Uganda: Profiling US Meddling Across Africa

September 24, 2018 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - While China builds roads, rail, pipelines, airports, seaports, and factories across Africa, the United States finds itself resigned to selling weapons and stirring up conflicts between and within African states to disrupt the rise of the continent independent of Western hegemony.

Part of stirring up conflict involves political subversion. In Uganda, the US is propping up an opposition leader who even at the most basic, superficial level fails to conceal his allegiance to and dependence on Washington.

The Making of an Agitator: Bobi Wine's "Political Rise" 

A media circus has developed in the West around Ugandan pop star turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu - referred to by his stage name as "Bobi Wine" - portraying him as a rising opposition leader seeking the overthrow of incumbent Ugandan strongman, President Yoweri Museveni.

While depicted as a Ugandan "opposition leader" by the Western media, fewer cases of Western meddling in African politics have been more transparent.

Wine entered politics as recently as 2017. In early 2018, he had already made a trip to the United States to enroll in the Harvard Kennedy School's "Leadership for the 21st Century" course, described by the school's website as:

The executive education program, Leadership for the 21st Century: Chaos, Conflict and Courage, delves into why we lead the way we do. The program offers a stimulating and challenging curriculum that invites you to learn how to exercise leadership with more courage, skill and effectiveness. 

Upon returning to Uganda, Wine's political supporters violently attacked President Museveni's motorcade after which he was arrested and charged with treason.

The BBC in their August 2018 article, "Uganda's Bobi Wine: Pop star MP charged with treason," would claim:

The authorities say opposition lawmakers led supporters to attack the president's convoy with stones. Bobi Wine's driver was later shot dead.

And as with all Western-sponsored agitators, the BBC has reported Western governments decrying the charges as "politically motivated" claiming:

The charges are widely viewed as politically motivated and aimed at silencing a prominent critic of the president. The US decried the "brutal treatment" of MPs, journalists and others by security forces. 

By September, Wine would fly to the US to allegedly receive "treatment" for his "injuries," however most of his time was spent consorting with the US State Department, DC lobbyists, writing columns for the Washington Post, and grandstanding with visible US backing behind him.

In Wine's op-ed for the Washington Post, he would claim (emphasis added):

When people are allowed to speak, allowed to protest, to organize; when terms are limited and elections are transparent; when the press is free and officials are held accountable, there are no Musevenis. This is why we are seeing increasing censorship — including blackouts of broadcasts by Voice of America, among other heavy-handed attempts to keep Ugandans in the dark.

Voice of America - of course - is US State Department-funded and directed media representing US special interests. Here, Wine suggests that without US State Department narratives, Ugandans are left "in the dark." While depicted as a democratic opposition leader, it is safe to say any opposition movement being led from "the dark" by foreign special interests, is entirely undemocratic.

Other media sources promoting Wine include The Nation Media Group, majority owned by foreign foundations like the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and openly partnered with Western foundations like the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and the International Press Institute.

Like in virtually every other nation around the globe the US seeks influence within, the US is doing this in Uganda not by investing in genuine economic, political, or even military partnership, but instead by simply co-opting or overwriting the nation's institutions, including its media.

Upon returning to Uganda, Bobi Wine was again promptly arrested - with treason charges seeming somewhat understated now considering Wine's open conspiracy with the entirety of Washington's regime change apparatus.

The US "Cannot Ignore" Africa... 

Wine's lawyer is notorious lobbyist Robert Amsterdam who has worked with other US-sponsored agitators ranging from Thai billionaire, fugitive, and mass murderer Thaksin Shinawatra, to Russia's Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The Plundering of South Sudan

US AFRICOM, Israel, and Uganda's Dictator-for-Life Yoweri Museveni set up in South Sudan, inflame conflict, push out China and prepare to take over oil. 

January 9, 2014 (LD) - RT's report "Who is to blame for the crisis in South Sudan?" gave a succinct background on the warring factions inside the new "nation" of South Sudan and the Western genesis of the conflict. The report would state: 

The SPLM has received support from the US and Israel throughout the duration of the civil war fought between southern rebels and Khartoum, which has historically had unfriendly relations with the West and has moved very closely to China in recent times to jointly develop the country’s oil wealth prior to the separation. Romantic notions for self-determination did not motivate the West to support southern secession; the objective was to partition Sudan and deprive Khartoum of economically relevant territory in the south where most of the oil fields lie. In exchange for the financial, material, political, and diplomatic support received from the West, the new government in Juba endorsed a ‘Faustian pact’ with its sponsors to open its economy to international finance capital and multinational interests. The government in Juba even applied for IMF membership before it had even officially gained independence from Sudan.

The piece would continue by laying out the current dilemma for the West: 

Despite supporting the South’s independence with diplomatic muscle and military aid, the United States has been unable to gain a foothold in the country’s oil sector; Juba’s crippled economy remains dominated by Asian companies, primarily from China. South Sudan must rely on pipelines that run through Khartoum to export its oil, and the two countries produced around 115,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012, less than half the volume produced in the years before South Sudan's independence. Both sides have nearly gone to war over disputed oil fields that straddle a poorly demarcated border. Judging from the poor economic performance of both countries since the partition and the dramatic loss of the life in the ongoing crisis, the experiment of South Sudanese independence is failing. 

Image: Violence predictably is centered around currently 

Chinese-controlled oil infrastructure. The goal is to have 

violence drive the Chinese out just as was done by NATO 

in Libya.

The piece would go on to note that peace deals reached leaving Sudan intact could have avoided the deadly conflict now raging - and that of course is correct. However, peace is not and never was the goal of the West and its involvement in Africa - economic gain is.

Precisely because China still maintains extensive holdings in Sudan and South Sudan's oil infrastructure, the conflict will be brought to a fevered pitch - and unsurprisingly the conflict's epicenter corresponds with South Sudan's primary oil producing regions. If and when the Chinese are pushed out of South Sudan, the West will continue either across the border to establish routes for exporting their newly gained oil wealth from the landlocked country, or proceed through Kenya with or without the current government in Nairobi's backing.

The BBC would report in their article, "China's oil fears over South Sudan fighting," that (emphasis added):

The stakes could not be higher for China, the largest investor in South Sudan's oil sector, as fierce fighting continues between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of his former deputy. 

Some of the largest oil fields China operates are in areas controlled by fighters backing Riek Machar, the country's vice-president until he was sacked in July. 

Oil production has already dropped by 20% since the onset of the conflict three weeks ago and more than 300 Chinese workers have been evacuated. 

The spectre of their Libyan experience also weighs heavily on the Chinese minds - project after project now lies deserted because of heavy fighting during the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, inflicting huge losses on China.

Most telling of all is the BBC's reference to Libya - another nation destroyed by Western military aggression that saw both Russian and Chinese interests crumble overnight and replaced by Western corporations. While South Sudan's chaos is being orchestrated more covertly by the West, the final goal of pushing out the Chinese and taking over is the same.

Similar covert destabilization can be seen all across what the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute's report "String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China's Rising Power across the Asian Littoral" calls China's "String of Perals." This includes US-backed militants attempting to carve off the province of Baluchistan from Pakistan where China has established a port at Gwadar and at another Chinese port in the state of Rakhine, Myanmar that has been the scene of brutal, genocidal violence carried out by "democracy icon" Aung San Suu Kyi's "saffron monks" against Rohingya refugees.

Setting Up Shop in South Sudan 

Kony 2012 Part 2: License for Imperial Conquest

Excuses, backpedaling, more lies, and the truth behind Invisible Children's mission. by Tony Cartalucci

April 6, 2012 - The sequel to the mega-viral disaster that was Kony 2012 may only be 20 minutes long, but financier-turned-humanitarian Ben Keesey still manages to gravely insult the intelligence of an audience clearly more awake and aware than he and the corporate-financiers behind Invisible Children would like to admit. Surely though, they are more than aware of the real revolution they've scratched the surface of - a population no longer swayed by slick marketing campaigns and who are more than ready to confront such deception. That is why Invisible Children has not only disabled comments on their latest piece of propaganda, but have also disabled the rating system for their video.


Image: Kony 2012: Part II (video can be found here). Ratings and comments have been disabled exposing "activism 2.0" as the one-way predetermined, monolithic, corporate-funded agenda it was all along. (click image to enlarge)

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Just like traditional corporate propaganda, Invisible Children has become a one-way marketing operation - while posing as an "activism 2.0" exercise, it denies activists any opportunity to express their views, influence the debate, or sway the agenda in any shape form or way - much like Soros-funded infiltrators did to the Occupy Wall Street movement right before it petered out. You are given the illusion of being a part of something bigger than yourself when in reality you are simply being used by a monolithic unilateral predetermined agenda.

Bigger than Kony: Selling the R2P Pretext

Keesey, in his pro-imperial infomercial, begins by citing a 2005 UN World Summit "outcome" titled "the responsibility to protect" which is drafted verbatim from a 2001 report titled, "The Responsibility to Protect,"- published by the ad hoc "International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The commission consisted of members drawn from the Fortune 500-Soros funded International Crisis Group (Fidel Ramos, Cyril Ramaphosa), the Lowy Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and members of both Western governments and their armed forces. It is a doctrine created exclusively for the benefit of justifying wars of opportunity, profit, and conquest by former colonial rulers to recommence the golden age of global subjugation and plundering.

Already R2P has been horribly abused in Libya, where violence was purposefully triggered by the very nations behind the R2P doctrine, then insidiously used as a pretext to militarily intervene. Their intervention saw weapons, money, air support, and diplomatic legitimacy granted to vicious, racist, genocidal terrorists, notorious for decades of violence not only in Libya, but in Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO's assistance to these terrorists, falling under the banner of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), has not only plunged Libya into perpetual chaos, but has seen these rearmed, reinvigorate terrorists carry their campaign as far east as Syria and as far west as Mali.

Ironically, Keesey in his "Kony 2012 Part II" video implicates Syria as another prime candidate for R2P intervention. It is ironic because Syria is another nation ravaged by violence openly fueled by the UN, NATO, and their junior Arab League partners, with the "Free Syrian Army" itself armed, funded, and directed by NATO-backed Libyan LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj all under the pretext of the R2P agenda.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the illegitimate "International Criminal Court" (ICC) once again lends his questionable stamp of approval to Invisible Children's crusade to "catch Joseph Kony." Ocampo states that it is a "dream" that we are a "global community protecting each other." Ocampo is famous not only for his role in lying to the world to justify the Libyan War in the first place, but for his overt deceit during the height of NATO's Libyan campaign when he claimed Saif al-Islam Qaddafi's capture in Tripoli was not only "confirmed," but that his transfer to the Hague was underway. The next day, Saif al-Islam appeared in Tripoli still leading efforts to liberate his besieged nation. It would be months before he was actually captured.

Photo: Saif al-Islam in Tripoli leading the defense of his nation the day after ICC's Luis Moreno-Ocampo "confirmed" he was captured - an overt lie. Ocampo would compound this lie by later denying he made any such confirmation.

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Keesey then claims that the world is still standing behind the goals of Invisible Children, but what his video shows instead is the same steady stream of deceitful politicians who have held the will of their constituents in contempt for decades, green-lighting a massive military build-up in Central Africa for an admittedly meager, "alleged" force of 250 men. Keesey produces a smattering of Congolese witnesses that are supposed to sway us - after their previous film falsely depicted the conflict taking place in Uganda with a similar smattering of Ugandan witnesses.



Images: Screen grabs from the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch "Joseph Kony - LRA" video uploaded in 2010 and the USAID-backed, US State Department AYM 2010 summit-attending, Soros, JP Morgan, Chase-funded (.pdf page 22) Invisible Children's Kony 2012: Part II. Another bizarre happenstance, as an identical man, wearing an identical shirt appears in both videos - as if the editing for both organizations took place in the same office using the same footage.

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The punchline of the sequel comes 13 minutes in, where it is stated that the ICC has indicted Kony, but lacks an "army" to bring him to justice. The "solution" of course, requires a joint military force. John Prendergast of the Soros-funded "Enough Project" chimes in claiming that Kony's alleged 250 men represent a threat to "international peace and security" and requires "collective responsibility." The "Enough Project" comes to us from the Center for American Progress run by notorious corporate lobbyist John Podesta, funded by George Soros, tied directly to the US State Department, and yet another special-interest think-tank (covered in more detail in, "JP Morgan, Exxon, Boeing, Among State Department's New Advisers").

Kony 2012 - R2P's Public Roll-Out

Keesey saves the best for last, claiming, "we will not dismiss the problems of our friends simply because they are not our own - we don't live like that anymore. And this is only the beginning because stopping injustice around the world is far bigger than stopping the LRA . We are a new generation of justice made for such a time as this. Because our liberty is bound together across the world and across the street."

And indeed it is bigger than stopping the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) - Kony 2012 and the mission of Invisible Children is the public roll-out of a geopolitical mechanism long festering amongst the pages of Fortune 500 think-tanks and being rubber-stamped at the UN for now over a decade. It is the public roll-out of R2P - the "responsibility to protect." It is the institutionalization of wars of conquest - a systematic methodology of sowing chaos within any given nation refusing to pay into the globalist collective and using the resulting violence, real or imagined, as an excuse to eviscerate their government, bury their institutions, and build upon the rubble homogeneous networks that will interlock with globalist "international institutions."

Kony 2012 from A-Z has been revealed as an absolute fraud - a fabrication as dishonest about the current problems in East and Central Africa as it is about the alleged solutions.

In reality, the greatest danger to the people of Africa are men like Ugandan "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni who is in reality still carrying out the very atrocities Kony is accused of. And while the UN, ICC, and a menagerie of other "international institutions" pose as an army of "white knights," they have been instrumental in legitimizing, covering up, facilitating, and clearly benefiting from the atrocities of men like Museveni. Just last year, it was reported that Museveni and a British corporation called "New Forests Company" forcibly evicted 20,000 Ugandans, incinerating their homes, burning alive and gunning down all who refused to leave. The evictions were part of a UN "clean air" program and involves investors including the World Bank and HSBC.



Image: Taken from New Forests' website, they proudly display the swath of destruction their company is responsible for, of course, instead of depicting the displacements, murders, and thuggery they are committing against the people of Africa, they place images of thriving trees. In just this manner R2P is being declared as a revolutionary humanitarian achievement where tales of "democracy" and "freedom" cover up the trail of atrocities truly being blazed.

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If what is essentially criminal land grabbing in Africa can be institutionalized and dressed up as "protecting the environment," then dressing up imperial military conquest as "protecting civilians" under the R2P doctrine is an obvious logical progression. The R2P doctrine is as big a fraud as the continuous lies being told to justify it and endear it to the public - Kony 2012 being perhaps the most obvious embodiment of these lies.

For further information on R2P, readers are encouraged to listen to James Corbett's "R2P or: How the Left Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Wars of Imperial Aggression."

Monopolizing Africa

AFRICOM Report: Combating Chinese Economic Encroachment in Central Africa

Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
March 23, 2012

Since the time of the British Empire and the manifesto of Cecil Rhodes, the pursuit of treasures on the hopeless continent has demonstrated the expendability of human life. Despite decades of apathy among the primary resource consumers, the increasing reach of social media propaganda has ignited public interest in Africa’s long overlooked social issues. In the wake of celebrity endorsed pro-intervention publicity stunts, public opinion in the United States is now being mobilized in favor of a greater military presence on the African continent. Following the deployment of one hundred US military personnel to Uganda in 2011, a new bill has been introduced to the Congress calling for the further expansion of regional military forces in pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an ailing rebel group allegedly responsible for recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes against humanity.

As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on the world stage, recent policy shifts toward an American Pacific Century indicate a desire to maintain the capacity to project military force toward the emerging superpower. In addition to maintaining a permanent military presence in Northern Australia, the construction of an expansive military base on South Korea’s Jeju Island has indicated growing antagonism towards Beijing. The base maintains the capacity to host up to twenty American and South Korean warships, including submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers once completed in 2014 – in addition to the presence of Aegis anti-ballistic systems. In response, Chinese leadership has referred to the increasing militarization in the region as an open provocation.

On the economic front, China has been excluded from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a trade agreement intended to administer US-designed international trading regulations throughout Asia, to the benefit of American corporations. As further fundamental policy divisions emerge subsequent to China and Russia’s UNSC veto mandating intervention in Syria, the Obama administration has begun utilizing alternative measures to exert new economic pressure towards Beijing. The United States, along with the EU and Japan have called on the World Trade Organization to block Chinese-funded mining projects in the US, in addition to a freeze on World Bank financing for China’s extensive mining projects.

In a move to counteract Chinese economic ascendancy, Washington is crusading against China's export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components. Coincidentally, the US military is now attempting to increase its presence in what is widely considered the world’s most resource rich nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Continue reading the rest of "AFRICOM Report: Combating Chinese Economic Encroachment in Central Africa," here...

Soros-funded HRW Jumps on Kony2012 AFRICOM Crusade

Another video of "Africans" begging the US to invade & occupy Africa.
by Tony Cartalucci

March 20, 2012 - Human Rights Watch (HRW) during the height of the Kony 2012 hysteria, dusted off one of its old propaganda videos titled, "Joseph Kony - LRA" uploaded on November of 2010, to try and capitalize on the attention Invisible Children raised earlier this month. However, the Kony 2012 campaign imploded just as fast, and perhaps even more spectacularly than it rose - with vast numbers of people pointing out the untenable narrative it attempted to peddle and the fact that it served as nothing more than a pretext for an expanded US AFRICOM presence in Africa.

Both Human Rights Watch and Invisible Children are funded by Wall Street speculator George Soros through his Open Society Institute and the myriad of corporate-funded foundations it funnels money through. At least one foundation behind Invisible Children (.pdf, page 22), "Enough," who is also involved in the George Clooney promotion of a US AFRICOM intervention in oil-rich Sudan, actually counts Human Rights Watch a partner.



Image: HRW's partners include Wall Street speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute which also funds Invisible Children through a myriad of proxy foundations. Note on the right-hand side the "Dear Obama" video which is featured below. It was originally uploaded in 2010, but has just recently been featured on HRW's website in the midst of the recent Kony 2012 hysteria.

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After Invisible Children collapsed under the weight of overexposure - simply the sheer volume of people scrutinizing and exposing the fraud being peddled - we can begin to appreciate the necessity the Wall Street-London elite see in cultivating a vast array of redundant "human rights" fronts. This is to compartmentalize catastrophes like Invisible Children, and just like a ship that loses an entire section to flooding, it can be sealed off and the agenda kept afloat. In this case, the AFRICOM agenda can still keep moving forward even with "all hands lost" at Invisible Children.

HRW video has Africans "begging" for AFRICOM to carry out its mission.

Video: HRW's video features "Africans" operating under the false perception that the US President is a global arbiter. These "Africans" are also suspiciously eager for the US to intervene in their respective nations and "bring security" - which just so happens to be AFRICOM's stated objective.

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Examining the mission statement of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), as provided on their official website we see:

Africa Command’s activities, plans, and operations are centered on two guiding principles:

1. A safe, secure, and stable Africa is in our national interest.

2. Over the long run, it will be Africans who will best be able to address African security challenges and that AFRICOM most effectively advances U.S. security interests through focused security engagement with our African partners.

Upon watching the HRW propaganda video we see "Africans" addressing President Obama regarding atrocities being committed by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). As they plea for help, they claim the indigenous people are powerless and incapable of stopping "the war," and that Africans "want" Obama to intervene. One character conveniently wearing an Obama medallion literally says, "with tears in our eyes, we ask the President to end this terrible suffering and bring security to our region."

"Bring security to our region," indeed - which of course just so happens to be AFRICOM's stated mission objective. When we consider that Kony was last believed to be in the Congo and hasn't been seen in 6 years (4 years when HRW uploaded this video in 2010) and that the war in Uganda against the LRA has long since ended, it is clear that HRW, like Invisible Children, is grossly mischaracterizing the alleged plight in the region to serve as a pretext for AFRICOM expansion.

Like Invisible Children, Human Rights Watch is a corporate-backed fraud.

Just like the Kony 2012 fraud and Invisible Children, Human Rights Watch merely leverages legitimate concerns regarding human rights to carry out the neo-imperial ambitions of their corporate sponsors. HRW claims that they have "gathered evidence at massacre sites," but seem to have overlooked the very real and quite extensive abuses and atrocities committed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. In fact, while Kony has been MIA for years, Museveni is currently carrying out mass displacements affecting tens of thousands of Ugandans as he auctions off their land to British and American corporations.

That HRW and Invisible Children ignore this inconvenient truth, as well as propose supporting, funding, and further arming Museveni who has undemocratically reigned over Uganda for nearly 30 years while selling out his nation, exposes the true mission of US AFRICOM. It is the continued pillaging of Africa started by European Empires during the "scramble for Africa."


Image: Cecil Rhodes whose British South Africa Company (BSAC) (1889-1965) helped conquer a commanding swath of the African continent in the name of the British Empire. His megalomania was "honored" by the British later naming an entire nation after him, "Rhodesia," now modern-day Zimbabwe.

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Image: The coat of arms of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) (1889-1965) - a predecessor of modern neo-imperialism. The BSAC was chartered by the British Empire and lent its resources and capabilities to help loot the natural wealth of Africa. This mirrors exactly AFRICOM and the legion of corporate-backed NGOs carrying out the modern-day looting of Africa. Note the terms "justice" and "freedom" used upon the company's coat of arms. Humanitarian concerns have long been used to mask wide scale human exploitation. The term "commerce" is also present in both the coat of arms pictured above and in the intents of AFRICOM Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declaring AFRICOM’s guiding principle as "protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.”

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Video: "Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa" explains why Africa is the way it is and that the "scramble" is still very much ongoing today. AFRICOM, Kony 2012, and HRW are just the latest tricks and perpetrators of what can easily be described as the rape of a continent.

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When we look at the history of Africa and the genesis of the current strife being manipulated and used as a pretext for continued Western intervention, we will realize that it was the West that created many of these problems in the first place. It then stands to reason that the West's return in the form of Wall Street-funded "humanitarian NGOs" and US AFRICOM are the least likely solutions to improving the long-plighted continent.

Globalists Pull Plug on Kony 2012 with Spectacular Crash & Burn

The ravaging of Africa will still proceed as scheduled.
by Tony Cartalucci

March 17, 2012 - Over the past week, as Invisible Children and their corporate sponsors performed desperate damage control, ties between the alleged "charity" and the US State Department, Wall Street speculator George Soros and his Open Society Institute, and a myriad of corporate-funded foundations began surfacing and spreading just as quickly as their documentary Kony 2012 rose to fame.

Image: (via Infowars) A visual representation of Invisible Children's true backers and master minds. They will gladly shed their front group in the name of self-preservation and making a clean escape.

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Perhaps most importantly, the term AFRICOM began gaining wider notoriety as did the mission of AFRICOM - the neo-colonial plundering of all of Africa. And as this single backfiring propaganda stunt threatened to unhinge a continent-spanning corporate-military industrial campaign, the plug was abruptly pulled with news of Invisible Children's director Jason Russell being arrested for lewd behavior in public.


Image: The coat of arms of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) - a predecessor of modern neo-imperialism. The BSAC was a company chartered by the British Empire, lent the resources and capabilities of the Empire, to help loot the natural wealth of Africa. This mirrors exactly AFRICOM and the legion of corporations and NGOs carrying out the modern-day looting of Africa. Note the terms "justice" and "freedom" used upon the company's coat of arms. Clearly masking exploitation with good intentions is nothing new.

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Video: "Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa" explains why Africa is the way it is and that the "scramble" is still very much ongoing up until today. AFRICOM and Kony 2012 are just the latest tricks and perpetrators of what can easily be described as the rape of a continent.

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The growing legions of critics and skeptics arrayed against this latest Wall Street-London psychological operation will undoubtedly seize this irresistible bait laid out, either by chance or by design, to focus on finishing off the already mortally wounded "Invisible Children" organization. It is already turning out to be a spectacular crash and burn.

However, the focus must be maintained on the mechanics behind Invisible Children, the fact that they are backed by USAID and that they participated in the US State Department's Alliance for Youth Movements (Movements.org) summits which laid the groundwork years in advance for the US-engineered "Arab Spring." It must also be remembered that while they pretend to be a movement of the people, Invisible Children is in fact backed by (page 22) Soros-funded foundations, JP Morgan, Chase, and others.

And as satisfying as many will find it to stomp Invisible Children out of existence for intentionally misleading them, preying on their emotions, insulting their intelligence, and literally lying to them, they must remember that all they've managed to do is hack away but a tentacle of a much larger monster. While we have a firm grip on Invisible Children, let's pull up the whole monster from its murky lair.

Let us expose the International Criminal Court and its fraudulent head, Luis Moreno-Ocampo who enthusiastically supported the fraud that is Kony 2012. And the Hollywood propagandists who abused their fame and the misplaced trust of millions to promote Invisible Children, as well as other, more established but equally fraudulent NGOs like Soros-funded (annual report page 8) Amnesty International and the Neo-Con run Freedom House who skillfully rode the wave of publicity Invisible Children created, but ran concurrent anti-Kony/pro-AFRICOM invasion campaigns of their own, safely isolated from what they knew was experimental, unpredictable, and potentially disastrous propaganda.

As the plug is pulled on Invisible Children, the system will gladly sacrifice an easily replaceable tentacle in exchange for its overall self-preservation. Do not allow the writhing tentacle pulled into the boat distract us from the grander prize at hand.

Fake Charities Herald War, Occupation, & Plundering

GRTV Backgrounder: Uganda, AFRICOM, and the Kony Boogeyman

KONY 2012: State Propaganda for a New Generation

Vigilant Citizen
March 14, 2012

The overnight viral sensation KONY 2012 brought worldwide awareness to the African war criminal Joseph Kony. Beneath this commendable cause, lies however an elaborate agenda that is presented in the video in a very manipulative way. We’ll look at the agenda behind KONY 2012 and how it uses reverse psychology to not only justify a military operation in Africa, but to actually have people demand it.

KONY 2012 is a viral sensation that swept the entire world in less than 24 hours. Its main subject is the African rebel leader Joseph Kony, his war crimes and the clearly defined “movement” to stop him. Countless celebrities have endorsed the movement, news sources have reported it and social media is buzzing with it. While the problem of guerrilla warfare and child soldiers has plagued Africa for decades, and several documentaries have already been produced regarding the issue, this particular 29-minute video made managed to obtain mass exposure and support.

KONY 2012 is less of a documentary than it is a highly efficient infomercial that is tailor-made for the Facebook generation, using state-of-the-art marketing techniques to make its point. Young people like “underground movements” and want to feel like they are changing the world. KONY 2012 taps into these needs to bring about something that is not “hip” or “underground” at all: A military operation in Uganda. Not only that, it urges the participants of the movement to order stuff, to wear bracelets that are associated with an online profile and to record their actions in social media. This makes KONY 2012 the first artificially created movement that is fully track-able, monitor-able and quantifiable by those who engendered it. In other words, what appears to be a movement “from the people” is actually a new way for the elite to advance its agenda.

Continue reading here...

Make THIS go Viral: Kony 2012 Propaganda 2.0 Explained

Editor's Note: Seems Kony 2012 not only made Joseph Kony famous, but also the now not-so-hidden agenda of Wall Street and London's AFRICOM. I wonder if the makers of this informative and entertaining video had to spend 9 years duping people into parting with millions of dollars to get this online like Invisible Children did? Let's see if we can make this go viral and prove that in addition to being deceitful, Invisible Children also misappropriated millions of dollars when simply telling the truth would have sold better, and with lower overhead.

The final message is also quite powerful - showing the true potential of modern society, if the truth is known and technology mobilized against, not for the agenda of the megalomaniacal elite.

KONY 2012 Psy-Op Collapsing

Invisible Children disables comments on viral propaganda video + meet the real Joseph Kony.
by Tony Cartalucci

March 14, 2012 - As the US State Department, USAID centric Invisible Children psy-op KONY 2012 collapses, Invisible Children has disabled comments on their viral YouTube video.

When last checked, negative comments were voted to the top and a cascading effect of skepticism as well as damning facts began drowning out the initial confusion, sympathy, and emotional knee-jerk support the propaganda video purposefully created and preyed upon.


Image: A screenshot of Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video on YouTube. Comments have been disabled. (click image to enlarge)

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As comments are now being censored - it is suggested that people simply go to the video and click the "dislike" button to voice their opposition to this stunt. Most likely, even that feature will be disabled, and the video KONY 2012 will become the one-way Wall Street infomercial it really is, rather than the faux-participatory "social media" "activism 2.0" experience it masquerades as being.

The Establishment-Funded "Anti-Establishment" Charity

It has been revealed that indeed Invisible Children has been working with USAID, a US government agency that helps lay the groundwork for what could best be described as a modern-day imperial administrative network. It is now also revealed that Invisible Children attended the 2010 US State Department and Fortune 500 sponsored Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) summit in London.

AYM (also called Movements.org) it was reported, played a central role in preparing armies of US State Department funded, trained, and equipped activists to carry out the so-called "Arab Spring" years in advance. Much like KONY 2012, the Arab Spring took many by surprise and in the wave of confusion, entire nations were upturned and US proxy regimes installed. Tunisia and Libya are now full fledged client states of Wall Street and London, while the fates of nations like Egypt and Syria still hang in the balance.

Unlike the "Arab Spring" however, the KONY 2012 scam has collapsed almost as fast as it first swept the globe. And as it falls, it is taking with it the credibility of all who participated in it and promoted it, including the deceitful International Criminal Court (ICC) and its chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, as well as Hollywood and the corporate-media who did all in their power to lie, manipulate and make fools out of millions once more in the pursuit of perpetuating the imperial ambitions of Wall Street and London.

KONY 2012 is Casus Belli for Emptying Out Africa

It was reported in "Libyan Rebels Inspired by Globalization" that US-proxy rebel leader, Gibril (Jabril) Elwarfally before the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution, would claim Libya's role in the future was to transition to a service economy, focus on education, and turn Libya into “a lake” to develop the skills of Africans to serve the needs of the European Union. If Africa is a treasure trove of resources, Libya will be the doorway through which the West loots it.

And as the West breaks down the door in North Africa, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been concurrently deploying military assets throughout Africa, from Nigeria, across Central and East Africa and southward toward Kenya and even as far as to menace the former British holding of Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe.

It has been reported already that in Uganda British firms have participated in land grabs violently displacing up to 30,000 people in single transactions in direct cooperation with Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni. In fact, it is troops under Museveni's command, who helped displace these people, and who stand to receive additional weapons and funds from Invisible Children's KONY 2012 campaign.

Video: Meeting Joseph Kony - A rare interview with Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Kony would state that he and his men were "freedom fighters," and that, "we are fighting for democracy. We should be free to elect our leader. We want our leader to be elected," as opposed to the current reigning dictator of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni who has been in power for nearly 3 decades.

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While researching this article, a rare interview with Joseph Kony himself was found. Kony states that his fight is against Ugandan President Museveni, who by any definition is indeed a tyrannical, mass murdering dictator. Kony states that he is actually a "freedom fighter" fighting for "democracy." With talk like that, it is a surprise that the US State Department isn't funding and arming him. Ironically, recent reports indicate that the US may just have been, and that the West was funding and backing both Kony and Museveni to ensure that the entire region remained in constant turmoil. The purpose of this from a geopolitical point-of-view is quite simple, as encapsulated in the following ancient Chinese stratagem:

When a country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack. -The 36 Strategies, #5 Loot a Burning House

With US troops already on the ground in Uganda, as well as creeping across Africa under AFRICOM, the attack is already on. Quite clearly further US troop deployments based on invoking renewed interest in Africa and the hunting of various "boogeymen" amidst an atmosphere of general chaos and lawlessness serves only to give the US free reign over the continent and eliminate any and all African leaders who insist on maintaining ties with China and/or their national sovereignty.

The corporate-financier elite have calculated that public ignorance, even for nations as well-known as Iran, Syria, and Libya, is so profound that the media can peddle any narrative and still have the public believe it. Building a manipulative mechanism, what Vigilant Citizen describes as, "State Propaganda for a New Generation," goes beyond just Uganda and Joseph Kony. It represents a model that can be turned against virtually any country in Africa, or even around the world.

It represents a new stage in manipulating the minds and hearts of the global population by leveraging so-called social media, more accurately described as "Propaganda 2.0." Exposing and burying this new method of manipulation is the key to bringing forth a real revolution.

“Kony 2012″ a New Recruiting Tool for US-UK Aggressions and Genocide in Africa

Also: Russian Elections and Syria's Destabilization

REPOST: British Corporation Mass Murdering Ugandans in UN Sanctioned Land Grab

Editor's Note: March 12, 2012 - This article was originally published on September 26, 2011 regarding a murderous land grab made by Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni on behalf of a British corporation masquerading as a "green" humanitarian enterprise.

In the wake of the KONY 2012 fraud, Land Destroyer believed it was essential that the plight of some 20,000 Ugandans displaced, some murdered by Ugandan troops, be reiterated - in hopes of highlighting the absurdity and double standards being applied by the corporate media, Hollywood, and various mouthpieces throughout Western government in regards to Africa and around the world. Real injustice as well as the real perpetrators must be fully exposed.

There is REAL genocide being carried out in Africa, and the face of the perpetrator is not merely Joseph Kony and his child-soldiers, it is Museveni and his child soldiers, as well as corporate-fascists like Robert Devereux of the UK who had tens of thousands displaced while making deals to prop up brutal dictators like Museveni. The difference, aside from the vast scale of Museveni's crimes compared to Kony, is the fact that Museveni gladly serves Western interests, while Kony serves more conveniently as the latest in a long line of "boogeymen" to cover up the ongoing Western plunder of Africa.

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Image: Ugandan "President-for-Life" Yoweri Museveni and British corporate-fascist Robert Devereux (over his shoulder) are recent collaborators that saw the Ugandan military displace 20,000 people from their land so Devereux's corporation, "New Forests" could plant trees where once they wrought their livelihood from. Strangely, this seems to have been overlooked by "Invisible Children."

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Beneath fraud, media spin, & UN stamps of approval, awaits an unfolding nightmare for the people of Africa and the world.
by Tony Cartalucci

September 26, 2011 - The New York Times recently reported in an article titled, "In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out," that the British "New Forests Company" has evicted over 20,000 people from their land in Uganda to make way for tree plantations. Homes were burnt, people, including women and children, were brutalized and murdered during the long eviction process. However, the New York Times states that in this case "the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming."



The "group" the New York Times is referring to is Oxfam, which published a report titled, "The New Forests Company and its Uganda plantations," detailing the activities of New Forests in Uganda and the evictions the New York Times gingerly describes in its article.

Who is The New Forests Company?

Meet "New Forests," a UK-based firm that claims to be a "sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits." Their corporate website is not short of the color green, nor of African people smiling and prospering, so apparently, we are left to believe, New Forests has made good on their mission statement.


Image: Taken from New Forests' website, they proudly display the swath of destruction their company is responsible for, of course, instead of depicting the displacements, murders, and thuggery they are committing against the people of Africa, they place images of thriving trees.
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Meet Robert Deveruex, chairman of New Forests, one of the founding shareholders of The Virgin Group and former chairman of Soho House Group. He has spent a great deal of time and energy making what his corporation is doing in Africa appear to have a philanthropic spin. In an August 2010 Guardian article titled, "Robert Devereux donates £4m of art collection to set up African charity," Devereux claims of his New Forests company that it "has a huge community development programme. It's not philanthropy. We go to the community and we say, 'We want to co-invest with you. If you provide what labour and materials you can, we'll provide money for things that you can't get.'" Devereux, however, never mentioned what happens if the community says, "no thanks."


Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company's despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and "helps" people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was "helping" had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company's encroachment on their land.
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Meet New Forests executive director and CEO Julian Ozanne, who previously worked for the Financial Times, advised US and European investment banks on business and political risk in Africa and worked for the global corporate-fascists nexus, the World Economic Forum. Also serving as a New Forest director is Jonathan Aisbitt, chairman of the investment firm, The Man Group, and previously a partner and managing director at the now notorious Goldman Sachs.

There is also Avril Stassen, who is not only a director at New Forests but is also currently a principal at Agri-Vie Investment Advisers, which claims to be "focused on food and agribusiness in Sub-Sahara Africa with a mission to generate an above average investment return, as well as demonstrable socio-economic development impacts through its equity investments in food and agribusinesses." In other words, buying up land in African nations people depend on to live, to instead broaden foreign investors' portfolios and profits, all under the cover of feel good rhetoric and pictures of smiling Africans pasted all over their website and annual reports. A good website that seems to be keeping watch on Agri-Vie is Farmlandgrab.org, which in one short URL explains exactly the game Agri-Vie is playing.

And finally, meet Sajjad Sabur, also a director at New Forests, as well as a managing director at HSBC, heading the mega-bank's "Principal Investments Africa" branch which targets African businesses with management buyouts, growth capital and recapitalization "opportunities." Sabur's HSBC invesment arm has actually invested in New Forests.

Quite clearly, this looks more like the profile of a Wall Street-London corporate-fascist hit team than anything at all involving humanitarian, environmental, or social concerns. And judging by Oxfam's report and the subsequent attempt by the New York Times to mitigate the gravity of what the largest banks in the world are doing to Africa, it seems like a corporate-fascist hit is just what is unfolding in Uganda at New Forests' hands.

Globalization is Modern Day Imperialism by Anglo-American Bankers

Backtracking to New Forests' mission statement, apparently "social responsibility" equates to murdering or displacing tens of thousands of Ugandans in their own nation, and "attractive returns" equates to the extraction and exportation of Ugandan resources for a corporation's shareholders 4,000 miles away. What we are told is of significant "benefit" to society and the environment looks more like a textbook case of imperialism, perpetrated by British, surely new to being socially and environmentally responsible, but certainly not to imperialism nor gimmicks used to mask it behind noble causes.

The New York Times reveals that the World Bank is also an investor in New Forests along with HSBC, and that the true nature of the scam goes beyond merely displacing tens of thousands to grow trees, but that the trees are being used for the purpose of selling contrived carbon credits, not even to provide tangible resources for economic activity. The New York Times also implicates the United Nations, which granted New Forests permission to "trade" with the Ugandan government regarding its 50-year lease to grow trees in the landlocked nation.

The government of Uganda, led by President-for-life Yoweri Museveni for the last 25 years, was the result of a protracted civil war led by Museveni himself. After seizing power, he was immediately lauded by the West, embraced the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's plans for restructuring his newly conquered nation, and has been running it as a dictator ever since. It is no surprise that Museveni is now selling his own people out, no doubt in exchange for his perpetual, unhindered rule, transiting a vast corporate media black hole enjoyed by regimes servile to Wall Street and London worldwide.

The globalist New York Times has a long tradition of apologizing not just for Anglo-American bankers as they defile the planet, but defending their accomplices, Museveni apparently one of them. In a 1997 New York Times article titled, "Uganda Leader Stands Tall in New African Order," Museveni is praised for his extraterritorial meddling throughout neighboring African states. The New York Times claims, "not only has Mr. Museveni resurrected his own impoverished nation from two decades of brutal dictatorship and near economic collapse, but he is also widely seen as the covert patron of rebel movements like the one that has just toppled Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime dictator of Zaire." The article then brushes off accusations that Museveni is dictator of a single party system of governance by providing Museveni's own defense, that Uganda is pre-industrial and not ready for multiparty democracy.

How resurrected Uganda is from poverty is a matter of debate, and certainly, the concept of poverty has taken on all new dimensions for over 20,000 Ugandans forced from their land by Anglo-American bankers and their willing accomplices in the Ugandan government. How Museveni plans on bringing Uganda past its "pre-industrial" state by handing over land to foreigners to grow trees on for the next 50 years, leaving his own people homeless, jobless, and destitute for an entire generation is also a profound mystery.

What we are watching in Africa is the grotesque reality that is globalization peaking through the thick layer of lies, propaganda, spin, liberal ideologies, and imagery used to dupe the Western world, and increasingly many in the developing world. It is a reality that entails theft on a massive scale, human exploitation, mass-murder, collective punishment, and intimidation. For those that think Uganda is an isolated anomaly and are somehow able to dismiss the backgrounds of New Forests which represents an entire network designed specifically to exploit and strip mine all of Africa, one need look no further than Southeast Asia's Cambodia. There, half way around the world from Uganda, another Western backed dictator-for-life, Hun Sen, has literally sold half his country to foreign investors, displacing hundreds of thousands at gunpoint in a nearly identical Wall Street-London land-grab.

Globalization is a multi-billion dollar packaged update of the British Empire's "spreading of civilization." Designs of dominion and exploitation have historically always been accompanied by excuses seen as palatable for the masses who were expected to support and carry these designs to fruition for the ruling elite. While it is no longer fashionable to kill black and brown people while accusing them of being "savages," it is still quite fashionable to consider them "undemocratic," "backwards," "overpopulating," "terrorists," and above all, "detriments to our environment." At least, New Forests and New York Times seem to think so.

Once again, the choice we the people have, upon learning of this, is to either detach in cowardice and apathy, or identify the corporations, banks, and institutions leading this "globalization," expose them, boycott them, and ultimately replace them. Those of New Forests guilty of displacing, even murdering people simply for profit in a foreign nation, thousands of miles from their shores, don't belong in business anymore.

The darkest villains we face on earth today are not cave dwelling Islamic fundamentalists, Libyan colonels, or Americans selling sliver coins, instead, the most dangerous, degenerate, and detrimental members of the human race reside on Wall Street and in London's financial institutions.

A More Accurate KONY 2012 Campaign Poster...

Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it "Rhodesia."

Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market" was one of AFRICOM's guiding principles. Of course by "global market," the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.

In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM's expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.

Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.

For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie's "Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa," and BlackStarNews.com's "KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda."

KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM & Museveni Propaganda

March 8, 2012
BlackStarNews.com
Editorial

Invisible Children's goals initially may have been to publicize the plight of children caught in Uganda's decades-long conflicts; lately, IC has been acting as apologists for General Yoweri K. Museveni's dictatorship and the U.S. goal to impose AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Military Command) on Africa.

IC has produced a brilliant film that's making the global rounds on Facebook

It's a classic as propaganda pieces come. The short but overwhelmingly powerful film uses all the best tear-jerk techniques. In the end, the film denounces Joseph Kony, the leader of the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, while giving the impression that Museveni's dictatorship and his brutal military, which was found liable for war crimes in Democratic Republic of Congo by the International Court of Justice, has nothing to do with the atrocities committed against children in Uganda. It also doesn't inform viewers that Museveni abducted thousands of child soldiers to win his insurgency in Uganda in 1986, launching the pattern of child soldier recruitment all over Africa.

In fact, Kony's insurgency against Museveni was launched later, meaning he too learned child soldier-abductions from Museveni.

Look at the way Invisible Children exploits American children in the beginning of their documentary; they then transplant the audience to Uganda, where again they take advantage of Ugandan children, who are the victims of both the LRA and the Ugandan government's army.

The imagery are powerful. Dr. Joseph Goebbels' and Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud of this cinematic coup by Invisible Children.

If Invisible Children was in fact a serious organization that has not been co-opted by the Museveni regime and the U.S. foreign policy agenda, the organization would inform the world that General Museveni, who has now stolen three elections in a row in Uganda is the first person who deserves to be arrested.

This Ugandan and East African nightmare gets a blank check from Washington simply because he has deployed Ugandan soldiers to Somalia at the behest of the United States. So democracy, human rights abuses, and genocide, become minor nuisances as far as U.S. foreign policy goes and as far as Invisible Children cares. This is beyond hypocrisy. Those members of Invisible Children who may have supported this misguided project to send more U.S. troops to Africa because they were unwittingly deceived, should do some serious soul searching.

Please continue reading the rest of this amazing analysis from BlackStarNews.com here...

Kony 2012: Wrapping Imperialiam in "Activism"

Editor's Note: It is worth mentioning the background of "Invisible Children's" CEO, Ben Keesey and that he was formally pursuing a career at JP Morgan before suddenly becoming an advocate for a US AFRICOM invasion of resource rich Africa.

Like other fraudulent NGOs including Avaas.org who's founder is formally of Fortune 500-funded, George Soros and Zbignew Brzezinski's International Crisis Group (page 5) as well as the Soros-affiliated MoveOn.org, they exist within one degree of separation from the most depraved corporate-financier interests on earth, promoting identical agendas of invasion, war, occupation, and foreign meddling.

Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa.

Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
March 8, 2012

Edward Bernays believed that society could not be trusted to make rational and informed decisions on their own, and that guiding public opinion was essential within a democratic society. Bernays founded the Council on Public Relations and his 1928 book, Propaganda cites the methodology used in the application of effective emotional communication. He discovered that such communication is capable of manipulating the unconscious in an effort to produce a desired effect – namely, a capacity to manufacture mass social adherence in support of products, political candidates and social movements. Nearly a century after his heyday, Bernays’ methodology is apparent in almost every form of civic and consumer persuasion. The platform of social media is being used in unprecedented new ways, one such example is a new online documentary about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an extremist rebel group operating in Central Africa.

The documentary is unprecedented, not for its educational attributes but for its capacity to use visual branding, merchandising and highly potent emotional communication to influence the viewer to support US military operations in resource rich Central Africa under the pretext of capturing the LRA’s commander, Joseph Kony. The Lord’s Resistance Army was originally formed in 1987 in northwestern Uganda by members of the Acholi ethnic group, who were historically exploited as forced laborers by the British colonialists and later relegated by the nation’s dominant ethic groups following independence. Together with the Holy Spirit Movement, the LRA represented the armed wing of a resistance faction aiming to overthrow the government of current Ugandan President and staunch US military ally, Yoweri Museveni.

The LRA was originally formed to combat ethic marginalization, but soon became dominated by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed spiritual messenger of the (Christian) Holy Spirit. Kony utilized his messianic persona to lead a syncretic spiritual movement based on Acholi tribal beliefs’ and extremist Christian dogma. It is claimed that LRA seeks to establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments, however its inner ideological mythology is largely unknown. In an effort to mobilize a large scale armed resistance, the LRA routinely recruited child soldiers and forced them to commit heinous acts such as cannibalism and mutilation on others who resisted to join the rebel group during their extensive twenty-five year campaign.

KONY 2012 is directed by Jason Russell and runs just thirty minutes; the video has received over twenty million views on YouTube and Vimeo and it’s national support group on Facebook is said to gain 4,000 members each hour. The highly produced feature is narrated from the perspective of Russell and his attempt to explain the Lord’s Resistance Army to his infant son, Gavin. The video features footage from Russell’s trip to Uganda (prior to 2006, when the LRA was still operating in the region) and introduces the viewer to Jacob, a Ugandan boy who was formally recruited by the LRA as a child soldier. Russell presents various montages of ethically diverse groups of students raising their fists in the air, sporting KONY t-shirts, and scenes of mass celebration in response to President Obama signing the S. 1067: Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009.

The bill was passed without congressional approval, and allows the US to deploy military forces in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan (at the consent of those nations) in pursuit of LRA rebels. The film further advocates the requirement of public support for US military operations in the region through forms of street activism, encouraging viewers to purchase Action Kits ($30.00) and posters ($10.00) featuring images of Joseph Kony. Russell then targets specific celebrities and US policy makers and pressures them to endorse the campaign against Kony. Perhaps most absurdly, Russell suggests that without mass public support from the American public, the US would withdraw its military presence from the region.

This is the first large-scale campaign to mobilize social medialites to aggregate public support for what would otherwise be, controversial pro-intervention US foreign policy. The production relies on highly charged and often unrelated emotional triggers, which ultimately rely on the viewers sense of compassion in tandem with a lack of prior information on the subject to produce a desired result – explicitly, the villainous mythification of Kony and the mainstream acceptance of US presence in Africa through a proposed archipelago of AFRICOM military bases in the region.

The production targets an age group between thirteen and twenty-one, and uses a level of academic vocabulary appropriate for a young adult audience with a limited attention span; the narrator at one point even insists the viewer pay attention. The viewer is encouraged to form an emotional connection to Russell, as we witness unrelated footage of his child’s birth. The viewer is then subsequently associated with Russell’s role as a nurturer to his young son, before shifting to scenes of Russell nurturing the Ugandan child soldier, Jacob. Russell is shown prophetically pledging to stop the LRA to the traumatized and crying young boy. The intimate portrayal of emotion in these scenes work to further incite an reactionary response from the viewer, towards the preordained conclusion suggested in the narrative - a mass mobilization of support for the US military in their efforts to stop Jacob’s source of trauma. Bernays’ would be beside himself.

KONY 2012 is produced like any other sleek marketing campaign – instead of stimulating elements of self-satisfaction like advertisers would do to promote a product, US military intervention is justified to end an atrocious humanitarian catastrophe. The film also plays on an underlying theme of the White Man’s Burden, a notion that persons of European descent inherit a quality of guilt for their ancestors’ inclination for slavery and colonialism, requiring an activist response to finally correct the situation by “saving Africa.” During the Nigerian civil war in 1967, western media successfully used images of starving children for the first time to strengthen public support for military aid to the secessionist Republic of Biafra before rebel forces were defeated. This film attempts to purportedly “change the conversation of our culture,” however it remains a highly sophisticated refurbishment of pro-military interventionist foreign policy propaganda, dependent on dangerous subliminal messaging.

Furthermore, the film was produced by an organization called Invisible Children, Inc., who have been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide necessary information in the Bureau’s standards assessment. Invisible Children, Inc. has failed to disclose a list of sponsors (beyond the donations of American high school students), and has also earned a low rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. In a 2011 financial statement, the organization disclosed that only 31% of all the funds they receive are used for charitable purposes, with the majority allocated toward travel expenses and employee salaries. Invisible Children has also been accused of fraud and voter manipulation in a recent charity contest sponsored by Chase Bank and Facebook. The group’s Co-Founder and President, Laren Poole addressed the International Criminal Court in 2009 alongside Aryeh Neier, President of George Soros’ pro-war Open Society Institute.

Invisible Children has partnered with two other organizations, Resolve and Digitaria, to create the LRA Crisis Tracker, a digital crisis-mapping platform that broadcasts attacks allegedly committed by the LRA. On its list of corporate sponsors, Resolve lists Human Rights Watch and the International Rescue Committee. Digitaria’s website boasts commercial clients such as CBS, FOX, MTV, ESPN, Adidas, NFL, Qualcomm, NBC, National Geographic, Hasbro and Warner Brothers. While KONY 2012 attempts to portray itself as an indigenous activist movement bent on bringing justice to African children, its parent organization is affiliated with the upper echelon of the US corporate media and a network of foundation-funded pro-war civil society groups with a long history of fomenting pro-US regime change under the banner of democratic institution building.

According to Invisible Children’s own LRA Crisis Tracker, not a single case of LRA activity has been reported in Uganda since 2006. The website records ninety eight deaths in the past year, with the vast majority taking place in the northeastern Bangadi region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a tri-border expanse sharing territory with the Central African republic and South Sudan. Since December 2009, the eastern Djemah region of CAR has seen occasional LRA activity; the western Tambura region of South Sudan has experienced even less. The LRA has been in operation for over two decades, and presently remains at an extremely weakened state, with approximately 400 soldiers. Due to the extreme instability in northern DRC after decades of rebel insurgencies and Rwandan/Ugandan military incursions into the nation, it remains highly unlikely that cases of violence in the region can be sufficiently investigated before concluding LRA involvement.

The whereabouts of Joseph Kony are completely unknown; he was last seen in crossing between Sudan and CAR in 2010, according to unverified reports. The US military currently has one hundred military officers training and overseeing the Ugandan military in anti-LRA operations. Due to the complete absence of LRA activity in Uganda, it becomes feasible that the US may be planning further operations in the resource rich DRC. Over six million Congolese nationals have been killed in war since 1996, largely with US complicity. The regimes of Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda have both received millions in military aid from the United States. Since the abhorrent failure of the 1993 US intervention in Somalia, the US has relied on the militaries of Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia to carry out US interests in proxy.

Paul Kagame of Rwanda has been given free reign by the US to conduct military operations inside DRC in the on-going ethnic conflict in that region following the 1994 Rwandan genocide. For Ugandan participation in the fight against Somalia’s al Shabaab, Museveni receives $45 million dollars in military aid. The US has contributed enormous sums to these nations and now is beginning to consolidate its presence in the region under Barack Obama and AFRICOM, the United States African Command. The LRA has contributed to less than one hundred unverified deaths in the past twelve months. Considering that the United States completely ignored events in DRC and Rwanda that collectively resulted in nearly seven million deaths, their participation against the ailing Lord’s Resistance Army is completely absurd by comparison.

Through AFRICOM, the United States is seeking a foothold in the incredibly resource rich central African block in a further maneuver to aggregate regional hegemony over China. DRC is one of the world’s largest regions without an effectively functioning government. It contains vast deposits of diamonds, cobalt, copper, uranium, magnesium, and tin while producing over $1 billion in gold each year. It is entirely feasible that the US can considerably increase its presence in DRC under the pretext of capturing Joseph Kony. The US may further mobilize group forces, in addition to the use of predator drones and targeted missile strikes, inevitably killing civilians. In a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward stated that AFRICOM will further its regional presence by "operating under the principle theatre-goal of combating terrorism”. 


During an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared AFRICOM’s guiding principle as protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests.The crimes of the Lord’s Resistance Army have been documented in the past and they are truly despicable actions. Presently, the operations of the LRA have nearly dissolved and their presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is difficult to verify. While the pro-war filmmakers behind KONY 2012 naively call for the US military to assert its place in the conflict, an independent fact finding mission would be far more effective in assessing the seriousness of the LRA threat in the present day.

Editor's Note: Please also read BlackStarNews.com's story regarding Kony 2012, and about verified Western atrocities carried out in Uganda on behalf of the same corporate neo-imperial profiteering dressed up as "feel-good" activism.