Letter to the President

As many of you are aware the "Kony 2012" campaign has gone viral. While these efforts are noble and eager many of these attempts may do more harm than good. The following letter is what I relayed to the White House not long ago.


First off President Obama I’d like to commend your administration on taking a step towards fighting the LRA and attempting to discover Joseph Kony. As I am sure you aware there is a large movement known as Invisible Children which seeks to spread awareness about needs in Uganda is receiving lots of media attention for the “Stop Kony” campaign or “Kony 2012”.
These members have pressured your administration and members of Congress to find Kony and bring him to justice. I don’t dispute that this is a necessary need to stop a tyrant who is bringing war and destruction to a region I do dispute several of the “facts” invisible children uses in its movies and production.
1. According to Visible Children, an anti Invisible Children blog, the company spent only 33 percent of its $8 million-plus in spending on "direct services." Some critics also point to Charity Navigator, which grades the transparency and financial earnings of charities, and Invisible Children's 2-star rating when it comes to "accountability and "transparency" (out of four).
2. And The Guardian reports that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Army. That isn't good, because they also do plenty of bad things (arrests, torture, killings, etc.), says an expert at Human Rights Watch Africa.
3. Invisible Children also been accused of tampering with the stats they reported, inflating them. Foreign Affairs called it, "manipulated facts for strategic purposes."
To call [Kony2012's] campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, it’s portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.
This isn’t the beginning of problems seeing how there is corruption in Uganda’s government.
I don’t suggest that this administration “sits on it’s hands” and does nothing either while the people suffer. We must back successful methods for stopping autocratic warlords. I suggest working in conjunction with the African Union, United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
Thank You for your time.

MGA

Why Kanye inspires me?

Part of the problem with facebook is the status update. I still like faceboook but it's only conducive to a certain depth of knowledge.

With Befe's bites. I hope to delve deeper in to my thoughts, beliefs, views. There were probably be issues of faith, politics, music, television, film, art, culture whatever I might be thinking about at the time.

Kanye West inspires me really.

He has a middle class upbringing and never had to hustle. When I say hustle I mean he never had to sell drugs, worry about killing someone or the quote on quote regular problems of rappers. That doesn't mean that he didn't have challenges.

I like to dance in addition to just listening to music. Kanye makes music people can dance to as well as music that has a message. Let's start off at the College Dropout. This album focuses on family, faith, education, and materialism.

I'm a Christian and besides "Jesus Walks" there are other high points to this album. In the track "All Falls Down" I see the perception of success being critiqued. "We'll buy a lot of clothes but we don't really need em things we buy to cover up whats inside"
"Then I spent 400 bucks on this
Just to be like nigga you ain't up on this!"

There are lot of other great examples from this one track but I'ma let that simmer right quick.

Many people do things without questioning there own motivations. I know I do a lot. We should question and challenge why we do the things the we do.

Independent from his music he's also the sartorial style icon. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/kanye-west-fashion-2010

Back to the music. Some people familiar with his producing know that before he became an artist he used to produce for acts such as Jay-Z, Alcia Keys, Jermaine Dupri others. He had to challenge the views of people that he worked for hard to be taken as a serious artist.

After the College Dropout instead of just relying on soul samples he used Jon Brion the film score guy to add variety in his musical repertoire. There were intricate orchestral pieces overlaid with Ye rapping and rhyming. His musical proclivities continued to evolve with Graduation featuring samples from the great Steely Dan and Elton John. 808s took this evolution even farther with West singing. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had elements found on all 4 of his initial albums. My pastor once said that "Rivers flow, Reservoirs hold water. Reservoirs just hold water and don't spread it, but with rivers there is a change and movement" In life we should be rivers flowing, changing not reservoirs staying the same.

Kanye isn't afraid of controversy either. I don't have to tell you about the George Bush doesn't like black people. Not to mention him interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV awards.

I don't agree with Ye here of course. I think W. having 2 African-American secretaries of state would show he's probably not racist. There's other stuff he's done too. Like speak on the soft bigotry of low expectations and not being guilty of it.