NEVER Trust The Government - Whistleblower Reveals Why

on this channel we're always talking about corruption how power operates the inability of ordinary people to influence what governments do to affect their relationships with big business in this episode we're looking at my conversation with khan ross former government insider turned whistleblower who tells us explicitly how government operates and importantly talks about what solutions we may deploy and it gives us a chance to imagine a different world altogether if you're sick and tired of the way things are i was very heavily involved in the iraq wmd issue i helped set up the weapons inspection agency the un weapons inspection agency i was deeply versed in the intelligence about wmd carl ross worked with the british government and intelligence services some time ago and was in government at the time of the iraq war speaking about his experiences working that closely with people in power in this important episode of history where we found out really the kind of decisions that are made what information will be used and neglected in order for government imperatives to be met the implications or ramifications excuse me of which are still being felt to this day here he's talking about that and so i was extremely familiar with the the case that the government was making for war and knew immediately that its case was uh to put it politely grossly exaggerated but also and i think this was an important thing that's often ignored that the the government had um ignored alternatives to war and that's a basic moral requirement of war that it's only the last resort and i had written papers on what an alternative to war might be and so i knew that the government you know had not taken that seriously all of us know that there were lies around the weapons of mass destruction situation but here's someone who worked in the government speaking from a human perspective about the way that power operates i think this is a unique insight and some of the conclusions khan comes to as a result of his time there for me are fascinating this is taken for a conversation that i was had on my podcast under the skin that's available on luminary this episode actually is free on youtube but i really recommend you subscribe to luminary if you're interested in hearing conversations like this about the nature of power and the philosophies of power the experience of being around people in government ministers prime minister's presidents that it's one of the reasons i became an anarchist because i think it's um it's all a bit of a myth that these folks are really impressive and competent and know what they're doing a lot of them are very well-intentioned people a lot of them are competent but we put them on a pedestal and we want to believe they are heroic that they have some kind of access to truth and reason that the rest of us don't have and i i never really saw that well i think it's fascinating about what khan ross is saying there and he's concluding to become an anarchist and just to unpack that for a moment anarchism doesn't mean chaos it means centralized power is abolished and democracy is practiced at every level of decision-making that's what he means by anarchism there and it's a conclusion he reached as a result of experiencing the ordinariness and the limitation of even well-intentioned people within government what i felt as a result of conversations like this in my conversation with janice varathakis for example is that the systems themselves are so um and bent on particular imperatives that no amount of change of personnel within them systems is going to make a meaningful difference to ordinary people it doesn't matter if you have the democrats or the conservatives or the republicans or new labor or whoever what you're going to end up with in those systems is the kind of results that we're used to over the last 50 years and perhaps beyond that if you have a deep historical knowledge i began to think that it's constructed on ideas which are not humane the idea of national interests um which are by their very nature regardless as amoral states are allowed to do things that individuals are not allowed to do above all commit violence states have a monopoly of violence this conversation with khan rosh is where i understood a really important thing about power that all laws are underwritten by the idea of violence this is something we've also discussed with brad evans a brilliant guest on under the skin for example take something simple like i'm going to park where i want right i'm just going to park where i want well this is a nose parking zone we'll put a ticket on your car i'm not going to pay that parking fine you will get a court summons i'm not going to turn up to court on that day some people knocking on the door i'm not going to open the door the door's getting broken down i'm not coming with you they're taking you so whilst law and legislation is of course by its nature necessary to maintain order it does a lot more than that it is the implication of violence you're handing over your volition your autonomy to a secondary power which khan points out there are not restricted by the kind of um moral parameters that we usually live within we don't practice violence if you do it's considered a crime and you go to prison a state has the right to practice violence yes in order to protect you but ultimately if you step out of a line with the state's agenda in order to incarcerate you i reject the state-based system because i saw it from the inside and i saw what it's capable of and i saw the way it made people behave and i think one of the most disturbing things i felt about it was that you know i wanted to regard people like me and my colleagues as decent people and in many ways they are decent people i thought of myself as a decent person and yet you are put in a framework that allows you to do terrible things and this is the you know the history of moral crimes is usually people are put in circumstances that makes them behave badly people are not innately evil they wouldn't otherwise choose to do evil things but you put even decent people in the kind of circumstance and structure where they can do bad things and bad things follow hannah arendt's work unpacks that articulately and continues to be influential to this day her analysis of the nazis and the concentration camps that were run by them uh point out that the crimes were committed by ordinary people doing extraordinarily evil things her famous phrase the banality of evil describes this now whilst i'm not suggesting that all governments are as extreme as that great blemish on humanity the third reich and the holocaust regardless systemic power power and systemic abuse remains a problem it takes away individual autonomy it takes away your ability to make individual decisions you are inhibited prohibited controlled by the role that you play with in the system why i like this conversation with karma ross is it illustrates to me from the perspective of an insider something that i've long felt you will not get real change from within those systems they are built a certain way they behave in a particular way if you want meaningful change not reform although reform has of course led to comparatively good things if you want real change systemic change is what you have to focus on 911 changed my life fundamentally but also i think profoundly unsettled me as it did for so many people it was an epic failure of the sort of thing i was paid to do you know i was i was our middle east expert at the u.n security council and we we utterly failed in um you know the state's basic duty which was to protect the population and then once that failure had happened i saw the state in particular washington construct a new way to legitimize itself by finding an enemy almost any enemy in order to prove its necessity to a population that was otherwise would doubt its its need for a state that had failed to protect it and i saw the construction of that narrative from the very beginning i was with the us government right after 9 11 and for the days following i went to the state department for weeks afterwards to talk about iraq and we saw how the narrative on iraq began to shift and i saw my own government go with it and failed to question it and it was an extraordinary experience to see how a government and a state adapted itself to a circumstance where it was required to prove itself and i realize that states behave in a way that isn't rational um that is ultimately driven by a need to prove the necessity of their own existence in a sense the only thing i would argue with there that kant ross said is that their behavior isn't rational it is rational if the incentive is perpetuation of the system and preservation of the system i like hearing from someone who's been present for a significant historical event has watched it unfold has seen the response i like the way this challenges important philosophical ideas about the role of the state the presentation of the state as our protector but the reality of the state as our persecutor as a contr our controller now in the interceding i don't know 10 20 years i'm not very good with time look at what's going on now look at the amount of power that governments have during this pandemic the power and authority to keep us on lockdown the power and authority to track and trace the power and authority to do deals with big tech that's going to mean that we're being observed in ways that we've never been observed before that huge sums of money are going to be handed over to the private sector to run previously public utilities khan ross is sounding a warning bell from the heart of the system that this isn't about oh it might be better if you vote for a more liberal or a more conservative type candidate in a sense we have to withdraw from conventional politics we have to establish new political models this is something you know that i've understood then and even when congress was teaching me that you know i'd heard other people explain this kind of stuff to me but their lessons are still relevant because none of these solutions are being reached for because whether it's their media big business or the government no one in these positions is interested in bringing about change because their objective as karma ross explains there is self-preservation if you want real change you'll have to establish new systems and this is what anarchists think about all institutions is that institutions ultimately have their own sets of interests which are ulterior and the state is one such institution above all states and the people who work in it and i knew this because i had worked in it want to feel that they are necessary and sometimes they have to prove it and war i'm afraid to say is one of the ultimate ways that the state proves its necessity we did a video recently on joe biden and the forever war the distinction between joe biden's campaign promises and his actions in offices we do videos about the great reset the relationships between big tech and uh the state about how these relationships prevent ordinary people having privacy or power this is something that's been experienced first-hand by khan ross it's a wonderful episode of under skin i recommend you watch all of it but also there's brilliant episodes with naomi klein joel backham this is a deeper dive into subjects that you are interested in it's the hobbesian bargain that we all make with the state it's based on a premise that other people are not to be trusted that without authority we would um return to a state of nature which is essentially violent that's a powerful assumption about the nature of human beings in itself isn't it that we are malevolent it's a cynical world view so whether you're again a democrat or republican a liberal or a conservative the world view that abides is that human beings need to be controlled that we're incapable of controlling ourselves and that suggests a kind of malevolence and the optimism about the human condition is regarded as a sort of naivety or very naive well of course i know that human beings are capable and forget human beings that i am capable of doing things that are led by appetite but our individual struggles are about finding our own harmony with the best version of ourselves would it not be better to live in communities and systems that are about enhancing those values supporting those values acknowledging that people are flawed and fallible but where possible creating the conditions for human beings to thrive and cooperate what we have now is increasing oligarchy and an ill ability for ordinary people to really have any impact on their own lives look i know i'm in a western country and i'm wearing a great cardigan and i've got a laptop and all that kind of stuff but look at the way the wind blows look at the way things have changed since this interview like five years ago look at what's happening right now and envisage if you can with the rate of change increasing all the time where we could be in five ten years with the sort of legislation that's being passed and the kind of decisions that are being made today real anarchy of a violent kind where we'd all kill each other where life is nasty brutish and short as hobbs put it and i don't believe that people are really like that and that the the claim that we have to have coercive authority to control us to stop that happening i think isn't at best an untested claim and at worst it's a an utter fallacy which we're foolish to believe i suppose that's why i bang on about spirituality a lot because spirituality i suppose has a few principles in it sort of vaguely speaking and how else can you speak about such matters we are all interconnected we have a common destiny together the values we should be promoting are kindness cooperation togetherness uni service humility basic simple nursery rhyme stuff really but things that are forgotten but all of them are undergirded by the idea that we as human beings are basically decent or capable of decency not incapable of it not that the only thing that's holding us back from becoming savage beasts and monsters is a sort of a draconian and authoritarian state if the solution is worse than the problem then you know as it's been brought up around other issues then you need to look at the solution after 9 11 you saw people in new york behave in a way that was extraordinary and tremendously moving and the diametric opposite of the way the government was behaving the government was saying threat aggression we must take revenge the people as far as i saw including you know survivors from the disaster from the attacks behaved with tremendous compassion and it was a profoundly moving thing to to witness and you know one of the experiences i am most moved by is the experience of soldiers in war um why is it that people in war experience this intense comradeship um why does it require war for us to feel like that why can't we have that feeling of common chip comradeship and absolute solidarity with each other and total loyalty and a willingness to sacrifice without the the need for war what what is it about the structure of our current political and economic circumstance that makes that so unlikely i suppose because the fact is is that in war abominable though it seems to me as a person that's not that never participated in it conditions are created for unity we have drifted in our culture in our civilization so far from our nature i mean in a basic anthropological sense small communities of interdependency and service in harmony with our nature that it takes an anathema it takes an anomaly it takes a dark event like war for us to awaken to who we are in sebastian young's brilliant book tribe he talks about how if you were trying to create a civilization for maximum negative impact on mental health and peace of mind you couldn't do a lot better than the dystopia we are creating and with ever increasing speed moving towards he talks also about the cohesion togetherness and unity in war and the grief of many returning veterans at the loss of the sense of purpose meaning and togetherness that that experience brings about in them if you enjoyed this video then consider having a look under the skin this video as i say is free on youtube anyway so you can see the whole thing but if you want more conversations like it conversations with jordan peterson naomi klein and coming up soon we've got a conversation with edward snowden glenn greenwald vandana shiva all these conversations are coming up on under the skin if you enjoyed this you should subscribe you will enjoy it if you can afford it otherwise sign up to my mailing list on russellbrand.com like this video and uh you know turn on the notification bell if you can stand too and write a comment because we really try and respond to those comments get on the mailing list participate join in let's create this beautiful new you to anarchist utopia that this wonderful gentleman is describing thanks

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 319,973

Rating: 4.9581351 out of 5

Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand politics, News, Brand, politics, Russell, government, the state, carne, carne ross, foreign policy, whistleblower, whistle, blower, president, Bush, Iraq, weapons, new york, blair, america, army, military, war, enemy

Id: PQr-pF4fYbY

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/trebuchetfight]

He has moments of clarity in between stretches of being a general assclown. 🤷‍♂️

[u/oneeighthirish]

I know some of the "great reset" stuff is wack, but this was surprisingly great.

[u/DarkVadek]

He's kinda ok at times. I've read of a time when he had been invited to a local political meating, and he didn't hog all the time and attention, but did an intro and then left the rest to the local organizers. I thought he would have just wanted all the attention

[u/yawaster]

I'll respect russel brand when he learns how to change a nappy.

[u/gazthechicken]

Isnt he married to a rothschild?