doing something amazing.  They are getting the youth of the world to rally around a cause.  They are getting people to care, they are getting people aware of the real horrors of the LRA.  Their campaign is inspiring and hopeful and gives a clear cut solution and steps to achieve that solution.  They may be oversimplifying a extremely complex issue, they have too.  It would take a 5 hour video to explain the details of the 30 year war in the Sudan. People won't watch that video.  They may be spending a large proportion of their money on marketing.... that is the whole point of their campaign.  To get the word out about Joseph Kony, to get people rallying behind this cause so the governments do something about it.

I have been an advocate of Invisible Children since their first video was released, they are not perfect, but they are a good cause.  They care.  They are doing everything they can to stop the LRA and help the people of Uganda.  And they have been successful in the past.  My heart, my money and my support will always be behind Invisible Children.  KONY 2012!!!

Here is an excerpt from Another Man's War by Sam Childers:

"In my opinion the worst menace to the people there is a wild dog named Joseph Kony, who leads a rebel group called the Lord's Resistance Army.  These are the maniacs who have devastated Southern Sudan and neighboring Uganda.

These days nobody really knows what Kony and the LRA are fighting for.  They don't seem to have any goal or objective other than terrifying people and practicing their gut-wrenching brand of mutilation and disfigurement.

Joseph Kony didn't have much money to pay and maintain his army, so around 1994, about the same time he moved the LRA base of operations from Uganda to Sudan and started kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers.  They're weak, compliant, easy to train, and easy to brainwash.  And most soldiers on the other side are going to hesitate before shooting at a child, giving the child a chance to shoot first.  In the time more than 30,000 kidnap victims became child soldiers.

Joseph Kony cultivates a personal mystique.  He thinks he's on some holy mission.  But I'm here to tell you that if anybody on this earth is more evil than Kony, I've never heard of him.

Kony and his men raid villages looking for children to capture.  They shock and traumatize the kids as soon as possible to frighten them into doing anything they're told.  They sometimes kill their parents in front of them, hacking them to death with machetes or burning them alive.  They slice babies out of their mothers' bellies and set them on fire.  They make the mother watch before raping and killing her.  They cut off noses, breasts, ears, lips, or hands, some times forcing children to eat the cut-off pieces.

They hand an 11 year old boy a machete and order him to disembowel his mother.  He does it.

They run off with children from teenagers to toddlers who will become armed soldiers trained to kill children themselves, to shoot girls on their way to the well, to murder parents on command.  The soldiers may kill and cut up one or two of their young captives or nail them alive to a tree, as a warning to the others. The ones remaining quickly learn to kill without feeling or remorse.  Even some of the youngest will soon carry machine guns almost as big as they are.  Others become pack animals, carrying ammunition and supplies for troops on the march.  Many, if not most of them, serve as sex slaves.  Senior officers get their pick of the older girls, lower ranks get the younger ones, everybody else gets the boys."