Uganda be kiddin' me*: Kony 2012, Ugandan Oil Boom, and America's Next Bin Laden

A parody pic by a hadtodoittoo posted here.

Kony 2012 has been perceived by many as one of the most effective advocacy strategies in the recent age of viral memes and social networks. Created and launched by the non-government organization Invisible Children, it has a simple objective: to stop and arrest international criminal Josephy Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army in any way possible. It's strategy is simple as well: get as much international support to push the United States (and possibly other states - they are very ambiguous on this) to do its usual thing of saving the world. But an originally all-American movement, the mobilization of support will naturally target the US populace. It's tactic: a year long spectacle of raising awareness, selling campaign paraphernalia, lobbying and leveraging  important personalities, and finally, direct action on April - seemingly riding the fad of creative protest actions sparked by of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Unfortunately for them, Kony 2012, which gained considerable success in its air war - million hits for its videos, #stopkony trending globally, and sparking a global discourse on Africa and the existence of Christian fundamentalist militias (not unlike that created by the joint US and Philippines forces during the late 1980s, but more on this later) - backfired. Various criticisms had been hurled, from the mild accusation of oversimplification and misplaced attention, to moderate criticism on its failure to highlight and expose Uganda's poor human rights record - in effect condoning or even supporting it, to a vicious assault on Invisible Children itself - exposing the fact that very little actually goes to Uganda and African nations. Then there is also its push for US intervention, which flies in the face of sovereignty issues and the reputation itself of the US military. There are more comprehensive criticisms here, here, and here. (All of these prompted Invisible Children to issue a reply here).

Invisible children graphic. Click image to see it.
Picture from the Guardian.

But, as we know, the issues can can still go deeper. For instance, we can think about how the Kony 2012 phenomenon is placed in the current political milieu. After all, Joseph Kony, the repressive Ugandan state, as well as "US-as-the-policeman-of-the-world" concept didn't emerge in a vacuum. There is always a historical and political context behind any phenomenon.

One of my most insightful friends Primo Morillo had this hypothesis about Kony 2012 and Uganda, a hypothesis I want to share with you. He proposed that Kony 2012's timing is impeccable - in fact, it coincides with the fact that there is recently discovered oil in Uganda. Verifying this assertion, I found out that there are indeed recent interests on a "Ugandan oil boom". This is what prompted me to write this post - which would center on Kony 2012 and the probable US interest on Ugandan oil amid rising oil prices, and its more important implication - that the US establishment is to create pretext for its petro-imperialism, similar to the demonization of Muammar Gaddafi. But I go further and propose that Kony is America's new Osama Bin Laden, meant to justify military intervention in resource-rich Africa.

Setting Fair Oil Prices for the Filipino People (by Rep. Walden Bello)

Just this Monday, Rep. Walden Bello, a progressive Filipino solon, world-renowned economist and the originator of the "deglobalization" movement, recently spoke in halls of Congress on the need to set fair oil prices and increase income in a time of inflation. A series of urgent demands for relief, Bello's proposals perfectly complements Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Transport's (PMT) strategic and medium-term "Proposals to End the Recurring Oil Crisis" (http://bit.ly/endoilcrisis).

This is a must-read for policy-makers who are considering a lasting but feasible urgent solution on the oil inflation problem. Enjoy!

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Setting Fair Oil Prices for the Filipino People
Privilege Speech of Rep. Walden Bello, May 16, 2011

A year after its election, the administration can point to the high economic growth rate, particularly in agriculture, as one of its achievements.

However, perhaps more than economic growth, people prize economic stability, and the way things are going right now, there is a sense of things slipping out of control. The main challenge citizens want the administration to meet is, far and away, the economy.  And among the economic issues, inflation receives the highest priority as a problem that must be addressed by the government in a recent Pulse Asia survey, with some 53 per cent of respondents citing it.

Rep. Walden Bello

Proposals to Resolve the Recurring Oil Crisis in the Philippines

I have written a piece, originally for Palag Na! but later for Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Transportasyon (PMT), that is meant to consolidate and give a framework for proposals, both popularly demanded and what we managed to come up with, to resolve the recurring oil crisis in the Philippines. This is in the context of the oil price crisis of mid-2008. But the proposals, I think, remain valid even if the financial crisis and the global recession eroded the price of petroleum recently.

As with any alternative, the long-term and strategic changes needed is inevitably tied with the short-term and the mid-term - so the short-term measure of regulating the domestic downstream oil industry is inevitably related to the mid-term measure of supply-side management and industrial structure and the long-term vision of demand-side management towards oil independence, assuming oil to be a finite resource. Realizing these proposals, of course, must be accompanied with better service standards from the end of the transportation industry (and workers) themselves, something which can be developed later on.

Economic Terror: E-VAT and the Looming Consumer Crisis

Together with the political crisis that grips the presidency of Gloria Arroyo comes another crisis brutal in its scope and consequence. With a vote of 15-0, the Supreme Court (SC) finally decided that the Expanded Value Added Tax (E-VAT) Law is constitutional. While hopes of the administration for greater revenues are high after a legal success, the Filipino public in turn succumbs in fear of astronomical prices.