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.
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”→
