As the Sudan heats up, so does the Kony Distraction

No one uses misdirection more than the Obama administration and when it comes to an evil, evil man named Joseph Kony, misdirection is in full swing. However, in this case, Kony is the object of the administration's spotlight, not Sudan, where it should be.

As Omar al-Bashir, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president of Sudan is beating the drums of war louder, almost by the day, against Christian South Sudan, reports about the search for Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are distracting attention from them. By nearly all accounts, Kony is far less of a factor than he was years ago. Most suspect he's not even in Uganda anymore, the country where he perpetrated the most evil. Many wonder whether Kony is even alive.

Bashir's propaganda machine is in full gear; it is whipping the Muslim masses up into a frenzy by pointing to South Sudan's withdrawal from Heglig, an oil rich border region. South Sudan claims it took over that area because Bashir's forces were launching attacks from there. Bashir is pointing to South Sudan's exit as a major victory and is fanning the flames of hate against South Sudan.

The Arab League has publicly condemned South Sudan:

The Arab League on Thursday condemned South Sudan's "military aggression" against an oil-rich border region claimed by Sudan while also supporting Sudan's right to defend itself. The statement came as some fear growing disputes between the two countries may soon lead to an all-out war.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan last year after a referendum held as part of a 2005 peace deal that ended more than 20 years of civil war, but unresolved issues such as the sharing of oil revenues and demarcation of the border have led to tensions and clashes.

Earlier this month, South Sudanese troops attacked and captured the oil-rich Heglig area. Sudan says it has since recaptured it. Earlier this week, after South Sudan said it was withdrawing its troops from Heglig, Sudan dropped bombs on the South. The U.N. said the bombs killed 16 civilians.

Sudan is a member of the Arab League, whose foreign ministers were meeting in Cairo. Their statement called on South Sudan to respect the borders between the two nations and to stop supporting rebel movements in Sudan's western Darfur region, south Kordofan and Blue Nile.

More rhetoric that should be garnering the attention of the international community is coming from Sudan's governing party, the National Congress Party (NCP). The political secretary says that South Sudan's exit from Heglig is spawning a "Sudanese Spring."

Via Sudan Times:

State media broadcast footages of massive crowds pouring to the streets in celebration of Heglig takeover by the Sudanese army on Friday, 20 April.

According to the NCP’s political secretary, Hasabu Mohamed Abdel-Rahman, the scenes were evidence of a “Sudanese spring” that silenced voices of internal dissent.

Meanwhile, though Barack Obama has publicly encouraged Sudan and South Sudan to do everything possible to avoid war, he only seems to be using one of the Alinsky tactics on Kony, and not al-Bashir. That would be Rule #11:

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

Obama has obviously picked a target in Joseph Kony. He has chosen to shift and spread the blame when it comes to al-Bashir and South Sudan. Why?

Sam Childers, a man who has fought for the safety of Ugandan and South Sudanese children for nearly a decade and a half, argues that Kony has been funded by al-Bashir for years. Yet, Obama seems to be more interested in pursuing the path of moral equivalency between Sudan and South Sudan instead of identifying al-Bashir as the real problem.

Here is Childers in a video message that came out when Invisible Children's Kony 2012 went viral back in March:

Obama invokes the name Joseph Kony as Sudan inches closer to war

The fervor surrounding the viral YouTube video, Kony 2012, died down several weeks ago but at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday, Barack Obama brought up the name Joseph Kony again. The timing and the place of his doing this is interesting because it comes at a time when Sudan and South Sudan are on the brink of all out war and genocide at the hands of the man who has funded Kony for many years - Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.

Via USA Today:

President Obama made his strongest vow yet to track down African warlord Joseph Kony, pledging today to "bring this madman to justice."

Obama told listeners at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that U.S. advisers will continue helping Uganda and other governments pursue all members of the Lord's Resistance Army led by Kony.

"It's part of our regional strategy to end the scourge that is the LRA and help realize a future where no African child is stolen from their family and no girl is raped and no boy is turned into a child soldier," Obama said.

Kony is an evil guy; there's no disputing that. The problem is the disproportionate attention he's getting relative to the extremely volatile situation between Sudan and South Sudan. The man responsible for funding Kony's atrocities is not only a Muslim Brotherhood guy but he's the president of Sudan.

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that Bashir has instructed his forces to "purge" the borders of South Sudanese, which is predominantly Christian. The rhetoric from Sudan's leader comes across as being more than just saber rattling.

Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has given his army a carte blanche to use “the language of the gun” against neighboring South Sudan in retaliation of the latter’s occupation of Heglig disputed region two weeks ago.

“I direct the army to restore [our] rights and repulse any aggression from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army [SPLA] of the south on any inch of the country and at any time” Bashir declared while addressing dozens of ululating Sudanese troopers at the station of Martyr Al-Fadil in Heglig on Monday.

Heglig was occupied almost two weeks ago by the SPLA before being liberated on Friday by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), according to Khartoum, whereas Juba said it voluntarily withdrew troops in response to international pressure.

The fighting around Heglig, which contains oilfields accounting for almost half of Sudan’s daily output of 115,000 barrels, sparked fears of a full-scale war between the two neighbors as well as heightened war rhetoric, especially on the part of Khartoum.

Al-Bashir, who arrived in Heglig unannounced to inspect the damage Khartoum accused Juba of inflicting on the town’s oil facilities, reiterated that there will be no return to talking with South Sudan unless its ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) is gone.


"One of us has to go" he said before adding that our “dialogue with these people will be through the gun because they only understand the language of the gun.”

Regarding Heglig, South Sudan also maintains that the reason for taking control of the region in the first place was because Bashir's forces were launching attacks from there.

Giving the capture of Kony more attention than what's going on in neighboring Sudan comes across as a distraction, especially in light of the fact that Kony's genocidal war has been funded by Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, a Muslim Brotherhood guy. Moreover, Kony's effectiveness has been greatly reduced over the years. Addressing Kony's genocide at the Holocaust museum seems like a natural fit but a much better fit would be addressing the Brotherhood's Bashir, the guy who is both responsible for funding Kony and threatening to slaughter a countless number of South Sudanese right now.

For more on the Kony / Sudan connection, go here, here, here, and here.

Video: Statement from Invisible Children CEO about Kony 2012 Producer's Naked Meltown

Ok, I'm still trying to figure out how an "exhausted" and "dehydrated" man remedies those problems by running through the streets of San Diego, naked with the midday sun beating down on him, but I digress. Kony 2012 producer Jason Russell did all of that and was shockingly not even arrested for the behavior.

The video message at the bottom of this post, from Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey, attempts to shed additional light on the reasons for Russell's outburst while assuring viewers that the Kony 2012 campaign has not ended.

Keesey starts out by saying that "these last two weeks have been.. really tough." That's a bit ironic considering what the victims shown in the Kony 2012 video have gone through; he probably should have left that part out. Nonetheless, the position from Keesey is that Invisible Children was hoping to get a half a million sets of eyeballs to watch their video and that they weren't prepared for what they got - 100 Million. He then points to all of that attention bearing down on Russell, who didn't know how to handle it. His way of doing so was apparently to call even more attention to himself by running naked through the streets of San Diego. I'm sorry, I'm having a tough time buying this.

These guys are well-intentioned but they have no clue what they're dealing with. Joseph Kony - the guy they're after - is a Muslim Brotherhood pawn. Until they're able to see the bigger picture, they could do far more harm than good. They've already set out to make Joseph Kony famous by selling merchandise that bears his likeness. This too is dangerous because it very well could lead to the Che Guevara effect, where people like Carlos Santana wear t-shirts that make a mass murderer iconic.

Mr. Keesey, instead of blindly pressing forward, perhaps you should take Russell's behavior as a sign that you're in over your heads, however well-intentioned you may be.

Via the LA Times:


To the Invisible Children Family from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

How are these Four Men Connected?

Ok, clockwise from top left: President Barack Obama, Hollywood celebrity and Obama shill George Clooney, Invisible Children filmmaker and producer of Kony 2012 Jason Russell at lunchtime on a San Diego street corner, and Northern Sudan President / Muslim Brotherhood backed Omar al-Bashir. How on earth are these four men connected, you ask? Look at the photos and I explain at bottom.

Let's start with the naked guy, Jason Russell. He is the producer of the wildly viral Kony 2012 video. The stated intent of the film was to make Joseph Kony famous. Kony, a sick and evil warlord who is much less effective today than he was five years ago, is responsible for tens of thousands of murders in Uganda; his soldiers would raid villages, make the children kill their parents and then turn those children into soldiers for his sick, sick army. On its face, the video was produced for a good cause - to garner international support against Kony so he could be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Obama administration endorsed the film, as did Hollywood celebrities like Oprah and P. Diddy. Russell stood to be a major player on the international stage but in the film, he is heard saying that Kony "is supported by no one." This is absolutely and demonstrably false. For years, Kony has been supported by the man pictured to Russell's left - Omar al-Bashir.

On Thursday, March 15th, Russell took to the streets without clothes and behaved in a most bizarre fashion; he allegedly "touched himself," vandalized cars (where did he hide the spray paint?), and repeatedly smacked the sidewalk with his hands while apparently doing a monkey impression.

Interestingly and coincidentally, on the same day (possibly at the exact same time) Russell was pounding sidewalk, Clooney was meeting with Barack Obama at the White House. The two men allegedly discussed Clooney's concerns about what was going on in the Sudan. Did Russell feel crowded out? If he knew that Clooney was drawing attention to Bashir (the real power behind Kony), did he conclude that Kony was being rendered irrelevant? Did it cause him to go stark raving mad on the streets of San Diego in broad daylight? For the record, the reason given for Russell's naked outburst was that he was exhausted and dehydrated but not on any medication. If we accept that premise, can you think of a better reason for someone to do what Russell is pictured doing above?

One day later (after Russell pounded pavement and Clooney met with Obama), the Hollywood celebrity - along with several far left Democratic congressmen and Ben Jealous, the head of the NAACP - stormed the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest Bashir (pictured at bottom left). The photo of Clooney above was taken shortly after his arrest for the incident. Though he denied discussing the incident with Obama beforehand, the timing of all of this is mighty coincidental.

Bashir is the Muslim Brotherhood's guy in the Sudan so why would Obama be supporting Clooney's efforts to protest a Muslim Brotherhood guy? The Obama administration has been Muslim Brotherhood-friendly in practically every respect since the president spoke in Cairo back in 2009.

The answer may be found in the name Hasan al-Turabi. He is much more radical than Bashir (if that's possible). He is also more of a Muslim Brotherhood loyalist than is Bashir, who is more of a tea leaf-reading political animal; he formed a very serviceable alliance of understanding with Egypt's Mubarak while jailing Turabi. Mubarak isn't in power anymore and the Brotherhood very well may prefer Turabi to Bashir.

If Obama really wanted to please the Muslim Brotherhood, he might be interested in seeing Bashir replaced by Turabi; that would make Russell and Clooney both useful idiots.

There you have it.

Video: Kony 2012 Producer gets Naked, Vandalizes cars and Masturbates; Police say nothing Illegal

Uh, where do you go with this one? First, here is video of Kony 2012 Producer Jason Russell, shot from what appears to be an apartment balcony. This video isn't too graphic. It's from a distance and shows Russell repeatedly smacking his hands on the sidewalk.

Via GWP:



Ok, got it? Now, take a look at the news report from San Diego's NBC affiliate. Note how at the end, after the reporter in the field kicks it back to the studio, that the male anchor actually says that Russell did nothing "illegal."

View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com.

In an MSNBC report on the story, a spokeswoman for the San Diego police department explained why Russell's actions did not warrant a criminal behavior designation:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Russell's wife, Danica, was also quoted in the MSNBC story as saying that her husband behaved so bizarrely because he was... tired:

Russell "did some irrational things brought on by extreme exhaustion and dehydration," his wife said Friday night, a day after he was detained over reports of a man masturbating and acting strangely, NBC News reported.

Danica Russell, in a family statement obtained by NBC News, suggested sudden attention and criticism of the film may have led to her husband's behavior.

"We thought a few thousand people would see the film, but in less than a week, millions of people around the world saw it," Danica Russell said. "While that attention was great for raising awareness about Joseph Kony, it also brought a lot of attention to Jason -- and, because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal, and Jason took them very hard.

Nothing will divert attention from yourself more than running around naked in broad daylight. Here is Russell's appearance on MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on March 8th:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

George Clooney's arrest, Kony 2012, and the Muslim Brotherhood

Note: though this is a "stand alone" post, it's also a bit of a continuation from this March 10th post about the fervor surrounding Kony 2012 being somewhat misplaced. While calling attention to Joseph Kony was a good thing, it ignored the source of his funding - Northern Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.

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On Thursday, March 15th, Hollywood actor George Clooney met with President Barack Obama. On Friday, March 16th, Clooney was arrested after storming the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest Bashir. While speaking to reporters outside the White House following his meeting with Obama one day before his arrest, Clooney spoke about it being important to keep public attention focused on Sudan:

“It doesn't mean that this has to fall completely off of the chart,” he said. “And so, our job is to find periods of time when it is most crucial to talk about it, when there's something that we may be able to do to bring attention at a crucial moment and try to keep that in the public eye. You can't have it be there all the time.”

One day later, Clooney - an avowed Obama supporter - did just that, along with multiple far left wing Democrats, to include Rep. James Moran (D-VA) and NAACP President Ben Jealous. The Daily Caller's Nicholas Ballasy interviewed Clooney as he was being led away in handcuffs. Note Clooney's response when the DC reporter asked him if this issue had come up one day earlier when the actor met with Obama. Clooney denies any correlation and promptly says he has to move on.


Do you believe Clooney and Obama didn't discuss this one day prior to taking a pack of Democratic Congressmen with him? That strains credulity at best.

That aside, my initial reaction was that this was great news; it didn't matter who was protesting Omar al-Bashir because he is so evil. Bashir is a far better target for public opposition than is Kony; the former has been the guy responsible for funding the latter's genocide. He's also backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Something was conspicuously absent in the media frenzy surrounding Clooney's arrest, however. Where was the reporting on Bashir's Brotherhood ties?

Perhaps it would make sense to go back one year and take a look at an article penned by Andrew S. Natsios, former U.S. Envoy to Sudan and current Georgetown University professor who has written a comprehensive book on the region. As the Mubarak regime was in its final throes last year, Natsios identified a Muslim Brotherhood figure that would be - if you can believe it - far worse than Bashir.

Via NPR / TNR:

...within the Islamist and Arab nationalist camp, there is a further split: between the National Congress Party, led by current President Omar Al Bashir; and the more strident Islamists, who follow Hasan Al Turabi, one of the founders of the country's Muslim Brotherhood. Originally, Bashir and Turabi were allies. They came to power together in a 1989 coup. Bashir became the head of government, though Turabi had been the coup's mastermind. Together, the two men established the first Sunni Islamist state; extended Sharia law (first imposed by the former Sudanese dictator Numayri) through a new Islamist court system; Islamized the financial and banking systems; and prosecuted a brutal war in the Christian, non-Arab south in which more than two million people died.

If the name Hasan Al Turabi sounds familiar, there is a reason:

Six months after taking power, Turabi orchestrated a long-term alliance between Iran and Sudan; they remain among each other's closest allies. It was Turabi who invited Osama bin Laden to live and work in Sudan during the 1990s. Bin Laden married Turabi's niece, and went into business with Turabi's son, trading in Arabian horses.

If I may digress slightly, any alliance between Sudan and Iran formed at a time when bin Laden was running terrorist training camps in Sudan further bolsters the ruling of a federal judge that said Iran was behind the September 11th attacks.

While the Muslim Brotherhood has supported Bashir, Natsios provides sufficient evidence that it supports Turabi more. Despite his genocidal ways, prior to the Arab Spring, Bashir was able to read the tea leaves and play ball with establishment power structures better than Turabi:

Bashir and his party, the National Congress Party (NCP), moved away from Turabi's radicalism. While Turabi was a true militant, it soon became clear that the only thing the NCP is militant about is their own survival. In 1995, an offshoot of the Muslim Brothers, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, attempted to assassinate Egyptian President Mubarak at an Organization for African Unity conference in Addis Ababa. Egyptian intelligence believed the plot was orchestrated by Turabi. Sudan and Egypt nearly went to war over the incident, but ultimately Bashir decided to de-escalate tensions with Mubarak and distance himself from Turabi. A year later, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan because of pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia, and Turabi was forced to find a home for his friend in Afghanistan.

This all begs a very important question: Now that Mubarak is out and the Muslim Brotherhood is in relative to Egypt (heck, all of North Africa for that matter), which of these two leaders does the Brotherhood likely prefer at this time? My money is on Turabi.

Again, from Natsios:

By 1999, Sudan's two major political figures were locked in a raw power struggle: Turabi, as speaker of the National Assembly, attempted to reduce Bashir's constitutional powers and increase his own, causing a bitter rift between the two men, which led to Turabi's ouster. Since 2000, Turabi has been repeatedly imprisoned whenever he threatened or attacked the Bashir government. Turabi's purge healed the breach between Sudan and Egypt, and Mubarak's government vowed that it would never allow Turabi to rule Sudan again.

It's quite obvious that there has been a power struggle between Bashir and Turabi for years. As long as Mubarak was in charge of Egypt, Bashir was safe and Turabi was at a serious disadvantage. That has changed completely. As we now know, Mubarak's government is no longer calling the shots when it comes to Sudan; the Muslim Brotherhood is.

There are significant signs that Brotherhood leadership is not happy with Bashir. He presided over an agreement that granted South Sudan's independence last year. Further salt in the wound is the fact that South Sudan almost unanimously elected a devout Christian to lead them.

If there's one thing we've learned, it's that the Brotherhood doesn't like Christian lands in general and rich Christian lands in particular. Making matters even worse for Bashir's relations with the fundamentalists is the fact that South Sudan contains 80% of the region's oil reserves. Natsios wrote a piece recently that the North and the South are engaged in a bout of political brinksmanship over it. Bashir's government won't allow the South to ship its oil through the North to the Port of Sudan without gouging to get its cut. As a consequence, the South is working with Kenya to construct a pipeline southward to the Port of Mombasa.

An unintended consequence of this brinksmanship is that China is not getting its Sudanese oil, which makes it very unhappy.

Something else at play here could be for the Brotherhood to put so much pressure on Bashir that he is forced to do its bidding. Again, from Natsios:

Both Khartoum and Juba have a history of brinkmanship. And Bashir is once again edging up to a precipice -- he seems to think invading the South would settle the impasse. Last week, along with his minister of defense, Abdel Rahim Muhammed Hussein, Bashir told 700 army officers to prepare for war.

This brings us back to George Clooney. By employing the same strategy against Bashir that was used against Kony - demonization via the Alinsky-style spotlight - who is Clooney helping? Is he not helping the Muslim Brotherhood to become more fundamentalist? In fact, contrary to his intentions, Clooney's actions may help Bashir to decide to go to war with the South.

Again, I keep coming back to one very simple fact. In nearly every instance, the policies of the Obama administration have benefited the Muslim Brotherhood. Why wouldn't its policy toward Sudan do the same?

What is the alternative to Bashir? What's going to fill the vacuum if / when he is arrested?

In virtually all of the conflicts across the Middle East today, the Muslim Brotherhood's fingerprints are all found. Yet, it somehow manages to remain the name that is rarely mentioned except in terms of the countless elections it seems to be winning.

The Saul Alinsky-friendly Obama administration has come out in support of Kony 2012 and quite possibly egged Clooney on when it came to storming the Sudanese embassy to protest Bashir. If both premises are correct, it's near perfect implementation of two of Alinsky's rules - Rules 6 and 11:

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

Going after Kony and Bashir gives both the producers of Kony 2012 and George Clooney a tactic they enjoy. Singling out Kony and Bashir also fulfills rule number 11 if the endgame involves empowering the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan.

Kony 2012 producer Jason Russell and George Clooney may be well-intentioned but they're also quite likely being used.

Northern Sudan demanding Christians to leave

This bit of news is particularly relevant in light of the viral Kony 2012 video which has been endorsed by the Obama administration. Northern Sudan, led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Omar al-Bashir, is now threatening all Christians to leave the region in less than a month. Remember, as long as the world's focus is on Joseph Kony, it's off Bashir, which could prove deadly to thousands of Sudanese Christians.

Via ENI News:

Sudanese Christians who have barely a month to leave the north or risk being treated as foreigners are starting to move, but Christian leaders are concerned that the 8 April deadline set by Islamic-majority Sudan is unrealistic.

"We are very concerned. Moving is not easy ... people have children in school. They have homes ... It is almost impossible," Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Khartoum archdiocese auxiliary told ENInews in a telephone interview on 7 March.

Sudan in February announced the deadline for the former citizens it had stripped of nationality after South Sudan's January 2011 vote to secede. The ultimatum will affect an estimated 500,000-700,000 people, who are mainly Christians of southern origin that still live in the north.

Many of them fled north during the long civil war fought between the Government of Sudan and the former rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. They have lived there for decades together with children who were born there. Few have ties with South Sudan.

Remember, Machine Gun Preacher Sam Childers said the following in response to the now insanely viral Kony 2012 video:

"If all eyes are not focused on South Sudan, what Bashir is doing there, within the next two months, we could have another genocide in South Sudan. It needs to be stopped NOW."

Looks like he's right...

Last month, the Sudan Tribune reported that the Muslim Brotherhood was leaning on Bashir hard to enforce Sharia law. In essence, the forcing of Northern Christians from their homes is a directive coming straight from the same Muslim Brotherhood that the Obama administration's policies have benefited at practically every turn.

This topic dominated my March 11th program which is available for mp3 download.

Back to the Kony 2012 video, endorsed by both P. Diddy and Oprah. Focusing on Kony exclusively is counter-productive and actually helps Bashir (Muslim Brotherhood) by taking the spotlight off of Sudan. It's like treating a leg infected with gangrene by cutting off the little toe and then telling the patient that he's cured.

Again, here's the Kony 2012 video that the Obama administration supports. Yes, Kony represents the little toe in the gangrene allegory:



h/t Weasel Zippers

Video: U.W. Professor on African Studies not impressed with Kony 2012

Yesterday, I wrote about Machine Gun Preacher Sam Childers and his reaction to the Kony 2012 video. In essence, he said the effort is nice but that Joseph Kony is only a small part of the problem. If people were serious about dealing with the real problem, attention should be focused on Northern Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir.

Now, here is Daniel Hoffman, Associate Professor of African Studies at the University of Washington. He basically says that Kony is nowhere near as important as he was five to ten years ago and that he isn't even in Uganda anymore. While he tries not to be critical of Kony 2012, he clearly is when asked to compare Kony to other problems in the region, though he doesn't mention Bashir.

Pay particularly close attention at the 6:00 mark. Hoffman says that if Kony is removed from power, it could take international attention off the region. Again, this is what Childers warned about when he implied that Bashir could commit further genocide against the Christian south if attention is diverted away from it. Bashir is already getting significant pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood to implement stricter forms of Sharia law.

In short, if the Kony 2012 campaign is successful, it could leave the brand new Republic of South Sudan in even more vulnerable, which is exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood wants.



h/t Ted Shoebat

Machine Gun Preacher on Kony 2012 (Muslim Brotherhood angle)

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Kony 2012 video and that while it espouses the noble goal of removing Joseph Kony from the Uganda region, there is also a uniquely surreal aspect to it. The man known as the Machine Gun Preacher, Sam Childers knows more about the region than anyone. He has been on the ground there for fourteen years. He builds orphanages for children and protects them with actual weaponry. In short, he's not your typical missionary.

Childers has issued a response to Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video and while he congratulates the charitable organization for drawing attention to Joseph Kony, he stresses that Kony is just a "small part" of the  problem. The larger part? Northern Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, who according to Childers, has been the source of Kony's funding for years. Any guesses as to what group Bashir has the support of?

The Muslim Brotherhood.



The success of the Kony 2012 video was no accident. Obama signed an order back in October that sent approximately 100 U.S. Military personnel to Uganda. Six months later, Kony 2012 is made. Yet, there is no mention of Bashir or the group to which he is beholden and has benefited most from the Arab Spring - the Muslim Brotherhood.

Also, did you catch what Childers said beginning at the 3:00 mark?

Take note:

"If all eyes are not focused on South Sudan, what Bashir is doing there, within the next two months, we could have another genocide in South Sudan. It needs to be stopped NOW."

Why is this important? Because just last summer - three months before Obama signed the order that sent 100 military personnel to arrest Kony - South Sudan gained its independence from North Sudan and Bashir.

Via the New York Times:

"The eyes of the world are now on us," said South Sudan President Salva Kiir, who was inaugurated during a scorching midday ceremony. Kiir stressed that the people of South Sudan must advance their country together, and unite as countrymen first, casting aside allegiances to the dozens of tribes that reside here.

Saturday meant that South Sudan and its black tribesmen would for the first time be linked politically with sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya and Uganda are already laying strong economic ties with their northern neighbor, an oil-rich country that may one day ship its oil to a Kenyan port, instead of through the pipelines controlled by Khartoum.

"From today our identity is southern and African, not Arabic and Muslim," read a hand-painted sign that one man carried as he walked through the crowds.

Again, back to the quote from Childers in response to the Kony 2012 video:

"If all eyes are not focused on South Sudan, what Bashir is doing there, within the next two months, we could have another genocide in South Sudan. It needs to be stopped NOW."

Incidentally, the Jerusalem Center identifies South Sudan's new president, Salva Kiir as a "devout Christian."

"Kiir is a devout Christian and attends services regularly at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the Southern Sudanese capital, Juba.

Kiir understands the difficulties facing Southern Sudan — Muslim states of the region (Chad, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) are obviously not excited to accept the appearance of a new Christian state that ostensibly has ties with Israel and enjoys the support of the American Jewish lobby.

Ok, according to Childers, if attention is directed away from Bashir, then South Sudan is in grave danger. Kony 2012 is a video that has quite mysteriously garnered tens of thousands of views in just a few days. That is not typical of organic YouTube hits. In fact, its length (30 minutes) actually makes viral viewing even more difficult. Perhaps the volume of leftist Hollywood celebrities and staunch Obama supporters like Oprah and P. Diddy have assisted in the video's success.

If there is one thing we've learned about the Obama administration, it's that when it wants to ignore something that doesn't fit its agenda, it's very, very good at doing so. Obama has endorsed the video. White House spokesman Jay Carney jumped on the Kony 2012 bandwagon just days after it was posted to YouTube.



Ok, again, if Childers is right about South Sudan needing to be protected by being a central area of focus, why does Kony 2012 seek to make an adjacent region that central area of focus?

Practically every policy of the Obama administration has benefited the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Arab Spring. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, and now Syrian rebels are all the beneficiaries of Obama's policies. In every instance, those policies have worked toward giving rise to the Muslim Brotherhood. So does all of this attention on Kony actually serve to help the Brotherhood's leader in North Sudan less than a year after the oil-rich South Sudan gained its independence and elected a devout Christian leader?

If so, it would be consistent with the administration's Middle Eastern policies to date.

For the record, Childers has far more credibility than the producers of Kony 2012. Yet, in the words of Winston Churchill, "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on."

I've posted the Kony 2012 video in question below. Note its left wing slant (Peace logo, raised fists, etc.). That is also another sign that the Obama administration doesn't just endorse it but is likely involved.

As of this writing, the video has 65 million views in under one week.



***UPDATE***According to the Sudan Tribune just last month, the Muslim Brotherhood is demanding that Bashir become even more extremist. Why? In response to South Sudan's independence and the rise of Christianity there:

A coalition of radical Islamic groups in Sudan has threatened to unseat the country’s President Omer Al-Bashir if he fails to heed demands for a constitution based on Shariah laws.

Sudan’s far-right and Islamist groups have been lobbying to have the country’s 2005 Transitional Constitution replaced with an Islamic one after the mainly Christian South Sudan gained independence in July last year.

To that end, they formed the Islamic Constitution Front (ICF) and proposed the Draft Constitution of Sudan, which is based entirely on Shariah law and according to a report earlier this month, prohibits the appointment of women in the judiciary.

If you listen to Childers, Bashir is more evil than Kony. If the Muslim Brotherhood is more evil than Bashir, shouldn't that be a bit of a clue about what we're dealing with in the Middle East?

God help us.

***UPDATE #2: 3/11/12***According to Kuzleem, there is no information on when Machine Gun Preacher will be released on DVD. The film was released in theaters back in September of 2011. Note the screen shot says DVD release dates for movies are usually issued 45-80 days after opening in theaters. Here we are 170 days after that opening and not only hasn't a DVD release date been given but the estimate for that release was January of 2012 and has come and gone.

There is an interesting dynamic at work here. Kony 2012 has generated a lot of interest in apprehending Joseph Kony but as in all Community Organizing strategies, organizers cannot be allowed to get bored or move on. Whenever this film (MGP) is released on DVD, it very well may keep interest in Kony from dying out. However, interest in Sam Childers may rise as well and his take doesn't seem to be in lock step with those behind Kony 2012.