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End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

theguardian.com

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Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#351

Post by inslee1 »

vladms wrote: post #309
zaphirplane wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like abortion rights, let’s see let’s encourage people to hate on Canadians and Americans because the us government has a policy on abortion. To reiterate, having an issue with a government for a specific reason is informed. Hating an ethic group is racism. Ps I’m not from there or live there

The above replies did not mention an ethnic group, rather a geographical area. The main ethnic group in that area is also very present in north Africa, and there is much less general "mistrust" (or negative feelings) towards that area than to the other. Not sure if "geographic discrimination" is in any way better than "racism" but using terms correctly is required for good communication.

The implication of using "632 CE" appears to be a reference to the proliferation of Islam after the death of Muhammad (I didn't know this until I Googled)

So if that individuals distrust towards the Arabian peninsula begins in the exact year Islam began to spread, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that OP is an Islamaphobe (and it would include a number of North African countries as well)

TLDR: OP is using geography as a dog whistle.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#352

Post by Tadpole9181 »

TylerE wrote: post #75
hgomersall wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled by this... Isn't the old testament essentially the Torah? (This is an honest question, in case that needs clarifying)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses “ According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in population and, as a result, the Egyptian Pharaoh worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies.[7] Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the pop…

Which should never be quoted as a historical reference, since:

> No references to Moses appear in any Egyptian sources prior to the fourth century BC, long after he is believed to have lived. No contemporary Egyptian sources mention Moses, or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure.

It's a fictional religious story about how the people who themselves wrote the story are chosen by their diety, victims of the "other" heathens, and very cool.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#353

Post by theblobawakens »

ethanbond wrote: post #259
oliviabenson wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are complicit (if not responsible). Accepted practice isn’t an excuse for indifference but criticising your own country isn’t a free pass to criticise the culture of others without challenging our culpability. If we sincerely want to help the citizens of these countries that we believe to be oppressed, we have options that we choose not to take. We could offer cultural asylum, give people a route to access our cul…

Was slavery-era America worse on the dimension of human rights or just different? Why does cultural relativism excuse horrors of actual modern people with access to and awareness of all modern thinking, modern technology, and modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress, but we’re perfectly comfortable saying slave owners of the past are responsible for their crimes despite being raised by slave owners in…

>modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress

But we haven't achieved moral progress.

G7/G20 countries have essentially merely physically outsourced slavery out of sight to second world factories and third world hell holes.

Through the magic of fiat money and currency exchange rates, we have deluded ourselves for half a century that we are in fact not colonizers and oppressors anymore.

Just one example are the Coltane mining wars in Congo: 1998-2008 5.2 million killed or dead from hunger (and it'd probably be higher if people hadn't more or less stopped counting after 2006). You probably didn't even know it happened,and yet millions today work at slaves to continue producing minerals for our digital comfort.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#354

Post by ethanbond »

ponector wrote: post #345
llamaimperative wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did send huge amounts of aid in 2022, including 38 HIMARS, 2,000 Stingers, 100,000 anti-armor systems, 250 artillery guns, 9,000 anti-tank missiles, and 35,000 small arms. Then Republicans put a hard right Christian theocrat, who’s totally captured by the hard-right wing of the party, in charge of the House and everything has stalled.

Yes, huge amount of light weapons, short range. I've specifically mentioned heavy weapons. It is hard to fight against heavy weapons with light one, isn't it?

No, what we’re finding is actually quite the opposite. High volumes of light weapons is not only enough, but preferable on the modern battlefield even fighting against heavy weapons.

What specific weapon systems would you like to see sent to Ukraine?

And what bearing does this have on where blame should land for the US turning its back on Ukraine?

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#355

Post by krisoft »

keiferski wrote: post #237
krisoft wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the city Łódź in Poland is situated along a single linear 4-5km street. Are we just making things up? Just by a single glance at a map of Łódź you can see that this is not true. The city is clearly blob shaped. > I guess I don’t really understand the criticism, most of which seems to be “you should just build something that isn’t the thing you want to build.” The criticism is that there are reasons why cities are b…

Had you taken more than a glance, you would have come across this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotrkowska_Street And yes, as I wrote, it is the main axis of the city, even if other neighborhoods branch off of it. This is a basic obvious fact about the city: From the very beginning this street was the central axis, around which the city grew bigger, and its development spontaneously gave the present shape to its ce…

Found it. None of that claims that "the city Łódź in Poland is situated along a single linear 4-5km street". It is not. So much so that if you look at it on a map, you can't see which one of the many streets is the one which is supposed to be the one you are talking about. I really recommend looking at a map if you want to make claims about how a city is.

What the sentence you are quoting claims is that this is the street the city grow out of. Which is a different statement than saying that the one you said. The "the city Łódź in Poland is situated along a single linear 4-5km street" describe the appearance and layout of the city today, the quote you are quoting describe the history of the city and in which order it was built out.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#356

Post by ethanbond »

theblobawakens wrote: post #353
ethanbond wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was slavery-era America worse on the dimension of human rights or just different? Why does cultural relativism excuse horrors of actual modern people with access to and awareness of all modern thinking, modern technology, and modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress, but we’re perfectly comfortable saying slave owners of the past are responsible for their crimes despite being raised by slave owners in…

>modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress But we haven't achieved moral progress. G7/G20 countries have essentially merely physically outsourced slavery out of sight to second world factories and third world hell holes. Through the magic of fiat money and currency exchange rates, we have deluded ourselves for half a century that we are in fact not colonizers and oppressors anymore. Just one example ar…

Those countries can outlaw those conditions whenever they want. When they do, they’ll have achieved some additional moral progress. I’m pretty sure you’d be crying foul if the US decided to go and enforce its laws over there.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#357

Post by ta1243 »

pndy wrote: post #106
saberience wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of assume they would have express trains as well as local trains, a bit like the NY subway. I.e. one train which just goes direct to the other end with no stops at high speed.

Wikipedia article mentions "the Spine" - an underground tunnel that would host transport superfast train infrastructure connecting both sides of the complex. Traveling from one end to another would take 20mins, supposedly.

So about as long as riding a bike from anywhere in a equivalent sized normal city to another point (6km tops)

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#358

Post by ethanbond »

Y_Y wrote: post #348
ethanbond wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was slavery-era America worse on the dimension of human rights or just different? Why does cultural relativism excuse horrors of actual modern people with access to and awareness of all modern thinking, modern technology, and modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress, but we’re perfectly comfortable saying slave owners of the past are responsible for their crimes despite being raised by slave owners in…

I agree with your point, but I think it's not fair to blame cultural relativism. Relativism means not prescribing a single morality applicable in all contexts. That's something on which reasonable people will differ. If you do accept it though, you're not obliged to permit everything. For example I think that there were relatively moral people who lived in e.g. the US and Saudi Arabia ~300 years ago and accepted slav…

Sure, I don’t believe cultural relativism is itself in all cases wrong. I think it’s obviously wrong when used to excuse obviously immoral things done in a context where they are in fact obviously immoral (such as much of the Middle East in the modern day).

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#359

Post by alephnerd »

usrusr wrote: post #327
alephnerd wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much this. The companies subcontracted on Neom all had some amount of investment or ownership from either the royal family's fund or the sovereign fund.

But is the money spent coming from different pockets? Doesn't necessarily counter your argument though, could be sovereign fund -> family, with those contractors owned by the source pocket effectively being noops in terms of that funneling. And even that could still very much be worthwhile, as in generate business for the company, sell off the company to external investors based on those numbers and later phase out t…

Authoritarian regimes aren't as unitary as people think they are - in reality you have multiple power bases and factions to keep happy (and they have their own family offices).

Furthermore, we live in a globalized world. In 2024, almost every country is dependent on international investors bringing in liquidity. Graft is fine, so long as execution happens.

This means you have multiple different firms joining in these kinds of infra investments. Some are international investors (eg. Citigroup, HSBC, Jardins), some are regional investors (eg. SNB, SAB), some are family offices, and some are the government itself.

The international investors are used to maintain international credibility, the regional investors are used as fixers by the international investors, the family offices are those regionally prominent members who can make or break procurement, and the government investment funds that act as the lubricant to manage all these different factions.

Basically, these investments are used to not only show off regional power, but also pay off regionally prominent factions via Family Offices or minority ownership.

This happens from Saudi Arabia (eg. Neom) to Japan [0] to South Korea [1] to Poland [2]. This is very common in newly developed countries as well as developing countries (eg. CCDI's crackdown on land corruption in China, the Odenbrecht scandal in Brazil, the various Adani linked scandals in India).

> as in generate business for the company, sell off the company to external investors

There's no reason to. Once a connected company executes successfully on large regional projects, they can become international players. This is what happened to Reliance in the 2000s, Adani in the 2010s, Odenbrecht in Brazil in the 1990s-2000s, Polimeks in Turkiye in the 2000s, Wanda Group in China in the 2000s, etc.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/japan-s-k...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-indic...

[2] - https://www.oecd.org/corruption/poland-s-fight-against-forei...

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#360

Post by zaphirplane »

ponector wrote: post #318
zaphirplane wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America a black man driving a clean car can be pulled over and shot dead by police In many American states a raped woman has to carry her rapist off spring to term In America black people are significantly over represented in jails, poverty, illiteracy, single parent families. I’m sure the 5 largest western democracies have similar issues

Are there special laws for black people? no, it is not comparable with UAE.

Meaningless hair splitting to a middle class black American shot dead for driving a washed car
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