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The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | Documentary Film
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.The challenge for the UK is that the flywheel of the City of London corporation and its offshore wormholes were at the core of globalization. Ironically the nation state the CoL coexists with (the UK) is as large a casualty of this as the many colonial nation states ravaged by globalization. This was compounded by the globalists - which the Economist exists to promote - forcing the merger of the UK into the european union.The vote to leave by the proletariat demonstrated massive dissatisfaction, but sadly there are subsequently no credible political parties or leadership that are not closely aligned with the CoL and/or the EU, resulting in a becalming.
The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | Documentary Film https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8
'Michael Oswald's film The Spider's Web reveals how at the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance'.
80 minutes, well worth watching imo
⬐ iLoveOncall> The vote to leave by the proletariat demonstrated massive dissatisfactionThe only thing it demonstrated is massive propaganda, that's it.
People were dissatisfied with the current state of their life, not with the EU. Then people just fed them lies saying that their problems were due to being in the EU.
⬐ olivermarksPlease watch the video I linked to for context
It is a little bit of both influencing each other, but the system in London is definitely the killer app. My understanding of the history is that there are systems that have been entrenched in the London financial industry going back centuries due to the unique history of the City of London and how it administrates itself separately from the rest of England/ GB. It was the global hub during pax brittania, and remained the financial hub of the world after the war thanks to the Eurodollar. It was at this point that tax systems were devised involving their crown dependencies to obfuscate everything which made it a popular place to launder money. A lot of the opulence has developed along side over all these years.So it was the case that London was the city of the world during the empire which made it the candidate for running the Eurodollar system to rebuild Europe which cemented its place as the financial capital of the world up until America financialized their economy in the late 70s, its colonies allowed for unique tax systems which made it even more popular.
I got most of this from the book entitled Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson, and the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8 that was inspired by it.
⬐ rosndo> It is a little bit of both influencing each other, but the system in London is definitely the killer appI’m super unconvinced this is true. I know many “oligarchs” living in London, most of them do not keep their money in the UK.
I think the people writing about London from a tax haven/money laundering perspective tend to have rather little insight into the quality of life aspect. It’s easy for them to mistakenly assume that the system is the main draw, but the reality on the ground seems rather different.
For very rich people that want to live in a city, London is absolutely the #1 destination.
⬐ aynggI am not saying the reason London in popular is only because of laundering, it is self evident that it is one of the major cosmopolitan metro areas in the world, but I am saying for launderers, London is a top destination. They have been the capital for the financial world for well over a century, you could even say the first globalized world with the Empire, with that there is a lot of money in the city, a lot of money in the city naturally creates the amenities, infrastructure, institutions and lifestyles that appeal and cater to that money over time (laundering being just one of those things), which in turn makes the city more attractive to people with money, creating a virtuous cycle. London exists at the intersection of new and old world globalism, no other city has even been in the game long enough to even compare.
Before going after individuals like Dyson in that regard, deal with institutions like the City of London Corporation and BoE first [1].
⬐ ascorbicI've not bought their hoovers either
Kind of off-topic, but there's an excellent documentary called The Spider’s Web [1] that explores how society reached this point of valuing increasingly ridiculous displays of paper wealth and the financialization of everything through the lens of British offshore wealth secrecy schemes.
If are interested in this topic and you haven't seen the independent documentary "The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire", you owe it to yourself. It's a superbly done documentary on a budget of ~4k£.
>It seems strange to me that so many people are onboard with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want the government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous.
That said, you may be right that some innocents may get wrapped up in this, but I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed.
To be honest the biggest problem I have is that we've become so normalized to this kind of shit that hardly anything happens from the revelations. Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account. Combine that with things like Epstein's lack of prosecution and later assassination and what I see is the overton window moving to normalize corruption as a required pragmatic approach to power such that most people will openly admit the rule of law simply doesn't apply to the elite.
This, therefor, is hacktivism of the finest kind imho. The people standing up for themselves when even their own governments won't. Any potential fallout relating to innocents I would place at the feet of those governments who failed to do their job, and not the hacktivists who reveal the truth because of that failure.
For those of you interested in the topic of offshore funny money, check out the following excellent documentary. The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire
⬐ AnthonyMouse> This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous.This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records.
Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business.
> I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed.
I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior.
> Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account
It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own?
They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.
⬐ arminiusreturns> This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records.Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation.
> Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business.
Again, straw men. One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data. Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways. Just as banks have to do suspicious activity reports if you deposit more than 10k or deposit large sums in a structured way that indicates suspicion, but them looking at your purchase data is at the same time considered a privacy violation. Don't get me wrong I'm against massive surveillance of the genpop, but that is not even close to what is going on here.
> I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior.
I'm not sure how much you know about the offshore world but that simply doesn't match everything I know about it (which is admittedly little, but some is first hand). Don't get too hung up on the one particular demographic I focused on. There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs". Your attempt to whitewash being an oligarch of the particular Russian type because Putin doesn't like them is laughable.
> It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.
You are partially correct, in that the rule of law doesn't seem to apply to the uber-wealthy, but that doesn't mean the people don't deserve to know who the shady cats are even if the gov does nothing. All of the reasons you state are obvious and exactly why this was done via hacktivism and not via some international banking regulation ala Switzerland when they changed their laws.
⬐ AnthonyMouse> Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation.Innocent people wouldn't be using Bitcoin or accounts in the Caymans or whatever if you could walk into a US bank (or a Walmart) with $100 in cash and walk out with a $100 prepaid debit card without being required to give anyone a name or social security number.
> One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data.
This is registry data on people published with the intent to force them back into using the system that gives up their financial data.
> Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways.
I agree! So then why does the system that allegedly exists only to prevent moving millions of dollars require the system to know what books a person is buying? Shouldn't that system only apply to high dollar value accounts?
> There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs".
But then what are we getting from publishing a list which is some bad guys and some good guys? Being on the list doesn't prove you're a bad guy, so what are people supposed to do with it? Some kind of indiscriminate mob justice?
Whereas if you have some evidence that a specific person is a bad guy then publish that and not an indiscriminate list of names.
> Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealthThis is easy, after all hiding cash is needed by everybody. And when it comes to finance , there are no countries only financial interest. Of course nothing bad will happen to these financial heavens, because they are protected by the richest and most powerful people and organisations.
"The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire"[1] gives a good overview of how this started.
For those interested in this subject, I can't recommend the documentary "The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire" [1] highly enough. The guy who behind it not only did an excellent job, but did it for a tiny fraction of what a bigger studio would have spent for a much more inferior end result.
This is an incredible documentary about British tax havens and the influence of the City of London in the running of UK government & foreign policy https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8
⬐ teh_klevI agree, this is well worth watching.
If this is a topic of interest, I can recommend this independently created documentary 'The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire'. It's the story of how Britain's elite created a financial web spanning the globe, replacing the old empire with a new financial one, running from the Commonwealth countries back to London. That's why so many overseas British territories are associated with money laundering and tax evasion. Free to watch on YouTube:
Here is an eye-opening look at how the city operates in the modern day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8
⬐ bogomipzThanks this looks interesting. Unfortunately I don't have time watch this now in it's entirety. I will later however. Cheers.
There is a massive 'fear campaign' drip dripping dire news in the UK every day if the people don't reconsider leaving a federated europe. The EU is well past its sell-buy date, won't reform and globalization has taken full advantage of its undemocratic structure for offshore commercial gain.The divide and rule aspects of the UK EU referendum results are being exploited to the full. Like the last US election there is no good result for the English people - remaining or leaving are both going to have an ugly side. The City of London rules the financial world and enables incredible sums to float offshore via trusts and opaque corporate setups. What we are seeing is a further divide between the haves and have nots.
https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8 < spiders web documentary
'At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance.'
This makes the consumer banks and FS firms shuffling fiat currencies around europe a tiny drop in the ocean
⬐ olivermarksThe Cayman Islands are the 5th largest financial centre worldwide, via City of Londonhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/11/11/the-cayman-conun...