Monday, March 12, 2012

It must be election season

I don’t understand the commotion around this Kony person. There appears to be a group called Invisible Children who are very blood-thirsty for this guy for no clear, apparent reason. And quite frankly, for an organization from Uganda, they seem to be ridiculously well-funded. This reminds me of an article I read recently but which I cannot locate. It was in an Estonian paper so if someone can find it on the web, please to share the link in a comment.

The article spoke about how a company, funded by the government of the U.S. used various public media methods to grow Americans’ hate towards a certain member of the bin Laden family. They used a corporation with the word ‘Congress’ in the name to implicate a status of official authority, got a basically random little girl (who happened to be the daughter of a person involved with the fabrications) to state horrible things that had happened due to this bin Laden character. The video, showing the claims and tears of the young girl moved American hearts and got their blood pumping. They succeeded in getting public support for a massacre, for an invasion of an independent country. And that the U.S. did – used the actions of a small group as an excuse to swap out the whole government of that independent state, kill thousands of civilians, massacre Al Qaeda and then turned their attention to Taliban, a peaceful group, whose only blame was their culture and faith.

That time the people fell for it. They cheered for it. Most of them were exuberant once they heard that boogey man was killed. One company orchestrated the hatred of many nations against a single person and his affiliates. But the company people talked. People heard. But only a handful of them learned from it. Warmongering is an art, an art the U.S. happen to be extremely adept at. And Americans fall for it. And they are not the only ones. It is a kind of a domino effect – when Americans fall for it, larger European nations follow (the ones who get the news first). After that, smaller nations start hungering blood. Then the whole world starts begging for war. A small incident, the tiniest of sparks, can light the powderkeg. And the U.S. gains control of yet another country, which incidentally happens to be somewhat rich in some resource the U.S. needs or wants very fiercely, such as oil. What a lucky coincidence!

And now it is happening yet again. Americans, as oblivious as always, go straight for the bait. Some protest, some try to enlighten people, but their voices go unheard. Who cares that Uganda is a country most people can’t place on a world map, who cares that there are far worse people out there, who cares Kony has been at it for many years without anyone protesting? Some little children are hurting! We simply must invade the oil-rich jungle, no matter at what cost!

This is, quite frankly, utter tomfoolery! Fine, although there are people in far worse circumstances, there are people suffering in Uganda as well. Why should we care?  Are we caring about that suddenly? We haven’t given a flying crammed sandwich about any African countries doing their own fighting and trying to establish a strong powerbase for a stable government. Until now that the U.S. has sent in some forces, established a groundhold for any strikes and funded the local ‘friendly’ guerilla fighters and governments with plenty. Now we should care? That sounds awfully hypocritical.

Another thing I don’t quite comprehend is that people want *WAR* to fix the situation. An armed intervention. I thought it was general consensus that wars were bad… Did we forget about that? Now it appears that killing people for a good purpose is not only good, it is considered to be heroic. Ending countless lives, including the lives of local civilians, has suddenly become an ideal. I’m sorry but this sounds terribly like a dystopian novel where every war is good, every enemy, as weak as possible, but always a threat to the ‘civilized world’. And every single soldier a hero to be admired and remembered. By supporting killing this Kony person, one propagates murder of hundreds and thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. People who, even in their current state, would otherwise have a chance to live. Sure, killing kids is bad, but is stopping that (note that kids will always be killed be someone somewhere, it is inevitable) worth killing hundredsfold more civilians? Sounds like a good deal if you wanted to hold back overpopulation…

I will not even go into the name of the campaign, ‘KONY 2012’. While I admit, after seeing all those ‘ROMNEY 2012’, ‘OBAMA 2012’ and ‘GINGRICH 2012’ ads, a fourth name in the race is a refreshing chance (Unfortunately Ron Paul appears to remain the the background).

In conclusion, I’d say the world has become one wacky place. Murder is bad, massacre is good. Terrorism (a term often used to signify acts of war by the ‘evil’ side) is bad, war against any foreigners is good. Basically killing in one’s home country is devilishly feared, killing anywhere else is like a gift from God and thus should be done without mercy. I guess Stalin’s quote rings true.

“One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic.”

 

I find it ironic that the quote best describing the actions of the U.S. is from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Americans have never been honest about themselves.

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