Translations and Mirrors of Government Explained

My video Government Explained has been mirrored by several different people on youtube. It has also been translated into several languages and has been dubbed into German. This post is a collections of all these different versions.  Total views across all versions are now over half a million!


Original Upload

Government Explained - original upload by grahampwright on 7 March 2012 - 319,432 views - includes subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Slovenian, Slovak and Traditional Chinese.   Thanks to William Tougeron (French), manuelmeint (German), keeluad (Spanish), Leon Goran Milosevic (Slovenian), TuNeCedeMalis11 (Slovak) and Chris Yang (Traditional Chinese) for the translations.


Dubbed Version

Das Ding namens „Regierung" - German dubbed - uploaded by FreiwilligFrei on 12 March 2012 - 20,340 views


Faster Version

Government Explained - edited down from 9:28 to 7:52 by LA Liberty, without losing any lines - uploaded to vimeo on 29 March 2012 - 199 views


Mirrors with Original Translations


Ako funguje vláda (Government explained) - Slovak subtitles - uploaded by TuNeCedeMalis11 on 10 March 2012 - 46,520 views

El Gobierno Explicado - Spanish subtitles by keelaud - upload by grahampwright on 26 March 2012 -
69,644 views

τι είναι η κυβέρνηση - Greek subtitles - upload by aitherovamones on 27 March 2012 - 53,603 views

什麼是政府？(Government Explained) - Traditional Chinese subtitles - uploaded by Chris Yang on 24 January 2013 - 8 views


Objašnjenje Vlade - Serbian subtitles - uploaded by Devedeset Devet

More Mirrors

Government Explained - uploaded by sgtpete1 on 9 March 2012 - 1,954 views

Government Literally Explained - uploaded by TheLibertyPirate on 11 March 2012 - 212 views

Government Explained (mirror) - uploaded by GangStalkerUK on 12 March 2012 - 81 views -now removed

Ako funguje vláda (Government explained) (www.SLOVENSKO.co.uk) - Slovak subtitles - uploaded by anonymousSlovenko on 14 March 2012 - 410 views

Government Explained !! - To an Alien !! - uploaded by pokertron on 16 March 2012 - 877 views - now removed

Government Explained - Vimeo - uploaded by Uyghur on 17 March 2012 - 8 views - now removed

Government Explained - DotSUB upload by FubulousBB on 17 March 2012 - 287 views

Government Explained !! - To an Alien !! - upload by ikonabass on 24 March 2012 - now removed

El gobierno explicado - Spanish subtitles - upload by themarketanarchy on 2 April 2012 - 39,556 views

El Gobierno Explicado - Spanish subtitles - upload by Sergio Mack-Nelson on 14 April 2012

Movimiento Ateísta : El Gobierno Explicado. - Spanish subtitles - upload by Movimiento Ateísta on 4 May 2012

El Gobierno Explicado - Spanish subtitles - upload by morttisv5 on 4 May 2012

¿que es un gobierno? - Spanish subtitles - upload by ojosdeunesclavo on 13 July 2012 - now removed

Government Explained / ¿Qué es el Gobierno? - upload by thorcido on 8 Feb 2013

Government Explained / ¿Qué es el Gobierno? - music edition - upload by thorcido on 8 Feb 2013


The Sequel - Original Upload

Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper - uploaded by grahampwright on 14 Oct 2012 - 4,987 views


The Sequel - Dubbed Versions

Das spezielle Stück Papier vom Ding namens "Regierung" - German dubbed - upload by FreiWilligFrei on 30 Oct 2012 - 1,994 views

Das spezielle Stück Papier vom Ding namens Regierung - German dubbed - upload by manuelmeint on 16 Nov 2012 - 33 views


The Sequel - Subtitled Versions

El gobierno explicado 2 - El pedazo de papel especial - Spanish subtitles - upload by themarketanarchy on 6 Nov 2012


These are all the ones I know about.  There may be more.  I only know about the German one because the uploader let me know about it and I sent him my transcript.  It does not show up if you just search for '"Government Explained" in German' so there could be others I'm not aware of. The view counters are as of 24 January 2013.

If you would like to create a new translation, the English transcript is here, or if you send me an email (GrahamWrightUK at Gmail dot Com) I can send you a timestamped caption file so the subtitles can easily be added to the original video.

You mentioned Ron Paul... oh dear!

4 minutes of analysis of the Republican primaries by MSNBC. Ron Paul is not mentioned until the very end. And as soon as his name is uttered, the host says "oh dear".

It is as though they are operating on the principle that Ron Paul is to be ignored as much as possible. This host sounds as though the mention of Ron Paul has cost her something. Maybe she gets a cookie from her boss every time they have a segment where no one mentions the name Ron Paul.

Skip to 3:39.

Responses to my Government Explained video

The response to my latest video has been overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who liked, commented, shared it, etc! 32k views in just 4 days!

This post is a collection of some of the responses I have seen online.


A video response:

LIES : This video will make you rethink what you think you know to be true.

"I think it's probably the best video I've ever seen, as far as putting the government in a nutshell and really making you think about things."


Some places it is being shared and discussed:

http://freetheanimal.com/2012/03/what-if-you-had-to-explain-21st-century-humanity-to-a-smart-alien.html

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/152751-government-explained.html

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/15923264

http://www.facebook.com/Capitalists/posts/264799206933552

http://humanformat.tumblr.com/post/19044126945/government-explained-an-inquisitive-alien-visits

http://nexus.2012info.ca/forum/showthread.php?9862-Government-Explained

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/03/government_expl.html

http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/28421/460264.aspx

http://concen.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=44989&pid=239322

http://misbehavedwoman.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/government-explained/

http://thesechangingtimezradio.ning.com/video/government-explained

http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/qosbv/government_explained_you_must_watch_this_video/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/qmq0g/government_explained/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/qpu46/explaining_government_to_an_alien/

http://www.politicalbuddies.com/f139/government-explained-4159/

http://iparte.com/videos/2185/9616/government-explained

http://digg.com/news/politics/government_explained_to_an_alien_race

http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2012/03/government-explained/

http://whatreallyhappened.org/content/government-explained


Some selected Youtube comments:

"A great video to share and gently wake up family and friends. Awareness through humor."

"Do you find it strange that murder is a huge crime that is against the law, but by war it its justified. I find that strange, hypocritical and contradicting. And quite stupid. You can't kill unless they say so."

"you did my dreams come true in this!!! INFINITE THANX!"

"Absolutely Brilliant!"

"I have two words to sum up my reaction to this video: standing ovation."

"This video is excellent. I've often wondered what an alien, or someone from the future would think if they came to present day earth. Great premise."

"Best video I have ever seen."

"XD I laughed at the ending "...yeah that's pretty much government", I shouldn't though, it's sad :p"

"what can you not like about this video.?"

"Now, if only the masses would watch this video like they blindly watched that stupid Kony video, we could all actually live free."

"excellent ... the 'alien thought experiment' the first step in achieveing an open mind ;)"

"This video really opened up my mind and hopefully others about how often we don't even think about such things... Mindlessly being controlled... By who? By what? Why?..."

"1 dislike? How's that possible! He must have sneezed and hit the wrong button :}"

"wow. that is all i can say~ wow. :o( ok~ one more thing~ RON PAUL 2012!"

"Rothbard, Molinari, Spooner, and many others are smiling right now."

"Priceless. This video exposes the brainwashed, dumbed down lunacy of the public and its absurd thinking when it comes to government. The arguments used by the 'human' are terrifyingly familiar. You see them every day in the articles and comments of the newspapers. I put 'human' in single quotes because no true human being believes what the character on the right is saying. Graham Wright, you are a talented true human!"

"Great video! The socratic method ftw."

"Fantastic work Graham! I was at that conference in 2011 and found Larken's presentation to be an very well done example of dialectic to explain the fiction that is government."

"THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO EVER ! ! !! ;)"


Selected comments from elsewhere on the web:

"Great video! It really connects to the reality nowdays. Love the alien!"

"The Alien is obviously an Anarcho-Capitalist... I bet he reads Mises too."

"Astounding! Great work!"

"Your video was amazing! So many great topics were discussed, and I see room for tons more development.  Once again, this video is fantastic! Superb!"

"That was awesome. Definitely a good perspective on the whole situation.  And when the aliens do land, I hope some of them talk in a British accent."

"That is a brilliant video. Well worth the entire watch. It's nice to see things from a different perspective like that."

"That was a very entertaining watch.  Thanks for sharing!"

"sendin this vid to everyone i know, nice post!"

"funny on a douglas adams level "

"This video is brilliant in its simplicity."

"LOLz + cry"

"Great vid. And 100% bang on."

"I thought this was f***ing genius."

"I've watched and laughed about 3 times... the alien is appealing to an enlightened sense of ethics and morality, and finds it perplexing that the practicalities don't really follow from stated premises... The alien is a practical guy. But, he's dealing with primitives, and zeros in on contradictions that go wholly unanswered or resolved. "

"This video is really a dead-on accurate (and humorously presented) explanation of the current conditioning we live with and live under. "

"what a fantastic video... it is funny, though at the same time serious, great animations too...and i think the alien is great...and thinks about what he says...shame the man didnt... twittered, facebooked & liked woo yeah"

The Philosophy of Liberty (with new voiceover!)

I have added my voice to this classic animation explaining liberty.



I love the music in this video. But others hate it, so I uploaded a second version with just my voice.

Government Explained

My new video, which has got 32k views after just 4 days!

An inquisitive alien visits the planet to check on our progress as a species, and gets into a conversation with the first person he meets. The alien discovers that we live under the rule of a thing called "government", and wants to understand more about what "government" is, what it does, and why it exists.





See some responses to this video here.

Kony: We Got Trouble

This is a re-post of an article by Grant Oyston, originally posted on 7 March 2012 on the Visible Children Tumblr as "We Got Trouble"


I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Chris Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.