We find this truth to be self-evident: This is the moment when we find out just how mad a king Donald Trump is.
Since kings break faith upon Commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee!
— Richard the Bastard in Shakespeare’s King John, Act 2 Scene 1
Even in Shakespeare’s time, street performers and pickpockets knew that the way to a mark’s wallet was to draw their attention with one hand while engaging the other, unseen.
It may be that while the world’s attention is drawn to Iran, the real action is in Riyadh. And while Donald Trump may think he is King of the World, the man on the throne is none other than His Sliceness, the Master of Bonesaw, Crown Prince of Cutlery and Controversy, His Royal Oiliness, Keeper of the Black Gold, Sheikh of Shady Shadows, Lord High Executioner of Journalistic Freedom, and the Emir of Emergency Rebrands, Prince Mohammed bin Salmon al Saud.
In May 2025, a high-profile lunch in Riyadh brought together Donald Trump, the Crown Prince, and a group of Silicon Valley billionaires and executives. The guest list assembled by Elon Musk (Tesla, xAI, SpaceX) and arriving by their own jets: Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Alex Karp (Palantir), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Ruth Porat (Alphabet/Google), Alexandr Wang (Scale AI), Travis Kalanick (Cloud Kitchens, former Uber CEO), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), Larry Fink (BlackRock), Jane Fraser (Citigroup), James Quincey (Coca-Cola), Patrick Soon-Shiong (ImmunityBio Executive Chairman), and Kimbal Musk (restaurateur, Elon Musk’s brother). Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Francis Suarez (the Mayor of Miami) arrived with POTUS on Air Force One.
Ostensibly, the agenda was securing Saudi investment in U.S. firms. The shadow agenda was cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, or what the Saudis refer to as Vision 2030. His Sliceness wants the financial center of the world to be his high-rise futuristic megacity, Neom, under construction since 2017 on the Red Sea, 220 clicks from the Israeli border.
The wealth of the Saudi monarchy is based on petrodollars—tip of the cap to T.E. Lawrence and Calouste Gulbenkian. Modernization has been impressive by historic standards. However, Arabia’s future wealth, MSB believes, will come from knowledge, and the best way to gather, store, commoditize, and sell knowledge is with AI.
Until recently, cryptocurrencies were regulated by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) and the Capital Market Authority (CMA), both constrained by Sharia law, which takes a dim view of illicit activity, especially among youth. Then, in 2024, a sympathetic Imam’s convenient fatwa declared Bitcoin to be Sharia-compliant, and SAMA began engaging with global crypto firms. CBDC is not a nightclub—it’s the Central Bank Digital Currency, a SAMA fiat stablecoin.
Footnote: Last week the U.S. Senate passed the Genius bill making any homegrown crypto stablecoin a legal U.S. currency not controlled by the Fed (“Stable Genius,” get it?).
Neom is designed to be a hub for innovation and fintech. Derived from the Ancient Greek prefix neo, meaning "new," and the Arabic word mustaqbal, meaning “future," the "M" is also the first letter of bin Salman's name and his signature as Neom’s principal architect. Launched in 2017 and proclaimed to be completed by 2030, construction will cost at least $8.8 trillion. More likely, add another zero.
Ain’t authoritarian rule great? Thousands of people were forcibly moved, their villages razed, to make way for MSB’s 10,200 square mile ecocity,. For contrast, Los Angeles is about 500 sq mi. Members of the Howeitat tribe who resisted eviction were simply cleansed.
Multiple city districts are planned, including a floating industrial complex, a global trade hub, and tourist resorts. In October 2024, Sindalah, a luxury island destination, became the first Neom region to open. Plans call for robots to perform functions such as security, logistics, home delivery, and caregiving, and for the city to be powered solely with wind and solar. Given that global air conditioning already contributes 3% of greenhouse warming, claims that a new megacity in the desert will be climate-friendly ought to be viewed with skepticism.
A single very long building in Neom—a "linear settlement"—is designed to have no cars, streets or carbon emissions. It’s called “The Line” (Arabic: ذا لاين). It will run 170 kilometres (110 mi) at a height of 500 m (1,600 ft) and a width of 200 metres (660 ft) and accommodate a population of 9 million (25% of Saudi Arabia in 2022). It will have a glass mirror exterior to reflect sunlight. MSB's vision for the city also includes flying cars, robot maids, dinosaur robots, and even a giant artificial moon.
The Line's 1,640-foot height makes construction difficult and could change the weather. Neom officials suggested lowering it to 1,000 feet to cut costs (the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet). The Crown Prince rejected this, insisting on finding savings elsewhere.
The planned airport has been registered with the code NUM. I could imagine that flights from one end of The Line to the other might be designated NUM-NUM.
On 3 March 2022, the Trojena project was launched, which will potentially be the first major outdoor skiing destination in the Arabian Peninsula. The project's site is about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the Gulf of Aqaba coast in the Sarat Mountains, with elevations ranging from 1,500–2,600 metres (4,900–8,500 ft). Although it is in the desert, the site's climate is considerably cooler than is the rest of Neom's territory. Ennismore, a lifestyle and hospitality company, was announced as the inaugural partner with its brands 25hours Hotels and Morgans Originals. In September 2023, Zaha Hadid Architects designed a 330 m (1,080 ft) tall skyscraper for Trojena which will stand on a mountain overlooking an artificial lake. Renders of the skyscraper, which will be connected to the lakeside development by a cable car, showed a crystalline structure made of numerous columns that narrow towards the peak.
In March 2020, Neom signed a partnership with Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team. In June 2022, Neom became the title sponsor of McLaren Racing's electric motorsport division as Neom McLaren Electric Racing, with McLaren's Formula E and Extreme E divisions renamed as Neom McLaren Formula E Team and Neom McLaren Extreme E Team respectively. MBS has also won his bid to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games at Trojena.
Whenever I think Mad King Donald could not get any crazier, I am treated to spectacles like this. Nonetheless, there are sane voices that can bring us back to ground. Psychiatrist Brandy Lee, who worked for many years in prisons treating prisoners, said:
There are many categories and it's been studied for the last 150 years—even though nowadays we tend to think of mental health as being only individually confined, actually all mental symptoms are psychosocial. And it's been studied for quite some time that mental symptoms are indeed contagious.
For myself, I've seen it in public sector settings where individuals can go for long periods of time with severe symptoms without treatment. So in prisons and State Hospital settings, I've seen this a great deal. We don't think of mental symptoms as being contagious but in fact they may be even more so because you don't need physical exposure for the symptoms to spread. You just need emotional bonds. So more so than whether or not someone is mentally ill to start, it would be those emotional bonds as well as a facilitating environments such as propaganda networks or cultic programming as I've come to call it, when the so-called news networks are not just spreading disinformation but they're actually following the symptoms and they're following the lead.
What we do not realize is that the emotional compulsion behind mental symptoms will be much more powerful than, say, rational persuasion, facts, evidence, or even logical self-interest. It can become very influential, pernicious, and ultimately destructive for the environment where the symptoms are spread, because ultimately it's the spread of pathology. It's very sad to watch it in real time isn't it? Especially when you're talking about so many people and it's hard to qualify or quantify the true number of people.
Sometimes it doesn’t even take a lot of people. Just a few mega-billionaires and their tech bros will do.
Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to cease the war in Ukraine immediately. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years. It will continue to do so with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). Thank you for your support.
And speaking of resettling refugees, did you know? A study by Poland’s National Development Bank found that the influx of Ukrainians added between 0.5% and 2.5% to GDP growth and paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
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#RestorationGeneration.
When humans are locked in a cage, the Earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is that human beings are not necessary. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.
We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.
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