HORSEPOWER - Walking With The Use Somebody
HOLY SHIT WHEN YOU HOLD DOWN ALT AND CLICK REBLOG
HOLY SHIT„„„„
option on mac. I mean, it’s not like, mindboggling but it’s pretty cool.
(Source: tsukinousagis, via inothernews)
![thedailywhat:
On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:
Stop sending me that video.
The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.
Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.
By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.
And as far as what they do with that money:
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports 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arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.
Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.
The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”
Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.
Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.
Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.
The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.
There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.
[kony2012.]
GREAT, now I just don’t know what to think anymore. Even when I try to do good in the world, as little as an impact as I can have, and although it isn’t about me, this makes me not want to get involved with anything, or anyone because of cynicism. Is there anything, or anyone, or anybody doing 100% good work anymore? If so, please send me THAT video. @coketalk mentioned Doctors Without Borders. I shall look into that.
Basically, this sends me the message that everyone is full of shit, that the internet can’t help solve anything, that it’s simply entertainment for cat GIFS and trolling and making fun of the Kardashians, and we should all just keep waiting for our Coachella passes in the mail and doing “us” because in the end it doesn’t matter. It’s all smoke and mirrors. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know who to trust. I’m going to have a cigarette.
I feel like a fool. I feel like I don’t know how to feel.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0iyiw3Jv01qzpwi0o1_r1_250.jpg)
Friends,
More powerful than words, video, and even laughter is the human spirit. When people come together, there is nothing we cannot do.
Today while trying to find the next thing to make you laugh, I found something to move your heart, and to spring your body into action.
This little video was put all over Tumblr, and maybe even some of your Facebook profiles this afternoon. It’s 27 minutes that I beg you to watch, focused without Instagraming, Scrambling, Facebooking, and Tweeting. There’s Kanye and NIN songs in it, George Clooney is in it, and it looks a lot like Never Say Never. It’s a pleasure to watch. You will get goosebumps, and feel moved. Honestly, I haven’t felt this good and empowered in a long time. I can’t go in to too much detail because I want you to feel the sense of discovery for yourself.
Although we live in sunny LA, and have the world at our fingertips, thousands and millions of children are not so lucky. Not everyone gets to grow up in a nice home, have a loving family and siblings, attend private schools, colleges, Coachellas, own Macbooks, Priuses, and go on family vacations. We’re the luckiest kids on the planet. We have a voice. For the past 20 years, children in Uganda have been kidnapped, mutilated and forced to kill their own parents by a man named Joseph Kony. He literally steals them in the middle of the night, forces them to kill their parents and join his army. Why? Solely to maintain his power. That’s it. So why hasn’t anyone done anything to stop this? BECAUSE NOBODY KNOWS…until TODAY.
Once you have watched, I urge you to pick up your iPhone, Macbook, iPad, and Dell (yikes) and BLAST THIS TO THE WORLD!
We’re the same Facebook generation than got Obama elected as the President Of The United States of America. Remember? Like I said, when we work together, there’s nothing we can’t do.
