Invisibile Children Spies

I live for these moments.......From RT

"A memo written by a public affairs officer at the US embassy in Uganda documents Invisible Children’s collaboration with Ugandan intelligence services. It notes that the US-based NGO tipped the Ugandan government on the whereabouts of Patrick Komakech, a former child soldier for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who was wanted by security officials for extorting money from the government officials, NGO’s and local tribal leaders. Ugandan security organizations jumped the tip and immediately arrested Komakech.As a result of the tip, the Ugandan military claimed it obtained the names of other suspects from Komakech. The military then conducted a sweep and arrested a number of people, many of whom declared their innocence, the Ugandan media reported. Human rights groups say torture of arrested suspects by Ugandan security forces is routine. "

But wait, there's more........

"Invisible Children also actively supported Operation Lightning Thunder (OLT), a joint attack by Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the then-autonomous South Sudan against the LRA. The operation, which was also received US intelligence and logistical backing, killed more civilians than LRA militants. In a confidential memo dating back to 2009, US ambassador to Uganda Steven Browning noted that the US-based NGO planned pro-OLT events under the theme “Kony Must Be Stopped. Rescue Our Children”. "

And if you are unsure of how bad Operation Lightning Thunder was, here.....haha...is a.....haha....report by......hahaha......the Enough Project!!! (Oh the sweet irony)

Hahahha, maybe IC's LRA Crisis Tracker was what they meant by US logistical support.

But in all seriousness, I think that this is an exagerattion of IC's capabilities in an attempt to write a attention grabbing headline. I mean, the fact that King of Conspiracies, Alex Jones is talking about it automatically kills its credibility.

I did a search to find the documents the article was referring to and I came up with these two: 

The first document does confirm the point about IC tipping off the Ugandan Intelligence service regarding the whereabout of Komakech is true......The funny thing that was not mentioned was that Komakech was actually staying in the IC compound in Gulu....so not only is IC a spy organisation, they also harbour criminals. 

The second document mentions IC's plan of organising a pro-Operation Thunder Lightning campaign and releasing a video called "Kony Must Be Stopped, Rescue Our Children". The way the document refers to the campaign does create the feeling that IC was acting as a tool of propaganda. However, after having watched many spy movies and TV show, I can expertly suggest that IC was being used as a tool at the absolute most. I can't find the video..... although I'm sure seeing the video would determine the degree of IC's intention. 

IC are mentioned on a few other documents, but nothing exciting is really mentioned there. 

So while it would be sexy and exciting to think that these guys are actually CIA spies, I'm pretty sure its safe to conclude that they are just a bunch of clueless wankers (literally, in the case of Jason Russel HAH!). 

Although, you never know........


[insert joke about how the CIA controls social media that make reference to this: The Onion]

The Machine Gun Present

Oh joy, the lovely folks at Invisible Children, in collaboration with the Enough! project, gave the Machine Gun Preacher a fancy new app that helps him track LRA movement. Now he can easily capture more LRA soldiers.....

I just hope that he doesn't accidentally get shot by those newly US trained soldiers.

1-800-Genocide

I came across this post on the Enough! Project blog:

"The condemnation expressed by U.S. government officials over the recent violence in Sudan must translate into meaningful action toward those most culpable, to force them to rethink their calculations. Call the White House at 1-800-GENOCIDE and urge Obama to impose consequences against the government of President Bashir. Follow these easy steps:
1. Dial 1-800-GENOCIDE to connect to the White House
2. State your name and which state you are from
3. Urge President Obama to impose serious consequences on Khartoum: Expand sanctions, freeze the assets of key Sudanese leaders, investigate war crimes, and increase civilian protection"

Now Im not quite sure how to react to this as I am totally flabbergasted by the concept of a citizen's direct hotline to the executive government office. If this is actually a thing, then I am quite impressed. However, a part of me feels like this is some grand joke that the White House formulated to relieve itself of the pressure put on it by civil society. Like when a girl gives a fake phone number to guy to avoid the awkwardness and potential conflict arising from a straight up rejection. Point 3 seems to suggest that you get to talk to Obama......Now I imagine that is not true, but would be pretty awsome. Just like Kagame's heavy personal usage of social networking media to communicate with his citizens (link/link).

Why I dislike Prendergast?

People are always asking me, "Why do you hate the Enough Project and John Prendergast so much?"

Well folks, this morning I came across an example of why it is that I want to stab pencils in my ear and wash my eyes out with bleach every time Prendergrast utters a word.

Speaking about the current violence in Abyei and South Kordofan, Prendergast made this brilliant suggestion:

the Enough Project, an advocacy group, called for the U.S. to provide air defense systems to southern Sudan to help the region protect itself and deter escalating violence in the north-south border region, where the north has attacked on multiple fronts. (Link)

At the risk of sounding like an even bigger hippy than Prendergrast, handing out weapons to one side of a conflict is not really a great path to peace. South Sudan is not engaging in combat for a reason. Its not because they don't have the capacity, but rather because they have experienced Enough! fighting and violence and want to simply resolve the issue diplomatically. By providing them with air defence and telling them to use it, you will merely be committing the SPLA further into the conflict, which will then demand a response from the Khartoum, leading to full scale war. People are tired of wars, and as horrible as it might be to count the casualties of Khartoum's air raids, it can't be worst than sending the entire region back into war where casualty numbers will dwarf those of the current air raids. As nice as it is to fantasize about killing the evil doer, it just isn't how the world works. So instead of making these awful emotionally plagued policy suggestions, why don't you, Clooney, the Machine Gun Preacher and that crazy American Ninja in Afghanistan go start a club for maverick superhero wannabes and take down dictators across the globe.

Prendergast: Clooney! How did you get to be Batman AGAIN? And why the hell am I wonderwoman?!!

More on Satellites

With my iPad, I can peer each morning at the latest high-resolution imagery of Sudan, captured by DigitalGlobe's constellation of satellites, from 450-700 kilometers (280-435 miles) above Earth, hurtling at 17,000 MPH ground speed. You can see some of these amazing images, too, in the Satellite Sentinel Project's first report, released yesterday. (source)

I was only joking when I made comments about people indulging in conflict porn on the move you dickhead.

Clooney's Satelite

P: No, Im Batman. You be Robin
C: What?! No way, Im Batman, I have more experience.
P: Exactly, you were Batman before, and you were shit at it. So this time I am Batman and you're Robin



In case you haven't seen, here is Batman (Clooney) and Robin's (Prendergrast) latest flash of genius...
Using public access satelites (from Google) to monitor military activity. If your interested, you can sign up and follow their twitter page* to be updated on genocide as it unfurls. Now you can be the cool kid at the table who is up to date with how many women and children were killed and raped as it happens!

Although while this is rather amusing on so many levels. I would just like to geek it for a second and talk about how exciting it is to see increasing usage of public satelites for a variety of reasons. In the case of South Sudan, this is not even the first time......this was. It was when Jane's Defense Weekly used commercial satellites to track down the cargo of tank from the hijacked MV Faina in 2008.



*there is no twitter page to follow, I made it up. If there is actually one.....2011 i going to be a very sad year

The conflict minerals debate

After having my fair share of attacks (and here) on Enough and John Prendergrast, I felt that I shouldn't make any comments or (even) acknowledgements towards the ongoing debate surrounding the conflict minerals legislation. So I'm just going to link to Wronging Rights succinct summary and show some love to their excellent argument:

"Campaigns centered around telling the public that their yuppie-consumer-goods are full of rape and murder are, fundamentally, aboutdisengagement, not engagement. This kind of advocacy tells consumers that the problem is their connection to the conflict via the minerals in their phones and iPods, and that the solution is to break that connection.

That's not a recipe for ongoing engagement, it's an invitation to withdraw further from an already-remote problem."

Nice......

Also, respect to Texasinafrica.