Kony 2012: George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and You Asked to Save Africa's Invisible Children From Torture

I first noticed this on Twitter when I saw that the actress Kristen Bell had quoted GC.....I then saw that "Kony" was trending....it is a heartbreaking story....cruelty is always wrong but when children are involved it seems worse. There does seem to be a bit of controversy about the tactics and legitimacy of the Invisible Children Organization--so I recommend that everyone do their own research, the atrocities do seem to be true and I posted because GC is quoted:

Kony 2012: George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and You Asked to Save Africa's Invisible Children From Torture
There's a global campaign to make Joseph Kony, the leader of Uganda's cruel guerilla army, "famous."

"I'd like indicted war criminals to enjoy the same level of celebrity as me," George Clooney said. "That seems fair."

The actor is one of 20 "celebrity culture makers" (including Angelina Jolie, Taylor Swift and Ryan Seacrest) who have been called upon by the Invisible Children campaign to help bring awareness to the horrific abuse and killing of children in Africa at the hands of Kony and his leadership.



But the Kony 2012 campaign isn't just looking for help from Hollywood: They've also mapped out 20 policy makers who have the power to keep U.S. government officials in Africa. In 2011, the United States responded to citizens' interest in the situation in Uganda and deployed a small number of forces to help track and find Kony. These U.S. forces, however, could be taken away at any moment if continuing support isn't voiced from those in the states.

Kony 2012 strives to make everyone as aware of Joseph Kony and his barbaric practices as they are of candidates for the 2012 presidential election.

To find out how you can help stop Joseph Kony and stand up for the Invisible Children, watch the documentary below and check out the Kony 2012 website.




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I watched the video this afternoon. You need half an hour of concentration and patience. Later on, deep thoughts can follow. Just like you highlighted Silly Girl, George said only one sentence, but we can see how involved he is in this project. We also know of options as to how we can help. There are unlimited ways to contribute to the great humanitarian work and this way stop world criminals from the unjustified power which they have and use and abuse against the innocent people around the world.

I remember Kony-ji being brought into a thread on IMDb... From the distance that (most of us) find ourselves in, prayers can sure help, but then support in raising the decibel through cyber power is also a must, sure... I wish George and this team all success...

can our thought
@ that infamous human being
harm him?


I try


you?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the quotes from George featured in this video actually him talking about Darfur awhile back? I've also read those quotes elsewhere in articles about his involvement in Darfur. I do believe this particular cause is noble, valid and that we should all try and do what we can to help these children; but I think his quotes were taken out of context and that he isn't necessarily involved with this. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Edited because I found the original interview - with Brian Williams on NBC's Rock Center. Check it out at the 3:43 mark. The makers of the KONY 2012 video definitely used that; and it's misleading because it gives the impression that George was speaking about the KONY situation instead of Darfur and the Satellite Sentinel project.


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it's me wrote:can our thought
@ that infamous human being
harm him?


I try


you?

I don't know about "WHO" really is harmful It's me Or for that matter "infamous human being" especially in a political environment At the core everyone is a GOOD person, but we develope certain prejudices that attract or absorb the wrong vibes, and from them follow the BAD / EVIL whatever actions...

Whether it is Bashir-ji or Koni-ji... or any other leader that we read / talk about... in them there will be a GOOD as well as a BAD side for sure... ask their followers and they will tell us why they are all GOOD people...

BUT then, as a community, we look at MURDER in the "physical" alone as HARMFUL / WRONG / against the law -- for the society... WHAT happens to those famous and sweet looking men and women, who have / are causing murders in the "soul" / "spirit" / "virtues" / "emotions" etc in so many pleasurable ways...??? Is there anyone raising a voice about them??? AND IF we do... just how many of us will really be on the "GOOD" side???

Having said all of that, I'd like to re-iterate that I don't support "murder" ... of any kind...

WHAT @ those famous and sweet looking men and women, who are causing murders in the "soul"
"spirit"
"virtues"
"emotions" etc
in so many pleasurable ways...???

(edited bec my better understanding)

GOOD QUESTION

We don't know for sure if George is involved in this KONY campaign. I hope he is. There are so many dastardly things happening to people in Africa. I watched the KONY tape and at the 6:55 point I cried along with that boy who watched his brother being slaughtered. In our modern culture it's unimaginable to think how the Africans are treating each other.

I wasn't able to see it
completely

too hard for me
sorry

This all sounds very interesting to me. I haven't watched the video yet but, I will. E! News mentioned at the end of the hour last night they would mention it on their show tonight.

I just watched CBS World News. They said the KONY 2012 video got 30 million hits to date. They also said that of the $20 million in donation money received only $8 million was used for the the actual program, the rest for advertisement. Just saying!

I know I have been reading so much ---I don't know what to believe....or whom to trust...although I think the atrocities are real....

cindigirl wrote:I just watched CBS World News. They said the KONY 2012 video got 30 million hits to date. They also said that of the $20 million in donation money received only $8 million was used for the the actual program, the rest for advertisement. Just saying!

Sadly, that happens alot. Thanks for the update!

Eli mentioned this in a tweet, but Stacy hasn't.

What is a real shame is that George's name was used in the Kony video - even though G was talking about Sudan, so therefore his comments were taken out of context. And now that George has released a heartbreaking video for the cause he truly supports - no one is paying attention.



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IN the second YouTube video in a week to highlight an African conflict, George Clooney makes an illegal and dangerous trip to the southern reaches of Sudan, where the actor witnesses a missile sail overhead.


Clooney's four-minute video highlights attacks on civilians in Sudan's Nuba Mountains, a region that US officials say could soon suffer a severe hunger crisis.

The video comes about a week after a YouTube sensation about Joseph Kony, the leader of the brutal Central Africa militia the Lord's Resistance Army.

In the Clooney video, which he wrote and directed, a man from the Nuba tribe is seen pushing Clooney to take cover after a rocket sails overhead. Mothers carrying children and young children lugging water jugs can be seen moving toward the rock caves.


Ryan Boyette, an American who lives in the Nuba Mountains, said Sudan's military has been launching large, Chinese-made rockets against civilians - not military forces with the rebel group known as the SPLM-N. Boyette said most of the rocket victims are caught off guard because they don't know the rocket is approaching.

Helen Hughes, an arms expert at Amnesty International, said the rockets can travel about 60km and deliver a "quite large" blast radius. The rockets are supplied by China. Hughes said the country can't close its eyes to the evidence that its weapons are being used against civilians.

"These rockets are long-range, ground-launched unguided rockets, and they're being used in Kauda, which is a civilian area," said Hughes. "There are no military there. They're being used indiscriminately and that's a violation of international humanitarian law."

The SPLM-N was or is aligned with the military in South Sudan, a new country that broke away from Sudan last year after decades of civil war. The Nuba Mountains were partitioned with the north although the black population there is ethnically and in some cases religiously different than the mostly Arab north.

South Sudan says it has severed ties with the SPLM-N. Sudan accuses it of continuing to aid SPLM-N fighters.

The Clooney video, produced with the advocacy group Enough Project, shows graphic footage of a boy who lost both hands in an attack. It also shows Clooney speaking to a child who recently had a bullet removed from his body.

Clooney asks one man during a conversation: "This is simply trying to clear people out ethnically because of the colour of their skin?" The Nuba man responds that Sudan wants to move black Nubans out and put Arabs in.

Boyette said that he has been frequently told by Nubans that they are scared of the Antonov airplane bombings so haven't been in the fields to plant.

"But since they have used the rockets now they are scared to even get firewood and water nearby to cook for their children," Boyette said.

Sudan has refused to allow aid agencies into the region. Nancy Lindborg, an official with the US Agency for International Development, told a Senate committee that Clooney testified before on Wednesday that 250,000 people are on the brink of a famine.

The Kony video, produced by the advocacy group Invisible Children, has received about 80 million views on YouTube since its March 5 launch. The video was applauded in some corners for raising awareness about Kony and his group's attacks on civilians. Critics called the video misleading and accused it of being a fundraising vehicle for an organisation some critics said doesn't spend enough on ground-level programs.

The Clooney video had received some 5000 views two days after its release.

Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for the Enough Project, said Clooney was not aware of the popularity of the Kony video while shooting the Nuba people, because he was in Sudan during its release.

Clooney is quoted in the Kony video as saying he wants warlords to be as famous as he is, but Clooney was referring to Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, not Kony.

"The purpose of the four-minute video is for Clooney to give a megaphone for the Nuba people on the ground and to raise awareness," Hutson said.

"Clooney wanted to make sure that the Nubans in the video were not portrayed as victims. He wanted to put the spotlight on the voices of civilians on the ground."

maybe a slightly out of topic
but really connected

Azur and Asmar




at some point you can hear something like
'the can have different colour skin
but their blood
has the same colour'


it's a sentence
we can engrave
IMO

Looked this morning and his video has almost 70,000 views..not bad not sure if that includes the times it has been shared....

More good news: Link

hope in a fast end

Angelina, the female Clooney. Hope you can translate it ! Link

Well it seems that Angelina Jolie knows our Goedele Liekens, she's from my little place here ! How weird !

Google Translate to Atalante's article:

Note to cynics who deride Angelina Jolie's appointment as "special envoy" for the UN refugee agency: do not laugh! For among the celebrities whose faces should promote a good cause, are also those who damn well know what they have. Angelina Jolie is the female George Clooney?



Poor Angelina Jolie. Especially as a woman is not easy to have a heart and brain, and even a sex symbol to be. If you google what she has done in the field of human rights, the combination Jolie and 'rights' sure you first find articles about the tattoo on her right shoulder and bare right leg at the Oscars. Then try a man wanted to do something serious in his life.

Famous and be taken seriously, it's sometimes a chore. Altruism is often greeted with cynicism - and that while the star sign as so often has proved its worth. In recent years, more than ever, because a new type of famous benefactor has risen. Previously borrowed stars like Audrey Hepburn, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte their fame and sympathetic look to obvious noble causes such as UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund. But in recent years, there are stars in music and film resurrected from denouncing abuses almost seem to make a life goal, and also no expense spared. For human rights organizations are stars like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie divine gifts, because they combine glamor with insight, and so are the critical convince fellow man.

Jolie's promotion as a special envoy to the UNHCR is unique. She gets powers normally only top politicians or retired senior diplomats forward. Jolie will in future major crisis regions where millions of people to flee, as in Afghanistan, Somalia or Lampedusa. But not only there, just because it is intended that they put the spotlight on other dramas to the world's attention threatens to escape. And it involves more than a few nice photo shoots.

"Of course there is much recognition to the appointment," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Geneva. "Angelina is already more than ten years goodwill ambassador, she's crisis areas in over twenty countries visited for us. Moreover, she shows in her professional career she with the fate of the world is doing. " Edwards refers, of course, not to action vehicles as Salt and Wanted, but on her role in A Mighty Heart (about the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan) and its recent debut as a fiction director, In the land of blood and honey, the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But besides that recognition gives them extra powers' quite a bit beyond what we expect a traditional goodwill ambassador. It is envisaged that Jolie arranged in place of the High Commissioner, Antonio Guterres, the Portuguese, the diplomatic mission goes. That also means to talk with heads of state, and draw them if necessary in their ears about the situation in their country.

Perseverance

Is that not somewhat exaggerated? There will still be professional diplomats who are better qualified than an occasional actress who reads and travels? Edwards warns us not to underestimate how much time and effort the woman in Arabic "perseverance" tattooed on her shoulder, already in the refugee problem has stopped. "We're not talking about a passing interest, but a dedication for over ten years - completely unpaid. She knows what she talks, she has also been a lot written about it. And WELL, YES, star quality works not only to the general public. It also opens at the diplomatic level doors that would otherwise remain closed. The role of Angelina Jolie in this way can the traditional task to arouse attention to the general public, transcend. We are lucky that such a person has crossed our path. "

'Path crosses is a little accurate choice of words, because at that time Jolie has offered himself to the UNHCR. Which is extremely rare, normally you are asked for such tasks. Gudula Liekens self fifteen years goodwill ambassador for the UN, still remembers how Jolie was initially uncertain. "She was very inquisitive, really wanted to know everything. She also asked if they could follow me on one of my reports. Too bad that in a period that I was very busy with TV, so it's never happened. "

Gudula

Liekens Jolie is a correct choice for its new function. "Whoever thinks that it is window dressing, does not understand it. Angelina was recently spotted in the public galleries of the International Criminal Court in The Hague at the trial of a Congolese warlord. You do not because it's so glamorous, right? "

Liekens places like whatever degree of professionalism of the UN ambassadors requirements. "I understand the cynical responses of the audience, because so many famous people have a role as a showcase for any organization, and not always with equal expertise. There is a little wild growth. But at the UN, we are truly educated, we get briefings, workshops, we inspire each other. I just have lunch with Ban Ki-Moon, now not only natural: we were a dozen ambassadors from around the world. But there is really much more than expected with a compassionate face on the photo to stand and something to cry about "poor kids". If you want to say anything meaningful about safe motherhood, for example, you must thoroughly informed about the issue of female circumcision, and all cultural pitfalls. I am then not only chosen because I was known in Flanders, but also because of my training as a sexologist. "

Clooney

It obviously can not all be George Clooneys. Clooney is undoubtedly the most credible among the stars. He is - besides the occasional commercial film or a television commercial, a man must live - often films with an intelligent political message, and he would without his acting career will become active for the cause. He follows in the footsteps of his father Nick, a retired journalist and politician of pronounced liberal signature.

"George and I are partners," says John Prendergast, founder of the Enough Project, an American human rights organization. He and Clooney all three trips to Sudan and South Sudan, but he has never Clooney 'recruited'. "We were the abuses in the region involved, and George and his father. When we met each other at a rally in Washington and we went together. But George is so much more than the sign: he travels to the region - not risk-free way - and knows the records through and through. At home he uses a very clever publicity to get the message over to members of the government and Congress, or to make movies about it and raise money. "

In short, a commitment that certainly a lot deeper than, with respect, the UNESCO commitment of the former tennis star Justine Henin for sick children.

"It's too easy engagement of celebrities for charities to do as a matter of vanity gratification," says Nicolas Demey, a Fleming who formerly worked for the organization Global Fund. Demey attracted to areas with stars who were plagued by poverty and conflicts, and was often surprised by the severity of his famous companions. "When I was with Scarlett Johansson in hospitals in Rwanda, had no RayBan that really in her hair and no sacoche of Louis Vuitton on her arm. I saw a very well prepared and interested young woman who posed questions to the targeted HIV patients who are in little glamorous circumstances were to die. I understand that there are people who are annoyed by what celebrities who love to profile in boekskes, such as Bono. But Bono is Product Red founded that company that big brands such as I-Pod, Apple, Gap and Armani has prompted a red product line to put the proceeds entirely to the charity - and that does have tens of millions of euros applied. So long as it does not involve celebrities who does not know, I would welcome such a commitment but rather than watching it. "

those people need to feel pages
only

I've heard people say, "Oh, I can't stand celebrities getting involved with charity/famine relief/child poverty etc " and when they are asked "why" all they can say it that they are doing it for
"their own publicity"

I always want to know from these cynics, "How do you know ?"
Do they follow them around 24/7 to understand what they are
doing or what motivates them ?

It's good that these celebrities don't give a hoot about being misunderstood, as it would be a great loss not to have
them on board.