So, who’s aware of Freeport’s and Charter Cities?
Now that Brexit has ensured our economy is tanked and our long standing democratic rights are being absolved some in the leave camp are even asking what the whole point of it all was. Sovereignty hasn’t changed. Migration hasn’t changed. However some are about to get their Brexit bonuses.
Chiefly that would be the Billionaire American corporate networks and Russia/the Putin circle that both heavily financed the leave campaign and the data analytic fiasco surrounding it. The Russians were buying the corruption and weakening of the British state, the eroding of a player on the world stage and protecting its huge money laundering operations in the city of London. We all know about Russian money in this country. Why do you think we’re so scared of putting actual sanctions on Russia. The American corporate network, primarily funded by the Koch brothers and hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and bolstered by new age tech billionaires were more than interested in the idea of charter cities in the UK. Freeport’s already allow for tax havens and money laundering to occur so charter cities are just a natural extension from Freeport’s. Not just for the access and exploration of people and resources but they have their sights set on much more than our money.
What are Charter CIties. Exactly what they sound like. Privately owned cities where everything from the police force to health care to education is privately run, ring fenced from the host country to become a privately run fiefdom. All the institutions are ran by one company accountable to nobody. There’s no legal oversight, just the rules created in the privately created legislative bodies and enforced by the privately owned judicial bodies.
Paul Romer (mentor and professor to Rishi Sunak) spearheads the UKs charter city plan first proposed the enterprise city model which differed slightly to the charter city plan being rolled out currently. The enterprise model was originally designed to be rolled out in underdeveloped countries for testing but with Britain’s rising inflation and decreasing living standards we became a perfect testing ground. It calls into question the true motives for the various current crises we face. Has the levelling up agenda been a ploy to drive down living standards and erode our rights so this plan can be slipped in under the radar. Be in no doubt this neoliberal plot is one of the greatest existential dangers we currently face. Can we be pushed to the point where we accept the idea of these cities would be a good thing and add prosperity to our lives. I seriously hope not. Crucially in Romers idea of a charter city there had to be transparent decision making and each city backed by a developed nation and adopt the legal code of that nation. Romer ended up distancing himself from the project after things went tits up in Honduras (neoliberal twats just can’t leave South America alone) when there was no transparency with deals made with private companies in the first attempt to create such a city. This snowballed into the attempt to create an even more private charter city which only got sniffed out after the local population rose up to protest.
Babson Global Inc, the commercial arm of Babson college embarked on a new project to introduce charter cities in 2013. Charles Koch is a graduate of this college. Another important person in this tale is shankar singham. A London born dual national who refers to himself as being American. He made a name for himself privatising British utilities in the 90’s and lists privatising nationalised utilities as a skill on his online CV. During his time at Babson Global he was instrumental in changing Romers enterprise ideal into the charter city idea now pedalled in Britain.
It’s argued by asvocates of charter cities that they will raise up the population of an area and increase prosperity but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is little evidence to support this but conversely a mountain of evidence to show the exploration, lawlessness and corruption these cities engender.
The idea for enterprise l/charter cities is like that of special economic zones which have been successful in part like Hong Kong, Bangladesh etc. shining examples of what charter cities could become. It is true that they have successfully delivered growth to their areas each area had its own particular setup and tooo years to deliver growth. What advocates of the idea fail to mention is that each of these areas had access to abundant cheap labour.
Honduras was a chief battleground for the charter city initiative before brexit. Following romers failed attempt and a subsequent change in legislation thanks to hondurases Supreme Court to outlaw charter cities a new government bowed to pressure and in stepped Eric Brimen who coming with the backing of people like Elon musk and peter thiel nearly succeeded in creating the first full private city in Honduras. He formed his own town called Prospera and attracted a lot of
Investment until the project imploded. The neighbouring town of crawfish rock had its water supply connected to prospera and Brimen went on to use the water supply in a power play and cut the town off from the water supply. This is just one example of how a charter town can act when led by a dangerous ideologue. It doesn’t take much power for Someone to become corrupted.
Charter cities in Britain will be no better. Due to the scale of the project it will be far worse. There will be no public services to speak of and everyone must abide by the laws set out by the private body that runs the town or face the punishments they also set out. Such arrangements only lead
To massive suffering and the enrichment of the few pulling the strings. The first step will be complete deregulation of everything within the zone. Not light deregulation but total, workers rights, environmental protections and business and tax obligations. Everything will be privatised and I’d you can’t afford things like healthcare on your twelve hours a day seven days a week job then you’ll just have to suffer.
How have we managed to get to a point where the government is willing to try these charter cities out. We’ll follow the money surrounding brexit and we get a good idea.
Mathew Elliot, former chief executive of vote leave and founder of the tax payers alliance is recognised as being instrumental in the successful yet legally questionable leave campaign and the subsequent huge shift to the right that British politics has seen. He and his right wing lobbyist wife Sarah have been working with the power Koch backed thinktanks and lobbying groups in the us and have openly sought to bring the American lobbying model over to the UK. The decision to leave the EU was always about getting away from the Democratic regulatory framework that prevented such arrangements as Eliot was trying to bring about. It was about avoiding the international rule of law that prevented such arrangements on the basis that the are exploitative and environmentally dangerous and function as hotbeds for crime and as tax havens. The vote to leave the eu has now been widely reported to have been influenced by several highly questionable and potentially illegal factors. From allegations of Russian financing and influence to the illicit overspending by the leave campaign to the controversial use of data scraping by companies like Cambridge analytica it seems it was far from a fair and impartial vote or democratic vote. It’s also worth mentioning that some leave groups met with steve bannon. In this post truth World we have a lot to thank Carol cadwalladr for. Her reporting has been second to none in keeping the corruption in the leave campaign in the public consciousness and yet even after the corruption and the Cambridge analytica scandal we still got the fogurehead of the leave campaign managing to end up in Downing Street changing laws to protect himself so there seems there won’t ever be any accountability there.
Worse still is the American billionaire funding of think tanks and political action groups that have started to flood our shores. They’ve gained a foothold here after growing like a noxious weed in America for decades. It’s allowed the ideas of people like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand to get to the heart of government. The tufton street think tanks have an alarming amount of power and of course have the leave groups think tanks amongst their number and are again financed by the Koch brothers, Merced and a group of other billionaires that form a coalition of extreme right wing think tanks known as the atlas network and is increasingly dictating policy on both sides of the Atlantic. Several Familiar faces from the imperialist brexit lobby are here including Mathew Eliot. They all hold high ranking roles in the atlas network.
Primarily with the aim of obscuring their sources of funding these think tanks all donate to each other creating a money trail that’s hard to follow. Further muddying the waters is the fact they hide behind the guise of charity status here in the uk. This means they don’t pay tax and aren’t required to open their books like normal businesses would be. This has facilitated the anonymous purchasing of our democracy.
These think tanks are not genuine free thinking cabals but groups with agendas they are trying to push. For some that is the idea of charter cities. One think tank merits closer inspection than any other. The IEA.
The IEA are the most influential think tank in the UK in 2022. They hade 14 of their alumni sitting in Boris Johnson’s first cabinet and more crediting the IEA with shaping policy and pushing ideaology outside of any democratic oversight. However another of their members has already had an important role in this story. Shanker Signham.
Singham previously of the Babson institute was appointed director of international trade and competition at the IEA. Initially having left his government position under May in 2018 Johnson couldn’t wait to have him back in. He reportedly had several unminuted meetings with Johnson and is likely responsible for the ultra hard brexit we now find ourselves in. Singham is also in the race for a 200million pound government contract he himself helped create, corruption if ever there was any. There’s more to play for than a few million pounds where Singham is concerned however. For him this is an ideological battle, free market fundamentalism is his battle cry where the only thing that can have value is financial.
From his time at the Babson institute to now Singham has been a part of this story. He promotes eurosceptacism and free market economics post brexit within the government and now sits at the heart of government apparently advising on trade but enjoying unparalleled access to the brexit process and senior government ministers. At every step Singham has been there to guide us down this sorry path. Now the governments plan to unleash charter cities is out remember who has been whispering in their ears.
There’s not much information available on what the governments plans are with charter cities or Freeport’s as they call them to downplay just how much territory is being given away. The lack of transparency has been instrumental in getting these plans through. There is little chance anyone would have voted for brexit if they knew they were voting to get rid of their own rights and submit themselves to a private corporate fascist overlord. We know there are numerous sites already created in the uk and more are to come. The lax laws surrounding what the bidders have to do in providing laws in these areas is shocking. So much for reclaiming our sovereignty.
The obvious aim of these ideas, think tanks and the like is to do away with government entirely and have a technocratic hegemony, with the charter city idea all wrapped up within it. The idea is to exhaust all natural resources and labour ina race to the bottom. If a trading and defence cooperative of billionaires can achieve this end it will be the dream realised decades in the making. Wealth and power unchained it will be the death of democracy for all.
