Neom: Forces 'told to kill’ to clear land for eco-city
Neom: Forces 'told to kill’ to clear land for eco-city
An ex-intelligence officer tells the BBC he was permitted to shoot dead those resisting eviction.
Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.
One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.
The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment.
Neom, Saudi Arabia's $500bn (£399bn) eco-region, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy which aims to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil.
Its flagship project, The Line, has been pitched as a car-free city, just 200m (656ft) wide and 170km (106 miles) long - though only 2.4km of the project is reportedly expected to be completed by 2030.
Please don‘t call it an eco-region just because these eco wrecking saudis do.
You're saying creating a 100 mile long barrier with a mirrored surface that cooks everything around it and prevents wild life from reaching the sea isn't creating an eco-region?
And it's a real word. Neom is obviously not an eco-region lol
This is such a stupid project. You could fit the same size city in 6km x 6km and it'd be bigger than what they have planned. Much cheaper and easier as well, and no reason to kill anyone... Oh wait, I see the incentive.
Nobody would talk about it if it was a standard square city. Masdar city is a square design of 6km² for example, also trying to be a hub of future technologies, and most people will go "mass what city?" The Line attracts attention, and with attention often comes money. At least they have the first part right, the second part isn't working out as they hoped it would.
Who cares if people talk about it when it‘s doomed to either become an unlivable hellscape or more likely never see completion because it‘s utterly infeasible? They destroy a huge area, waste billions and worst of all throw many lives into a meat grinder just to get some clout by the dumbest idiots on the planet. In the end of the day more people will dislike and look down on them for this moronic project that many knew would never work.
I agree its stupid but the original idea was larger and had a transit system going down it. I think that was the concept. To sorta maximize transit as you did not need to branch it off to go to various places.
Public transit sounds also easier as a grid or something if you are able to plan it beforehand.
Unless part of the point is to keep all the poors at one end. They will be reluctant to travel very far daily so the wealthy won't have to look at them. Servants will have to travel, I guess. Maybe servants come from the middle section.
Well I'm not surprised to see that Neom is going wrong in both stupid and horrifying ways. This particular part will make it hard to be too smug about it with the Saudi fanboys though... This is just sad.
All this hardship and money just so they can build a giant glass box in the middle of the fucking desert. Anyone whose spent like 5 minutes in a greenhouse will tell you why that's a bad idea for a city.
If it even gets built out. I'm expecting this to become a bioshock or escape from LA type situation. Where the city starts off normal but just goes straight to hell.
I'm thinking more "fallout vault dweller" scenario, hundreds of small isolated cities each with their own experiment.
It's fine they'll fill it with air-conditioning, all powered by fossils fuels.
How long before tankies start protesting the Saudi colonialism?
Oh, they won't? Okay.
They do, every year, at career fairs across the nations schools. It’s called divesting from the military industrial complex.
You just pretend not to see it.
This issue is brought up literally every time the Saudis are mentioned. However, your take is a fresh and interesting one that makes absolutely zero sense.
What are you doing?
Oh that’s right, nothing. Okay.
It’s not even a fucking meme in the tankiest Putin apologist communities to support Saudi Arabia.
Seriously where are you even getting this from?
Protesting in Saudi? I didn't know such a thing existed. /s
All citizens can do it. Once.
Does for a little bit, then it doesn't.
Wait? I thought they had killed the project or at least significantly reduced it in scope? Why still kill for it then?
This was when the stupid plan was both big and stupid, now it's puny and stupid.
Those people are still dead tho
At least Saudi Arabia is doing something to guard against the imminent collapse of their oil economy... So that's good, I guess.
Not sure Neom is the project I would have funded to do so, but I imagine the Saudis are getting desperate.
Was he land occupied by puppies?
Neom, Noem, so hard to tell the difference, since they're both stupid and evil.
if you've ever wonder what it was like to see the pyramids being built..
It wasn't, the pyramids ended up as planned. This won't.
They didn't always go as planned! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Pyramid
Pharaos probably were like "build my tomb inside a golden tower that reaches the stars" and a couple years later, "OK, a pointy 400 foot high pile of rocks will have to do I guess".