Now normally I manage to resist the urge to rise to a Daily Mail article I disagree with. But for this one:

‘Well that’s gratitude! We give India £1bm in aid, THEY snub the UK and give France a £13bn jet contact’

I’ve made an exception.

The article refers to a contract awarded by the Indian government to the French firm Dassault Rafale to provide 126 military jets to the Indian air force, over British firm BAE systems. This is seen to be an affront given that Britain’s aid package to India is 15 times larger that that of France. The contract was given to France ‘despite Government claims that the UK’s £1billion aid package to India would help secure the order’.

It has always been known that ‘aid’ is often understood by governments to be payment for favourable trade terms, a supportive vote in the UN, or money expressly to be used to hire foreign firms, but it is not normally put quite so clearly (by press or government). The outrage is almost refreshing.

The reason cited for the decision to buy the jets from France is one of cost – and this seems to be what has put a few noses out of joint. We give India money, they should spend it on buying our planes, regardless of cost, quality or suitability, the logic goes. This has happened countless times througout the past decades – Indonesia’s Suharto using British loans to buy weapons to persecute thousands of Indonesian civilians is the classic example.

Aid is aid; to give money expecting a lucrative arms deal to come out of it as a result is bribery, plain and simple.

Look at this first one. A high-explosive mushroom cloud billows up above the palm trees, rending the powder-blue, tropical sky with a fist of heat and smoke. Another secret jungle cocaine lab is out of business for good. COLOMBIA, FUCK YEAH!

But two shots later we find out what a cocaine lab actually looks like. And it is, well, underwhelming.

As you can see, the truth is that a “cocaine lab” is a tent with half a dozen billy cans in it. The ammunition used to blow one up costs much more that it costs to build a new one, possibly hundreds of times over. Facilities like the one destroyed in the first picture probably exist in their thousands, and that one will have been replaced within days, if not hours.

When the enemy’s infrastructure can all be bought at Wal-Mart for a hundred dollars, there is no way that blowing it up at colossal expense and risk to life can have any significant effect on supply.

What we learn from these pictures is not what a vital job the counternarcotics police are doing in the jungles of Colombia, but how futile their operation is.

The other is stranger. Why does he keep talking about Saul Alinsky? I spotted it in his post South Carolina speech and asked about it on twitter. Someone pointed out that it wasn’t the first time, and this morning, the Guardian had a blog on the subject. A quick google reveals various people have been asking the same question.

For those who don’t know, Saul Alinsky was an American community organiser from the 1930s to the 1970s. He made his name organising the people living in the slums of Chicago, and later, across the States. If you haven’t read his book ‘Rules for Radicals’, then do. The guy was a legend.

But the operative word there is ‘was’. He died of a heart attack in 1972. How many Americans have heard of him now?

Well, until Newt started mouthing off about him, not that many. A quick Google trend search shows that Americans were more likely to enquire about Slovenian communist Slavoj Zizek than they were about Alinsky.

Also, he seems a strange target. While Sarah Palin hammered Obama for ‘palling around with terrorists’ over his relationship with former Weatherman Bill Ayers, it’s harder to label Alinsky – a man who worked peacefully with the poorest Americans – as evil. For example, watch how CNN answered the ‘who is this guy Gingrich keeps banging on about’ question:

This is no savaging of Obama – comparing him to someone who wrote a book in 1971 on how the have-nots can take power away from the haves. For those who didn’t know who he was, he hardly sounds mad. For those who did know who he was talking about, it just makes Gingrich look like an old man with a 40 year old axe to grind.

So, why does Newt keep hammering this? Well first, there is an extent to which it is sort of true. Obama is nothing like as radical as Alinsky. But he did work as a community organiser in the same Chicago neighbourhoods that Alinsky had organised decades before, and there is some suggestion that he, Obama, taught the theories of Alinsky when he was a professor.

But that it’s true isn’t enough – Gingrich has repeated this line – that the election will be a debate between ‘American exceptionalism and the radicalism of Saul Alinsky’ – often enough for it to be thought through. And it seems to me that it offers a window into the kind of campaign he is planning on running. He’s no Palin, he’s saying. He isn’t dismissing Obama as an idiot and a terrorist. He’s bigging him up. The comparison to a serious and respected – and obscureish – figure of the radical left is Gingrich’s way of saying ‘these are serious ideas. This is a serious debate about the future of America – American exceptionalism vs the radicalism of Saul Alinsky. And so you want and ideas man – an intellectual heavyweight, who is familiar with these ideologies, ready to debate them.’

To emphasise his point, Gingrich has said that, if he is the Republican nominee, he will challenge Obama to seven debates, each three hours long.

There is, of course, an irony to all of this. Alinsky himself wasn’t really an ideas man. There isn’t so much a ‘radical vision of Saul Alinsky’ as ‘tactics of Saul Alinsky’. He was an organiser, a tactician, a cynic. He was disdainful of ideology. And if we look to Newt’s great weaknesses, perhaps he could begin to learn lessons. Despite what he says, Gingrich’s campaign hasn’t exactly demonstrated “people power”. He wasn’t even organised enough to get on the ballot in Virginia. As one political analyst put it to Roanoak’s NBC affiliate:

“There’s never this kind of problem that I can recall and in my memory of people (having problems) getting on the ballot,” he said. “You just need the staff and to follow the rules. Clearly Newt didn’t have the organization or the proper staff to do so.”

If Obama has learnt anything from Alinsky, it is not radical politics. It is about organising people. His 2008 election campaign was famous for its doorstep operation, its Get Out The Vote drive. As Saul’s son, David, wrote:

“Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

So, come the Autumn, if Newt really wants to take on ‘the radicalism of Saul Alinsky’, then what would this mean? Not bothering to engage people? Not bothering to engage face to face with communities on their terms? Not trying to get out the vote? Relying in his campaign against the greatest election street fighter in history on the idea that people will watch 21 hours of televised debate – delivered in careful iambic tetrameter? It would be a fitting challenge to Alinsky to see Gingrich attempt just that…

Counterintuitive doesn’t begin to describe it. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, the Iraq Helicopter Video, all those instances of collateral damage, the attack on a Pakistani border post and too many others, we’re expected to believe that these represent terrible exceptions, exceptions that just happen to be caught on video.

A far more credible explanation is that there is a far deeper problem, one stemming from an increasingly inhumane culture that, in the wake of September 11^th, has gripped American forces. The US military has become brutal and, dare one say it, fascist in the proper sense of the word – that it wields the power to punish and execute and sees itself as the final arbiter.

In the wake of the Vietnam War the US military drafted a ‘Soldier’s Creed’. You can see the degree of emphasis put on protection, creditable behaviour and the importance of not disgracing one’s uniform.

I am an American Soldier.

I am a member of the United States Army – a protector of the greatest nation on earth.

Because I am proud of the uniform I wear, I will always act in ways creditable to the military service and the nation it is sworn to guard.

I am proud of my own organization. I will do all I can to make it the finest unit in the Army.

I will be loyal to those under whom I serve. I will do my full part to carry out orders and instructions given to me or my unit.

As a soldier, I realize that I am a member of a time-honored profession—that I am doing my share to keep alive the principles of freedom for which my country stands.

No matter what the situation I am in, I will never do anything, for pleasure, profit, or personal safety, which will disgrace my uniform, my unit, or my country.

I will use every means I have, even beyond the line of duty, to restrain my Army comrades from actions disgraceful to themselves and to the uniform.

I am proud of my country and its flag.

I will try to make the people of this nation proud of the service I represent, for I am an American Soldier.

In 2003, at the height of the war on terror a section of the US military responsible for the Warrior Ethos rewrote the Soldier’s Creed thus:

I am an American Soldier.

I am a Warrior and a member of a team.

I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.

I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American Soldier.

All those references to protection and honour and avoiding disgrace have been stripped out. It’s as though the task of writing the code has been handed to the teams responsible for Gears of War or Call of Duty. There’s no ethos there just a cartoonish and brutal rant. The actions of US troops pissing on their dead enemies fly in the face of the original Soldier’s Creed but they’re wholly consistent with the current version.

If the US military wants to defeat its enemies rather than see its soldiers acting as recruiting sergeants for new ones it needs to recognise that it is in the throes of an ethical and cultural crisis. If it wants to take a step back towards a US military that projects American values, values that might have been recognised as American by the four men whose faces look out from Mount Rushmore, they could do worse than scrapping the current Soldier’s Creed and replacing it with the original.

Bernie demonstrates the potential of even one principled legislator to drag the debate in his or her direction. He gives voice to those demands of the people that are otherwise taboo among the elite: a right to healthcare, peace over war, and the end of corporate ownership of democracy (which I’ll come back to later); in doing so he makes it impossible to pretend those ideas don’t exist. Even in a country like the USA, where ‘socialist’ is more an insult than an ideology, he forces Democrats (who often rely on his vote) to recognise its legitimacy.

It became infuriatingly fashionable during and after the last Presidential election for those on the UK centre-left to lament “if only we had an Obama”. You may like to know we *do* have a Sanders: Bernie’s equally heroic, and in my view grossly underappreciated, brother, Green councillor Larry Sanders.

His filibuster speech is truly historic, deserving to be seen as one of the founding documents of the Occupy movement and whatever grows from it. You can watch it below, but unless you want to wait eight hours to find out what Bernie’s been up to this week you might want to skip to the end of this post first, then come back to it.

Senator Sanders does not rest on his laurels. For the first time in his career, he’s moved an amendment to the US Constitution, dubbed the Saving American Democracy Act. A response to the disastrous Citizens United ruling which opened the floodgates to corporate money flowing into politics, this amendment would finally assert in fundamental law the natural truth that a corporation is not a person.

Here’s Bernie introducing his amendment:

Rest assured, in the next week we will be bringing you the festive tradition that is Bright Green’s Dick of the Year. But first, we thought it might be nice to recognise one of Bright Green’s heroes.

Follow Bernie Sanders on Twitter and Facebook.

Sometime last February I sat in a meeting when people were talking about how there was going to be an extremely serious food crisis in the Horn of Africa in 3-4 months time. They talked of the possible unprecedented scale, the huge potential cost and above all the possible loss of life. But, ‘hey’, I thought, ‘if people know already that things could get so bad then that’s plenty of time to stop it right?’

Theoretically yes, but of course 3-4 months later the region was in the midst of the continent’s first fully blown famine since the days when Bob Geldof first asked if we had heard of Christmas in 1984. This year 11 million people were threatened with starvation, in scenes that should have been unthinkable in the 21^st Century.

I wasn’t involved enough in that crisis to know what stopped the world responding in time, but I do know that they didn’t. Many lives have of course saved through the extraordinary efforts of a massive relief effort, but far too few could be reached. But I am now trying to learn fast, because just as the rains are beginning to bring a little relief to Somalia, their irregularity is now threatening the terrible spectre of hunger in the Sahel region of West Africa.

Cross posted from the World Development Movement’s Durban Watch blog

If you have been following the news recently you could be fooled into thinking the politics of the UN negotiations have been turned on their head. It might no longer seems to be a case of developed vs. developing countries, but of new alliances forming between them and the UK committing to the future of Kyoto and a new ambitious global deal.

But in actual fact the reality of what we are seeing is the same old politics, but with a clever spin and a lot of muddying of the waters.

So, what are the UK & EU really saying? Though they sound like they’re using the same language as some developing countries, they are in fact aiming for something completely different. In reality, their goal is to scrap anything in the UN talks based on the differences between developed and developing countries and the principles of historical responsibility for causing climate change (that industrialised countries in the global north have grown rich on the back of massive emissions). This goes against justice, one of the fundamental principles of the UN convention on climate change. So whilst the idea of treating all countries as if they were the same may sound good in theory, in practice it is far from a just solution to climate change.

Judging by the way the talks went at Cancun and Copenhagen, it is clear that rich countries are shirking their responsibility by pushing to scrap legally binding targets. Instead they prefer a move to insufficient and ineffective voluntary pledges that are guaranteed to lead us to catastrophic climate change. As if the voluntary pledges aren’t bad enough, the new deal they are proposing would not come into force until 2020, which would make it impossible to meet their own stated target of a 2°C increase in global temperatures, never mind the 1.5°C demanded by most developing countries and backed by the science.

We’re now hearing that the UK and EU are also pushing for a ‘political Kyoto’, where new targets are set, but without any requirement for them to be legally binding. They would get to keep carbon markets, clearly shown to have failed, without having to commit to the legally binding targets that are required to ensure meaningful action.

Clever use of language doesn’t mean countries are pushing the same thing. In fact, language is another way rich countries use their privilege in the talks. For many of the rich countries English, the primary language of the talks, is also their first language.

The reality is UK and EU are aiming for “The Great Escape” – no extension of the Kyoto Protocol’s legally binding targets and a new deal equating developed and developing countries, therefore ignoring historic and current per capita emissions.

The real battle in Durban should be around getting ambitious commitment on legally binding targets for developed countries, based on the treaties that already exist, and on ensuring finance is available that will help people, not corporations, adapt to climate change and find new ways of accessing energy whilst mitigating climate change. Hiding political differences under the vague language of a new global deal is just a distraction from the emissions reductions developed countries are so keen to avoid.

In recent years state authorities in Russia have repeatedly tried to prevent LGBT people from campaigning publicly for their rights. This has been most evident in relation to demonstrations. Since 2005 almost every attempt to hold a Pride March, or similar, has been banned. Three such cases were the subject of a 2010 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights which severely criticised the Russian authorities. Despite that, the bans continue.

Now a bill has been introduced into the legislature of one of the Russian regions, St Petersburg, that would prohibit “public actions aimed at propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderness among minors”. If enacted, it will almost certainly intensify suppression of freedom of expression, moving from the current situation where individual events are banned on a case-by-case basis, to a blanket ban on events, media coverage and the dissemination of information generally. It is part of a trend: similar laws have already been introduced in two other Russian regions. And there is talk among politicians of this being repeated in the Moscow region, and perhaps even at federal level. Even if this does not happen, the developments in St Petersburg are particularly serious for the LGBT movement in Russia – the main umbrella organisation for the LGBT movement, and some of its most active member organisations, are located there.

It is noteworthy that the Bill was introduced into the St Petersburg legislature by Putin’s party, United Russia. It is widely reckoned that the timing of this initiative was  determined by the general election on December 4, and that it is a cynical attempt to curry favour among homophobic and transphobic voters. This is borne out by the speed with which it is being processed – it was first tabled in committee on 11 November and received its first reading only three working days later, on 16 November.

There are concerns that the St Petersburg bill could have wider consequences in the region. Politicians and religious leaders in much of Eastern Europe regularly call for “propaganda for homosexuality” to be banned. Bills to this effect have been introduced in the Lithuanian and Ukraine parliaments, and we could see more if St Petersburg goes through.

What are the chances of preventing the legislation being adopted? Not great. There is significant international pressure. But the Russian authorities seem to take a particular pleasure in flouting international human rights standards and ignoring pressure from democratic states. US diplomatic cables revealed by Wikileaks advise that Russia has become a virtual “mafia state”. It seems unlikely the present government will take much notice of anybody unless oil prices fall dramatically or the Russian people wake up.

Nigel Warner is a long term activist for LGBT rights, working particularly in the international field.

Now the exceptional team that took over from me, Heidi ‘Knives’ Chow and Christine Haigh, along with online campaign genius Pontus Westerberg, have acheived the impossible: campaigning comedy that is actually funny.

The Real George Osborne casts Holy Flying Circus star Rufus Jones as an incompetent but oddly likeable Gideon, facing up to the food speculation problem while caught between his longing to be more popular than Boris and his loyalty to his old school chums.

I strongly urge you to watch the first episode below, and then go directly to the website to read George’s blog and to sign up for episode alerts, and follow George on twitter.

The answer is Ulster Bank’s sponsorship of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s; or as it’s now called, the ‘Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s.’  The 49^th annual festival begins this week.

It came from humble origins; started by an undergraduate student in 1962, the festival blossomed and continued through the days of political upheaval to the present day. From Jimi Hendrix to the Moscow State Ballet, it can boast an impressive, star-studded history through very dark times to brighter days.

A few years ago, due to under-funding by both the University and the Department for Culture, Arts & Leisure, sponsorship was sought and met by Ulster Bank, in a 3-year deal starting in 2008.

Ulster Bank is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group – a bank now 84% taxpayer-owned since it was bailed out by the UK government three years ago. The public now own the largest share of one of the biggest banks in the UK. The government is ultimately responsible for making sure that public money – that is to say, our money – is not being used in ways that would violate human rights or used to further unethical actions.

However, since 2008, RBS has awarded its failing executives, some of whom were credited with helping to create the financial crisis, with huge rewards from our money.

It has been identified as the world’s principal creditor to the arms industry, having participated in deals totalling an eye-watering £44.6 billion in the last 10 years, including deals involving producers of depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs.

It was recently forced to back down on a controversial loan it was prepared to make to the government of Belarus as its President, Alexander Lukashenko, cracked down on pro-democracy protestors.

And perhaps worst of all, RBS provides billions in loans to finance the extraction of the ‘tar sands’ of Alberta – a super-polluting form of oil extraction which involves using huge amounts of energy to remove the topsoil (and anything on it; trees, habitats, everything) to get at the oil underneath, destroying everything as this image shows. The First Nation communities in Alberta have documented serious impacts on their health – from very rare cancers to immune system-related illnesses, to a decline in local animal populations and water quality – not to mention over 17,000 violations of their indigenous rights guaranteed by centuries-old treaties.

As a report by a coalition of NGOs demonstrates, if the tar sands project can be proven to be viable in Alberta, this could see it rolled out to other parts of the world as oil addict economies become increasingly desperate and willing to do anything for a fix. If this type of oil extraction becomes acceptable, the world faces an even more grave challenge in dealing with the climate crisis.

Despite UK taxpayers now owning one of the biggest banks in the world, we continue to have little say in how it could create a better world for us and our children; or how it could easily become a force for good by financing clean technology.

And this is what links Ulster Bank and Queen’s University Belfast to the financiers of global suffering. The festival, it’s hard-working staff and its guests and performers are a force for good. The sponsor isn’t.

Is this really the kind of brand that a University that has just adopted the slogan ‘We Are Exceptional’ wants to be associated with? Exceptionally unethical? Exceptionally dirty?

Some may think that connection is absurd, but it’s very clearly a straight line. I’m so tired of people looking at investment in a vacuum. Part of the reason why unethical investment is permitted to exist is because people juxtapose the funding source and the end result. Sure, it’s near-impossible to live a 100% ethical live in a western consumerist democracy, but that’s no reason to do what many people do and just decide not to care about the ethics of anything. Some people are determined to ignore the cruel origins and decisions that furnish our lives with (often frivolous) first-world luxury. More active, more responsible, and more compassionate consumers could go a long way to changing this.

The EU have recently indicated they may clamp down on imports of tar sands oil. Now’s the time for RBS, other high street banks and their owners to put the long-term interests of taxpayers first and invest its considerable funds in low-carbon technology and disinvest in harmful industry. And now’s the time for Queen’s University to look into a different, less oil-drenched sponsor if RBS won’t do that.

In the meantime, what’s a decent response? Withdraw your money and put it into a bank that thinks before it invests your money in something unscrupulous. And tell your bank why you’re leaving. I did.