Jason Russell Arrested: Co-Founder Of Invisible Children, 'Kony 2012' Creator, Detained In San Diego

[Generic Other]

Last edited Fri Mar 16, 2012, 07:24 PM - Edit history (1)

NBC San Diego is reporting that Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children, the advocacy group behind the "Kony 2012" viral video, was detained at 11:30 am on Thursday morning for allegedly masturbating in public.

According to TMZ, Russell was allegedly under the influence of alcohol. Police also told TMZ that he was vandalizing cars.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/jason-russell-arrested-invisible-children-kony_n_1354455.html

Did anyone else see this coming?

on edit: OMG, there's video.

http://www.tmz.com/

[Richardo]

1. Care to reword that question?

[Generic Other]

4. ewwwwwww

You are bad!!!

[xchrom]

2. Good. Nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. Why? nt

[ellisonz]

3. Cocaine is a hell of a drug. n/t

[joeybee12]

5. Unless they show he had been arrested or questioned before about stuff like this...

I will reserve judgment and simply note the curious timing of his fall from grace.

[Son of Gob]

6. I'd say any public masturbation is curious timing.

So unless he has a history of masturbating in public you're going to doubt the story?

[joeybee12]

13. And of vandalizing cars...any sort of public disturbance...

I don't know what to think of the Kony 2012 thing, but he did make some enemies with it.

[randome]

7. Even my daughters saw through this when it came out.

What a waste of everyone's time and money. And thanks to this buffoon, real problems may go unaddressed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Well it is good to see that SDPD has officers to do this

since most of Central is still baby seating Occupy.

Oh let me add the obligatory

(And if he was vandalizing cars, dime on dollar all he will get is a misdemeanor, this is not an occupier after all)

[Generic Other]

9. Did he claim to be an occupier?

I didn't know that. I guess he was occupied in a sense!

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. No he did not

but I was actually making a comment on how willfully over stretched the department is.

[Lint Head]

11. LSD? Meth?

[FreeState]

12. Jesus

He is a holy roller no?

[ellisonz]

14. That video is interesting to say the least.

A little inducing...

[Dawson Leery]

15. Yoweri Museveni's Apartheid Jerry Falwell Liberty University frontman

seems to lack the morals which his kind preach.

[ellisonz]

16. Or he has a mental illness...

Just saying.

[FreeState]

17. That is my guess, I hope he gets the help he needs n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

20. The getting naked part tells me something.

When my Mental Health patients were off their meds, they invariably would shed clothes..it was very common. Happened with Bi-polar and schizophrenia patients.
Never saw it with people who were on crack or PCP, only in diagnosed bi-polar or Schizo.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. Is this actually the guy who made the Kony video?

I'm not entirely clear what Invisible Children's role is in funding said video.

It remains a mystery to me why folks would have a problem seeing attention brought to the ongoing genocide in the Congo, or cheer the mysteriously timed emotional breakdown of the person "behind" it (yet another example why self-appointed figureheads are deleterious to a mass movement) yet gloss over the similar crimes of persons advocating for intervention in Libya, e.g. Hillary Clinton's near-admission that we had Gaddafi assassinated for no particular reason other than he was in our way. So I have no reason to reserve judgement about this guy -- he sounds like a creep -- but I fail to see how it's relevant to the larger issue -- except to wonder if someone slipped him a hotshot.

BTW, the Kony 2012 people made clear what they were doing when they discussed producing the documentary / short film last year... I don't see any big conspiracy here. The fact that they are religious is irrelevant... the fact that they want military intervention (which people who supported in Libya oppose in the Congo, as I pointed out on DU a year ago) doesn't affect the issue either of whether the video itself has any merit. Death of the Author applies.

[Generic Other]

21. It's that all the money they raise is for themselves

$1.7 million in US employee salaries
$357,000 in Film costs
$850,000 in Production costs
$685,000 in Computer equipement
$244,000 in "professional services" (DC lobbyists)
$1.07 million in travel expenses
$400,000 in office rent in San Diego
$16,000 in Entertainment etc

People hate scams.

[FreeState]

22. That and they are tied to some pretty horrific people

If you haven't done so look up the Kill The Gays Bill in Uganda. While ending the problems in Uganda and other places is admirable, there are other organizations that are more effective and not tied to extremist.

http://www.towleroad.com/2012/03/kony.html

Alternet has a lengthy article about links between Invisible Children and The Caster Family Foundation, one of the biggest financial backers of the push for California’s Proposition 8.

Also tied to IC are Lou Engle's The Call and other ministries including Discovery Institute, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, The Fellowship Foundation, and Ed Silvoso’s Harvest Evangelism. All received funding from the National Christian Foundation. Several are tied directly to Uganda's "kill the gays" bill.

Alternet adds:

Why does it matter, if Invisible Children was funded by controversial donors? Two reasons - one, we can assume those donors thought IC aligned with their agenda - which is antagonistic to LGBT rights. Two, it fits an emerging pattern in which Invisible Children appears selectively concerned about crimes committed by Joseph Kony but indifferent to crimes, perhaps on a bigger scale, committed by their provisional partner, the government of Uganda - whose president shot his way into power using child soldiers, before Joseph Kony began using child soldiers. Like Kony, the government of Uganda was also indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005, for human rights abuses and looting in the DRC Congo (PDF file of ICC ruling against Uganda). Like Kony, the Ugandan army preys upon civilians and is currently accused, by Western human rights groups, with raping and looting in the DRC Congo, where it is hunting for Kony. In the late 1990s, Uganda helped spark a conflict in DRC Congo that, by the middle of the next decade it is estimated, had killed up to 5.4 million civilians, more than any conflict since World War Two.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Yes, but keep in mind that the US-backed, Western-educated dictator whom Museveni overthrew was a

mass murderer who turned the homeland of said child soldiers into hamburger and burned their families out en masse.