Carne Ross: Let the People Talk

About this video

Carne Ross, founder of the Independent Diplomat, offers us a new way of thinking about how we manage our affairs together. A self-proclaimed “gentle anarchist”, Ross believes the key to genuine democracy is letting the people – all of them – decide their own affairs. The world is a complex system. Ross knows that order comes not from top-down authority, but from the bottom up.

ABOUT CARNE ROSS

Carne Ross is a former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war. Carne’s second book, “The Leaderless Revolution”, was published by Penguin in 2012. Drawing from his experiences as a diplomat, economist and activist, it describes how governments are failing to address our most urgent problems, including mounting inequality and economic volatility, climate change and terrorism. Instead of looking to authority, the book offers an inspiring message of empowerment and self-organized action: anarchism for the 21st Century.

Carne is also the founder and Executive Director of Independent Diplomat (ID). An expert team of former diplomats and international lawyers, Independent Diplomat advises democratic but marginalized governments and political groups so that their views are heard internationally. ID advised Kosovo before independence, and now advises, among others, South Sudan, the world’s newest state, and island states on climate change negotiations.

Carne has also been heavily involved in Occupy Wall Street, where he has helped facilitate a working group that is aiming to set up a new kind of bank – that is democratic, transparent and, above all, accessible to America’s 40m “unbanked” and “underbanked”, who are denied banking services by the for-profit banking industry.

Carne is a frequent commentator on international affairs on the BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR and in publications including the Financial Times, the Guardian, The Nation and the Huffington Post.

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