Have you seen the video? Did you know that US soldiers had been deployed? What do you think about this? Will it expand?
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Kony2012 - a pretext for the invasion of Africa?
- Thread starter Makalakumu
- Start date
Have you seen the video? Did you know that US soldiers had been deployed? What do you think about this? Will it expand?
[video=youtube_share;Oz0IxH865oc]http://youtu.be/Oz0IxH865oc[/video]
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OP
ballen0351
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So who are the powers that allowed Obama to be president?
This is a classic logic error.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
Specifically, it is a fallacy of the false cause. A does not imply B.
A: There is oil in Africa.
B: There are US troops in Africa.
Therefore, A caused B.
It is certainly POSSIBLE that we have US troops in Africa as a result of oil being discovered there. But it is not proof; it's not even a good argument.
So I have to reject that as a conclusion, unless you have a better set of arguments.
But, American Imperialism... [/kook whackjob]
OP
- Thread Starter
- #8
It's just an interesting coincidence. For all I know, we could have troops there for the stated purpose. As more information comes forth, we'll see about building a better argument. At any rate, I think the subject raises question about how we're going to use our armed forces. Is finding Kony an appropriate use of our soldiers?
I don't know, but I think 100 'advisers' seems reasonable. I suspect they're special forces or CIA spooks, but if they can coordinate with local forces on the ground and get this dude caught, that would seem a win. Our troops on the ground in combat? Not so much.
But I get where you are coming from. Remember, I'm the one who noted on MT that China was buying up large chunks of Africa; there's a reason for it. And A-Q is moving into Africa in a big way, and that's bad. With the exception of South Africa, there's not much stability there, and we've recognized the strategic importance of Africa (maybe too late) and established AFRICOM.
http://www.africom.mil/
We've got lots of reasons to be in Africa; a lot of reasons not to. Entangling interests and environments. Risks and rewards.
Can't say I know what's going on here.
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ballen0351
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Well played with the Heartbreak Ridge clip
We did actually, when a poster was calling our troops murdering Bs for ''killing thousands of innocent civilians every day'' and saying our soldiers deserved to die.
When people say invading Africa they do realise how big the continent is and that there's more than one country there?
Oh, no, I forgot about that. The damn Mayans were right, we are screwed.
I seriously doubt it.
Given the HUGE AIDS/HIV infection rate in Africa, and the number of groups actively trying to wipe each other out, maybe we (the Western world) should just wait 20-50 years and take over when it is completely depopulated...
As HUGE as Africa is there just have to be unimaginable amounts of natural resources there just waiting to be used.
I wouldn't say that a huge amount of people are trying to wipe each other out in Africa, in a couple of countries but not in the continent as a whole, there's more peaceful countries there than there those at war. I think people's perception of Africa is skewed. Africa has over a billion people and rising so any epidemic is going to appear bigger than anywhere else however the people living with HIV in Eastern Europe and Asia has tripled since 2000 according to these figure which while they say are an estimate show that HIV/AIDS numbers are going down in sub Saharan Africa. http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
If you look up the World Peace Index for 2011 you will find Botswana, Malawi, Ghana, Tunisia, Mozembique, Burkino Faso, Zambia, Namibia, Tanzania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Swaziland, Equatorial Gunea, Senegal and Gabon all ranked higher than the USA for peace!
The countries of Africa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Africa
As Africa is three times the size of the USA invading the whole continent may be a tad more difficult than some think. There's the islands too like the Canaries, the Spanish will take a dim view if you invade there ( it's theirs) which is a popular holiday destination for Europeans. if you are thinking of invading an individual country in Africa that's different but please... invading Africa? I'm sure all the peaceful prosperous countries wouldn't appreciate being invaded, as many soliders as you have I can't see you managing to invade the whole place, the South Africans wouldn't be amused either. A many of those countries are in the Commonwealth so you couldn't expect any help from us either.
Look at photos of the planet at night from space.
Much of Africa has no electricity. No roads, no telephones, no radio or TV stations, little infrastructure. Peaceful? There's not really any good way of knowing; no way to report routine crimes. I'm sure a lot of Africa is safe and peaceful. But that's not really saying anything; it's apples and oranges.
And I doubt that anyone is talking about 'taking over' all of Africa. More like getting our piece of the pie in a neo-colonial expansion. Not that I believe that is about to happen either, I suspect that's what was meant by 'invasion'.
It wasn't that long ago that small cadres of mercenaries toppled governments in Africa. It's not exactly stable.
In any case, I agree that the US has our eye on Africa for many reasons. Radical Islam is recruiting heavily. If that doesn't concern you, it should. China is buying up entire MOUNTAINS in Africa and South America to secure access to the natural resources they do not have in their own country. If that doesn't concern you, it should. And we have other strategic reasons to be in Africa. I do not believe that the current grassroots hunt for Kony is a veiled attempt to grab power, money, or land in Africa; I doubt it is a prelude to an invasion. But I do believe we'd like to have more power, more money, and more land in Africa under our control.
"We as in America? As I said a fair few African countries are Commonwealth ones so we as in the UK have a good deal of influence there anyway. Africa doesn't have roads, electriicity etc, do you think it's perhaps because those areas aren't actually populated? Considering the size and population of africa you sound somewhat patronising and imperialistic when you sneer at them for not having electricity because that obviously makes them savage and dangerous to us.
I think however you are missing my main point...that Africa is a continent with over 50 countries, the idea of invading Africa is one that only someone with no idea of geography, politics and who had ideas of grabbing countries to become American colonies would come up with. Islam isn't recruiting heavily, it's been there in longer than Christianity. America sends a lot of Christian missionaries out to Africa to 'educate and radicalise' the 'natives' which I'm sure you are still seeing the Africans as. Do you imagine they are still half naked savages living in grass hunts? As for China rather than worry about what they are buying up in Africa I'd look to what they are buying up in the States but of course they are the reds under the beds, nothing good could ever come from them could it in America eyes?
I think that as you do with Europe you are looking at Africa as one huge country where everyone is the same, all the problems are the same and that only you have the answers.
As for Kony and that video.....http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/...curtis/2012/mar/08/kony-2012-what-s-the-story
" They call themselves "a movement" seeking to end the conflict in Uganda and stop the abduction of children for use as child soldiers, but behind the slick website and the touchy-feely talk about "changing the course of human history", there's a hard-nosed money-making operation led by US filmmakers and accountants, commuication experts, lobbyists and salespeople.
So far the organisation has released 11 films and run film tours across the US and other countries to raise awareness. In Uganda, it has given scholarships to 750 children, and helped to re-build schools there and in centralo Africa. The organisation's accounts show it's a cash rich operation, which more than tripled its income in 2011, with more than two thirds of its money coming from "general donations".
The accounts suggest nearly 25% of its $8.8m income last year was spent on travel and film-making with only around 30% going toward programes on the ground. The great majority of the money raised has been spent in the US. $1.7 million went on US employee salaries, $357,000 in film costs, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in "professional services" - thought to be Washington lobbyists - and $1.07 million in travel expenses . Nearly $400,000 was spent on office rent in San Diego.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17305470
[h=1]Joseph Kony campaign under fire[/h]Comments (92)
Kony's forces are accused of atrocities in four African countries
[h=2]Related Stories[/h]
It is always hard to criticise good intentions. And yet...
The extraordinarily sudden success, if that is the right word, of the social media campaign by three American advocacy groups aimed at shining a big spotlight on the notorious Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has prompted some scathing reactions from plenty of well-informed quarters.
I will link to some of them below, but here is an outline, each introduced with a relevant tweet, of what strike me as the main arguments being made against the film and the campaign.
I think however you are missing my main point...that Africa is a continent with over 50 countries, the idea of invading Africa is one that only someone with no idea of geography, politics and who had ideas of grabbing countries to become American colonies would come up with. Islam isn't recruiting heavily, it's been there in longer than Christianity. America sends a lot of Christian missionaries out to Africa to 'educate and radicalise' the 'natives' which I'm sure you are still seeing the Africans as. Do you imagine they are still half naked savages living in grass hunts? As for China rather than worry about what they are buying up in Africa I'd look to what they are buying up in the States but of course they are the reds under the beds, nothing good could ever come from them could it in America eyes?
I think that as you do with Europe you are looking at Africa as one huge country where everyone is the same, all the problems are the same and that only you have the answers.
As for Kony and that video.....http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/...curtis/2012/mar/08/kony-2012-what-s-the-story
" They call themselves "a movement" seeking to end the conflict in Uganda and stop the abduction of children for use as child soldiers, but behind the slick website and the touchy-feely talk about "changing the course of human history", there's a hard-nosed money-making operation led by US filmmakers and accountants, commuication experts, lobbyists and salespeople.
So far the organisation has released 11 films and run film tours across the US and other countries to raise awareness. In Uganda, it has given scholarships to 750 children, and helped to re-build schools there and in centralo Africa. The organisation's accounts show it's a cash rich operation, which more than tripled its income in 2011, with more than two thirds of its money coming from "general donations".
The accounts suggest nearly 25% of its $8.8m income last year was spent on travel and film-making with only around 30% going toward programes on the ground. The great majority of the money raised has been spent in the US. $1.7 million went on US employee salaries, $357,000 in film costs, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in "professional services" - thought to be Washington lobbyists - and $1.07 million in travel expenses . Nearly $400,000 was spent on office rent in San Diego.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17305470
[h=1]Joseph Kony campaign under fire[/h]Comments (92)
[h=2]Related Stories[/h]
It is always hard to criticise good intentions. And yet...
The extraordinarily sudden success, if that is the right word, of the social media campaign by three American advocacy groups aimed at shining a big spotlight on the notorious Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has prompted some scathing reactions from plenty of well-informed quarters.
I will link to some of them below, but here is an outline, each introduced with a relevant tweet, of what strike me as the main arguments being made against the film and the campaign.
- Awareness raising is useless. Foreign advocacy campaigns achieve almost nothing, it's argued. The money would be better spent on competent aid programmes.
- Don't get people fired up by telling them they can solve something that is not within their power to solve. This is self-explanatory, but here is another tweet that caught my eye on the same point: My basic premise is that the awareness of American college students is NOT a necessary condition for conflict resolution in Africa.
- Thirty-one percent of the money received goes toward helping anyone. This is a frequent criticism of advocacy groups - that the money they raise simply perpetuates a self-promoting cycle of expensive films, travel etc... rather than putting money into local communities.
- Don't make yourself the hero. This is both a reference to the self-absorbed role of the film's narrator, and to the broader sense that such campaigns can be deeply paternalistic, even neo-colonial, in their portrayal of Africans as helpless victims who must be saved by brave foreigners.
- Bad aid is worse than no aid. Helping people is a complex business. Campaigns like this one have, in the past, had a distorting impact, with money channelled to inefficient organisations rather than those best placed to help. At worst, this can even make conflicts harder to end.
- There are plenty of examples of children and youth from N. Uganda who are agents of their change. Don't let @invisible convince you otherwise. This speaks to the most basic argument against foreign aid - that it undermines local, indigenous organisations and governments. The pressure should be applied to Uganda's president, not US President Barack Obama.
I'm not sneering at anyone.
I think YOU missed the main point. I don't think Makalakumu meant 100 US soldiers in Africa is a prelude to invading as in taking over the entire continent. I don't agree with his conclusions, but I don't think he's stupid.
I didn't say Islam, I said radical Islam.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news...les-With-Rise-of-Radical-Islam-137949633.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/07/radical-islam-takes-hold/?page=all
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/poli...-qaeda-radical-islam-threaten-progress-africa
And etc. In Somalia, a failed nation with no effective central government anymore, the members of Al-Shabab, an Al-Quaida-approved Islamist faction, is slowly taking over.
I will leave your childish diatribe unanswered. I think your words speak volumes about you in this case.
Grow up. Seriously.
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