Enter the Conspiracy Dome!

I've been debating Corona Virus conspiracy theorists for the past couple of days (all from Bristol, UK), and because I've got nothing better to do, I thought I'd report back with some observations from my swift and unexpected decent into the eighth circle of hell.

I think it's worth saying that sadly the rabbit hole many of these young men have fallen down is so deep, dark and absurd that it's hard to see how they will ever emerge again without professional help. When I say 'conspiracy theorists', I'm not talking about the folks merely trying to play-down the seriousness of this crisis for economic reasons, the Trump's and Bolsanaro's of this world - whilst they're certainly obnoxious, incompetent, criminally negligent, dickheads - the characters I'm talking about are orders of magnitude more un-tethered from reality. Think Pizza Gater's of the Pandemic.

The old Twain adage to never debate stupid people, 'because they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience' largely holds, at least they certainly brought me down, but actually I think the saying 'arguing with stupid people is like arguing with pigeons, no matter how hard you try, they will shit on the board and strut away like they won' to be both fairer and more descriptive.

I'm being unnecessarily cruel I know, but the combination of total ignorance and massive smugness on display from every one of these political grifters triggered the ever livin' fuck out of me, so I really don't care. Whether it be the 'deep state' duping the masses into giving up their democratic freedoms and plunging the planet into a fascist dictatorship using 5G, Bill Gates' nefarious plan to install a vaccination chip in all of us, corrupt doctors seeking to harvest our organs, or just the basic run of the mill 'false flag operation', there are numerous Corona conspiracies doing the rounds, and somehow I managed to run head-first into nearly all of them in one place, at the same time. Thanks Facebook!

It's surreal and tragic to think that a disease born on November 17th 2019, less than five months ago, has now killed 100,0000 people. But what's weirder and no less tragic is the growing number of people who now seem to believe the death toll is a complete fabrication. My crash landing into this world started a few days ago with a rather innocuous post from a friend of mine questioning what he perceived to be the British public's desire for a more 'aggressive' approach to enforcing the current lock-down currently in place in Britain. To paraphrase my friend, he thought it was stupid and shortsighted to want the police to be in any way more 'aggressive' with the public, and argued that anyone calling for such a thing, even temporarily, was just asking for trouble. A lot of posters agreed with this sentiment, which is fine, but before long there were lot's of comments like this (actual comment):

"BEGGING for fascism because of a massive con... people are beyond saving".

I chimed in at this point, that given the (hopefully) once in a lifetime nature of this crisis, granting police temporary powers to send people home seemed a reasonable measure if large numbers of people were disobeying stay at home orders. I argued this could save thousands of lives, particularly vulnerable citizens (not to mention front-line NHS workers), and didn't amount to us giving up our freedoms and certainly didn't mean I was calling for the police to enact violence, let alone fascism.

I had no way to know the metric fuck ton of of ignorance my comment was about to unleash upon the world.

Dipshit 1: "whats more important... being forced into house-arrest/quarantine, or our rights as sovereign beings/legal citizens?"

Me: That's a false choice. You can grant police temporary powers to send people home without turning into a fascist dictatorship.

Dipshit 1: "forcing people into house-arrest is fascism. So which is more important to you?"

Me: House arrest has absolutely nothing to do with fascism. All democracies use house arrest. Staying at home to prevent your fellow citizens dying is NOT house arrest.

Dipshit 1: "So you're incapable of understanding fairly basic principles, and incapable of answering the question...Christopher do you have the rat-number for grassing up dog-walkers to hand?"

As I sat momentarily dazed by his weaselly non-sequitur, my opponent received reinforcements in the form of a new commentator who I'll simply refer to from now on as Dipshit 2, who quickly established themselves to be every bit as dense as the densest star known to humanity. Posting a link to an article urging us to believe that Covid-19 was actually caused by.... the roll-out of 5G, I suddenly realised I had to make a decision, to continue this miserable conversation risked permanent brain damage, but to pull the ejector seat and get the hell out would have left a really bad taste in my mouth. I was now outnumbered 1.5 to 1 and my reasonable conversation with a mate had degenerated to the level of the comments section under a Joe Rogan video, but for unknown reasons, (let's be honest, probably my ego) I decided to plow on anyway.

Sensing weakness at my momentary silence as I read through Dipshit 2's absolute nonsense article, Dipshit 1 struck again, swiftly posting a link to a Youtube video, just as I was clicking on it, disaster struck again, as yet more reinforcements arrived in the form of Dipshit 3, entering the fray with a perfectly timed and entirely fabricated Henry Kissinger meme. Classic. Which one, you ask? You know the one claiming that Kissinger said 'vaccinations are the way the government will control and exterminate us'? Yea that one.

At this point I knew I had to attempt to rally, so I pointed out that Kissinger never made any such speech and linked evidence that the meme was made by an anonymous Facebook user. He immediately started backpedaling and in an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance claimed both that he already knew the speech wasn't real AND that it could still be real and I should prove to him that the speech wasn't real.... OK.

I finally click on Dip shit 1's link to find a video produced by the ultra conservative 'Next News Network' YouTube channel, a notorious right-wing propaganda mill out of the U.S that supports Trump and is famous for spreading dangerous misinformation and junk science. The particular video he linked was an interview with Dr Shiva Ayyadurai, a charlatan of the most transparent kind with a record of fraud longer than my arm.

Me: 'This is dangerous right-wing propaganda from a Trump loving antivaxxer conspiracy theorist.'

Dipshit 1: 'his 4 degrees from MIT and proven track-record in innovation and genius somewhat outshines your baseless little outbursts. Its funny because you don't even realise that you are exactly why Trump wins lol' 🤣

Me: 'Says the guy regurgitating baseless conspiracies that he saw on a far-right youtube channel.'

Dipshit 1: "Did you even watch the video? Dr Shiva invented Email, has four degrees from MIT, he's running for Senate and he's calling out babylon for it's bullshit and you're right your opinion doesn't matter, except for when you start espousing fascism...then you're not only dumb but also dangerous."

Me: My honest advice to you is not to believe everything you see and hear on You Tube. Dr Shiva didn't invent email (which is almost as hilarious as thinking that inventing email would validate his bogus scientific theories) He 'ran' for election as a Republican in 2017 but lost getting only 3.4% of the vote. He has a long history of fraud, academic malfeasance and generally scummy behavior) .... Are you a Trump supporter out of interest?

(He did not like this at all. He responded nearly an hour later with a pages long diatribe)

Dipshit 1 - "You are abhorrent, derailing the conversation thinking you're being smart when you haven't contributed anything to the discourse other than 'I'm a dumb sheep incapable of critical thinking or engaging in information contrary to my currently held beliefs... and the police should have a right to punish you because I saw the news and that's what they told me and you're bad for endangering people"zzzzzzzzzzzzzz if you want to sit at home doing nothing then by all means please, for the sanctity of life, you go right ahead. society won't miss you when the police cart you off for 'treatment' People with big egos and confidence in themselves seem like crazy, bad men to people who's ego is so pathetic and diminished that they can only mirror and replicate the rhetoric of the nanny-state that owns them. I don't 'support' trump but I'm not dumb-fuck enough to be "errrrrrrr orange man bad so everything he do bad" because the media tells me. I think he's a way more geniune and admirable person than you. You have to look at demonizing an individual in order to get support for your cause and justify your belief-system rather than exploring the science of our reality. Thankfully 'truth' is way more powerful than little dumb-fucks begging for fascism... How pathetic and stupid the UK is right now. Shame on you. I support sovereignty and freedom to all beings. You support violence from the state. YOU are the threat."

Powerful stuff.

The conversation had been fun, but I knew it was well past the point a rational person would have called it quits. My new pals and I had stopped replying to each other so I had just decided to log of and go to sleep when I heard an ominous chime calling to me.. When I read the new comment, I knew an entirely new level of 'free thinker' had entered the arena. Dip shit 4 was not like the others merely echoing far right American propaganda, he had his own facts and unshakable feelings about things I could never hope to understand. I knew I was defeated. So like a coward I ran from the battle, I didn't reply, I couldn't. Simply no reply would have ever sufficed. So I'll leave you dear reader, to formulate your own response...

Dipshit 4 -

"Way back in the 1920's Rudolf Stiener explained that the human body excretes poisons through its cells at given times (when necessary) that effect the body with virus-like symptoms. The spanish flu epidemic corresponded exactly with the rolllout of the electricity grid. Interstingly there have been international flu pandemics in 1720, 1820, 1920 and 2020 - check it out. If there is a link between the two it's likely to be that corona is being used to disguise the symptoms of people affected by the 'essential' roll out of the network of the beast which is occuring at this time in order to control 'the internet of things' (things including your brain).... If you look at the Wiki Entry on the Military World Games held in Wuhan end of last october .... look at the number of delegates attending from each nation and how the virus spread around the world t paints a failry blatant picture of how it spread .... question is who put it there? Was it in the bat soup or is something more sinister afoot?..... dunno but it do'nt matter cos Bill Gates has got your nano-chip vaccination waiting so roll on up, get in line. If you read revelation 13 and you have eyes to see, and your name is in the book of the lamb, all will begin to be revealed .... if not - that's cool, you will get the life you wish for, in worship and communion with the beast .... for a while. Stay Up."

I'm being pretty heartless here obviously, a lot of this comes down to class, and the underlying level of distrust in the authorities that many people have. If you go your whole life believing the police and the government is the enemy, whether for legitimate reasons or not, when a real crisis comes along that to a large extent requires the trust and consent of the people, if you can't at least temporarily suspend your ideology and follow the science you're kind of fucked and unfortunately so is the rest of society. We have a similar problem in Hong Kong where nobody trusts a word out of any government official, but luckily a relatively strong civil society stepped in to fill the gaps.

The gloves are off - Hong Kong government's murderous intent now crystal clear

On an oppressively hot and humid Tuesday evening in Hong Kong, violent and dislocating convulsions shook the city to it's foundations once again. As police savagely beat protesters and utilised firearms on numerous occasions, it marked yet another grim milestone on the path to God-only-knows where. Much of the city remains locked down and at a standstill with public transport suspended and visible road blocks in many districts. It feels very much like martial law in all but name.

As police violence towards demonstrators reached a sickening nadir with the shooting of a high school student this afternoon, it is clear the government wants to send a message to the public. 'Resist and die' or something to that effect. The use of force on display today from 'Asia's most respected police force' came as no surprise to anyone, but was shocking in it's brutality nonetheless. Whilst public attitudes to the Police surely crystallised some time ago,  outrage sparked by police violence reached a crescendo in recent days with widespread reports of torture and sexual abuse suffered by detainees held on the border with China and now today's unprecedented scenes of violence captured on video and quickly shared on social media.

To the people of  Hong Kong the truth has now become abundantly clear. The rule of law is smashed, broken and bloody on the floor along with  the bodies and dreams of the city's brave youth. Any remnants of faith in the city's most vital institutions is gone forever, along with any sympathy for the territory's corrupt and incompetent leaders. This leads people to the inevitable conclusion that the government and their instruments are now the enemy of the people. Leaving millions of residents with an impossible conundrum, a question that many had avoided under the assumption things would never come to this, what if I don't want to live under 'actual' Chinese rule?

Many Hongkongers are existentially split on this point, they have always felt a kinship with the Chinese people, a pride at being counted amongst them - 'I'm Chinese and I'm a Hong Konger'; was the prevailing sentiment. But this was a pride and sense of identity that explicitly depended on being allowed to remain different and diverse. Now that China, (like Israel) has successfully made it's regime synonymous with the country itself,  many Hong Kong citizens are grappling for the first time with more fundamental questions of identity. Perhaps for the first time, it seems possible that this fragile society could collapse under the weight of it's own contradictions.

Today feels different not only because it marked a new low in terms of police violence, but because it likely signified the beginning of a new phase in hostilities, as Beijing visibly ramps up efforts to crush the pro-Democracy movement once and for all.  

On Monday, suspected pro government supporters put up posters throughout the city advertising for applicants for a 'Anti-Police Death Squad', a pathetically transparent attempt to provide justification for a later use of extreme force again demonstrators. As escalation seems to be the only government 'strategy' at this point, many feared Tuesday's demonstrations might be where we see the first deaths at the hands of security forces. Sure enough, there were at least five live rounds discharged by police throughout the day including one into the chest of a teenage demonstrator.


Meanwhile Carrie Lam smiled and laughed it up with Chinese elites in celebration of their Dear Leader, Xi, in Beijing. Whilst the government is not without supporters amongst certain limited sections of HK society, popular support is now vanishingly thin. It seems clear that on orders from Beijing, the HK government will make no more concessions. And has been tasked with actively crushing dissent.

The status-quo-ante is no longer an available option, what this means going forward is far from clear. What we do know is that today marked a violent shift in direction. The gloves are well and truly off now, and in a hugely asymmetrical struggle such as this, with little meaningful international support, the people of Hong Kong have every reason to be worried about their future as 'part of China but not under it'.

Corbyn castigated for NOT having a losing strategy.

A round of applause is overdue for the only principled party leader left in British politics. I really have to tip my hat to this man who despite the naysayers, propagandists and fanatics of both the Remain and Leave persuasion, has managed to walk the incredibly treacherous line between respecting the original referendum and seeking to present an informed and credible choice back to the people.

I don't want to leave the EU, I think it will be disastrous for the U.K. But for some strange reason my feed is awash with fellow middle-class liberal Remainer types who suddenly seem hell bent on getting the most right-wing government in British history re-elected with a bolstered majority and a mandate to dismantle our country. Let's get one thing absolutely straight.

The Labour party CANNOT become the party of Remain and win an election, period. Why? Because almost all of the key marginal seats they need to win that election (and all of which were  promised new hospitals this week by the Tories) heavily voted to Leave. Say it with me.

Reading the Guardian constantly criticizing Corbyn for trying to find a genuine compromise, save some last vestiges of faith in British Democracy and act strategically in the interests of a future Labour government is truly cancerous.

Corbyn is presented as weak and dithering, indecisive and 'on the fence' on this issue, whilst nothing could be further from the truth. I've been arguing this with people endlessly for months; the alternative was/is/will be electoral suicide.

Campaigning to revoke article 50 would in a stroke all but guarantee the alienation of millions of working class people in exactly the key marginal seats Labour NEEDS to gain power. The election will come down to these crucial swing seats in the former industrial heartlands where Labour absolutely must make gains. If you continue to ignore this fact because Brexit is the only issue of importance to you, you've already picked the hill you will die upon, now you just have to wait to see the manner of your death.

Why debating with Israeli's makes you sound like an arsehole.

- By Christopher Landau

A late night encounter

Last week I found myself in a depressingly familiar situation.  

It's 3am, I'm dressed as a French mime and I'm drunk. After stumbling out of a nightclub I catch a cab with a friend back to her apartment. I arrive in a shambolic state more arthritic zebra than lithe mime.

Here's where it gets interesting, or tediously familiar, depending on your perspective.

I had been told in advance by my friend, half-mindful half-naive of my own experiences, that she shared her apartment  with a former I.D.F (Israeli Defence Force) soldier. He was still up and sat in the living room as I arrived.

A large majority of Israelis share a reluctance to talk about the occupation in Palestine with strangers. A minority are vocal advocates for the cause. My late night protagonist fell into the latter category.

Many will often cite, justifiably,  the widespread ignorance of European critics they encounter as the main reason for this weary cynicism of 'outsiders'.

The hostility that young Israelis encounter when travelling after their military service is one contributing factor to the proliferation of Israeli-only hostels in Colombia, India, etc.

Two sides of the same coin

As it turns out, he was stationed in the same area of the occupied territories as I was. We had walked the same cobbled streets in Nablus's old city,  scrambled up and down the same Lunar hills and taken shade in the same olive groves.

He refused to tell me what unit he served with, so his exact role and duties were left to the imagination.

Most of the soldiers I had encountered in that area of the West Bank were primarily involved in suppressing demonstrations and launching nightly 'snatch' missions into Nablus and the surrounding villages and refugee camps.

The names of  the 'trouble' villages; Nabi Salih, Kafr Qaddum, Bil'in, and Ni'lin, the camps of Askar and Balata, were etched just as deeply into his mind as they were to mine.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter

As someone who has been debating with supporters and apologists of Israel for many years, I have now developed my own weary cynicism when forced into unwanted political discussions.

 Often this feeling is motivated by an overwhelming sense of futility.  

A debate of the occupation or the legitimacy of the systems of oppression utilised by Israel, based on evidence,  i.e. - what actually happened - is nearly impossible. For the same reason you can't convince a theist of the unlikelihood of God with physics. 

We inhabit different conceptual realities. Paradigms shaped by the narrative that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Most Israelis see themselves as the misunderstood victim and not the occupier and oppressor.

This self enclosed moral universe is a necessary product of Israel's colonial experiment. It makes debating them tricky though, because they are essentially in denial.

The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is of course illusory, even if it gets us through the day it remains ideology at its purest. But try telling that to someone when you're hammered drunk at three in the morning.

The Israeli paradigm

I really wanted to be polite and attentive but I quickly found that neither of us were up to the task.

Cognitive dissonance puts people on the defensive automatically, my protagonist used the limited facts in his possession and slotted them into the ready-made, unthinking,  pro-Israel mold that his socialisation provides.

Once he had sufficient information with which to identify and categorise me, he said the appropriate things for a former I.D.F soldier to say to a  naive, passive-aggressive, neck-beard, leftist twat.

His questions were incoherent but nonetheless emotionally potent.

He asked how I could support the Palestinians and criticise Israel when I wasn't from Israel and  couldn't  possibly understand the problem. 

He asked how I could judge Israel when the British and the U.S had done far worse things.

He asked why I would wish to live and work with the Palestinians but not Israeli's.

He questioned how I could espouse non-violence but refuse to condemn Palestinians for throwing stones 

and then he asked me: "What if Scotland were firing missiles at London?"

I stared at the floor for long periods of time. I mainly felt like walking out. In the end managing only curt  pithy responses to the many charges laid against me.

I couldn't escape framing every word that he said in the context of a cold-hearted fascism. Instead of treating him for what he really was, an average Israeli who just happens to be the participant in a greater political game.

 I don't mean that to sound patronising. Most people, even former Israeli soldiers, have not studied the conflict in any great detail. They know only the simplistic slogans, smattering of facts and euphemistic language they've been raised with.

His  agency is thus severely limited by all sorts of factors. His socialisation and education in Israel has conditioned him from an early age. His army buddies and perhaps even his family would no longer communicate with him if he thought any differently.

I have met many dissident Israelis who have been entirely ostracised from their families and friends for speaking out. Many have become unemployable, treated as traitors, outcast and alienated from mainstream society and those that they love.

My opponent was not merely a tool of the state, but a product of it. Israel's education system and civil society is highly militarised and propagandistic: "Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land" etc.

It's a heavy price to pay, but some still do speak out .There are increasing numbers of deeply committed Israeli activists joining the fight against Apartheid in Palestine as grass-roots Israeli movements against the occupation have continued to multiply.

The activists of B'Tselem [8], Anarchists against the Wall [9] and the former soldiers of Breaking the Silence [10] being a good example. 

This makes it even truer that directing even passive aggressive anger towards my protagonist rather than focusing it laser-like on the systems of power that placed him there, was childish and ultimately self-destructive.

Part of my brain wanted  to have that debate with him, perhaps even to share some of my experiences. 

But I knew the truth was that whilst he could listen to me, he wouldn't hear.

Memories that warm you up and tear you apart

Nonetheless  unbidden memories  flashed  through my mind as he continued to admonish me. As I stared even harder at the floor, I began to revisit that tiny slice of reality on the streets of the West Bank that I had myself experienced.

I remembered her vividly. Not older than a few weeks, the smallest child I had ever seen lying amongst a pile of purple blankets. Cooking to death on the floor of a plastic tent.

Her heart was beating unnaturally fast and her mother's desperate expression as we  watched her  baby struggle for life was hard to endure. But there is no safe place to put a new born baby when you destroy her home three times in a single year and drive her family into the desert.[1]

I remember walking up the concrete staircase of a home in mourning. The wails of the women getting louder with every step. A house drowning in sorrow for a young man vaporised by drone strike a day previously. Another victim of the grotesque siege of Gaza, the corrupting logic of occupation. 

What about that old man mauled by the dog in Sheikh Jarrah. Beaten, arrested and imprisoned for 'provoking' the animal. Or the boy talking with his father as he picked up the booby-trapped grenade  planted by some still unknown settler, the horrific injuries to his stomach.

Interviewing countless families and friends of kidnapped children and young men. Meeting many of their mothers and joining in solidarity and pain. Thousands held indefinitely without charge and on hunger strike, hardly making the news.[2]

The kidnapped children taken to Israel's darkest places, tortured into betraying their families.[3]

The acid and faeces thrown at the children of Al- Khalil.[4]

When the soldiers attacked with dogs at Kafr Qaddum.[5]

When they ambushed us and dragged Rachel into the humvee by her hair. Or when they beat Ebbe and the girls.[6]

What happened on Land Day.[7]

Or what still happens every single day in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

Apartheid. 

When it's darkest we see the stars

I don't tell him any of these things of course.

Nothing good would have come of saying that resistance is not only inevitable and necessary in Palestine, it is legitimate.

That whilst I personally subscribe to the Gandhian  philosophy of dynamic non-violent resistance (Satyagraha) I would never patronise somebody enduring occupation by proselytising my views of how they should or should not resist.

That International law recognises the right to resist your occupier. That all Israeli actions in the West Bank are in violation of the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council, which regards Israel as the 'Occupying Power'.

That the very deployment of my debater to Nablus puts him within the 1967 green-line and thus in breach of international law, theoretically subject to criminal prosecution. 

The role and duties of the soldier in an occupying force has remained largely unchanged for millennia. The work is brutal and alienating.  Avraham Shalom, director of Israel's Shin Bet (secret police) from 1980-86  recently said: "The future is bleak ... where does it lead? To a change in the people’s character, because if you put most of our young people in the army, they’ll see a paradox. They’ll see it strives to be a people’s army ... involved in building up the country. On the other hand, it’s a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II. Similar, not identical. We've become cruel to ourselves as well, but mainly to the occupied population, using the excuse of the war against terror.”  I should have treated this man with more compassion. For as Einstein expresses more eloquently than I: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”  It is not my debater's fault that he was born into the role of oppressor. Reflexively defending Israel is simply axiomatic. Whilst this certainly does not expunge him of moral responsibility, it at least puts his world-view into appropriate context. What I describe is similar to countless debates in the eighties and early nineties between pro-apartheid South African's and European critics. The supporter of Apartheid is telling you that you don't understand South Africa like they do, that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist and that the A.N.C means to wipe the Afrikaans people off the face of the earth; the only way to have security is enforced separation and mass internment, the maintenance of a police state is necessary to keep the black-majority under control and the theft and occupation of land is justified by past collective suffering.   Just as ending South African Apartheid required a plausible and achievable vision of the future for supporters of that despotic regime to accept change, keeping a genuine dialogue open with Israeli's is equally as important. If Israeli's truly believe that there is no forgiveness possible, they will refuse to change.  Many white South Africans said that the lifting of Apartheid liberated their consciousness as well as the bodies of their black countrymen.  I'm obviously not yet strong enough to distance myself from past events, my own experiences, and to always act on this principle.  Which is unfortunate because until the occupation ends, I'm sure to encounter many more such situations.   And like an arsehole I'll probably be sat there, in silence, staring at the ground. - C

REFERENCES 

---

[1] http://www.jpost.com/National-News/IDF-demolishes-small-Palestinian-Bedouin-village-in-Jordan-Valley-326286 

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/07/israeli-court-rejects-palestinian-prisoners-appeal

[3] http://dci-palestine.org/documents/systematic-and-institutionalised-ill-treatment-and-torture-palestinian-children-israeli

[4] http://palsolidarity.org/2012/02/settler-violence-broken-glass-on-shuhada-street/

[5] http://972mag.com/idf-soldiers-release-attack-dog-on-unarmed-palestinian-protesters/38136/

[6]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEQSs3Y2lgE

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVuxQJw-6TI

[8] http://www.btselem.org/

[9] http://www.awalls.org/

[10] http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

Departures

(This is a short extract is from a diary entry I wrote exactly a year ago today) 

It is late morning in Nablus, the market is busy as usual. A group of nine ISM activists are being led through the crowded streets  by my Palestinian comrade Wael, as I sit on the roof of our apartment writing I can just see the top of Wael's head receding into the distance. Walking briskly through the center of town, they will soon arrive beside a fruit stall piled high with watermelon, bananas and fresh green almonds - ten volunteers awaiting a ride into the unknown.

From where they gather a battered old van will arrive as usual to take them - Israeli checkpoints permitting - to a prearranged meeting point near the Palestinian village of Kafr Qaddum. From there they will be smuggled into the town on the back of a series of pickup trucks working in tandem. The journey is hot and uncomfortable as the skilled local drivers make use of the old sheep trails winding there way through the olive groves.

Kafr Qaddum is located to the north of Nablus, with a population of approx 3,500 inhabitants. More than half of the village’s land - about 11,800 dunams (one dunam equals 1000 sq meters) - is situated in area C; which means that the Palestinians must be given permission to work there from the Israeli District Coordinating Office. The villagers from Kafr Qaddum have often complained about harassment and violence from the nearby illegal settlement of Qadumim ( built in 1976).

As with all demonstrations that the ISM attends, the popular committee of Kafr Qadam (The Palestinian equivalent of a local council) had requested our attendance at what has become a weekly demonstration in their village, after more than six years of protracted legal arguments before the notoriously one-sided Israeli High Court. The attempts to gain justice through legal recourse were motivated by a unilateral Israeli decision in 2003 to block the main arterial road linking Kafr Qaddum with Nablus.

A number of ISM representatives had visited the village in the days running up to the planned protest, to discuss with the popular committee the specific problems they were having with the Israeli occupying forces and the possible ways in which the ISM could be of use.

Abdul Ra’ouf Hamsa, a representative of the local council, and his assistant, Saqer Obwed, had explained to the ISM forward party that the main problem confronting the village was the loss of this key road - which up until 2003 had been the principle means of access to Kafr Qadam from Nablus - a journey of only 15 minutes now closer to forty.

The road was initially obstructed (without explanation) by members of a local illegal Israeli settlement at Qadumim, but responsibility for the occupation of the road quickly became a matter requiring the repressive potential of the Israeli armed forces, together with the notoriously brutal (and Arabic speaking) border police force.

For the past eight years the villagers have been utilizing other routes to travel to and from Nablus. As a result, their expenses have increased markedly and their lives have become significantly more difficult. As is usually the case with incidents of this kind, (which are unfortunately all too common) it is the most vulnerable who suffer first and most. The cost of transportation increasing for students studying daily in Nablus, the chances of serious injury or death increasing with a long and circumspect route to Nablus hospital (two Palestinians have died in recent years after failing to reach the hospital in time), the anti social impact of increased journey times between family members and their loved ones, etc.

Hamsa explained to the preliminary ISM delegation that they used to organize demonstrations against the blockade of the road more than six years previously, but were forced to stop when they decided to take the issue to the Israeli high Court.

After awaiting the court decision for many years, just eight months ago the popular committee of Kafr Qadam received a rare ruling in their favor - allowing them legal access to this vital stretch of road. Despite the court's decision in their favor, it simultaneously ruled that the villagers could not use the road until 2012 after claims (made by the Israeli's) that the road was not "suitable" or "safe". (edit: The road remains closed to Palestinians. as of 28/4/13) 

Thus the establishment of a weekly non-violent demonstration was agreed upon and international observers and participants from the ISM were requested. With Israel demonstrating a complete lack of will in granting the villagers their rights, it was decided by the popular committee that peaceful demonstrations were the only viable option left to them.

Urif – The brutal legacy of Yitzhar settlement

- As written by Christopher Landau

Urif is a Palestinian town in the Nablus Governorate of the northern occupied West Bank, located 13 kilometers South of Nablus. The town has a population of just under 3000 inhabitants and is overlooked by the illegal Israeli colony of Yitzhar. Four days ago (Sunday, April 22nd 2012) Urif’s boys school was attacked by mask-wearing settlers supported by four IOF (Israeli occupying forces) soldiers who used tear-gas, sound bombs and live ammunition against unarmed Palestinian children.

The settlers were led by the head of security for the Yitzhar colony, a man that despite being suspected in the murder of a resident of Urif in 2004, (a killing that nobody has yet been charged with) continues to lead brutal assaults against the defenseless civilian population of six Palestinian towns in the lands surrounding Yitzhar, namely in; Burin, Huwara, Madma, Assria Al – Kalibya, Ein nabous and Urif.

The attack began when the head of security from Yitzhar and a number of masked settlers approached the school from a hill that overlooked the building. “The children were sitting their mock exams” said Arif, a member of the local popular committee: “The settlers used foul language and began throwing stones at the windows of the school”.The settlers were soon joined by four uniformed IOF soldiers who did nothing to stop the abuse and stones hurled towards the school: “When the army came they were supposed to stop the settlers coming to the school, in fact the opposite happened, there was chaos.” exclaims Arif. As a number of Palestinian youths approached the Israeli settlers and soldiers on the hill armed only with stones, the IOF soldiers threw tear gas canisters down towards them and the school, one of which landed on the roof where a member of the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, Adil Safadi, was filming the attack.

As the Palestinian youths attempted to throw stones towards the soldiers and settlers they were met with a barrage of teargas (after the attack the teachers from the school collected sixty tear gas canisters), a small number of sound grenades and at least thirty rounds of live ammunition fired directly over their heads. In the video of the incident that ISM volunteers were shown, the screams of the children and the loud report of an assault rifle being fired in fully automatic mode can clearly be heard. At one point an IOF soldier takes aim with his M16 directly at a Palestinian youth out of camera shot. The sustained assault lasted for around an hour before the settlers decided to leave with their IOF minders in tow.

Whilst some children hid in their classrooms during the attack (under the watchful eye of their teachers) many rushed directly to their homes, many were exposed to large amounts of tear-gas and required medical attention. The children of Urif’s boys school, aged between 13 and 18 have been subjected to this kind of brutality on a regular basis since the founding of the school which sits on the outskirts of the village and is thus vulnerable to these kind of attacks.

Many of the older kids that attend the school were in the process of studying for their final years examinations which take place in early May. A sad coincidence as it is in April of every year that the settlers mount their most sustained and brutal attacks upon the surrounding villages. “You can’t imagine the loss we have suffered as a result of this settlement” says Arif, “we would like to live in peace and prosperity, but that is something we cannot gain. The settlers are very aggressive, there is no word in the dictionary to describe them.”

This is not the first time the settlers supported by the military have attacked the school. Around a year previously they attempted and failed to burn it down. ISM saw pictures that showed the charred remains of one classroom that was severely damaged during the attack.

A brief history of incursions from Yitzhar into Urif and surrounding villages

All that follows was told to us by Arif and the mayor of Urif in our recent visit: 

The illegal colony of Yitzah was founded in 1982 but it wasn’t until the beginning of 2000 that it began to aggressively expand into the surrounding Palestinian lands, annexing vast swaths of land illegally and barring access to the Palestinian farmers, shepherds and villagers that have lived and worked the land for countless generations.

The village of Urif is a mere 1500 meters away from the Israeli colony, since 2000, over 2200 dunam’s (roughly equivalent to 220000 square meters) have been stolen by the nearby settlement. In addition, four thousand olive trees cultivated by the village have been uprooted and burnt by settlers in the past four years.

The villagers of Urif have no access to running water, instead they rely on a small number of ancient wells. Two years ago, members of the village were dismayed to find tear gas canisters had been dropped into one of the wells by unknown settlers, poisoning the water supply.

Any attempt to expand infrastructure in the village is also met with settler attacks. ISM volunteers were shown the remains of a house that had been under construction before it was attacked and completely dismantled: “Late at night they launch attacks on the residents in this area” said Arif pointing to the rubble strewn skeleton of the destroyed house. A tractor and a number of cars belonging to residents of the village had also been destroyed in a series of recent arson attacks.

Settlers have shot through the windows of a number of the homes. Hebrew graffiti saying “revenge” was scrawled across one residents house. The widespread “price tagging” of agricultural land, i.e. the destruction of crops has lead to a vast “wasteland” between the outskirts of Urif and Yitzhar. Hundreds of goats, sheep and a few horses have been stolen.

This is not even to mention the violence towards the villagers themselves. Arif reports that hundreds of villagers have been injured since 2000, with as many as 40 serious injuries (many of which were gunshot wounds) and as mentioned earlier, one murder.

The combined effects of this systematic assault on the residents of Urif, their way of life, economy and civil society, is akin to a form of ethnic cleansing. A stark indicator of the impact that the measures have had on the town is that unemployment in Urif  is as high as 40%. Many people simply cannot survive under these conditions and are thus forced to abandon the village of their birth, leaving behind their friends, family and identity.

(For a photo gallery of the IOF training and arming Israeli settlers see here -
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/israel-arms-trains-illegal-settlers-for-rampage-in-occupied-palestine-in-pictures/ )

Why I won't be purchasing a "Kony 2012" bracelet

- As written by Christopher Landau

Foreword



Since Monday the 27th of February 2012, Dreadbook/Egobook/Wastebook and other social media sites have been awash with a pervasive and infuriating viral video campaign that quickly took the world by the testicles and squeezed extraordinarily hard. After a rather hasty crash course in the politics of Northern Uganda, it seems to even my untrained eye that the “Kony 2012” campaign has a number of serious and glaring flaws.

Primarily it reduces a complex problem down to a collection of emotionally charged and misleading sound bites that entirely fails to capture the voice or thoughts of the subjects it portrays as helpless victims. ‘Kony 2012’ smacks of patronizing, gimmicky, post-colonial orientalism in its purest and most destructive form, and is entirely counterproductive to the cause it claims to advocate. By framing the issue as they do, the filmmakers have made it impossible to imagine anything like an appropriate vision or methodology to resolving a long standing and nuanced issue. Rather we are left with the injunction to ‘spread the word’ in order to raise awareness and presumably speed up the execution of Kony’s death warrant.

Before I open myself up to a legitimate claim of hypocrisy however, I should say that I am not an expert on the region, its people or its complexities. Yet, as nobody involved in the online firestorm that I have encountered has any better access to information than I do, it seemed appropriate and important to do my very best to martial the arguments against the film and its ostensible objectives. This I must confess was largely motivated by the accusation that I was engaged in fomenting a ‘conspiracy’. A charge I felt needed to be addressed head on.

Introduction

The last few days has seen one of the most profligate and insidious ‘human rights based’ viral campaigns of recent times take off into and out of the stratosphere. Whilst there is undoubtedly legitimate praise to be leveled at the film’s makers ‘Invisible Children’, the aim of this blog is primarily to focus people’s minds away from the filmmakers (Seen posing with Ugandan soldiers above) and onto the content and subtext of the film itself. Much of which presents a distorted image of the everyday lives of northern Ugandans, their trials and tribulations.

The multitude of people that have loudly and arrogantly rushed to defend the film against anyone daring to make critical remarks includes the usual bunch of Armchair Interventionists, Clicktivists and idiots who claim to represent the interests and views of the Ugandan people without knowing anything at all about them beyond what they saw in ‘Kony 2012’. Whilst many if not most of them are surely well intentioned, the road to hell is paved with their naïve desires to save the poor African children that incidentally, hardly feature in the ‘Kony 2012’ film at all.

To paraphrase an excellent blog, ‘Justice in conflict’, I will set out to examine both the explicit and implicit claims made by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign and test them against the historical and empirical record. However I will also attempt to make the further point that this film and its acolytes only perpetuate US efforts at the geopolitical steering of Africa and thus are actually working against the interests of the very people they purport to defend.

Omitting history and context is always dangerous.

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history"

Citing the marginalization of the Acholi people as justification for The LRA's indiscriminate use of violence and cruelty in northern Uganda, Kony and his army of child soldiers has for the last two decades waged a campaign of terror not only in northern Uganda, but also the south of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. In what some would surely call a farcical response, Kony et al have been indicted by the International Criminal Court and placed on America's terrorist black list. A list that as recently as 2008 included the former head of the African National Congress – Nelson Mandela.

What “KONY 2012” omits from its simplistic and binary narrative, is that the conflict in northern Uganda was (the civil war is now over) multifaceted and highly complex. Deeply rooted in the immense trouble of reconciling the interests of the warring southern kingdoms and the smaller, clan-based regions in the north. Kony’s notoriety in the region in which he operates is legendary and well deserved, stemming primarily from the period when tensions between the central governments of Uganda and the Sudan erupted into a vicious war by proxy. Both countries instigating violent insurgencies within each other’s borders.

This of course does not justify Kony's past or present actions, however before we take the “Kony 2012” assumption that Ugandan forces are: “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries” to deal with Kony, at face value, we might note that the Ugandan government's own ‘counter-insurgency’ operations were arguably more brutal than that of the LRA itself. Much like with the Tamils in Sri Lanka , the Chechens and Ingush peoples in the North Caucasus and of course Al-Qaida in Yemen and Somalia (not to mention Afghanistan, Pakistan and post invasion Iraq) a simplistic “we must catch the terrorist evil-doers” interventionist narrative and accompanying justifications belay not only immense naivety, hypocrisy and hints at ‘the white man’s burden’ but embody the deluded and pervasive assumption that state sponsored counter-insurgency interventions are primarily benign.

During the primary period of hostilities, the Ugandan government (the same government that the makers of ‘Kony 2012’ implore us to trust) have (according to U.N estimates) been largely responsible for the internment of between 1.5 and 2 million civilians in "internally displaced persons" camps where mortality rates were shockingly high. Former UN under secretary general Olara Otunnu and Democratic party leader Norbert Mao (Both of Ugandan origin) insist that many atrocities were committed within the camps, and those that profited were primarily the Ugandan army officers and senior figures in the military industrial complex. Many of whom succeeded in stealing vast swathes of land from the interned refugees fleeing the violence and savagery committed by both the LRA and the Ugandan army. It has also been claimed by some (although I was unable to verify this) that this land grab led individuals within the leadership of the Ugandan army to deliberately prolong hostilities in order to further benefit from illegal land appropriation.

‘Kony 2012’ omits any mention of this important historical context whilst also failing to mention that the U.S has already sanctioned operations in Uganda to remove Kony and the LRA in the past, all of which succeeded only in splintering the LRA into smaller groups and pushing them out of Uganda into the surrounding countries. (Primarily Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo; this in turn lead to a disastrous and counterproductive increase in tensions between Uganda and the DRC.) The U.S sanctioned these military operations with the express intent of killing Kony and his militia (Operations Iron Fist and Lightning Thunder), but in both cases failed to ‘get their man’ and this failure lead to retaliatory killings and kidnappings which effectively removed any diplomatic solutions from the table.

One regional commentator outlined some of the problematic implications the failure of these military ventures entailed: “Future missions involving four states with prickly relations will be even more diplomatically and logistically daunting. The indictments against the LRA appear to rule out non-military options. With the door closed on negotiation, efforts to corner Kony on a "battlefield" that spans four countries are likely to press him into further acts of murderous bravado”. All of this the unintended consequence of a hasty rush to violent intervention in the first place. As I have mentioned, many northern Ugandans themselves actually favor a negotiated settlement with ‘traditional reconciliation mechanisms’, (i.e. not mechanisms that involves special forces, drones or any other form of American imperialist power) but their beliefs and ideals don’t seem to matter to the makers of ‘Kony 2012’. The north Ugandan voice is thus entirely removed from this debate, and thanks to the actions of the U.S government and its cheerleaders, any attempts to listen to it are now far more difficult.

Of course this also assumes that killing Kony would solve any of the problems so emotively illustrated in the film. Even if Kony were to be eliminated tomorrow by U.S or Ugandan forces, the entirely western led campaigns for retributive and violent ‘justice’ could very well end up fueling the very violence that the assembled battalions of armchair interventionists claim to deplore. Whilst such complexities are simply ignored by US pressure groups. (of which ‘invisible children’ is quickly becoming a leading light) it has to be said that this lack of nuance didn’t stop them from being extremely effective in mobilizing bipartisan support in the U.S congress with the “LRA Disarmament Act” approved last May. These advocacy groups have undoubtedly made the destruction of the LRA a fashionable and zeitgeisty cause amongst predominantly white, middle-class, activists, bloggers and journalists. But to quote the excellent ‘securing rights’ blog: “stories can inspire [but] at the same time, inspiration runs the risk of perpetuating problematic, unintended cognitive biases. A “single story,” […] can obscure a complex, multi-layered web of perceptive analysis, underscoring cultural stereotypes and simplifications.”

The United States – ‘World police’?

“The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.”

The role of the U.S as portrayed in the film is as a benevolent but overly cautious ‘regional’ power that is more than capable of completing the proposed ‘solution’ offered by the filmmakers - namely ‘stopping’ Kony. The fact that this might not actually solve any of the systemic problems in the region is, naturally, not mentioned. It seems to me that these assumptions require careful examination and reflection before we even think of proselytizing them. Have we already forgotten Bosnia? Have we already forgotten Somalia? Have we already forgotten Nicaragua? (Since 1945 the U.S has attempted to intervene and overthrow 50 sovereign governments, so I will refrain from listing every instance of a disastrous U.S led intervention)

These kinds of interventions are always couched in the language of defeating the evil doers and of moral necessity. Sadly, judging by a recent Guardian opinion poll that showed roughly 80% of its readership support U.S senator John McCain’s injunction to bomb Syria, the answer to the question ‘do we remember?’ is either ‘no’, or more worryingly ‘yes, so what?’. It seems clear to me that most people do remember something, but only what we were told to believe happened by our leaders regarding these ostensibly ‘successful’ interventions, not what actually happened.

The U.S interventionist strategy for Uganda so far (Instigated by AFRICOM) is necessarily sparse on details, as is any operation primarily consisting of deniable Special Operations assets or to use the common euphemism ‘American advisors”. The mandate provided by congress to “remove Joeseph Kony and senior LRA commanders from the battlefield” explicitly consists of a “multi-year commitment [to provide] enhanced logistical operational and intelligence assistance”. So whilst it is indeed speculative to claim that this might be used as justification for increased U.S military presence in Africa, it is far from a ‘conspiracy’.

The Obama administration’s decision to send around 100 additional troops was not motivated in any way shape or form by altruisic tendencies. To claim so is naiveté of the highest magnitude, as Matt Brown of the 'Enough project' argues: “The U.S. doesn’t have to fight al-Qaida-linked Shabab in Somalia, so we help Uganda take care of their domestic security problems, freeing them up to fight a more dangerous – or a more pressing, perhaps – issue in Somalia." However the sending or reinforcment of any contingent of ground troops in Africa sets a dangerous precedent. Especially if we look at the external factors driving U.S troop deployment in the region more generally. To quote one blogger: ”It is clear that the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign sees the 100 US troop allotment as inadequate. Here they are right – 100 US troops is not the solution. But their own answer is highly problematic."

We know what the makers of “Kony 2012″ believe should happen but they won’t say it explicitly, except to say that Kony must be “stopped”." By 'stopped' we can infer that the filmmakers really mean 'killed' which plays into the narrative created by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign that what actually happens to Kony and the LRA soldiers is unimportant - death or otherwise. Having said that, we are forced to draw our own conclusions as to the actual meaning of the filmmakers, the unspecific aim of “stopping” him is meant to be sufficient despite its obvious ambiguity. Who after all, doesn’t want Kony to be 'stopped'? But this is begging the question somwhat, does the removal of one man end the LRA? How do you reconcile what happens to the deeply traumatised children of Kony's militia with our desire to see an evil man dead? ‘Kony 2012′ offers us nothing here.

With its long and sordid history of unilateral and protectionist intervention in foreign states, the increasing power of China in Africa and the perpetual interest amongst U.S hawks in maintaining U.S global dominance, is it far from paranoid to be concerned about the supposedly benign motivations of U.S strategic planners. Writing this as I am from the occupied territories of Palestine, I would argue it is clearly not so. To quote Guardian journalist Nick Young, part of what actually motivates U.S intervention is that: “American support in mopping up the LRA is a payback for Uganda's contribution of (US-trained) peacekeepers in Somalia.” He goes on to say that the: “US, whose defense budget is now higher than at any point during or since the cold war, is gearing up for "strategic" competition with China in Africa, seizing opportunities to strengthen military alliances.” In this sense there is a odd coalition forming between U.S hawks/ neo-cons and young American and European idealists who: ‘find Kony the perfect hate figure’.

“Kony 2012 must be good because it raises awareness”

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”

The idea that popular opinion can be leveraged with viral marketing to induce foreign military intervention is incredibly dangerous. It is immoral to try and manufacture the consent of the peoples of the Empire and its satellites with a sanitized vision of foreign intervention that entirely neglects the fact that many innocent people will die as a result. Of course that doesn’t really matter to us westerners, because we will never have to see their bodies or learn their names, and as other non-people of the world, they will inevitably fall down the ‘memory hole’.

This is not even to question the moral efficacy of targeting somebody such as Kony who runs an army consisting of many children. Many of these supposedly ‘legitimate’ targets are also victims themselves. Can the killing of a nine-year-old child forced into slave labor (of whatever kind) be justified on the grounds that his captor is a psychopathic monster?

Following on from what Mark Kersten has said about this on his blog, one of the most questionable assumptions behind ‘Kony 2012’ is that the more people that ‘get to know’ Kony, the greater the chance that the world will act to remove him. Firstly this arrogantly assumes that because people in the U.S and Britain don’t know who he is, it must be that rest of the world is similarly ignorant. Secondly it presupposes that awareness alone solves problems. To take one obvious counterexample, I would hope that we all know of the cruelty, suffering and death imposed upon the Palestinian people by the racist state of Israel (and it’s U.S and European backers) over the past sixty years, but what changes do we see as a result of this awareness?

In an even more abject display of questionable moral reasoning, ‘Kony 2012’ argues that the use of celebrities is a crucial part of this awareness campaign. To quote the Huffington Post newspaper, part of this awareness drive involves: “encouraging 20 cultural tastemakers and 20 policy makers, including the likes of Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey, to take a stand.” George Clooney is also quoted in the film as saying “I'd like indicted war criminals to share the same celebrity as me[…]that seems fair." That is what these bombastic and unsupported claims about the utility of informing (or miss-informing) people boils down do, merely another excuse for the PR industry to commodify suffering and indoctrinate us further into the cult of celebrity.

Again to quote Kersten: “I am actually stupefied that any analysis of the ‘LRA question’ results in the identification of the problem being that “Kony isn’t popular enough”. The reality is that few don’t know who Joseph Kony is in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, making it all-too-apparent that this isn’t about them, their views or their experiences.” Again we find ourselves with an entirely western-centric view of the problem that excludes those most affected by our actions and rhetoric. Shockingly ‘Kony 2012’ features almost no participation by the very people it describes. Where exactly are the northern Ugandans in this film? Kersten later argues, compellingly in my view, that: “It is hard to respect any documentary on northern Uganda where a five year-old white boy features more prominently than any northern Ugandan victim or survivor.” Of course it is easy to see why this might be the case, as I have argued elsewhere in this essay, the vision presented by ‘Kony 2012’ is simplistic, reductionist, and if it weren’t an internet phenomena, irrelevant.

The views of the northern Ugandans cannot be considered by the film makers for a simple reason, because they don’t fit the chosen narrative framing. An interview with a survivor of an LRA attack that wanted Kony brought before a local tribal judge, rather than executed by an American special forces soldier or Ugandan artillery shell confuses the binary narrative that is so effective at rousing people’s emotions but so dangerous in matters of peace and war. One final quote from Kersten: “‘Kony 2012′, quite dubiously, avoids stepping into the 'peace-justice question' in northern Uganda precisely because it is a world of contesting and plural views, reports suggest that the majority of Acholi people continue to support the amnesty process whereby LRA combatants – including senior officials – return to the country in exchange for amnesty and entering a process of traditional justice. Many continue to support the Ugandan Amnesty law because of the reality that it is their own children who constitute the LRA. Once again, this issue is barely touched upon in the film.”.

The conflict in northern Uganda is not seen by most Ugandans as primarily an issue centred on the LRA in any case. It only takes a brief internet search to discover that many citiziens of Uganda lay the blame for nearly 25 years of violence not only on the LRA and the government of Uganda, but other regional players such as militias of the South Sudanese (as well as the government in Khartoum) who have their own long and appalling record of human rights abuses. There is also no mention in the film that northern Ugandans are currently enjoying the longest period of peace since the conflict began in the mid eighties. The inevitable triumphalism brought about by the supposed success of ‘Kony 2012’ in mobilizing the Obama administration to action obscures these key realities. In conclusion, we mustn't let a well edited video, light on facts and heavy on emotion set a new precedent in the world of online activism. If we do I fear the first facebook sponsered war could be just around the corner. "Iran 2012" anyone?.