This site hosts my writing and media appearances including news about the documentary movie, Accidental Anarchist. I am a former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war. I founded the world's first non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent Diplomat.
Occupy Niall Ferguson! My row over #occupybank with the Prof #ows
This has just been broadcast on the BBC in the UK, and will be soon on the BBC World Service.
Every year, the BBC holds the “Reith lecture” which is a major set-piece speech by some public figure on an issue of the day. Niall Ferguson this year gave a series of talks on “The Rule of Law”. He and I had a bit of a contretemps at the recording of the lecture a few weeks ago, in New York City.
Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
Occupy Wall Street and a New Politics for a Disorderly World
Carne Ross | February 7, 2012
The global financial crisis has provoked a profound and necessary questioning of the prevailing political and economic orthodoxy. So pervasive is this disillusionment with the current order that it is hard to find anyone prepared to defend it. Disorder is the new order; disequilibrium rules, and old assumptions no longer hold.
This note was shared with members of the OWS working group on Alternative Banking today:
The Commons: A Good Bank
112411 draft
This note has been prepared by the alternative banking working group of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. The note is for discussion with the OWS movement and more broadly.
Huffington Post did a great little piece on the Alternative Banking working group that I’m part of. You can find the original article here. I’ve also pasted it below. Thank you Janell Ross for coming along, and taking an interest.
The other night, at the Occupy Wall Street “General Assembly”, I announced the formation of a new working group to examine alternatives to the current banking system.
The idea is to explore existing alternatives to mainstream high street banks (credit unions, cooperative banks etc), think about an ideal system, then try to set it up. No small ambition. But you’ve got to start somewhere.
Independent Diplomat was really pleased to help with this visit. JB is making a documentary about the Western Sahara, and has a long-standing interest in the issue (he has visited the refugee camps in Algeria).
Here are some suggestions for a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street protests, which are currently taking place. The manifesto attempts to summarize common concerns about current banking practices and articulate a new agenda for a better system. The banks are busy lobbying lawmakers and the Administration every day. Continue reading Demand Better Banking – A suggested manifesto for #OccupyWallStreet→
After talking with a lot of people at the UN, and in the leader- and diplomat-packed corridors and lobbies of various mid-town hotels in a rainy New York City, the likely early outcomes of the Palestinian initiative are becoming a bit clearer. Any observations now however must be stated with a very clear proviso that things are moving fast, and the diplomacy is hectic. Things may change very suddenly.
There’s a lot of confusion about the PLO’s likely attempt this week to gain full membership of the UN. In particular, many commentators (and the PLO itself) often refer to the initiative as an attempt to gain “recognition” by the UN, which it is not. The UN does not recognise states; only other states can recognise states (however, UN membership would undoubtedly boost Palestine’s claim to be a state).
My cousin told me about this remarkable story. It illustrates perfectly the arguments of “The Leaderless Revolution”: a tragic and difficult problem which an appeal to conventional insitutions could not solve; instead this brave and resourceful couple took matters, peacefully, into their own hands and addressed the problem, with great compassion, directly…
In the US and Europe, disillusion with politics is feeding the far right. We need a radical response that returns power to people
The recent debacle in Washington, where wrangling over the debt limit has triggered a downgrading of American debt, has underlined the deep incompetence of the US political system. Thanks to needless brinkmanship, particularly by the Republicans, confidence in US debt has been undermined, thereby likely increasing the cost of borrowing – a price that will eventually be paid by all Americans.
One of the arguments of my forthcoming book is that one sign of the failure of government to agree necessary legislation is the seemingly arcane but vital issue of capital requirements for banks. I discuss this issue in this recent column for The Guardian. Such requirements arguably would have prevented the recent financial crisis. Continue reading The Leaderless Revolution: The ongoing debate about bank regulation→
This is my latest weekly column in “The Guardian” online, in the series “Power and Nations”.
Whenever an international problem starts being called a “process”, one should immediately become suspicious that the problem itself will not be solved. Indeed, the naming of a problem as a “process” is a way to obscure lack of progress with endless anaesthetising conferences, meetings and statesmanlike speeches.
While our attention has been on Libya, the aftermath of bin Laden’s death and a hundred other news stories, there seem to me to have been three other stories playing out that are of considerable significance. They are not headline grabbing, but that does not diminish their importance. They are long-term stories of gradual but dramatic change:
I had not seen this passage until I read it in “Lapham’s Quarterly”, an excellent new journal of history and ideas. It is taken from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1884). According to Lapham’s Quarterly, this text was not published until 1959. One could hardly find a more eloquent description of the fundamental alienation wrought by work. Work is not spontaneous activity, but belongs to another; it comprises a loss of self.
Below is the summary of my new book, “The Leaderless Revolution”, to be published by Simon & Schuster (UK) in September, 2011. And before it, a very generous quote about the book from a rather better writer than me:
It is now a commonplace to observe that recent uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world were and are leaderless. In all these cases, no leadership figures have emerged, neither charismatic individuals nor vanguard organisations. These revolutions embody a degree of organisation, including on social media, but not very much; these movements are not top-down, driven by the choices of a small group or individual, or inspired by an ideological rhetoric except the common cry: enough of the old order! Continue reading The Necessity of Leaderless Revolutions→
There was this terrific battle. The noise was as much As the limits of possible noise could take. There were screams higher groans deeper Than any ear could hold. Many eardrums burst and some walls Collapsed to escape the noise. Everything struggled on its way Through this tearing deafness As through a torrent in a dark cave.
I am like many disappointed by the lack of debate about non-violent alternatives to the situation in Libya. No Fly Zones are an extremely risky venture, have no current legal basis, and may backfire. Above all, imposing NFZs, as Defense Secretary Gates has said, means attacking Libya i.e. entering a war. That means killing Libyans.
I’m very grateful to the BBC Doha Debates for inviting me to take part in this debate. I was the second proposer of the motion. And you can see the debate here.
It was a cracking debate, with a very lively and outspoken audience. I was very struck by the passion of the young people taking part, whose views could not have been clearer: we have a right to know the truth.
A fascinating and insightful discussion on Friday at Independent Diplomat here in NYC. The subject was how to use technology to break open that closed practice, diplomacy. Two challenges were clear, and help define the problem:
1. First challenge: to open and improve the current closed practice of state-to-state interaction by promoting transparency and providing technological means (combined with incentives) to encourage and structure that transparency.
Heads of state and government agreed to the following text on the Responsibility to Protect in the Outcome Document of the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly in September 2005
Watching the spreading revolt against autocracies in the Middle East – Tunisia, Egypt and tonight Libya – I am struck by how irrelevant is that international body of state governments, the UN. What a pity the UN is as awful as it is, a body all too often deadlocked in stale debate, repeating tired patterns of bloc politics. No one is inspired by it; no one can love it. Populated only by governments both democratic and not, it is run according to that dry calculus of states’ interests, which too often do not accord with the wishes or needs of humanity as a whole. Continue reading A thought experiment in global political revolution→
I attended a conference this week about the impact of technology on social issues. It had many interesting speakers, not least the wonderful people at AccessNow who are doing extraordinary and secret things to help political activists use the web and get the word out despite repression. Above all, it was fascinating to watch people grapple with the seismic impact of technology on the world – but with no clear map to guide them. Many, I’m afraid, turned to familiar prejudices to show the way.
This was the question that occurred to me after listening to Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, and Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, last night at a discussion at Columbia University (well reported by Micah Sifry here).
There were several striking revelations from the discussion, though I am not sure that they were those intended by Rusbridger and Keller.
Amid the sound and fury of the reaction to WikiLeaks, something is missing. Whether hostile or supportive, politicians and commentators on all sides have managed to miss the real point. The contents of the leaked cables should demand a deep reflection on our foreign policy. That this has not happened tells a sorry story about our very democracy.
The following appeared in the Financial Times, which I have long treasured as the most truly subversive of newspapers. This short article provides a rare pleasure – a profound, concise and it appears wholly unintended yet devastating insight into the true nature of the current economic and cultural system (a similar insight is to be found in the revelation that a toothbrush I recently bought came with a CD-rom with which to programme the device). Such signs are perhaps faint signals of the very death of capitalism – or at the least the death of our sense of the absurd. Continue reading The Semiotics of “Pot Noodles”→
Micah Sifry, one of the two political-tech gurus behind the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) (the other is Andrew Rasiej), has kindly posted my remarks to the #PDFLeaks “flash” conference last Saturday in New York City. It was a great discussion, with a lot of smart people, including Arianna Huffington and Charles Ferguson, trying to grapple with the implications of the Wiki-drama. You can see it all Continue reading WikiLeaks and Terrorism (Personal Democracy Forum, 12 December, 2010, NYC)→
I did an interview on the BBC yesterday on Wikileaks, along with Bill Keller, the Executive Editor of the venerable New York Times, which has published a few of the leaked diplomatic cables. Keller made a startling admission – the New York Times took all the cables it intended to publish to the US government to get their permission and edits before the Times published. Extraordinary! Continue reading #cablegate Wikileaks and the Press→
Too much to say about this story right now. I’ve been tweeting about it all day (@carneross) as I read each telegram on the Wikileaks site. It’s like being back at work at the Foreign Office reading the daily folder of telegrams. I miss it! Continue reading Wikileaks (#cablegate) – Crikey, what a story→
A week ago, it appears that Moroccan forces violently shut down the protest camps of unarmed Sahrawis outside the occupied territory’s capital, Laayoune. The Sahrawis, who numbered approximately 20,000, were unarmed and protesting peacefully. This incident highlights the reality of occupation for Sahrawis in the territory and puts paid to the claims of Morocco’s propagandists that all is well under Moroccan rule. Continue reading The Western Sahara – The Reality of Occupation→
