We also know that the company behind it invest themselves in the worst of the worst. However, for a final sting in the tail, look no further than what this hedge fund does with some of the cash it makes.
Labour Party: £4m in slush funding…?
As openDemocracy revealed:
The Labour Party’s largest-ever donation came from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers.
While the £4m donation by Quadrature Capital is the sixth-largest in British political history, it is noteworthy not just for its size, but also its timing.
Of course, no one should really be surprised that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is accepting donations from hedge funds registered in tax havens. However, there were further revelations from openDemocracy. These include the fact that Quadrature had investments in fossil fuel, arms, and private healthcare companies.
However, the donation got its reward for Quadrature.
Interesting. Labour's new climate envoy Rachel Kyte is co-chair of climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms. Quadrature gave Labour £4m on 28 May, at the start of the…
dizzy: The on-the-take shower of sihts that currently govern us probably see nothing wrong with a rich offshore hedge fund buying a plump government role to promote it’s own interests. Years ago it was called corruption.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, speaks during a September 25, 2024 campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned,” said the National Iranian American Council.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat on Wednesday to blow Iran “to smithereens” if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as “genocidal.”
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” he said to raucous applause. “We’re gonna blow it to smithereens, you can’t do that. And there would be no more threats.”
Responding to the former president’s remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that “Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal.”
Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself "to smithereens" is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal.https://t.co/8LImpJLefl
“Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran’s most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government,” NIAC continued. “These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat.”
“Likewise, we unequivocally condemn any Iranian threats that may be targeted at Trump or former officials,” the group added. “Political violence must be rejected and prevented in all forms. Assassinations are a path to war and human suffering, as was demonstrated by the strike on [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen.] Qasem Soleimani that engendered these threats, and risk further embroiling the region in violence.”
Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran’s economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State fighters and “take out their families,” resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
“He’s a liar. C’mon, you know he doesn’t tell the truth at all,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the only member of either legislative chamber who voted against authorizing the so-called War on Terror in 2001—said in a recent interview with The Nation.
“Just look at his record, who he cozies up to in terms of dictators,” Lee added. “He wants more investment in the military budget. What his strategy is, is to create a more dangerous world.”
Biden addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s 79th session (Photo: UN Photo/Loey Felipe)
Biden’s final address to the United Nations as president was riddled with falsehoods and hypocrisies typical of US foreign policy
When US President Biden ended his final address to the UN General Assembly with “my fellow leaders, there is nothing that’s beyond our capacity if we work together,” it can be easy to forget that the United States is the number one obstacle to mutual cooperation around the world.
Biden’s mention of the various conflicts and aggressions around the world—from Ukraine to Sudan to Gaza—of course made no mention of the US’s complicity in each of these conflicts.
Biden calls for “a ceasefire and hostage deal” for Gaza in order to “bring the hostages home, secure security for Israel, and Gaza free of Hamas’ grip, ease the suffering in Gaza, and end this war.”
But while Biden calls for an end to the war, the US continues to send weapons and other forms of aid to Israel as it carries out genocide in Gaza, aggression in the West Bank, and extends the war to Lebanon. Biden’s administration has ignored the popular demand for an arms embargo against Israel, supported by major labor unions which represent almost half of all unionized workers in the US as well as 61% of the US population. Instead, the US has only expanded its military support for Israel, approving a USD 20 billion dollar arms package to the Zionist state in August.
The US has maintained its unconditional support of Israel, even as Israel floats a possible ground invasion of Lebanon. Yet ironically Biden said of the war in Sudan, “the world needs to stop arming the generals.” According to the Palestinian Youth Movement, an international Palestinian diaspora organization, “the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for the current massacres in Lebanon.”
The US’s support for Israeli genocide has received additional scrutiny after it was revealed that USAID and the State Department knew that Israel had deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. US law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries which block deliveries of US-backed aid, and so US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to have deliberately told Congress that Israel did not block aid so that weapons shipments to Israel would remain unaffected.
Yet in his speech to the UNGA, Biden entreated Sudanese generals to “stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people.”
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” Blinken told Congress on May 10, despite being told the opposite by USAID and the State Department in April.
In Ukraine, not only were the US and NATO’s violations of Russian security red lines the chief cause of that war, but the West continues to be an obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the conflict. There has been no negotiation between Ukraine and Russia ever since the West allegedly forced Ukraine to withdraw from talks in April 2022, and the US in its usual fashion continues to supply billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine to continue the war.
And while Biden urged other UNGA member nations to “stand up” for the Ukrainian people, US military officials openly thirst for Ukrainian blood—complaining in a New York Timesarticle from last year that the Ukrainian military has become too “casualty averse,” causing it to “race through precious [US-provided] ammunition supplies” as opposed to human lives.
Biden spent time lamenting the humanitarian situation in Sudan, and claiming that “the United States has led the world in providing humanitarian aid” to the war-torn country. But like many global conflicts, the war in Sudan has its roots in the savagery of US imperialism. According to Stephanie Weatherbee Brito of the International Peoples Assembly, “Through both military interventions and economic sanctions, the United States has shown its willingness to coerce any nation deviating from its interests. This has fostered a global environment where nations vie for power and influence. The US’s propensity to invade and punish perceived adversaries has spurred countries to bolster their military and geopolitical capabilities to safeguard their sovereignty in a world marked by violence and conflict, saturated with weaponry and lacking effective mechanisms to ensure peace.”
“This is essentially what is happening in Sudan today, where the conflict has resulted in more than ten million displaced persons. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces serves to thwart the democratic process the people have been struggling for since 2018, as rival military groups struggle to control the country and its resources,” Brito articulated.
US hybrid wars remains chief obstacle to global cooperation
“Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart,” Biden claimed in his address to the UN, despite his administration’s wielding of sanctions that cause economic devastation throughout the world.
For decades, the international community has been calling on the United States to lift deadly sanctions on Cuba that are part of an over 60-year-long blockade against the socialist nation. Most recently, a group of nearly 600 parliamentarians from 73 different countries penned a joint letter condemning the continued inclusion of Cuba on the list. And 35 former heads of state from across the globe penned a separate letter to Biden, urging him to remove Cuba from the US’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
But when it comes to US sanctions and other violations of the sovereignty of other countries, Cuba is but one facet. Comprehensive US sanctions target and put a stranglehold on the economies of countries such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, and Syria. Other nations, such as China, are under constant attack on many fronts, whether through media fear mongering or military exercises near their territories.
And yet in his speech to the UNGA, Biden seems to deny that his administration has deliberately stoked conflict with China. “We also need to uphold our principles as we seek to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict,” Biden pontificated. “We stand ready to cooperate on urgent challenges for the good of our people and the people everywhere.”
According to Amanda Yee, journalist, anti-imperialist activist, and host of The China Report on BreakThrough News, Biden’s China strategy has nothing to do with managed competition. “In reality, it’s a belligerent policy which will only escalate toward war,” Yee told Peoples Dispatch.
“What he calls ‘strengthening our network of alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific’ really means the continuation of arming Taiwan, building more military bases on allies’ soil and in the South China Sea, sending cruise missiles to Japan, conducting war games exercises in South Korea—all to further build up the military encirclement of China.”
The future of US democracy
“I’ve made the preservation of democracy the central cause of my presidency,” Biden claimed during his address. And yet those in the US who have protested against their governments’ domestic and foreign policies have faced police violence, mass arrests, and even deportation.
As US presidential elections fast approach, whether the winner is Biden’s successor Kamala Harris or the ultra-conservative former president Donald Trump, anti-imperialist activists can expect more of the same repression.
Delegates defy Starmer by voting to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance after Unite chief’s barn-storming speech
LABOUR conference defied Sir Keir Starmer today and voted to reject the callous cut to pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.
Delegates backed a motion from Unite the union demanding that the government “reverse the introduction of means-testing for the winter fuel allowance.”
It also urged Labour to scrap the “fiscal rules which prevent borrowing to invest” and introduce a wealth tax on the top 1 per cent and an excess profits tax.
In a barn-storming speech, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham recalled how the 1945 Labour government had rebuilt the country despite debt ratios three times the level of today.
She said: “People simply do not understand, I do not understand, how our new Labour government can cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and leave the super-rich untouched.
“This is not what people voted for. It is the wrong decision and needs to be reversed.
“We are the sixth-richest economy in the world. We have the money. Britain needs investment, not austerity mark two. We won’t get any gold badge for shaving peanuts off our debt.
“These fiscal rules are self-imposed and the decision to keep them is like hanging a noose around our necks.
Youth Demand group spray paints ‘GENOCIDE COFENCE’ at the UK Labour Party Conference, Liverpool, 24 September 2024.
Two Youth Demand supporters have taken action at the Labour Party conference by painting ‘GENOCIDE CONFERENCE’ on the front entrance. Youth Demand are calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the new UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
At around 10:50am two Youth Demand supporters walked up to the security check-in building, where all guests must pass through, of the Labour Party conference being held in Liverpool and spray pained ‘GENOCIDE’ and were part way through writing ‘CONFERENCE’ before they were tackled by plain clothes police officers and arrested.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
“Labour is still arming Israel despite a majority of the public backing a complete arms embargo. Despite admitting there is a ‘clear risk’ of ‘serious violation of international humanitarian law’, they have spinelessly suspended less than 10% of arms licenses.
“They claim their national conference is ‘democracy in action’. This is a joke when in reality Labour sold our democracy to arms and fossil fuel companies. Just last week it was revealed Starmer accepted a £4,000,000 donation from a hedge fund with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of shares in fossil fuels and weapons.“
One of those taking action today was Danny Lusardi, 23, a graduate from Lancaster. He said:
“The Labour government has admitted the arms it’s selling to Israel are being used for war crimes. But still they’re happy to keeping licensing 90% of those sales. We’re here to show them the British public can’t accept that.”
“It’s our duty as citizens to hold our government to account. When they won’t listen to the democratic will of the people, that means breaking windows and spraying paint.”
“As we approach a year of watching Israel’s genocide on the news and social media, it’s time to ask ourselves: are we serious about ending it now?”
'There is a genocide happening right now in Gaza, it has been so destroyed it is literally a different colour from space.'
At the end of WWII, this country looked at the bodies and promised we would never allow these kinds of atrocities to happen again. This monument reminds us… pic.twitter.com/rI7yKXxFcX
