Category: Published Articles

                                BEACH MUSINGS ON GOD                                       

“If there’s heaven for me, I’m sure it has a beach attached to it.”

                                                                                          Jimmy Buffet

“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.”

                                                                                          Kahlil Gibrah

         I’ve been trying to take a walk on the beach every morning.

It is the first thing on my agenda each morning.

But this morning was different.

I had a conversation with the God of the universe this morning.

In my previous shoreline outings (since we’ve arrived at our snow birding location here in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina), I’ve done all the talking: a worshipful thank-you for God’s wondrous works, appreciation for the gift of life for another day, a long list of prayer requests on behalf of my many needy relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

Then—after what I deem to be a respectful period—I walk or jog back to the resort.

All with the best of intentions.

So, this morning I walked southward toward the Maritime Beach Club, stopping between two posts that mark my favorite morning prayer place. I looked out over the endless waves, listened to the pounding surf and cawing birds, tasted the salty air, and let my nostrils take in the unique ocean smells.

On my way, I had passed a handful of people—an elderly couple sitting in their beach chairs (he had two fishing poles in the water, wore a Vietnam veteran’s hat and said they were from the western part of the state; she smiled, clutched her book, and told me she had recently retired from teaching). The couple had been there yesterday morning as well.

I had the distinct feeling that he really didn’t care whether he caught any fish or not. They were enjoying the beach and being together.

Others walked by as I stood there: a squabbling couple, two ladies keeping each other company, and another couple (she thanked me for my service). That is one thing nice about the South; at least once a day (if I’m wearing my Vietnam air force-era cap), someone will say “thank you for your service.” I could wear the same cap for months in the Washington D.C. area and no one would say anything.

Just saying.

But back to this morning at the beach. As the waves continued to roll in and retreat—leaving tumbling pieces of shells and foamy globs in their wake—I began to thank God for the consistency and beauty of His creation. My mind tried to fathom the eons it must have taken just to come up with the idea of sand: nature’s perfect buffer, porous absorber, scrubber-cleanser, and cooler.

But then, that is my human mind trying to wrap itself around the miracle of creation.

I recalled that my very first church sermon was on the topic of sand.

I still think of it from time-to-time.

As I stood there this morning, I began to visualize the constantly moving ocean waves as the drenching spiritual waters breaking in one fresh wave after another over my heart, soul, and spirit. I asked God to make my heart like the sand at the beach: completely porous and absorptive, able to be repaired, restored, and rejuvenated.

In a word, full of life.

A heart full of life-yielding DNA, just like the frittering, frothy remains that so quickly dissipated after one-wave-after-another melted back into the ocean deep.

For some reason, my attention was drawn to several shells and fragmented pieces below my feet. I picked up four shells, the smallest and most delicate survivors of ceaseless interaction between surf and sand. An inner voice whispered to me how God delights in using the small—and seemingly insignificant—things of this world to achieve His purpose and grand design.

I remembered one of my favorite quotes from Peter Jackson’s highly successful Hobbit movies. In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Gandalf is talking to Galadriel, who asks the wizard why he put so much faith in Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit. After admitting that Bilbo gave him hope, Gandalf ends by saying: “l found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary people that keep the darkness at bay.”[1]

At any rate, as I headed toward the resort, I began the short walk along a blue-plastic walkway that separates the beachside dunes. I have returned to the resort using the same route every morning. But this morning, on the blue walkway, something remarkable happened.

I know some of you will have a hard time accepting what happened next.

That is okay.

If it was anybody but me, I would probably feel the same.

In my inner spirit, I heard a voice—and that voice was clear.

You see, like so many others, my conversations with God are one-sided. I do all the talking (and pleading). I am always bombarding God with a list of personal needs or prayer requests for others.

I almost never take time to listen.

But the voice was clear. “Yes, I also rejoice in the creation I’ve created for man to enjoy. But what is even more beautiful to Me is a completely yielded human heart. In that kind of heart, I can implant the whole glory and power of My creation.”

Wow!

That was it.

No angels singing, no thunder from heaven.

Just a quiet word.

And an encounter I’ll treasure forever.

[1] I had to dig a bit to come up with the quote that made such an impression on me when I watched the movie. See, Tom Steel, “Gandalf’s 10 Most Iconic Quotes From The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,” CBR.com, Sep. 08, 2022.

        HE’S EVERYWHERE: GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER                                       

“Now ordinary people are born forwards in Time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live, just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a W if you were allowed to look at them forwards, instead of backwards and inside out. But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having a second sight.”

                                                                            Merlyn

The Sword in the Stone

“Custer was a figure larger than life, unbelievable in so many ways, and he attracted myths. In a sense, Custer was part of the Mike Fink-Paul Bunyan tall-tale tradition of America. More nonsense has been said, written and believed about him than any other Army officer.”

                                                                           Stephen E. Ambrose[1]

          One of my favorite pieces of personal artwork is a picture of Merlyn—dressed in a sorcerer’s gown of purple with white stars—holding a Chinese child and feeding him with chopsticks out of a porcelain bowl decorated with an intricate Chinese dragon design. I titled the picture “Merlyn Feeds Mao.” The artwork now resides—as so many of my other pieces do—in a tub buried deep in a storage unit located outside of Winchester, Virginia.

Whether it be art, religion, movies, particle physics or literature, I love themes which play with the notion of the arrow of Time. That’s why I love the works of T. H. White[2] so much, particularly his accounts of King Arthur, Wart, and Merlyn—the latter being a character who moves backward in time. In chapter 20, of The Once and Future King, for example, “Merlyn looked younger every year—which was only natural, because he was.”[3] All of which prompted King Arthur to ask (in chapter four of The Queen of Air and Darkness), “I wish [Merlyn] had been born forwards like other people.”[4]

So, you may ask, what does all this have to do with George Armstrong Custer and our recently concluded grand tour of the West and Midwest U.S.A.? I hope my logic is not a stretch too far for some of you. At several places during our trek, we encountered and crisscrossed locations identified with the historical General Custer—interestingly enough, in reverse order, as though we were tracking a Merlyn-type character—beginning with the last and most controversial event first (the Battle of Little Big Horn) and working backward in his flamboyant and controversial career.

For some reason, I thought it may make an interesting missive.

Our first encounter, in many ways, was the most memorable. After spending several days with our friends Gary and Madeline Gibson in Pocatello, Idaho—punctuated by a trip to Las Vegas and my whirlwind trip to Texas with the Westwin Elements team—Ima and I drove north to Montana, skirting the western edge of Yellowstone National Park and passing through Big Sky skiing territory. I convinced Ima that we needed to visit the site of Custer’s “last stand,” which I had been to a couple years earlier with my sister during a hurried visit.

We arrived at the battlefield site on a hot, sweltering day.

The kind of day it was on June 25, 1876.

Custer’s last day.

A place where his wife Libbie and journalists subsequently created the myth of a gallant “last stand.”

Actually, it was a massacre.

A rout.

Probably over in less than a half hour in the late afternoon.

Custer and his men of the Seventh Calvary Regiment were overwhelmed by a combined force of over 1,500-2,500 mounted Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors.

We call it the Battle of the Little Bighorn—named after the river meandering below the fatal bluff and through the tribal Crow reservation lands—and it was the most significant confrontation of the Great Sioux War.

The Lakota call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass.

Today, you can drive along the bluff and listen to a recorded message retracing the various phases of the battle and observe the gravestones on “Custer Hill,” including one black marker, designating the spot where Custer was cut down.

Custer’s final fight and battle movements are a matter of conjecture and controversy. There were no human survivors among Custer’s battalion (roughly 210 men in five companies under his immediate command, including two of Custer’s brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law). Eyewitness accounts provided by Indians after the battle were often conflicting or unclear.

As I stood for my second time at the battle site, I tried to envision the sights, sounds and smells of Custer’s final agonizing moments with his men and horses—reportedly exhausted from long, forced rides—desperately struggling to reach the crest of the bluff. At what point did Custer realize that he had grossly underestimated the size and fighting resolve of the Indian force—led by, among others an Oglala Lakota warrior named Crazy Horse? I tried to imagine the blood-curdling screams, war cries and thundering hooves of a thousand tribal horsemen breaking like waves over Custer and his men. I tried to visualize the fear in their eyes, the pain of arrows and bullets. I tried to force my nose to detect the smells of rifle smoke and human and horse blood on the bluff (Custer and his men used the horses shot out from under them as an equine breastworks of sorts).

By the time General Terry’s force reached the battlefield site two days later, they found Custer’s body with gunshot wounds to the chest and head (subsequent speculation is that he was shot in the head after he was already dead.) When they arrived, they found that the Lakota and Cheyenne had already removed their dead from the field. Most of Custer’s dead men had been stripped of their clothing, ritually mutilated, and in a state of decomposition, making identification of many impossible.[5] Following the battle, tribal women may have used stone “mallets” with rawhide handles to finish off the wounded.[6]

Custer’s remains are separated from the bluff where he met his fate. Instead, he is buried beneath a large monument on the grounds of West Point Military Academy—where despite hundreds of demerits, he graduated last in his class in late June 1861 (apparently to a raucous round of cheers from his classmates).[7] Buried at his side, next to her beloved “Autie”—lies Libbie Bacon Custer. Her loyalty to her husband never flagged. Through fifty-seven years of widowhood, she defended her husband’s reputation and, largely as a result of her dogged efforts created a popularly accepted version of Custer’s gallant last stand. She also put the blame for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of Major Reno and Captain Benteen who had betrayed Custer by not following orders.[8]

Ima and I left the battle site and drove through the Black Hills toward Lead, South Dakota. The Black Hills—a small mountain range rising from the Great Plains to western South Dakota into Wyoming (the tallest peak is over 7,000 feet high)—is called by the Lakota tribe Paha Sapa, meaning “the heart of everything that is.” For local tribes, the hills are considered a holy site. The first white trappers and hunters called them the black hills because of their dark hue from a distance, where the slopes were covered in evergreen trees.[9]

From Lead, it was a short drive to the impressive Crazy Horse Monument, commemorating the most erstwhile adversary of Custer. The site was Ima’s favorite stop on our entire trip. One’s first impression of the monument is its scale; it is said that the all the presidential heads of Mount Rushmore could fit under Crazy Horse’s still unfinished arm. The memorial granite carving began in 1948, after it was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear (a Lakota elder), to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, a place considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, and is located roughly 17 miles from Mount Rushmore. Today, there is no final timetable for the project’s completion; by 2037, the team of artists and explosive experts anticipate that the hand, arm, shoulder, hairline, and top of the horse’s head will be finished. The original idea was a giant carving of Crazy Horse riding his horse and pointing toward tribal lands. The face, completed in 1998, by itself stands 87 feet and six inches high, the outstretched arm will be 263 feet long, and the finger 29 feet and six inches long. By any measure, it is a breathtaking sight and we feel blessed we were able to see it.

Ima liked it because no state or federal money is involved in the project—Ziolkowski was reportedly offered $10 million for the project when it first started but turned the offer down. The project is currently funded by visitor entry fees and private donations. The monument is operated by a nonprofit organization, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, and today the site includes a Native American school, a cultural museum and cultural center

Crazy Horse (1840-1877)—in the Lakota tongue Thasunke Witko (literally “His-Horse-Is-Crazy”)—was an Oglala tribe warrior leader. The Oglala tribe, in turn, was one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people.[10] Crazy Horse was a great hunter and tribal braves willingly followed Crazy Horse into battle because they thought his “medicine” was most powerful. According to Ambrose’s account, in the early 1860’s Crazy Horse was given a medicine man’s special charm to ward off danger—a little white stone with a hole through it—that the warrior wore slung over his shoulder and under his left arm. It worked! Although Crazy Horse had eight horses killed under him, he was never wounded by an enemy of the Oglalas. Another reason braves so willingly followed him was his reputation for never leaving a brave on the field of battle, whether it be the numerous intertribal skirmishes they fought or against the white invaders.[11]

Interestingly enough, Crazy Horse was not an Oglala Lakota chief but rather a “shirt wearer” or war leader (Ogle Tanka Un), an honorific title—perhaps derived from the term for “decider”—bestowed on a small, select group of warriors in recognition of great battlefield accomplishments and good deeds for the tribe. Crazy Horse was one of four “shirt wearers” who acted as counselors to higher-ranking tribal members—the “Fat Bellies”—of the tribal council on matters of hunting grounds, campsites and war.[12] They wore shirts decorated with patterned bands of quillwork and beadwork reflecting their accomplishments, with hair lock fringes on the sleeves.

In comparison to the flamboyant, attention-seeking Custer, Crazy Horse was quiet, shunned having his photograph taken and was buried in an unknown location. Never beaten in battle, he surrendered to U.S. military authorities to save his tribe and was fatally bayoneted by a soldier while incarcerated at Fort Robinson (in the present-day state of Nebraska) on September 5, 1877.

Upon leaving the Crazy Horse Monument and heading back to our hotel in Lead, we passed the road leading to Custer, South Dakota. Nuggets of gold were first found in the Blacks Hills near the town of Custer. That discovery would change American history. Sioux Indian tribes in the Black Hills area knew gold drove the white man crazy. Ambrose recounts a story from the early 1840’s, after local Indians found some gold, when a large gathering of Indian warriors met, including Worm, Crazy Horse’s father. The council agreed that any Indian who revealed the presence of gold in the Black Hills to a white man, or any white man who discovered it, was to be slain.[13]

So, how was gold discovered in the Black Hills? Again, it was the colorful and controversial George Armstrong Custer—a bit less than two years before the Battle of Little Bighorn—who played the pivotal role. In early July 1874, during the presidential administration of fellow Union wartime leader Ulysses S. Grant, Custer volunteered to head one of the most famous military expeditions in American history, perhaps second only to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Custer gathered an expeditionary force of over one thousand men and two thousand horses and mules—including ten companies of the 7^th Cavalry, two infantry companies, Gatling guns, over 100 Indian scouts, two miners to look for gold, a geologist, a photographer and four journalists—requiring a train of over 100 wagons. On July 2, 1874, the column pulled out of Fort Abraham Lincoln (just south of Bismarck, North Dakota) with Custer riding his favorite horse “Dandy” at its head with a band playing “Garry Owen” as they left.[14]

What a spectacle it must have been!

The problem: the Black Hills had been promised to the Sioux tribes forever in the treaty of 1868. As Grant’s political opponents pointed out back East, the expedition was blatantly illegal and an effort to divert the nation from its problems. But more than politics was involved. The Panic of 1873 resulted in a nationwide (then 37 states) depression and the need to find and mint more gold. Moreover, there was a growing sense of manifest destiny with open spaces to conquer and last, but not least, plans for a Northern Pacific Railroad through the area.

Custer pushed the column hard despite the blazing sun and a mostly treeless prairie terrain. He had the men up by 3 a.m., on the march by 4 a.m., and often not in bed until after midnight. By July 22, he approached the Black Hills and almost all of his Indian scouts left him (fearing Sioux retaliation and the logistical problem of such a large wagon train in the Hills). But Custer pressed on. On July 27^th, near present-day Custer S.D., miners with the expedition found what they were looking for. They panned several gold particles from French Creek. Custer sent one of his best remaining scouts to Fort Laramie with the news: by the end of August 1874, the New York Tribune and other newspapers were carrying the story of gold discovered in the Black Hills.[15]

Custer’s expeditionary force returned to Fort Abraham Lincoln on August 10. The expedition had covered 1,205 miles in sixty days—a remarkable feat in those days. There was very little Indian resistance on the trip, prompting Custer to snort famously: “I could whip all the Indians in the northwest with the Seventh Cavalry.” As we have seen, the saying—and the arrogance behind it—would come back to haunt him.[16]

The Indians were right: the discovery of gold drove the white man crazy. By March 1876 (following a horrific winter on the Plains in 1875) there were no less than 11,000 white men in the frontier town of Custer alone, more than 15,000 altogether in the Black Hills—outnumbering the native Oglalas on the Sioux agencies—and thousands more were coming.[17]

The next day, from our mountain-top hotel in Lead, Ima and I visited the nearby remarkable frontier gold-mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota where we witnessed firsthand the historical effects of the gold frenzy. There is no evidence (at least that I have found) that Custer ever visited Deadwood. As I related in a previous missive,[18] this was the town where “Wild Bill” Hickok was famously shot in the back at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon–the No. 10 Saloon—holding his now famous “dead man’s hand.”

But Hickok knew “the boy general” Custer—and his beautiful young wife Libbie—very well. In September 1866, after Hickok returned from an expedition to Santa Fe, he spent time at Fort Riley (Kansas) where the Seventh Cavalry Regiment was being organized, under its new commander Lieutenant Colonel Custer. Both Custer and his wife were quite taken by Hickok, to the point that Libbie spent her latter years in life fighting off rumors of an affair with “Wild Bill.”[19]  By the late summer of 1867,[20] Custer was serving under Major General Winfield Scott Hancock—famous for repulsing Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg—and engaged in one of several Army military campaigns against the Indians. At the time, “Wild Bill” was one of Hancock’s best scouts and among the West’s foremost authorities on Indian customs and tactics. Custer, a good learner, soaked in as much as he could.

Back to the gold frenzy: narrow Deadwood Gulch once hosted a population of over 10,000 gold-thirsty prospectors and frontiersmen during the heyday of the “Black Hills Gold Rush” in 1876.

A gold rush made possible by Custer’s expedition.

As we left behind Little Big Horn, the Crazy Horse Monument and Deadwood in our rear-view mirror we encountered several more historical markers tracing the route of Custer and his grand expedition to the Blacks Hills. So, as we drove further eastward across South Dakota and southward to Missouri, we eventually crossed the Mississippi River. In a few days, we would pick up Custer’s trail again—backward in time—to his experience as a Union officer in the Civil War.

But that is another missive.

[1] Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, (Anchor Books: New York), 1996, pp. 234-235. I picked up this book at the museum at the Battle of Little Big Horn during our drive through Montana. The myth Ambrose was referring to was Custer’s relationship, some rumored a child, with a Cheyenne squaw named Mo-nah-se-tah, who was captured at the battle of Washita.   

[2] Terrence Hanbury “Tim” White (1906-1964), was an English writer best known for his Arthurian novels (gathered together as The Once and Futuree King in 1958). The book is one of my personal favorites and over the years I have read passages from it to my girls and grandchildren. See, “T. H. White Dead; Novelist was 57,” The New York Times, Jan 18, 1964.

[3] T. H. White, The Once and Future King (Collins, 1958).

[4] T. H. White, The Queen of Air and Darkness (original title The Witch in the Wood), (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939).

[5] E. A. Brininstool, A Trooper With Custer, 1925, pp. 60-62.

[6] Douglas D. Scott, et.al., They Died With Custer: Soldiers’ Bones From the Battle of Little Bighorn, 1998.

[7] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, pp. 115-116.

[8] Ibid., pp. 477-478.

[9] “Black Hills National Forest—Frequently Asked Questions,” Unites States Forest Service; see also, a good treatment of the subject in the Wikipedia article.

[10] Today, the Oglala’s live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and with almost 47,000 registered tribal members, constitute the eighth largest Naftive American reservation in the U.S. See, “Oglala Sioux Tribe: A Profile”; and, Barry M. Pritzker, “A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000). 

[11] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, pp. 130-133.

[12] In the process of researching this missive, I have become fascinated with the topic of Indian “shirt wearers.” A good treatment of the topic and the Ogala Lakota initiation ceremony can be found in Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, pp. 135-137. See also, “Treasures of the IACB: Oglala Lakota Leader Shirt,” U.S. Department of the Interior (Indian Arts and Crafts Board), Nov. 26, 2019.    

[13] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, p. 374, citing Edgar I. Stewart, Custer’s Luck (1955), p. 61.1w

[14] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, pp. 375-377; Max E. Gerber, “The Black Hills Expedition of 1874: A New Look,” South Dakota History, June-July 1970, p. 8.

[15] Ibid., p. 379.

[16] Reiger, ed., The Passing of the Great West, p. 106; Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, p. 380.

[17] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, p. 395, citing Robinson, A History of the Dakota, p. 421.

[18] Akers, “From ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok’ And Kamran Khozan To Neutrinos,” Sep 2022.

[19] Tom Clavin, Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter,” (St. Martin’s Griffin: NY), 2019, pp. 78-79. I bought this book at the famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, S.D. The book has a much different narrative on Custer’s “last stand,” portraying Custer in a much more favorable way.

[20] Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer, p. 265.

                             A MIND-“NEOM”ING FUTURE VISION   

“I want to be clear about this—Neom is a complex, bold, and highly ambitious undertaking and is most certainly not an easy one to deliver … But we are making strong progress, and it’s exciting to see the vision come to life.” 

                                                                              Antoni Vivas1 

Our grand trek is just about over. Next week at this time, Ima and I will be checking in as “snowbirds” at an oceanfront resort in North Myrtle Beach, SC. As I write, we are staying at a lakeside hotel in Clarksville, VA (Ima and I have passed through here several times and always wanted to stay here).  

Outside our window, the sun is setting, and the trees are all displaying their most vivid and glorious autumn colors: God’s wonderous palette of reds, yellows, golds, oranges and even a touch of purple.   

I never get tired when nature shows off. 

From the balcony I can see the lake, a handful of fishing boats and a fat, happy groundhog sunning himself. 

None of this—other than putting me in a good state of mind—has anything to do, of course, with this missive. 

Before we left Bethany’s house (my youngest daughter), I noticed an article on the futuristic Saudi city of Neom.2 

What is Neom you may ask?  

The word Neom itself stems from the Ancient Greek prefix Neo (meaning “new”) and the “M” is an abbreviation of the Arabic word Mustaqbal (meaning “future”).  

The coined word has been adopted for a totally new concept in urban planning. Neom’s origins trace back to an announcement at a future investment conference in Riyadh by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) five years ago, (late-October 2017). At that time, MBS outlined an urban area—10,200 square miles—to be built in northwestern Saudi Arabia (Tabuk Province) that would incorporate smart city technologies and become one of the world’s leading tourist destinations. Since everything had to be built from scratch, the megaproject’s initial planning and construction costs—estimated to be USD500 billion—came from the Public Investment Fund (the Saudi sovereign wealth fund) and other international investors. The Neom initiative was the cornerstone of MBS’s Saudi Vision 2030, an ambitious plan to reduce the country’s dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors.3  

The Crown Prince envisioned a city powered solely by wind and solar power, flying cars, robots capable of performing a broad range of functions, dinosaur robots, high-speed rail, robotic avatars, holograms, and even an artificial moon.4 It bothered him little that none of these technologies were then—or now—mature enough for such large-scale usage. 

Neom, as originally envisioned, will consist of three parts: the Line (more below), Oxagon (a large floating industrial complex), and Trojena (a futuristic skiing and entertainment area).  

Most interesting to me is a proposed section of the city called “the Line”—a 110-mile “smart” linear-skyscraper city that will have no cars, streets, or carbon emissions.5 The Line is envisioned to be the first part of the city’s development and, if all goes well, will extend from the Red Sea to the city of Tabuk. The original plan consisted of two mirrored long buildings (with an outdoor space in between), 660 feet wide and 1,600 feet high (making it the 12th tallest building in the world). Moreover, as envisioned by MBS, the Line will consist of three layers: the surface layer for pedestrians, one underground level for infrastructure and another underground level for transportation, mainly a high-speed rail that will whisk passengers from one end of the Line to the other in twenty minutes. Eventually the Line will have 9 million citizens. In July 2022, modifications were made to the original plan for the Line: instead of multiple buildings on a linear grid, it will now consist of one long building.  

 Artificial intelligence will constantly monitor the Line (and, presumably, its inhabitants) using predictive data models to improve the daily life of the citizens. 

Right! If you believe that then I have a part of the Brooklyn Bridge available to buy; especially considering Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record, mistreatment of women, and long track record of spying and monitoring its citizens. As a result, critics are skeptical that Saudi citizens will benefit from Neom’s status as a surveillance city.   

So, what could go wrong with creating Oz out of an endless sand, kitty-litter box? After all, they did it in Vegas right? 

First, less than a year after Neom was announced with great public fanfare, MSB—de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, seventh son of King Salman, and recently named Prime Minister—became a lightning rod of international condemnation due to his alleged role in the early October 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian commentator and journalist for the Washington Post, had been highly critical of the Saudi regime before he was ambushed, strangled, and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Turkey by a squad of Saudi assassins. The story, replete with foot-dragging by Saudi officials, worldwide press attention, a body double, international tension and intrigue, a CIA Director’s plane flight and investigation, parts of a body stuffed in a well, reads like a John le Carre novel.6 Most believed MBS’s fingerprints were all over the murder; he acknowledged it happened on his watch but denied he gave the final order for the extrajudicial killing. 

To say the affair had a chilling effect on U.S.-Saudi relations would be a gross understatement. In the U.S., then-President Donald Trump (eager to preserve the U.S.-Saudi relationship) blamed rogue actors rather than MBS (despite reports to the contrary from his intelligence services). When Joe Biden was elected, he publicly belittled MBS (threatening to treat him as a “pariah,”7 presumably to appease the far-left wing of his own party) and allowed close relations to lapse (by July 2022, with rising oil prices causing political problems, Biden was forced to “eat crow” with a visit to Saudi Arabia). In recent days, a public spat has surfaced following Saudi Arabia’s decision to follow OPEC+ countries in cutting oil supply—prompting Biden threats, Saudi claims that Biden was manipulating oil prices for political purposes, and Saudi officials forced to publicly deny reports of private MBS remarks about Biden’s diminishing mental capacity.8  

Stay tuned.   

In addition to poisoning relations with the U.S. and Turkey, the Khashoggi affair tainted MBS’s Neom plans. Futurist advisers including Daniel Doctoroff and architect Norman Foster dropped Neom and its “toxic” mentor like a hot potato. They were not alone. By mid-2022, according to The Economist, only two buildings had been constructed and most the area remained bare desert;9 more recently, excavation on the Line only began in October 2022.10 

The second obstacle for Neom’s construction stemmed from legal and public relations issues surrounding native Howeitat tribal claims. One tribal human rights activist, after posting several videos showing the violent methods used by Saudi law enforcement to oust locals from their land, was killed by Saudi security forces. To put a band-aid on the controversy, MBS hired a U.S. public relations and lobbying firm, but legal claims continue at various domestic and international levels. 

Thirdly, claims by former employees directed against the former CEO of the Neom project assert an abusive work culture and a corrosive management style. Several executives have quit the project, despite Saudi offers of exorbitant salaries to attract technologists.          

Another reason I am interested in Neom is because the city—especially the Line—features prominently in an important scene in my next futuristic novel. Let me set the stage for you. Between 15-20 years in the future there is a major global war that wipes out a significant portion of the world’s population. There had been a warning that it was coming, especially a prophecy uttered by a previously unknown person at a major church conference in Asia. The prophecy not only foretold the disastrous worldwide war to come—subsequently called “The Great Conflict” by those lucky enough to survive it—but also the collapse of international institutions and Western nation-state structures. Moreover, according to the prophecy, the Great Conflict itself preceded end-of-time harbingers such as strange signals from beyond.  

Out of the war’s ruble emerged a seven-person Commission possessing broad-ranging executive and judicial powers over global affairs. This body attempted to set the postwar world right and study the root causes for the conflagration. The most powerful of the Commissioners, and the most recognizable face in the world, is High Commissioner Abdullah, a Sunni imam from Turkey and highly decorated participant in the Great Conflict. His loyal right-hand man, wartime comrade, confidante, and trusted covert operator was Sheik Kabbani. Both Abdullah and Kabbani suspect the activities of another Commissioner, Ch’en, a Sino-Singaporean business magnate with extensive global and lunar commercial interests. 

Thus, the novel rotates on three tensions: the looming end of time, the challenges faced by future Christians. and growing friction within the Commission itself.  

So, here goes …    

                CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 

                                      Abdullah’s Assignment 

A TROUBLED SHEIK KABBANI took a seat at High Commissioner Abdullah’s huge mahogany desk. The wall behind Abdullah’s desk was dominated by a huge gold-framed photograph—alternating in various virtual reality nighttime sequences—of the futuristic city called “The Line,” a sideways skyscraper stretching over 100 miles across the Saudi desert. The final stages of the architectural masterpiece, originally the cornerstone of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s grandiose Neom Project, stood unfinished. Construction was interrupted by the Great Conflict. 

Instead of the nine million inhabitants originally projected to occupy the futuristic city, less than 35,000 people—a ragtag collection of desert nomads and other lucky survivors of the opening nuclear exchanges that ravaged the Middle East—lived threadbare existences in mostly abandoned corridors and waterless fountains.  

They struggled to keep the dream alive. 

So did Abdullah. 

He was working on no less than three projects to attract workers, technocrats and the Sunni faithful to Neom. 

Indeed, the Neom Project was part of Abdullah’s grand vision to reestablish a new Muslim spiritual and commercial caliphate. As a first step, he propped up the old Saudi royal family in Riyad and put them in charge, again, of the two holiest Muslim sites: the Grand Mosque in Mecca and its revered Black Kaaba—the continued favorite postwar destination for pilgrimages by the faithful—and nearby Medina. 

  But the real gemstone of his aspirations was a revived and powerful Neom. Before the war, he had been a major investor in the project. Afterward, he played a major role in having the Commission declare the development an international city. He funneled much of the Commission’s commercial activities in the region through businessmen and bankers personally affiliated with him. As a result, Neom became the focal point for efforts to rebuild the shattered global economy and a center for the new global currency.  

All the world’s techno-titans and new elites that rose from the ashes of the old order—from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Nairobi and Brazilia, to Jerusalem and Moscow—paid homage to Abdullah and his minions at Neom.  

On one occasion Abdullah, in a euphoric moment, described to Sheik Kabbani his various commercial ventures and the new city he envisioned, as the “New Babylon.” 

But that morning, Neom—and Abdullah’s dream for a sprawling postwar empire—was far removed from Jerusalem, his office at Commission headquarters, and Kabbani’s long list of problems. 

“You seem troubled my friend,” Abdullah began, his voice nonplussed as ever. 

“Yes, High Commissioner,” Kabbani replied with a sigh, “it is time I told you about several nettlesome developments—” 

“How nettlesome?” 

“For starters, your ally on the Commission—Ch’en—has been acting strangely of late.” 

Abdullah leaned back in his chair. He carefully studied Kabbani, his longtime loyal friend and wartime confidante. He knew he was not one prone to exaggerate things. “How strange?” 

“He’s not here at headquarters. He took a commercial jet back to Singapore, without clearing it through Commission channels.” 

“Perhaps he had urgent business to tend to at home—” 

“Perhaps,” Kabbani replied, “but almost immediately after arriving he met with his personal assistant—” 

“Kwa?” 

“Yes, High Commissioner.” 

“None of his family?” 

“No, instead the two of them accompanied a special guest to Bintan—” 

“Bintan?” 

Kabbani nodded. 

“How do we know all this?” 

“We have eyes on the ground in the city-state Your Excellency—” 

“So, you’ve been monitoring the activities of a fellow Commissioner—” 

“Yes, Your Excellency, on my authority.” 

Abdullah leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “On your authority—” 

Kabbani swallowed heavily and pushed a piece of paper across the desk. 

Abdullah picked it up to examine the note. “What is this?” 

“A report from our agent in Singapore—” 

“And this one?” 

“A report from the Commission’s INTERPOL office there.” 

Abdullah, his curiosity nerve now in full tingle mode, scanned the two readouts. 

Kabbani also showed Abdullah an intercept from a member of Ch’en personal security entourage and played a short sequence of overhead drone footage. 

“I recognize Ch’en’s son and Kwa. Who is the old guy with them?” 

“They call him the Prophet?” 

“Prophet?” 

“Why do they call him the Prophet and what are Ch’en’s ties to him?” 

“Exactly, Your Excellency. That’s what I want to find out—” 

“Where is Commissioner Ch’en now?” 

“We don’t know. All cyber and other monitoring channels have gone dead. He has vanished into thin air—” 

“I’m assuming you are taking all necessary steps—on your own authority—to pick up his trail?” 

Kabbani nodded. 

“Sheik Kabbani, do you have something else?” 

Kabbani showed the video from the Special Tribunal and Judge Stammen to the High Commissioner. Abdullah replayed the Prophet’s final words. 

“That partially explains who the Prophet is. How did Ch’en keep him out of our sight? And why?” 

Kabbani spread his arms in frustration. “I wish I knew Your Excellency. You know I never trusted Ch’en from the start—” 

“It looks like our friend has his own agenda.” 

“Find out what it is, Sheik Kabbani. No excuses. I don’t want any more surprises.” 

Kabbani debated on whether he should share the Tehran information. 

“Is there something else?” 

“Sorry, Your Excellency.” Kabbani shared the video from his contact in Tehran showing the writing in the cave. 

“Our friend’s deceit, a so-called Prophet predicting a future message from the stars and strange cave writings about the end times. You have been busy my friend—” 

“What do we do next Your Excellency?”  

“How long has it been since you’ve been to Bangkok?” 

“I’ve never been there—” 

“I want you to speak to the lawyer and Susan Chu. I’m troubled about this one they call the Prophet.” 

“What about that ratface Ch’en?” 

“I’ll deal with him through other channels. But just in case, perhaps you should contact our old friend Abu, in case his special services are needed—” 

“His services are costly Your Excellency.” 

“Take whatever costs are involved out of my Special Fund. And make sure no one else knows.” 

“Yes, Your Excellency.” 

“And Sheik Kabbani—” 

“Yes—” 

“I want to be informed about every step from here on out. Do I make myself clear?” 

“Yes, Your Excellency.”  

                        DRONE WARS: WHOSE LAWS WILL APPLY? 

“Biden had quietly put in place [with a new drone strike policy in early October 2022] many of the limitations that the new policy now formalizes when he took office. The policy now officially reverses a loosening of Obama-era rules under then-President Trump, which had pushed authority for approving lethal [drone] strikes down the chain of command.”

                                                              Katie Bo Lillis[1]

“If [I’m] in the field risking and taking a life, there’s a sense that I’m putting skin in the game … I’m taking a risk so it feels more honorable. Someone who kills at a distance—it can make them doubt. Am I truly honorable?”

                                                              Shannon E. French[2]

In case you haven’t noticed, the increasing automation and efficiency of killing machines has prompted a tension in military decision-making: how do we preserve traditional American values of limiting quasi-battlefield civilian casualties in a techno-world that is becoming increasingly hostile to everything we stand for?

Along these lines, the Biden administration a few days ago formalized a new drone strike policy that had been put in place much earlier.[3] Military and CIA officials must now obtain White House permission for drone strikes outside conventional battlefield zones. The new policy was reportedly in effect in late September (2022)—some eleven months after American forces were pulled from Afghanistan—when Biden announced the drone killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, where he was hiding with his family.[4]

Biden’s new policy, and the decisional problems it represents, is a unique aspect of American security policy. Can you imagine, for example, Russia’s President Putin being guided by a set of policies limiting Ukrainian civilian casualties in using drones in his “special operation” in the Ukraine (now approaching nine months old)? Or, now that China’s Xi Jinping has secured an unprecedented third term in office—in the process accumulating more power in his hands than any leader since Chairman Mao—hamstringing his military’s drone strikes in a future invasion of Taiwan to prevent civilian casualties?

Democratic societies and authoritarian societies have widely differing views when it comes to the laws of war.

And the value of life.

Technology is narrowing the differences.

On one notable occasion, for example, officials in the Obama administration faced an uncomfortable decision point that pitted the unique American way of waging war in the face of an intractable foe, all unfolding amid the backdrop of increasingly capable and sophisticated AI-enhanced overhead systems. Even as a very low-ranking intelligence officer, on the far margins of the policy discussions in those years, I can still recall the tension involved. Much later, I spent several classes discussing this same decisional nexus when I was teaching a Terrorism course for the Criminal Justice Department at the College of the Ozarks.

The decision then was even more difficult because it involved an American citizen. The specific case involved a Yemeni-American Muslim imam named Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed in September 2011, in Yemen, by a U.S. government (CIA) drone strike ordered by then-President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki, dubbed by an Arabic satellite network as the “bin Laden of the Internet,”[5] was the first U.S. citizen to be deliberately targeted and killed by a government-authorized drone strike.[6]

Now as then, it is not easy for an American President to order the killing of a U.S.-born citizen, by a drone or otherwise.

And that is a good thing.

The al-Awlaki situation was unique. Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico where his father earned a master’s degree in agricultural economics at New Mexico State University. Al-Awlaki returned with his family to Yemen in 1978 (at age seven). Subsequently, he returned to the U.S. in 1991, studying first at Colorado State University (Fort Collins) and then spent over a decade rotating from Denver, and San Diego, to Northern Virginia (where he was chief cleric at the Dar Al-Hirah Islamic Center mosque in Falls Church, Virginia). In 2002, he went to London, where he preached in several mosques known for radical ideologies. Al-Awlaki returned to Yemen in 2004 and was imprisoned on kidnapping charges (released in 2007). By April 2010, al-Awlaki’s name appeared on a list of specially designated global terrorists because, in the words of then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, he was a “terrorist who declared war on the United States.” According to 9/11 Commission Report, al-Awlaki became a priority for the FBI after his connections were revealed with Nidal Hassin (a Muslim U.S. Army officer who killed 13 people in November 2010 at Fort Hood, Texas), a Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the so-called “underwear bomber” for his attempt to blow up a commercial aircraft on Christmas Day 2009), his preaching to several 9/11 hijackers, and providing on-line inspiration for a generation of would-be terrorists, many of whom attempted terrorist attacks.[7]

Indeed, it was al-Awlaki—not Osama bin Laden—who was labeled as “the most dangerous man in the world” by New York Police Department counterterror officials in late 2010. Why? His American upbringing, and religious fervor, combined with his technological savvy and writing skills, combined to make al-Awlaki the most capable recruiter of his generation for radicalized Muslim extremists. In a video presentation in November 2010, for example, he told his worldwide audience that no one needs special permission to kill Americans because they were are all “devils” and the “enemy.”[8]

But that was so long ago.

Today, the FBI has more dangerous targets to surveil and monitor: parents protesting school board decisions, administration critics with opposing ideological views, and more recently, of course, Christian Nationalists (whatever and whoever they are).

At any rate, American military and intelligence officials in the 2010-2011 timeframe were hesitant to target al-Awlaki without the covering of a presidential finding. Eight years earlier, there had been considerable public controversy when it was revealed that an American citizen, Ahmed Hijazi—a citizen of New York—was killed in a CIA Predator drone strike targeting al Qaeda leaders.[9]

All this set the stage, in my view, for one of the more interesting legal cases in American history. Al-Awlaki’s father, a former Yemeni diplomat who had returned to the U.S., upon learning that his son was on a list to be targeted by the U.S., brought a lawsuit to prevent such an action. The father claimed that al-Awlaki’s listing violated his son’s due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. Eventually, the case was determined by a federal judge in Washington D.C. (U.S. District Judge John Bates), who ruled that the case could not go forward because the father lacked standing and his claims were nonjusticiable under the political question doctrine.[10] At the same time, Judge Bates recognized the “unsettling nature” of the court’s conclusion. Indeed, the opinion noted some “stark and puzzling questions: How is it that judicial approval is required when the U.S. decides to target a U.S. citizen abroad for electronic surveillance, but that, according to defendants, judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the U.S. decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?”[11]

A good question indeed. But—I suggest respectfully—only a question that could be asked by a court in our American system (or a country with comparable Western values). I cannot imagine such a case even being considered in countries like China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.

Can you?

To compound the ethics issue, another drone strike, a month later, killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son in a remote part of Yemen, along with eight others, prompting a public outcry.[12]

From a technological and performance perspective, drones have come a long way since the CIA Predator drone that killed al-Awlaki. They are far more capable and lethal in every respect.

Military drone-related black programs are years ahead of their commercial counterparts. For now, this commercial world belongs to the Chinese. In the high-tech hub of Shenzhen alone (several scenes of my futuristic trilogy are set in Shenzhen), the largest commercial drone manufacturer in the world, DJI Technology Co.,[13] produces eight out of every ten non-military drones purchased around the world and is one of 600 drone manufacturers in the city.[14] The commercial drone industry by itself is expected to reach US$42.8 billion in 2025.

Drones anyone?

Or should we let the algorithms decide?

[1] Katie Bo Lillis, “Biden finalizes new rules for US drone strikes,” CNN, Oct. 7, 2022.

[2] Professor French is the director of the Center for Ethics and Excellence at Case Western Reserve University, a former professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and author of The Code of the Warrior.

[3] Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, “Biden Secretly Limits Counterterrorism Drone Strikes Away From War Zones,” The New York Times, Mar. 3, 2021.

[4] Matthew Lee, et.al., “CIA drone strike kills al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan,” PBS, Aug. 1, 2022.

[5] Aamar Madhani, “Cleric al-Awlaki dubbed ‘bin Laden of the Internet,” USA TODAY, Aug. 24, 2010.

[6] See, among others, Scott Shane, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone, NY: Tim Duggan Books, 2015;  

[7] Among others, see Madhani, “Cleric al-Awlaki.”

[8] Matthew Cole and Aaron Katersky, “Awlaki: ‘The Most Dangerous Man in The World,’” ABC News, Sep. 21, 2010; Rick Leventhal, “Anwar Awlaki ‘Most Dangerous Man in the World,” Fox News, Nov 10, 2010.

[9] Matthew Cole, et.al., “U.S. mulls legality of Killing American al-Qaeda ‘Turncoat,’” ABC News, Nov. 10, 2009.

[10] In legal parlance, this doctrine limits the ability of federal courts to hear constitutional questions even where other justiciability requirements—such as standing, ripeness, and mootness—are met. The doctrine helps courts escape from facing politically-charged issues.

[11] See, among others, Debra Cassens Weiss, “Judge Tosses Suit Seeking to Prevent Targeted Killing of Cleric Who Urged Jihad,” ABA Journal, Dec. 7, 2010. See also, Peter Finn, “Political, legal experts want release of Justice Department memo supporting killing of Anwar al-Awlaki,” Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2011.

[12] Craig Whitlock, “U.S. airstrike that killed American teen in Yemen raises legal, ethical questions,” Washington Post, Oct. 22, 2011.

[13] DJI (Da Jiang Chuangxin) stands for “Great Frontier Innovations,” and was founded in 2006 by Frank Wang (Wang Tao). The drone company—and its futuristic headquarters complex in Shenzhen—is backed by several state-owned companies. Shenzhen is also home to Huawei, ZTE, and Tencent, among others. In October 2022, DJI was added to a DoD list of “Chinese military companies operating in the U.S.” DJI drones have been used by ISIS in Iraq, a botched assassination attempt on the Venezuelan president (Maduro in 2018), and has been criticized for use by both sides in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.

[14] Masha Borak and Yujie Xue, “How Shenzhen, the hi-tech hub of China, became the drone capital of the world,” South China Morning Post, Apr. 4, 2021.

                   BLACK MASS? THE TORONTO INTERLUDE  

by Jeemes Akers

“Black Mass is what you obtain once a [lithium-ion] battery has been processed for recycling. Batteries are composed of metals including lithium, manganese, cobalt, and nickel. Once a battery reaches the end of its service life, it is collected, dismantled, and shredded. The shredded material is then processed to produce ‘Black Mass’, which contains high amounts of these metals.”

                                                                                        Jacques David[1]

“Recycling these [lithium-ion] batteries is still a complex, costly process: the collection and transportation of spent batteries make up nearly half the cost of recycling … [a process that will] become more challenging around 2025, when tens of thousands of EV [electric vehicle] batteries will start to reach the end of their lifespan.”

                                                                                         Rebecca Leber[2]

            It all started—as have many of my recent adventures—with a note from my former student and CEO of Westwin Elements Inc., Ms. KaLeigh Long. “Jeemes, would you be interested in a trip to Toronto to see Kamran’s refinery?”

Of course, I said yes.

And so, Ima dropped me off at the Charlotte Airport. (We are still on Ima’s grand post-retirement tour.)

An uneventful flight to Tulsa followed.

Katie was nice enough to pick me up.

We made a quick stop at the Chic-fil-A in Bartlesville.

Then out to KaLeigh’s house.

She was preparing for a small group meeting from her church.

We picked up some Tex-Mex and drinks in town.

Then it was a night of prayer and worship songs with a handful of like-minded believers as the sun went down over the ranch country of Oklahoma.

Afterwards, a long talk about all things spiritual with Brian, KaLeigh’s dad, in the “great room” of their cattle ranch home before retiring.

Martha made a tasty breakfast the next morning before KaLeigh picked me up.

Then we—KaLeigh, Ryan J., Randy P. and two photographers—boarded Randy’s private jet for a short flight to Lawton, Oklahoma, to meet with city officials and look at the piece of property in the city’s industrial park where our cobalt refinery (the nation’s first largescale refinery of its type) will be located.

In truth, the entire trip was arranged for Randy’s benefit. Randy—a likeable native Texan who made his fortune in oil and real estate—had recently become our largest individual investor. He told me he was attracted to Westwin Elements for at least four reasons: his interest in supporting a wholly Christian-run project, his desire to leave a large and meaningful final “legacy” gift, his patriotic desire to support a U.S.-based strategic minerals initiative, and, finally, a desire to get in on the ground floor of a project with the potential to return a huge profit for the initial tranche of investors.

It was the second time I’d been with Randy.

After our whirlwind visit to Lawton, we reboarded the small jet for a flight to Toronto, Canada. We made a brief custom’s stop in St. Louis (with a sudden crosswind, as we approached the runway, that pushed our small jet around like a small maple leaf in a windstorm). KaLeigh said it made her stomach queasy. The whole experience reminded me of the many landings aboard the “hognose” RC-135 at Kadena AFB during the Vietnam years. One young pilot in particular—I forget his name after all these years—who, when we found out he was in the cockpit, prompted all of us crew members to place bets on how many times he would “bounce” the plane on landing. (Any number above four generally was a pretty good bet!)

After an uneventful take-off, we headed for Canada. On our final approach to Toronto Pearson International Airport, all of us onboard experienced a visual treat; an incredibly beautiful sunset, painted in hues of red, purple and orange, stretching above a vast urban landscape of lights below, each dazzling like a beautiful gem in the growing darkness.

Once on the ground, two Uber cabs whisked our party to an upscale French Restaurant where Kamran Khozan and two individuals associated with his firm, CVMR, awaited.

Kamran was in rare form. He regaled Randy and others close to him with stories of his travels and various business ventures. Of course, as his wine glass was constantly refilled, the jokes began flowing out of him like the waters of the Amazon. I’ll only repeat one of them. (Even though I can’t write a joke nearly as good as Kamran can tell one).

A Jamaican was walking along the seashore and up washed an Aladdin-type lamp. He dutifully rubbed the lamp, and a genie pops out. “I’ll grant you three wishes,” the genie says.

“I want to be white,” the Jamaican says.

“And your second wish?”

“H-m-m. I want to be surrounded by water,” the Jamaican said as he scanned outward from the crowded beach over the ocean waves.

“And your third wish?”

The Jamaican looked down the beach. “I want to be able to see brown, female Jamaican asses every day!”

Poof!

He was turned into a toilet bowl.

During the dinner I sat next to John, Kamran’s longtime corporate attorney and CVMR board member. We had a nice conversation about his law practice, his family, and his disappointment with the various Toronto-based professional sports franchises.

All-in-all, it was a charming evening.

After the dinner, we stayed at a nice hotel in downtown Toronto.

Our team spent most of the next morning at Kamran’s refinery. We observed first-hand what our first module would look like—the build-out for Westwin Elements in Lawton OK will be much larger in scale. There were various gauges, dials, canisters, and pipes, as well as samples of nickel and copper ore containing cobalt deposits. Kamran was particularly excited to show us a box of hardened black globs, “vacuumed from the Pacific Ocean floor shelf off Seattle” which could serve as a future source for strategic minerals including cobalt. Victor, (Nanthakumar Victor Emmanuel), Kamran’s unassuming chief scientist and vice president for production (with some 90 metallurgical patents to his credit), stirred and tested some lithium brine as we walked through.

I first met Victor during our trip to Midland-Odessa, Texas, and liked him immediately.

I noticed one area which was obviously off-limits to us during the visit to Kamran’s facility. The doorway was constantly guarded by a couple scientists (or at least a couple individuals looking the part) garbed in long, white laboratory gowns. When one of our group asked about it, Kamran apologized, looking at me as he spoke, saying that his company was involved in a number of classified projects with various U.S. agencies (ostensibly DARPA, DoE’s national labs, and DoD among them). We lacked the appropriate clearances.

His explanation made sense.

Nevertheless, I sure wanted to take a peek.

I would be willing to wager that projects involving a number of other countries were there as well.

Victor drove us to the airport after our tour ended. I was sitting in the front passenger’s seat. He is so quiet and unassuming, yet brilliant. The only topic he feels comfortable talking about is his family. He is most proud of his youngest son, who is a tennis player ranked number six globally in his age bracket. His son wants to attend M.I.T.

Victor said he would be the one helping us with the technical details of the building and initial operational activities at our refinery in Lawton.

I was glad to hear that.

During our conversation (with the off-limits room in mind), I asked him if the Jilin refinery in China was still up-and-running. Victor spent several weeks in China, advising on the Jilin refinery as it was being built (ours will be similar in size). I had heard Kamran say several times (during his presentations in Texas and Oklahoma) that China still owed him $300 million on the project.

“Victor, are you still working with technicians on the Jilin refinery?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“But I have heard Kamran say many times how much money China owes him?”

“The squabbles between management have nothing to do with us technicians,” Victor replied without batting an eye.

Scientists—and technicians—have a way of preserving their linkages.

KaLeigh and Ryan were sitting in the back seat.

“How effective will your process work in extracting cobalt from Black Mass?” KaLeigh asked.

It was the first time I had heard the term used. All three of them engaged in a Black Mass-related conversation as it pertained to the future refinery.

I listened, nodded when appropriate and tried to act like I knew what they were talking about.

In truth I didn’t have a clue.

I’m sure some of you have been in similar situations.

All this, mind you, despite the fact that Black Mass and the whole battery recycling process is illustrated in an entire page in our company prospectus that we handed out to prospective investors in Texas and Oklahoma. Still, I had no idea what the term really meant.

I started digging.

Later, I found out that Joanna, one of the key players at Westwin Elements, has been attending black mass conferences and enlisting prominent Black Mass-related companies to provide raw material for our cobalt refinery.

So, let me make four brief points about the topic of Black Mass:

First and foremost, Black Mass will be with us for the foreseeable future. Why?

Most importantly, the growing demand for electric vehicles means advanced battery systems and the need to eventually dispose them. In today’s news alone, I read that Taco Bell food chain in California—of course—will put in EV car charging stations.[3] (California lawmakers voted recently to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 and the state now accounts for 39% of EVs nationwide, followed by Texas.[4]) According to another story today, in China the Shenzhen-based BYD recently dethroned Elon Musk’s Tesla as the world’s largest EV assembler; by 2030, three out of every five vehicles sold in China will be powered by batteries, according to Swiss Bank predictions.[5] Earlier this week, President Biden announced that $2.8 billion in grants to boost U.S. production of EV batteries and the minerals used to build them, part of an effort to wean the country off supplies from China.[6] The administration’s goal; by 2030, 50% of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be EVs or plug-in hybrid electric models along with 500,000 new EV charging stations.[7]

So what? The demand for ever more capable EV batteries requires more strategic minerals—cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel. Aside from mines in areas controlled by China, or otherwise difficult to access, the other place to look is in batteries that already exist.[8]

That is where Black Mass comes in. Today’s lithium ion (hereafter Li-Ion) batteries have a shelf life and must be disposed of somehow.

Secondly, Black Mass cannot be separated from the broader topic of recycling. And Americans are notoriously poor recyclers. Some estimates show as little as five percent of today’s Li-Ion batteries end up recycled, most ending up in the trash, stored indefinitely, or exported as waste instead.[9]

Thirdly, as Victor explained during our car ride, there is no one-size-fits-all process to extract cobalt from Black Mass. Any estimate of the purity of the final refined product varies from one sample to another.

Why?

The composition of Black Mass is diversified because the composition of Li-Ion batteries vary significantly from one producer to another and from one application to another.[10] In Toronto, Michael Hargett (CVMR President) and I—in discussing the future of EVs—talked at length about this lack of standardization in the industry. For example, the world’s largest Li-Ion battery producer, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd., (CATL) [Ningde Shidai] controls almost 33% of the world market share. CATL’s CEO Robin Zeng (China’s so-called “Battery King”),[11] has carved out a niche for the company in special arrangements with foreign car producers such as Tesla, Toyota, BMW, Honda, Volvo, and Volkswagen. My point: CATL designs Li-Ion batteries specially tailored for each of these companies, and for each model type within these companies. While that is an important aspect of Li-Ion battery production, it means that the process for extracting cobalt from the respective Black Masses will differ from batch to batch.

And that is a huge problem for the Victors of the world.

And, ultimately, a problem for Westwin Elements.

Fourthly, and unsurprisingly, America lags far behind in Black Mass re-cycling facilities. With few plants for Black Mass open in the U.S., DoE estimates show that a typical Li-Ion battery has to travel some 50 miles for dismantling and then another 1,000 miles for processing.[12] (By comparison, traditional lead-acid batteries used by combustion-engine cars, a technology that has been around for nearly a century, is among the best recycled products in the U.S. with reuse rates near 100%[13]). The costs of EV battery recycling are costly: recycling costs in the U.S. are $50 per hour, compared to $7.50 in China.[14] Today, as a result, the major Black Mass recycling facilities are located in China, Japan and South Korea, some dealing with more than 50,000 tons per year.[15]

And all this discussion focuses solely on the burgeoning future EV market. I haven’t mentioned the future flood of Li-Ion batteries from factory forklifts or other material handling systems, golf carts and airplanes.

Bottom line: for Westwin Elements and its future cobalt refinery, Black Mass could provide a promising source of raw materials from which to extract cobalt using Kamran’s proprietary chemical vapor metal refining methods.

At least in the short term.

[1] Jacques David, “Black Mass one of the hottest issues in battery recycling,” Recycling Magazine, Oct. 9, 2021. See also, Elliott Ethridge and Frederick Kuhn, “Let’s Talk Recycling: What is ‘Black Mass’”, BASF Catalysts, Jul 13, 2021.

[2] Rebecca Leber, “The end of a battery’s life matters as much as the beginning,” Vox, Oct. 17, 2022.

[3] Orlando Mayorquin, “’EV charge and a chalupa’: Electric car chargers are coming to over 100 Taco Bell locations,” USA Today, Oct. 19, 2022.

[4] See, “Electric Vehicle Registrations by State,” U.S. Department of Energy, afdc.energy.gov.

[5] “Electric cars: China’s BYD extends lead over Tesla after stealing its crown, as Chinese drivers opt for cheaper models,” South China Morning Post, Oct. 20, 2022. Note: BYD—“Build Your Dreams” in Chinese—is a publicly listed Chinese manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Shenzhen, founded by Wang Chanfu in February 1995. The company started out as an EV battery manufacturer and now sells EVs at a much cheaper price than Teslas or Chinese EV rivals Nio and Xpeng. The company attracted the attention of global investors when Berkshire Hathaway paid over $232 million for stock shares in 2008 (recently sold). China, the world’s biggest EV market, is expected to double this year to six million units. On a personal note, many scenes from my futuristic novels are set in Shenzhen.

[6] David Shepardson and Ernest Scheyder, “Biden awards $2.8 billion to boost U.S. minerals output for EV batteries,” Reuters, Oct. 19, 2022.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Leber, “The end of a battery’s life.”

[9] Ibid.

[10] David, “Black Mass.”

[11] See, Tyler-Dudley, Davis et al, “CATL: China’s Battery King,” May 6, 2021.

[12] Leber, “The end of a battery’s life.”

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] David, “Black Mass.”